Victorian Vampire RPG thingy (WIP)

[Thaluikhain]

Thread number 6666 in IMHO, woo!

Anyway, have for some reason decided to create an RPG about vampires (and the like), set up Victorian London. No illusions that anyone will likely ever want to play it, but it will keep me out of mischief.

I was thinking of the usual society of supernaturals hidden away, however I wanted to keep it (otherwise, mostly) grounded in historical accuracy. Sinister cabals of vampires secretly running everything is, IMHO, overdone and often boring, and can be very disrespectful. I'm not going to say that the Irish Famine was due to vampires, for example. And anyway, the cabal of mortals more or less openly running everything is sinister enough. A lot of stuff set in Victorian ignores the nasty bits to concentrate on the corsets, but, IMHO, a lot of what is conveniently forgotten makes for perfect backdrops for vampire stuff. Without wanting to go all "who is the real monster?", if I squint my brain a little vampires (et al) perfectly fit the ideas of capitalism, imperialism, classism etc. There are almost cliched as a metaphors for those. So, the society of immortals (need a better name for that) is a dark reflection of Victorian London, not pulling the strings.

As for historical accuracy, I am sticking vampires and stuff in, so there's only so far accuracy can go, but I still want to keep it otherwise as accurate as possible, mostly because I'm pedantic like that. For example, a bit of googling tells me that there was an average of 63 foggy days a years between 1886 and 1890. Assuming that's correct, and assuming that's typical for other years as well, and assuming foggy means really thick fog all day, determining whether or not sunlight will affect vampires is a D6 roll. Good, I like that. Apparently there was a fear (or maybe a media build up) about garroters, thieves that would half-strangle victims and rob them, peaking in 1862. Also good, I shall put garrotes into the game, you can be attacked by them when walking around in the dark. The NRA was formed in 1859 to provide trained men to defend the empire, real soldiers didn't think much of them. Might be useful, but nothing really jumps out at me, so leave than out.

This also means that I have to pick a more specific time that "The Victorian Era", because a lot changed during that time. I want the big underground constructions (sewers and railways) to have been built or at least partially built, so about mid 1860s is the earliest. I don't want guns to be that advanced, so early 1870s is the latest. Ok, that's a small time period, but that'd probably work better. That does mean I'm too early for Jack the Ripper and Dracula, but I think I can live with that. It also means I'm too late for various things, but this is less of a problem. Long lived vampires might not be up with the time and still think that this or that is still around. It's also around the time of the American Civil War, so lots of renewed interest in whether it's ok to own other people.

I was thinking of populating the world with 4 types of people (well, and also animals):

Mortals: Google says there were about 2.5 million in London in this time period. I want certain mortals to be able to compete with immortals, there's a point to having them on your team.

Vampires: Not sure how many of these I want to have in London, but the majority of the supernaturals. I don't like the idea of sunlight killing vampires, so I'm going to go with vampires being mortal during sunlight instead. Also, feeding can be non-lethal for night to night purposes, with lethal feeding being a combat boost. That requires them to have humans to feed on, making them bourgeoisie at least, so not many Marxist vampires. I like the idea of vampires succumbing to ennui and losing interest in night to night affairs as they get older, allows for scary powerful old vampires that don't do anything, and for leaders of society to start dropping the ball and needing someone younger to take over.

Revenants: Mummies, bog bodies, zombies (maybe) and the like.

Synthetics: Mortals created or modified with bits of other mortals, in a Frankenstein's monster sort of way. Rare, and create to serve some purpose by their creator, so I'd imagine they'd be more likely to be Marxist. The word synthetic is just a tad too modern sounding, might have to rethink that.

I like the idea of immortals (mostly) being laid back, disinterested in most affairs, decadent and lazy aristocrat types. This explains why they aren't running the world. It also means they'd sit around and say "someone should investigate the old mill" instead of doing it themselves. I'm thinking that old mill investigating brings a certain prestige to old mill investigators amongst everyone else who totally could have done that but for some reason didn't, so players have a reason to do it (beyond preserving the secret or whatever). And gaining prestige can be nicely equated to leveling up. I'd probably use "Rank" or something instead of level to avoid that OotS comic.

