Anatomy of Failed Design: Vampire

[Grek]

While I can respect that someone might want to make a waterproofed robot, I still very much want robots who aren't waterproofed on the table. If you can't have a scene where the robot who is otherwise convincingly human gets pushed out into the rain by a plucky scooby, thus causing them to short out and spark and twitch in an unnatural manner, you don't really have the evil robot genre fully supported.

Unfortunately, robots aren't actually weak to water in After Sundown. They get tripped up by alcohol. Or, if my suggestion is implemented, smoke. Water is the Transhuman weakness.

This is resolvable, all you'd have to do is swap the weaknesses of Witches and Animates (this also fixes the "dryads are weak to water" issue) but insofar as robots being not being uncovered by rain is a genre failure, After Sundown is already failing.

[pragma]

On a minor tangent: I'd really like a summary of key factoids about various powers included in a heading before the long form description. I don't like having to dig through the paragraph (and possibly other intro paragraphs depending on the discipline) to find the details of a powers action requirements / power point consumption / skill rolls when I'm in the heat of a game.

[Chamomile]

While I can respect that someone might want to make a waterproofed robot, I still very much want robots who aren't waterproofed on the table. If you can't have a scene where the robot who is otherwise convincingly human gets pushed out into the rain by a plucky scooby, thus causing them to short out and spark and twitch in an unnatural manner, you don't really have the evil robot genre fully supported.

Unfortunately, robots aren't actually weak to water in After Sundown. They get tripped up by alcohol.

I've written a post in the past about how I think the Icarids and Animates should have their weaknesses swapped. Clay golems dissolve and both androids and Frankensteins run on electricity. Meanwhile Icarids don't suggest themselves to any particular weakness, so we can plug in whatever's convenient. Frank pointed out at the time that it is a plot point that the actual original Frankenstein(s monster) was weak to alcohol, but that seems like it'd be better represented by that particular character having some kind of "can't hold his liquor" disadvantage. Particularly if we're getting rid of alcohol as a weakness altogether.

[Prak]

It actually might be a good idea to strip out some of the connotation laden terms. It's pretty clear that androids are distinguished by being created as lovers, not by being robots, that frankensteins are distinguished by being created to be people, not by being corpse composites animated with electricity, and golems are distinguished by being made to be workers, not made of clay, but we all keep forgetting that. Icarids could probably benefit from a name that has more of a Hyde-esque "I changed my actual physiology" connotation than a "I built something (and maybe attached it to myself)" connotation.

But then we still need tech monsters.

[Chamomile]

Animates, Icarids, and to a lesser extent Witches all have a problem in that they're very nearly a Steve category. They're the category people tend to reach for when they have a monster type that isn't particularly well represented by any of the other monster types. This makes it nearly impossible to assign a weakness to them that won't offend the sensibilities of someone or other. So I agree that Animate types should be based more around purpose of construction rather than material, but also think that they should still be uniformly weak to water. Because every potential weakness will fail to cover some niche kind of construct or another, but a weakness to water covers the main ones. Clay dissolves, iron or brass rusts, androids and Frankensteins short circuit. Now Galatea is made of marble and has no particular reason to care about water, but she also has no particular reason to care about smoke, booze, or sunlight, so.

I'd also be in favor of monsters being at least theoretically capable of having obscure weaknesses outside the main three, so long as this is a listed advantage (or disadvantage for just having an obscure weakness in addition to your standard big three weakness) rather than being an inherent feature of any given splat. For the PCs it means people playing one of those Steve-esque splats can pick a weakness more appropriate to whatever their weird Steve vision is and on the antagonist side it allows for an enemy whose weakness isn't something you can determine on sight or even by just trying one of everything on it, but rather something you have to go to a library and look up.

[OgreBattle]

I could see the core of After Sundown focusing on monsters that have a clear 'species' like werewolves, vampires, ghosts, demons and so on, then having a follow up for more 'steve' monsters like kikaider androids, Kamenrider/Super Sentai monsters and so on that don't fit into the same paradigm.