I also like the idea of immortal society being interested in preserving its status quo and not wanting big changes or conflicts to shake them out of their lethargy. So if there are active evil vampires evilling, as long as they personally aren't being eviled at, the majority of vampires are centrists want people to stop making a fuss about it.

Oh, and I'm going to want to avoid a definite first vampire or anything. Mortals during this period are just starting to argue about evolution, I don't see why vampires would know their origin or place in the world for sure. Now, I like the idea of some vampires trying to apply Darwin's ideas to vampirism, but no reason to believe they are correct.

I also want to avoid bloodlines or clans or whatever. You pick the monster you want to be from a list of skills and abilities that anyone can pick from. OTOH, I've got Cardigan by Taylor Swift stuck in my head, and there's the bit that goes "A friend to all is a friend to none, chase two girls, lose the one" which if I squint my brain a bit is a warning not to try supporting everything at the expense of not supporting anything. I'm hoping that having certain skills and abilities obviously synergise with each other better than others will avoid this.

I intend to put some rules and numbers and stuff in the next post.

Questions, comments and criticisms are all welcome, of course.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Are there any goals to the game, or is it a 'fuck around and find out' simulator with top hats and black leather pants?
Not that that's bad, of course. Are PCs intended to move up through society, rebel against it, either? What if my vampire wants to go on safari or something, as many Victorian noblemen did? Why, I could return from my travels and write a novella about the affair... by Jove!

[Thaluikhain]

Well, was going to concentrate on London (and maybe other parts of England/Scotland/Wales), going on safari would be a bit beyond the immediate scope. Also, there'd be a balance problem in that stopping rifles (double barreled guns designed to stop a charging elephant before it trampled you) were a thing. Not as capable of reliably and immediately killing an adult elephant head on as they'd later become, but enough to make a mess of a vampire in an annoyingly game-breakingly way. Though, I should stat up lions and tigers and bears, as they were around in London. In 1857, a tiger got loose briefly onto the streets.

Thinking that the idea would be move up in vampire society, or at least gain a reputation. Which is a goal in of itself, but also useful in a society full of scary monsters, some of which might decide they have more rights than you and be relatively unopposed by most others. There'd also be (mostly quietly) opposing such groups. But that's really there to contrive a reason to go investigating weird things and/or dungeon crawling, beyond the usual "preserve the secret stuff", just with bragging to other vampires afterwards tacked on.

(Also considering vampires know that they will lose touch with the world at some point, and become irrelevant, and hoping to earn a reputation so they can be immortal in one sense while wasting their immortality in another. But that seems like it could get into emo mopey territory if done badly)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well now I have to ask "what are you going to do when Clayton returns from killing Tarzan in the jungle and pulls out the elephant gun when he hears your vampire ass breaking into his estate"? This applies to most humans, too. If just fuckin' shooting the vampire can nearly kill it, that may be an issue. What about superstitious people, or the devoutly religious? Can they do anything to ward off vamp attacks?
Can I be Lestat?

[WalkTheDin0saur]

I think the elephant rifle thing is fine. I mean, Chicago PD has fucking tanks and Chicago is still the default setting for V:tM.

I don't know what your mechanics look like, but especially if you want badass mortals to be relevant you could focus on superhuman avoidance rather than superhuman durability. That way an elephant gun or a cannon isn't THAT much more threatening than a Colt revolver, maybe even a lot less if accuracy and speed matters more than damage. (Not sure if revolvers existed in 1870 but I'm sure some gun nerd is about to tell me.)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That's the cops, though. Some dude is unlikely to have a tank unless he's built his own killdozer.
... Vampire Killdozer sounds like a fun session or two.
Revolvers did exist in 1870, but I'm not certain if they made it across the pond by that point. Given that the first patents for revolvers were issued in the 1830's, I'm going to guess 'probably'.

[Thaluikhain]

I wanted to allow gunslingers to be useful, so revolvers and rifles have to be useful against vampires, which means more powerful elephant guns are more than useful. They'd also tend to make other weapons less popular.