Witches and other magic users, their style of magic already determines if you load salt or seeds into your shotgun before facing them, that already seems like enough. I could see something where they have the option to become more like a supernatural monster of their fancy and thus also pick up their weaknesses (water, sunlight, etc.). Like the spirit that inhabits their body giving them power is repelled by water so dunking the witch in water drives the spirit away.

"Crafted" beings like Galatea and shocker monsters have one tied to the way they were made (Say, if Galatea was made with orphic sorcery then...) or a unique weakness, or maybe don't have any one in particular. How that's balanced, I don't know.

Like... perhaps kamen rider monsters are particularly weak to attacks delivered with chi infused martial arts, so the rider kick is their bane.


This monster may or may not be weak to fire

[Mord]

How about robot people aren't vulnerable to wood or water but have to deal with an essence kind of mechanic where showing robocop where he used to live or Frankenstein hanging out with small children stresses them

I love the idea of an Animate hunter carrying around a grade schooler as Frankenstein repellent. Full speed ahead I say!

[Username17]

I don't think there is a satisfactory set of magical weaknesses. It's impossible for two different weaknesses to be balanced because there are some people who know what they are and some people who don't. The best you can really hope for is that the weaknesses to have advantages and disadvantages. Sunlight and Water are different, and that's about as good as you can do. Similarly with bane substances - wood is easy to get but silver is a heavy metal that holds an edge. Iron and Alcohol are not, I think, as close to balanced as Sunlight vs Water or Wood vs Silver. Those two are simply less felicitous than the other four.

But I haven't been able to come up with anything else to replace them with. Fire is a classic, but fire sorcery teaches you fire immunity at basic. There is no power of silver negation and isn't going to be. Iron has mythic resonance, but it's both very common and ludicrously easy to weaponize. That's unfortunate, but I do not have a good idea of what to replace it with.

On a related note: I actually am quite happy with seeds/salt/sand as dispel foci. All are acquirable and portable to roughly equal degrees.

Witches and other magic users, their style of magic already determines if you load salt or seeds into your shotgun before facing them, that already seems like enough. I could see something where they have the option to become more like a supernatural monster of their fancy and thus also pick up their weaknesses (water, sunlight, etc.). Like the spirit that inhabits their body giving them power is repelled by water so dunking the witch in water drives the spirit away.

"Crafted" beings like Galatea and shocker monsters have one tied to the way they were made (Say, if Galatea was made with orphic sorcery then...) or a unique weakness, or maybe don't have any one in particular. How that's balanced, I don't know.

I could actually see a world in which the Silver/Wood/Iron question was one that was dependent on power source. It would mean that you stake Strigoi but use silver swords on Nosferatu. Where your silver bullets are targeted against Werewolves but the Nezumi die to iron spikes. It would make the power source more important and the creature type less important. Sunlight and Water definitely don't seem like they could be fungible in that way, while I can point to Vampires in Blade who fear silver instead of wooden weapons,, but Vampires hating sunlight is a pretty important thing.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

I don't think there is a satisfactory set of magical weaknesses. It's impossible for two different weaknesses to be balanced because there are some people who know what they are and some people who don't. The best you can really hope for is that the weaknesses to have advantages and disadvantages. Sunlight and Water are different, and that's about as good as you can do. Similarly with bane substances - wood is easy to get but silver is a heavy metal that holds an edge. Iron and Alcohol are not, I think, as close to balanced as Sunlight vs Water or Wood vs Silver. Those two are simply less felicitous than the other four.

But I haven't been able to come up with anything else to replace them with. Fire is a classic, but fire sorcery teaches you fire immunity at basic. There is no power of silver negation and isn't going to be. Iron has mythic resonance, but it's both very common and ludicrously easy to weaponize. That's unfortunate, but I do not have a good idea of what to replace it with.

On a related note: I actually am quite happy with seeds/salt/sand as dispel foci. All are acquirable and portable to roughly equal degrees.