Bit of googling tells me that the British were using a 6 shot breech loading revolver since about 1867, replacing a 5 shot muzzle loader. Interesting, the Belgian police adopted a double barreled (that is, 2 shot) breech loading pistol in 1877, so all sorts of guns around.




Ok, to rules stuff and numbers. Numbers probably need tweaking.

4 main stats, Might, Agility, Will and Psychic. Need better names for those, and preferably they make a better acronym than "MAWP"

Normal mortals typically range from 7-9 on all of those, usually 8. Normal human maximum for each is 12. Someone outside the 7-9 range gets modifications to other stats.

An average mortal (including starting PCs before bonuses are applied) has:
Melee Defense 10
Melee Attack 0
Shooting 0
Dodge 0
Resilience 0
Psychic Defense 10
Psychic Attack 0
Health 10
And Might, Agility, Will and Psychic of 8

(Going to need a Stealth thing in there, not sure how to run that yet. Could have it be just a roll against a Stealth minus a Perception score, dunno)

(Also might have Agility also be a measure of how fast the character can move. Not sure.)

For each of the 4 main stats, every 3 (or part of 3) above 9 gives you bonuses. Might gives you +1 Melee Attack, +1 Resilience and + 4 health, Reflexes gives +1 Melee Defence, Shooting and Dodging, Will give +2 Psychic Defense, Psychic gives +2 Psychic Attack.
Every 3 (or part of 3) below 7 takes away the same amount.

I want a player to be able to be a vampire, and take a level/rank in something (magic, monster powers, fighting or whatever) as well. But then I want mortals to be able to compete. I could give mortals a bonus rank, but decided instead to have being a vampire take 1 rank, and a starting PC initially has 2 ranks. Which means they are a bit tougher than the 1st rank types who are a bit tougher than rank 0 normals. Bit odd to start at rank 2, but I like that. Actually, I might take "Rank" to mean the sum total of all the different Levels in things they have.

One or both of their starting ranks can be taken as creature types:
A vampire outside of sunlight gains 3 to each main stat. A vampire in sunlight cannot have more than 12 in any stat.
A revenant gains 3 to Might and loses 3 to Agility. They gain 3 to Might outside of sunlight.
A synthetic gains 3 to Might and 3 to Agility.

Those look roughly balanced at first glance, though it depends on whether or not people are in sunlight, that might be a problem. I initially wanted to only allow taking one creature type, but if people wanted to play a synthetic revenant or whatever, ok. They'd start off with no cool abilities, just higher stats.

Alternatively, they can take one or more ranks in Martial Disciplines (need a better name)
That gives them 4 points to spend on Melee Attack, Melee Defence, Shooting or Dodging.
2 points can buy 1 point of Might or Agility, and 1 point can buy 3 health.
And one from the list of Martial abilities, which are intended to stack with each other and make taking more Martial stuff desirable.

So, taking Synthetic would give you bonuses because you've got extra Might and Agility, whereas taking Martial gives you less, but you can tailor that better to what you want (you might not want to pay for increased Shooting if you are going for Melee Attack, say).

Alternatively, they can take one or more ranks in various magic things to be decided on, starting with Atavism. In Victorian times, to explain why Anglo-Saxon types would do things associated with dirty foreign types, one method was to claim that the person was atavistic, a throwback to the primitive. That is, they could be white without being properly white. So, I'm thinking Immortals, being sorta kinda part of the same society, use that term to describe people with animal related powers.

Two problems with that, it does originally come from a seriously bad way of thinking, but I'm thinking that particular thing is mostly irrelevant nowdays and the name can be used again. Also, whereas atavism in men was supposed to result in violent crime, atavism in women was supposed to result in prostitution. Going to overlook that.

Anyhoo, when a person takes a rank in Atavism, they select 3 Atavistic powers, which are either Transformative or non-Transformative powers (need better names).
Atavistic powers can only be used outside sunlight. An Atavist can activate or deactivate all their Transformative powers during their turn, before their action but not replacing it. They can't choose which to activate, it's all or nothing.