Witches and other magic users, their style of magic already determines if you load salt or seeds into your shotgun before facing them, that already seems like enough. I could see something where they have the option to become more like a supernatural monster of their fancy and thus also pick up their weaknesses (water, sunlight, etc.). Like the spirit that inhabits their body giving them power is repelled by water so dunking the witch in water drives the spirit away.

"Crafted" beings like Galatea and shocker monsters have one tied to the way they were made (Say, if Galatea was made with orphic sorcery then...) or a unique weakness, or maybe don't have any one in particular. How that's balanced, I don't know.

I could actually see a world in which the Silver/Wood/Iron question was one that was dependent on power source. It would mean that you stake Strigoi but use silver swords on Nosferatu. Where your silver bullets are targeted against Werewolves but the Nezumi die to iron spikes. It would make the power source more important and the creature type less important. Sunlight and Water definitely don't seem like they could be fungible in that way, while I can point to Vampires in Blade who fear silver instead of wooden weapons,, but Vampires hating sunlight is a pretty important thing.

-Username17

You can deliver alcohol with a dart gun, so all of them can be used offensively, except for sunlight. Unless you have some means of storing it, like a perfectly reflective box with a one-way slit that only lets photons in. But even then you'd lose a lot of light to interference unless you separate them into single photons and store each photon in a different compartment.

[Lokey]

Want to note that Positronic Brain was Asimov using a cool new buzzword and has nothing to do with antimatter.

Weaknesses is a tricky thing. Probably important that we're not talking about published schlock, you have the author here to talk about his thought process instead of wondering if he had one besides need coke money must type words

I guess the main problem is pulling from a bunch of different sources with different levels of verisimilitude, or having to deal with all of the cultural detritus of something like vamps (how's this garlic make you feel, ok mustard, ok what other condiments do we have?) AS has already chucked a lot of the classic vamp killers, why not fix the open the drapes and your friend is a pile of ashes problem with others?

I never got the golf bag outside things like DnD (where you need that thing or might not be able to do anything). At least I had lots of scorn for my fellow vamps carrying flame throwers and dragon's breath ammoed shotguns--why haul around the crap other things need to kill you? Just beat them unconscious, drag them somewhere then it's time for the "before I kill you Mr Bond" speech.

[Josh_Kablack]

Like... perhaps kamen rider monsters are particularly weak to attacks delivered with chi infused martial arts, so the rider kick is their bane.

If you want to go that route, why not harken all the way back to Grendel from Beowulf and have a vulnerability to unarmed attacks? For justification, write something up about how their defenses do not apply against material which is still alive.

It's a little odd and, I'm not entirely sure it's genre-appropriate, but normal human hunters already come equipped with punches and kicks and in the case of not-actually-alive kin like robots and vampires, it's pretty easy to get a couple guard dogs or throwing hedgehogs

[Eikre]

To fix Sunlight, all UV light needs to count for the purposes of powers. Witch hunters run around with blacklights and the vampire weakness becomes as portable as anything else.

Heck no, man. Disagree. Vampires are obviously super down for hanging out in blacklit rave lairs, and UV is not at all meaningful distinction of sunlight in the mythical sense. The sun is distinguished from candles and torches by its intensity, scope, and penetration. Placing something in the "daylight," figuratively, means exposing it to (possibly divine) scrutiny and giving it nowhere to hide.

If vampires are going to be weak to artificial light, it should be from banks of blaring institutional fluorescents. See, vampires shrivel in the sunlight because it conveys the force of God's Glory, which cannot be manufactured. So, hunters carry lamps which exemplify Mankind's closest substitute: Relentless, bureaucratic mundanity.




Hey, um, if you could just return to the dank pits from whence you came? That would be great.

[hyzmarca]

Humans have made artificial suns, though. They're called hydrogen bombs.

Vampires in The Strain are specifically weak against nuclear weapons because it is a close approximation to the power of God.

[Whipstitch]

It's a little odd and, I'm not entirely sure it's genre-appropriate, but normal human hunters already come equipped with punches and kicks and in the case of not-actually-alive kin like robots and vampires, it's pretty easy to get a couple guard dogs or throwing hedgehogs

Unfortunately that makes victims more vulnerable to packs of attack animals and war forms but not much else. Aggravated damage and penetrating discipline bonuses has its uses but there's also many situations where mathematically you're better off grabbing a shotgun or a fire axe and rocking out a higher damage code to begin with.

[name_here]

Honestly, once you're talking nuclear weapons, if it matters that something supernatural but not incorporeal is specifically vulnerable to them you have left the power level covered by AS.

[Prak]

How about robot people aren't vulnerable to wood or water but have to deal with an essence kind of mechanic where showing robocop where he used to live or Frankenstein hanging out with small children stresses them

I love the idea of an Animate hunter carrying around a grade schooler as Frankenstein repellent. Full speed ahead I say!

This episode makes a lot more sense if the paranormal investigator was hiding from Frankeberry

I never got the golf bag outside things like DnD (where you need that thing or might not be able to do anything). At least I had lots of scorn for my fellow vamps carrying flame throwers and dragon's breath ammoed shotguns--why haul around the crap other things need to kill you? Just beat them unconscious, drag them somewhere then it's time for the "before I kill you Mr Bond" speech.

See, this is actually a shame, because D&D and AS have flipped the Golf Bag Full of Banes. In sword and sorcery fantasy, which D&D tries to emulate, you don't drag around a cart full of weapons made from every random material you can find. You have your heirloom sword, or sword pulled from a stone, or made from a meteor (which... Excalibur, if it existed, was probably thunderbolt iron...) or whatever, and that was your trusty weapon against all manner of beasties. Worst case scenario, you also have a crossbow with some silver and sharpened wood bolts in case you run into werewolves or vampires.

In modern supernatural hunter fiction, however, going back to Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula, the knowledgable hunter of monsters carries at least a suitcase full of known methods for detecting and dispatching said monsters. This trope, though I can't find a fucking page for it, was in such full force that people started putting together "antique" vampire hunting kits during the Hammer Film era, and the artifacts became "hyperreal", part of the material culture of gothic literature, invented to fill a hole in the mythos. Like I said in my previously linked post, Dean has his trunk full of iron, salt, weapons, and various other talismans and tools of his trade, Buffy has several wall racks of weapons, Angel has tasteful cabinets, Hellboy has a belt of pouches full of talismans, charms and reliquaries, and the newest addition to the Modern Monster Hunter Mythos, Nick Burkhardt of Grimm, has (had) a "bigger on the inside" trailer full of books and weapons collected by his lineage for dealing with the supernatural creatures they hunted.

If the game were more specifically about hunting monsters, rather than playing monsters, I might go so far as to say that maybe weaknesses shouldn't be pre-defined. But that's much more befitting a monster-of-the-week game with a Research Phase. For what AS is[/is] I think an Advantage for unusual weaknesses, and a Disadvantage for extra weaknesses, is sufficient. Conceivably you could also have Obscure/Storied, making it harder or easier to looking a character up to find their weakness.

[Chamomile]

If the game were more specifically about hunting monsters, rather than playing monsters, I might go so far as to say that maybe weaknesses shouldn't be pre-defined.

Angel is an actual explicit example of source material given in After Sundown, Buffy quotes get used in some of the chapter headers, and I think Hellboy is mentioned at some point as well. I can't speak to Supernatural or Grimm because I haven't seen them (I really should watch Supernatural one of these days) but to the other three:

Early season Buffy has three non-supernatural luminaries, and only Xander stays that way. By season three, Willow has picked up some kind of Witch splat and Giles' Ripper persona has demonic possession in its backstory so you could make an argument for him being either a Fallen or a Baali. Buffy, Kendra, and Faith are all either Icarids or Reborn from the start and Angel is either a Strigoi or a Daeva, probably Strigoi. Jenny Calendar is also a Witch, and Oz is a werewolf. Later season Buffy adds Dawn, who is basically an NPC, Spike, who is another vampire, and Riley, who is an Icarid. So, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a cast that is almost entirely monster splats and most of those were monster splats from the very beginning. Even if you count Giles' history with demonic possession as not enough to qualify him for a splat and include Dawn as a PC despite the fact she barely does anything, it doesn't fudge the numbers much. If you can't play Buffy the Vampire Slayer in After Sundown, After Sundown is broken, because Buffy is pretty much playable as an After Sundown campaign as-written.