Transformative powers:
Gain 3 Might
Gain 3 Agility
Thick fur or scaly hide - Gain 2 Resilience
Claws - Unarmed attacks do d4, d6
Bite- After a successful unarmed attack, they can immediately make another attack doing d3, d4
Vampires get half that damage back as health for them.

Venom, when biting a mortal, roll over their Might on d20 to do d6 extra damage. Thinking of being able to spit venom as well, possibly another power.

Non-Transformative powers:
Command an animal to stay or go away on a roll against Will.

Command an animal under the effect of the previous power to attack someone on another roll against Will.

Mesmerise a person to stay still and not remember anything, needs first power.

Cause vermin to attack someone (little damage), or distract them (not in combat)
Upgrade that power with more targets or damage. Possibly drain their blood and return them to vampires?

Want more of these.

Might want the option to take another point of Might, Agility or Will as well when taking a level of Atavism, not sure.

So, you could take transformative powers to give you the same extra 3 might and 3 agility a Synthetic has, and one other power beside, but only outside sunlight. That seems roughly balanced. Likewise, if you take all transformative powers to help with Melee combat, say might, agility and resilience, you should be roughly equal in melee to someone who took Martial benefits for Melee combat.

OTOH, that means people who take martial benefits don't lose powers from sunlight but magic things do, which might affect balance.


Can test against stats easy enough, a given difficulty number minus your relevant stat, roll over than on a d20. Add someone else's stat to that if they are opposing you. Not sure if I want to use that for stealth or come up with something more involved. Firearms I'm also unsure of, don't want them to be the same as thrown weapons, but don't want them to be totally different. Maybe compare Shooting scores against range and visibility modifiers, and include dodging only for thrown weapons? But then I want to compare dodging against things you want to dodge that aren't thrown by someone. Might want to have thrown weapons work like dodging everything else and firearms differently, or maybe roll to hit and then the defender rolls to dodge for thrown weapons, only that's another roll, might be fiddly.

To attack in melee, the attacker rolls a d20 and has to roll higher than how much of the defender's Melee Defence they put against the attack less the attacker's Melee Attack. The defender might keep some Melee Defence in reserve if they are expecting to be attacked by someone else.

Weapons:
Weapons have two numbers, the first being the Penetration roll and the second a damage roll. When you've hit someone, you roll for Penetration and compare to their Resilience. If you get higher than their Resilience you roll for damage, if you get the same you half damage and if you get less you do no damage.

I'm dividing weapons into two types, things you can carry either concealed or openly in public without raising suspicion, or obvious weapons you'd only carry when fitting in isn't an issue.

People can carry one (only one) of the following weapons in public:

Melee
dagger d4 d4
shortsword d4 d6
cane d3 d6 (clubs or rifles/muskets used as clubs use same stats)
unarmed d2 d3
improvised d2 d4 (any random thing not designed for combat but would hurt, such as a broken bottle or using a pistol as a club)
knuckle duster d3, d4 (can carry two, one for each hand, as one weapon)
noose, successful attack immobilises victim, roll above 15 + attacker's might - defenders might at the start of each turn to escape, after 3 turns a human will lose conciousness

Firearms
pistol d4, d6 max cap 6
small pistol d3, d4 max cap 9
A great many designs of pistols are available. Some are single shot, while others are repeaters (revolvers, turret revolvers or lever action) or multi barreled and can be loaded a number of times up to given value not excluding that type of pistols maximum capacity (max cap). For example, a specific model of small pistol may have a capacity of 6, while others of the general type of "small pistol" have have a capacity of 5 or 8, but not more than 9.