Now when it comes to Hellboy I haven't read every comic, or even most of them, so I can't exhaustively list the main characters like I did with the Buffyverse. Even so, Hellboy himself is probably best represented as a Fallen, Liz Sherman's pyrokinetic powers are inherent which would make her either some kind of fire-themed Reborn or else a Baali with some fluff tweaks, Abe Sapien is very obviously a Deep One, and Johann Kraus is a Khabit. So again, playable in After Sundown pretty much as-written.

Angel requires only minor tweaks. Angel and Spike are right proper splats, Cordelia and Doyle have clear supernatural powers but will need expansion, Wesley is just the world's most badass non-splat luminary, Gunn and Fred are fighting for second place on that until Gunn gets Transhumaned but that's all the way in the season five, Lorne is some kind of splat but doesn't have many powers to justify it and doesn't fit into any of the existing splats anyway, and the less said about Connor the better. So only two out of our eight main characters have clearly identifiable splats, but another has exactly the backstory of a Fallen but without the powers and three more have obviously supernatural powers, just not very many and not clearly identifiable as any specific splat. So again, you'd expect something very similar to Angel to be playable in After Sundown, not by adding splats to characters who didn't have equivalents in the show, but by giving characters extra powers associated with their AS splats which their equivalents in the show didn't have.

In monster hunter games, you play as the monsters. That's not a wacky subversion, that's the genre.

Which isn't to say that there shouldn't be pre-defined weaknesses. In Buffy, vampires are vulnerable to stakes. All of them. The big named ones and the flunky spawn and everything. And that's how it should be, mook-level monsters shouldn't even have access to unique weaknesses, and even among big-time named baddies having a unique weakness should be the exception rather than the rule.

[Username17]

The trunk/closet/shelf/guitar case full of specialized weaponry is visual shorthand to inform the viewer that a character has put a lot of time and thought into killing. You show that to tell your viewer that the character in question is knowledgeable in this field. You can also use the weapons cache to show that another character needs to have a training montage by having them see the weapons cache and be overwhelmed. And finally, having shown the weapons cache, any wacky weapons or combat stunts you want to show later on can be considered "foreshadowed" rather than "immersion breaking bullshit."

The trunk full of weapons in Supernatural serves the same purpose as the trunk full of weapons in XXX. It is shown to demonstrate that the characters are bad ass and have put a lot of thought into combat. Vin Diesel doesn't fight vampires in that movie, but that's not important. Similarly, the guitar case full of guns in Desperado is literally the same guitar case full of guns in From Dusk Til Dawn and serves the same narrative purpose even though Dusk Till Dawn is a vampire fighting movie and Desperado is not.

The weapons cache does not work the same way in a non-visual medium like a book or a cooperative storytelling game. A quick visual pan across a bunch of crazy looking weapons is cool, but verbally inventorying a bunch of weapons on shelves is boring as fuck.





The Equalizer and Mrs. Smith have weapons caches to visually demonstrate to the audience that the characters have high combat skills and may be able to "go big" later in the film.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

The trunk full of weapons in Supernatural serves the same purpose as the trunk full of weapons in XXX.

Supernatural also has monsters that can only be killed by bizarre and specific banes. Like a stake that grew from the wood of a specific tree in a specific temple in Athens, which hasn't existed for many centuries. Or a brass dagger.

Just in the first season alone we have

1) Ghost - Burn and salt the bones. Disrupted by salt and iron.
2) Wendigo - Has to be burned.
3) Demon - Can't cross salt or iron, Holy Water burns it, must be exorcised.
4) Shapeshifter - Can only be killed by silver.
5) Reaper - Can't really be fought at this time.
6) Psychic - Normal humans with powers.
7) Tulpa - Can only be defeated by manipulating the destroying the legend that brought it to life.
8)Strigia - Consecrated iron, but only when it is feeding.
9) Vampires - Dead man's blood weakens them. Stakes do nothing.

So that's six banes right there, in one season. Plus some monsters that don't have banes. And one that has a rare and specific combination bane.

The Winchesters specifically do carry around a huge toolkit full of banes. They have angel-killing knives for killing angels, and a demon-killing knife for killing demons. They have holy oil, salt, iron, silver knives, iron bullets, brass knives, rocksalt shells. Anything that they need, they can pull out of their trunk. It's assumed to have any equipment they need to fight the latest monster unless it's a plot point that they don't.

[name_here]

The weapons cache does not work the same way in a non-visual medium like a book or a cooperative storytelling game. A quick visual pan across a bunch of crazy looking weapons is cool, but verbally inventorying a bunch of weapons on shelves is boring as fuck.

I wouldn't say that; the Dresden Files had a habit of listing off assorted gear in Harry's lab the first time he entered it in a given book, invariably ending with the human skull on the countertop. Some of them become relevant later, some were relevant in prior books, and some are just there to indicate that he gets up to monster hunting adventures in between books.

Iconically, when you have monsters with various specific banes, monster hunters are the guys who know what they are and insofar as possible carry them around. In kitchen sink settings, you can imply the existence of a certain type of mythological monster that has yet to appear by having its bane in a monster-hunting kit. If the grizzled old dude you call on to hunt vampires pulls a stake out of a box that also contains silver bullets, you can be reasonably confident there are werewolves in this setting.

[Eikre]

Humans have made artificial suns, though. They're called hydrogen bombs.

Vampires in The Strain are specifically weak against nuclear weapons because it is a close approximation to the power of God.

Oh, that's actually really good and also complementary with the tongue-in-cheek theme I was going for.

List of things which evoke a divine quality:

-Apocalyptic woe
-Enforcement of nonsense protocol, to the point of misery
-????

Honestly, once you're talking nuclear weapons, if it matters that something supernatural but not incorporeal is specifically vulnerable to them you have left the power level covered by AS.

You can be within the influence of a nuclear detonation without being killed by it.


This dude is only alive because he's not a vampire.

In modern supernatural hunter fiction, however, going back to Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula, the knowledgable hunter of monsters carries at least a suitcase full of known methods for detecting and dispatching said monsters.

I wanted to remark that these are strong arguments and I agree.

As it pertains to Frank's response, I'd like to point out that since movies have already depicted personal armories to the point of cliché, it is unlikely that anybody needs one described to them; thus, even though the shorthand is more spectacular when it's visual, it still works perfectly well when it's only conceptual. It can make the very same indications about a character with a description as short as "a rack of weapons, a box of talismans, and an array of jars and bottles with aging labels."

But I think that misses the core of Frank's implicit point, which I believe is that even though those armories are depicted, they are never employed exhaustively, because their narrative purpose ends before the confrontations begin. Heroes actually end up using a much smaller number of iconic weapons. Thus, there isn't a literary utility in articulating the relevance of any weapons beyond the primary set.

The chief criticism I have of that is that a large and diverse collection of meaningful tools is a very commonly appreciated variety of treasure. There's a significant sense of fantasy fulfillment in saying that your character has one, but it's predicated on there actually being a wide variety of tools that are nominally useful for something.

Make no mistake, it would be dumb to itemize lists of weird shit that your character has on him for the purpose of fighting the edge cases. In general, I think a character's capacity to produce an obscure weakness of any variety should be a consolidated circumstance that is either true or not depending on whether or not they have access to a storehouse at that particular moment, or if they had been specifically expecting to fight the person with the weakness since before they arrived.