Pistols may be breech or muzzle loading. A breech loading pistol can be loaded once in one action, a muzzle loader requires 3 actions to reload once.
There is no reason for PCs not to take repeating pistols of maximum capacity, and no reason for them to take muzzle loaders, but NPCs might

Combinations
Gun stick, which can be used as a cane, or a single shot small pistol
Sword stick, which is a shortsword inside a cane, can be separated and gives user both
Something I don't have a name for, but can be used as a repeating small pistol or knuckleduster

People can carry up to two of the above or following weapons when not concerned with appearances:

Melee
spear/halberd/pitchfork d4, d10 requires two hands
sword d6 d6

Firearms (any can be muzzle loaded)
Rifle d8, d10, single shot only, can have bayonet attached. requires two hands
Carbine, d6, d8, max cap 9 requires two hands
Small carbine d4, d6 max cap 12 requires two hands
Smoothbore d6, d8, max cap 2 requires two hands
can fire shot, which is 3 x (d3, d4) (roll once to hit) Maybe less than 3x at longer ranges.

Combinations
Cutlass pistol, which can be used as a muzzle loading pistol (not repeating) or a dagger

A rifle with bayonet attached can be used as a spear, the bayonet separately can be used as a shortsword.

The limit of weapons is admittedly arbitrary.




Martial Abilties

2 Shooting actions. When taking an action with a shooting weapon (drawing or picking up a shooting weapon, shooting with it, reloading it), the user takes 2 actions. So they can draw a weapon and shoot with it or shoot twice or reload and shoot or load twice. Possibly allow people to take this twice and allow 3 actions. Ends up with someone that can put a lot of lead (or silver) into a vampire, though, not sure about balance. Might want to have extra shots go at the end of the turn to allow opponents to get some shots back in first, but might be fiddly.

2 Hands. The user can use two one handed weapons, one in each hand, and use them both, so can draw two weapons or fire two pistols or strike with two swords or unarmed as one action. Cannot reload two guns at once, though. This stacks with the 2 actions skills, allowing people to attack twice with both weapons. Might want to have seperate skills for firearms, melee weapons and unarmed.

Disarm. If someone attacks the user with a melee weapon and misses, the user can force them to drop their weapon on a 1d20 roll higher than 15 +attacker's Might - User's Might.

Riposte. If the user has any defence left at the end of the round, they can make another melee attack, their melee attack cannot be more than the remaining defence score.

Parry. When defending in Melee, the defender adds their rank to their Melee Defence each time they are attacked.

[Krusk]

guns that don't kill vampires are still very useful in a vampire setting. Presumably there will be conflict with things that aren't vampires, and being able to kill them quickly from a distance is a big win, if lethal combat is a goal.

There are a couple of options folks usually use for vampires.
1 - Vampires dodge bullets with super speed - guns could hurt them, but most people can't aim quickly enough to do so. Some folks (PCs) may get special super aim.

2 - Vampires get wounded by bullets, but can't be killed. Getting shot sucks, but the vampire probably runs off wounded and comes back later. Later may be 30 seconds, or it may be a week. Either way, PCs want guns to wound vampires, and make them easier to stake.

3 - Vampires are immune to guns. they just absorb bullets, and it doesn't even matter. That vampire's probably got henchmen, and shooting them is something PCs probably want to do. Your PCs may also buy silver bullets, or blessed bullets, or other magic bullets which do kill vampires. If you want to make it so only PC guns work on vampires, but military/cop guns don't.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

Atavism: I like Atavism as a name, especially with the explanation that people in the setting associate it with reverting to a "primitive" state. I actually think you're good on unintentionally stealthing in racist tropes here, because:

#1: It's goofy old-timey racism that modern people with unexamined racist attitudes will still recognize as silly. Newsmax doesn't rant about how Pacific islanders are closer to animals than white people or whatever.
#2: Using the same Atavism power set for all vampires Anglo or otherwise is stating by word of god that the setting's white chauvinists are wrong. Anglos aren't "more evolved" or "more civilized", they get the same powers for the same number of points as everyone else.

Attributes: Why have breakpoints at every third point? You're not making a new edition of D&D, you don't have some legacy 3d6 rolling mechanic you have to support. Couldn't you make the scale 1/3 as big, and add the full attribute value to rolls?

Will and Psychic: Is Psychic likely to be a dump stat or a "defense tax" if you don't take the powers that use it? I like the 4-attribute setups but you might be better off with a different split for the mental ones. Maybe I'm not clear on what Psychic represents though.