So these are the cases in which a special weakness is relevant:

-Somebody has one of an unknown nature. Their opponent either pushes through the disadvantage or breaks off to do research.
-Somebody has one of a known nature, but either their appearance comes as a surprise, or their opponent was just not materially prepared for war. Their opponent either pushes through the disadvantage, breaks off to procure the weakness, or indicates how he can reasonably get his hands on it in that scene.
-Somebody has one of a known nature. Their opponent knows of either their presence in this locality, or their affiliation with an enemy group in this locality. Their opponent is also on the warpath and ready to kill some fuckers. Their opponent, thus, brought some kryptonite.
-A player has one. It pleases him to articulate it, as an ersatz form of masturbation.
-Conceptually, somebody in the universe has one, even if they never show up in this game. A player is nonetheless self-satisfied with the understanding that his fortress contains a vault with the conceptual foe's conceptual weakness.

I think it's worth it.

[Mord]

The trunk/closet/shelf/guitar case full of specialized weaponry

Or, in the case of Vampires: Los Muertos, the surfboard full of of specialized weaponry...



Also, Eikre: Spoiler tags plz.

[Username17]

The chief criticism I have of that is that a large and diverse collection of meaningful tools is a very commonly appreciated variety of treasure. There's a significant sense of fantasy fulfillment in saying that your character has one, but it's predicated on there actually being a wide variety of tools that are nominally useful for something.

I broadly agree with you here, but I don't see how weapons can be that thing. A challenge where "only the right tool for the job will do" pretty much has to be one which doesn't end the characters if they don't pass the challenge or one where the player characters already have the tool. There is no option 3 where you get to keep playing the game.

So it's OK for there to be a rooster door that you need to get the rooster key to open. That cuts off part of the adventure space until the player characters find the rooster key, but they get to keep playing even if they never open the door. On the other hand, if a Rakshasa can only be killed by brass or only killed by a blessed crossbow bolt, the player characters are going to get torn to shreds and the game ends if they get into a fight and don't have those particular weapons.

Right tool for the job models only work for combat challenges in authored fiction where the protagonists are guaranteed to get the right tools before it's too late. In a cooperative storytelling game, no such guaranty exists or can exist.

Now what I could see is having an Elder Fortitude power where you can only be killed for real by something weird and poetic. That seems like the kind of thing an end boss might have.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

So it's OK for there to be a rooster door that you need to get the rooster key to open. That cuts off part of the adventure space until the player characters find the rooster key, but they get to keep playing even if they never open the door. On the other hand, if a Rakshasa can only be killed by brass or only killed by a blessed crossbow bolt, the player characters are going to get torn to shreds and the game ends if they get into a fight and don't have those particular weapons.

Right tool for the job models only work for combat challenges in authored fiction where the protagonists are guaranteed to get the right tools before it's too late. In a cooperative storytelling game, no such guaranty exists or can exist.

This assumes that the characters can't just run away. Or can't know that they should run away.

An episode of a monster hunting show generally has two phases, the investigation, where they find out what they're facing, and the battle. The investigation phase is the longest part, and involves getting beaten up and running away until you can get the bane weapon that you need.


I'd also imagine that a standard monster hunter kit would just have all the normal stuff, maybe with a roll to see if they have the specific enemy's weakness. You'd only have to put in effort for the super-specific things, like a stake soaked with the fresh hymen blood of a virgin woman born on the under the light of the the celestial convergence of March 12 1917.

[Blicero]

Now what I could see is having an Elder Fortitude power where you can only be killed for real by something weird and poetic. That seems like the kind of thing an end boss might have.

I like this. That being said, it seems plausible to have an advantage that lets you swap up your weaknesses among the standard types to some extent. There should be relatively easy ways of finding out what such a kin's weaknesses are if they have done this, though. Maybe even just looking at them would tell you, I don't know. That would be an okay way of handling the Icarid/Android issues everyone always bring up while not shaking up the core assumptions.