Elephant Rifles Round 2: You've got two levels of damage. You could make the first level represent Avoidance instead of Resilience. Everyone (or maybe just vampires / badass mortals) has an Avoidance pool that's reduced by the first damage die. You refill your Avoidance pool if you go for a round without taking Avoidance damage (or possibly without being attacked at all) and then spend your action. Kind of like regenerating health in Halo. Elephant guns and cannons and bigass battleaxes from a museum can have low Avoidance damage to balance their high Wound damage (they hit hard when they hit, but they're big and unweildly). The claws and swordcanes and Bowie knives and dueling pistols you want to support for aesthetic reasons have higher Avoidance damage and low to moderate Wound damage. (Maybe I'm trying too hard to push ideas from my own homebrew stuff though.)

Revolvers: Thanks, I couldn't remember the dates from 7th grade Texas History, which was an actual full year course where I grew up. One out of the two OG vampire hunters in Dracula is a gunslinger from Texas. I could definitely see people wanting them in the game.

2 shooting actions / 2 hands: Is there an aesthetic reason you want dual wielding to be the norm? I feel like the Victorian horror aesthetic favors single one-handed weapon attacks. OgreBattle's Monster Hunter archetypes thread came up with a bunch of examples. (A lot of them carry a pistol and a rapier but they don't constantly fire their pistols in melee.)

[Prak]

So, a thought on guns.

As I understand it, in the Victorian era, while there were of course specific guns, the firearm industry was also just, well, the wild west

thank you

Which is to say, because the non-musket firearm was so new, and the assembly line and mass production weren't really things yet, people were doing all kinds of crazy shit with guns.





So, while it's a good idea to have some basics statted up, maybe guns could be more modular? A whole "customize your own gun" mini game would be ridiculous, but it might be worth having some kind of basic "choose penetration and damage, take a drawback for a feature" kind of thing.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Can vampires engage in atavism?
Can I also own a gun factory and be a gun-toting vampire shaman hero of the proletariat by smuggling guns to the lower classes to instigate total revolution, which will undoubtedly be opposed by other vampiric forces? ?

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have to think some more about guns. I was thinking of having silver bullets/whatever be worse than normal ones, but count the target as being in sunlight. I'm also unsure whether or not health should go up and down when in sunlight or not, might be fiddly and annoying. Having other stats go up and down shouldn't be too bad, I think, because mostly you'd only get one or two changes to the numbers. Don't want too many buffs of that sort, but having sunlight stats and darkness stats and they aren't quite the same shouldn't be too fiddly.

As for specific issues:

Attributes: Why have breakpoints at every third point? You're not making a new edition of D&D, you don't have some legacy 3d6 rolling mechanic you have to support. Couldn't you make the scale 1/3 as big, and add the full attribute value to rolls?

Could do that, though I wanted bigger numbers to allow more room to differentiate, but that might not be that important.

Will and Psychic: Is Psychic likely to be a dump stat or a "defense tax" if you don't take the powers that use it? I like the 4-attribute setups but you might be better off with a different split for the mental ones. Maybe I'm not clear on what Psychic represents though.

I was imagining Psychic to be a dump stat or defense tax except for dedicated casters that use it, yeah. I'm not entirely happy with Will and Psychic either, though.

2 shooting actions / 2 hands: Is there an aesthetic reason you want dual wielding to be the norm? I feel like the Victorian horror aesthetic favors single one-handed weapon attacks. OgreBattle's Monster Hunter archetypes thread came up with a bunch of examples. (A lot of them carry a pistol and a rapier but they don't constantly fire their pistols in melee.)

Actually, I don't really have a good reason for this. It does allow some choice of weapons, 2 single handed ones vs 1 2 handed one, and makes pistols more useful. Could lose it altogether.

So, a thought on guns.

As I understand it, in the Victorian era, while there were of course specific guns, the firearm industry was also just, well, the wild west

thank you

Which is to say, because the non-musket firearm was so new, and the assembly line and mass production weren't really things yet, people were doing all kinds of crazy shit with guns.

So, while it's a good idea to have some basics statted up, maybe guns could be more modular? A whole "customize your own gun" mini game would be ridiculous, but it might be worth having some kind of basic "choose penetration and damage, take a drawback for a feature" kind of thing.

That's true, I was trying to sorta kinda deal with that with the max cap for firearms. You can have a revolver with 6 chambers that therefore has 6 shots, but there's also 5 shot revolvers or 2 shot derringers or one shot pistols. Which are the same, but not as good.

Not ideal, but less fiddly. Have to think on that.

Can vampires engage in atavism?
Can I also own a gun factory and be a gun-toting vampire shaman hero of the proletariat by smuggling guns to the lower classes to instigate total revolution, which will undoubtedly be opposed by other vampiric forces? ?

Yes to the vampire atavism. Might have some restrictions though, poison spitting vampires seem odd to me. Or poison spitting mortal atavists who are going for the werewolf thing.

Yes to the gun toting shaman vampire. A big revolution amongst ordinary mortals seems a little (not that much, but a little) out of place for Victorian London, though. OTOH, a rebellion by synthetic mortals against vampires that had created them as slaves or low paid workers, that is kept out of the mortal newspapers, possibly supported by PCs, that's definitely something I'd want to support.

Not sure a factory owner would be a hero of the proletariat, that one seems odd.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Not sure a factory owner would be a hero of the proletariat, that one seems odd.

No, dude, that's part of the angst. They're a vampire factory owner who sticks up for mortal workers. This is despite their physical and economic need to devour them!
I think I might accidentally be making Stalinist vampires.

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, next up, some kind of magic using class thingy. Was thinking this would be focusing on spells that directly affected targets, as opposed to atavists which mostly improved themselves (or summoned bats to attack people, but it's still ending up as a melee attack roll...their mind control powers using will scores I might have to rethink).

Sorta like the idea of cast from health, but not quite, so was thinking that casters have a max of 1 magic point per level in this, and can regain a magic point by sacrificing d3 health.

Also want some vampiric "drain the life out of mortals and give it to the caster" kind of thing. Thinking about that, but one of the problems is that it means that people with this (and vampires) can end a fight with mortals better off than they started, whereas the other PCs are worse off due to injuries. Requires further thinking.

Now, I want mind control powers because they are cool, and in character, but they are notoriously game breaking. I'm thinking that the caster can only use them on a mortal of less rank than the caster has levels they have in this. And the victim is obviously in an altered consciousness state, can't use special abilities, and forgets what they have done under it's effect. Less Dominate Prime Minister and more Summon Lynch Mob. So you can make the guard step away from their sentry post and forget why, or have someone carrying a pitchfork chanting "Imhotep" like in that Mummy film. Possibly maximum of one person under control at a time per level.

So, roll psychic attack vs psychic defense for this. Possibly you can only get them to do someone really "against their nature" (which I shall take to mean harm themselves or someone that isn't their enemy already) on another roll. And maybe it counts them as 1 more rank for purposes of determining what rank you can cast them on.

Also, want a curse, say take 3 off the 4 main abilities.* Possibly cast this with more oomph, use more magic points as one action and allow to take multiples of 3, but one roll for each, rather than one for the lot. Any of them hit 0 and the victim is unconscious.

I also want to have them create an animated monster, such as turning a corpse into a zombie, bringing a scarecrow to life or animating a statue. Maybe on a temporary basis, and definitely with not great stats, so Summon DIY Lynch Mob. Possibly maximum of one active per level again. Possibly the caster has to concentrate on what these things are doing and can't do much else, but has these to hide behind.

Need more powers along those lines.

Was thinking that the caster can't have anything in their hands when using these powers, to limit them in combat. Though, that's encouraging them to take Atavism and getting claws, not sure if I want that.

Also, when getting a level of this...perhaps gain 1 Will or 1 Psychic*, or 3 points that can be spent on Psychic Attack, Psychic Defence, or Health, but no more than 2 on one of those at a time?

*Have thought about what WalkTheDinosaur has said, but for the moment will be keeping them in groups of 3. I like the idea of being to go up, say, Might at one point per level, but that not affecting your Melee Attack until you've done that a few times, but it would help when wrestling alligators or whatever.


Ok, got some sort of rules there, or at least enough to sorta kinda test. Took 5 2nd Rank PCs (one mortal with 2 levels in Martial, one mortal with 2 levels in Atavism concentrating on fighting stuff, one mortal with 2 levels in this new magic thingy I've just realised I don't have a name for, one vampire with a level in Atavism concentrating on fighting stuff and one vampire with no combat relevant powers) with swords and threw them into melee combat with 5 basic 1st Rank revenants with clubs.

And...rules as they are, it's possible to have a resilience of 4 or higher, and thus clubs rolling d3 aren't going to get equal or higher. One thing I'd previously considered was having Might give bonuses to Penetration (and maybe damage). Didn't do that as the bonus would start to overshadow the dice roll, which seems wrong, but it does allow for certain monsters to be more or less immune to hits from normal mortals, but still be vulnerable to attacks from PCs. I do like that.

The combat rules more or less work, but while it allows to build combat PCs that are feasible (and, IMHO, sorta cool) but work in different ways, the ways they work are set before the combat. There's not many choices going on when the dice are rolling. Might need some work there.

The new curse power allows someone with 2 levels to one shot a revenant that has 5 (or 6, I guess) Agility.

Looks promising.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Was thinking that the caster can't have anything in their hands when using these powers, to limit them in combat. Though, that's encouraging them to take Atavism and getting claws, not sure if I want that.

As a guy who likes his casters with a side of powergaming, most methods of limiting magic powers are kind of annoying and suck (I'm looking at you, 5e Concentration). You might be better off going with needing one hand free instead of both, so you can have magic gunslingers but not magic riflemen. Of course, you could always have a class feature or special ability or whatever that lets people cast certain spells when both hands are occupied. Keeping one hand free limits casters to a certain degree, but not in an excessively arbitrary manner - and it doesn't encourage people to grow magic claws instead of beating a dude to death with a pipe.
Perhaps some kind of burn mechanic instead, where casting too many spells too quickly will fuck your shit up? I'm just spitballing.

[deaddmwalking]

I'd argue that guns (and especially big guns) being particularly dangerous to vampires is a bad thing. If all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. PCs walking around the streets of London toting elephant guns is bad for the setting.

Sunlight makes vampires vulnerable - that's good. Silver ALSO makes vampires vulnerable - that's good. Having a Derringer pistol and lodging a bullet in a vampire lets you beat him to death with your lead-weighted cane. Blasting a hole in him lets him regenerate.

That would encourage your gentlemen of leisure to possibly pocket a pistol, but not go all Rambo on the world.

For magic, both hypnotism and spiritualism are appropriate. If hypnotism requires 'helpless' targets, and it's not too hard to discern that someone is 'altered' you can have some fun things where the bank manager walks in to the vault and brings you the diamond necklace etc. Fireballs are not going to be consistent with the setting.

To ensure that the vampires don't try to take over, it's important that humans collectively are a threat. Daylight weakness is a good start on that - not having a major weakness can be reason enough to want to be a human.
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[Thaluikhain]

Ok, some running numbers on dice roller and it looks like Riposte is powerful (as I expected), but perhaps not overwhelmingly so. Having the second attack at the end of the round is more fiddly than limiting, so change that to the same time as their first attack...but need a better name.

One other change, the bonus for having a high Might doesn't automatically add to Melee Attack, each turn you can choose to add it (in its entirety) to Melee Attack or to penetration and damage rolls. To stop high resilience from making strong monsters irrelevant, and to give people some options. Likewise, the Agility bonus can be applied to Melee Defense, Dodge, Firearms, or to a taking cover from firearms stat, decide the first time in a round it becomes relevant. Means another decision point each turn, which would slow things down, but hopefully stops things from seeming too samey all the time.

Thinking of another magic type, where you can use a weak spell and a normal action (with limitations, no Might or Agility adds) or a strong spell instead of another action. Possibly have that type be useful with high Agility, and concentrate Atavism on Might.