character-management Be At Ease Campaign Arcs

[Killer Shrike]

Arc 1: The Tears of Tierrasola: The first two sessions w/ Drew and Joey vs the Revenants and Antonio Aguilar will be considered the first (short) arc of a loose campaign.

 

Arc 2: Into The Breach: The third and fourth sessions in the game rooms of At Ease Games with the larger group of players against Nikolai and his Cthonically corrupted dimension will be considered the second arc. 

 

Arc 3: A Trick of the Night: A night of terror and blood on the Sunset Strip culminating in a all out assault on a Section M facility by vampires and their minions, with our Hunters right in the middle of it all. Lurking behind it all a mysterious master vampire named Vincent, and behind him an even greater and more insidious threat only whispered of by the name of L'Éminence Nocturne.

 

Arc 4: Qlippothic Philosophic: Secret societies, esoteric eschatologies, cthonic cults, and a legend from the dawn of Hermetic magic long believed to be apocryphal...falsely. 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Those making new characters to join the campaign will start at the 125/50 point norm for a new Here There Be Monsters character, following the guidelines described on the Starting Characters page, and then may add 75 XP* to their character.

 

Players may also just pick one of the Iconics and then add 75 XP* to them. I actually prefer this approach for people new to the setting, but it is not a requirement. 

 

*As the campaign progresses, the # of XP to catch up with the group will go up. I'll update this post accordingly.

 

I would encourage players to at least skim the docs linked to from here: http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Paradigm.aspx, particularly Assumptions. There are also a number of Talents particular to the setting that are worth glancing at. Players should also read the page for whichever Origin they choose for their character. If you don't want to do all that reading just to make a character...maybe pick an iconic instead; they're all good at something and are all within the campaign guidelines so no fuss no muss.

 

Hero Designer support files are available on the web site (prefabs, export templates, campaign rules).

 

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SELLING BACK OMCV:

 

Guidance on selling back OMCV: players are free to sell their OMCV down to 0 if they like. 

 

Be advised, some supernatural attacks in the setting work by targeting OMCV. Yes, this is a metagame hack to make OMCV matter. No, I don't feel bad about it. You're (mostly) grown adults...make a decision about getting 9 free points or not and live with the consequences... 😀

 

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SKILLS

 

Here There Be Monsters is a cinematic action setting which is primarily Heroic in nature, though with allowance for some Superheroic elements. Thus, it is a skill heavy game, and skills get used a lot during actual game play to navigate and interact with the setting.

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SKILL MAXIMA:

 

A Skill Maxima of 14- is in effect for the HtbM setting. This means that characters can buy skills up to 14- normally, 15- and higher costs double.

 

Overall Levels and All Skill Levels can be applied to take a skill roll over maxima. Other types of less expensive Skill Levels can only be used to offset penalties once maxima is reached. This nuance allows the more expensive skill levels (which many feel are a bit on the overpriced side in 6e) to be more `worth it` as they are the most economical way to go over the Skill Maxima for most characters.

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CUSTOM SKILLS:

 

There are a numerous custom setting specific skills in use in the Here There Be Monsters setting and nearly every character in the setting will end up with at least one of them; they are described here:

 

Here There Be Monsters Skills

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UPGRADED SKILLS:

 

While for the most part we are running Here There Be Monsters using the core Volume 1 rulebook for character creation (plus some specific Advanced Player Guide options that suit the setting such as Possession) and the Hero System Basic rules at the actual table, there are some specific skills that we opt to use the full Ultimate Skills version for which generally speaking is an upgrade or at least a `sidegrade` on the core version of these skills. The current list of skills we have agreed to do this for is:

• All of the Interaction skills
• Bureaucratics
• Criminology
• High Society / Streetwise (and all similar variants)
• Paramedics
• Teamwork
• Weaponsmith

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ALTERED SKILLS:

 

Computer Programming aka Computers: a base purchase of Computers is sufficient to cover "normal" mainstream operation of Computers and it is an Everyman skill for characters with a normal "modern" background. A character doing anything beyond just using prepackaged software, surfing the internet, etc suffers from a flat "Too Technical" penalty ranging from mild to severe depending on what they are attempting to do. Buying 1 point Adders to the skill for specific things beyond such basic usage (such as Hacking or Cell Phones) allows a character to apply their Computers skill to problems within that domain without suffering from the "Too Technical" penalty. Other penalties may still apply. A character paying full price for Computers (vs using it as a Fam or a Proficiency) gets one such Adder for free.

 

Fastdraw: I don't require players to purchase Fastdraw for each type of weapon; buying the skill once is sufficient. On the other hand, I reserve the right to apply penalties to circumstantial usages of Fastdraw where I think it would be more difficult than usual due to any complicating factors, the same as any other skill. So trying to Fastdraw a sniper rifle might be more difficult than Fastdrawing a pistol...for instance. 

[King Red]

Had fun the other night. As the new Killroy player, I look forward to how the story will progress. My sniper contributed to the party's success, so being a skilled human was still useful. Will hold off spending the experience points until I get a better feel of the campaign.

Edited May 21, 2019 by King Red

[Killer Shrike]

3 hours ago, King Red said:

Had fun the other night. As the new Killroy player, I look forward to how the story will progress. My sniper contributed to the party's success, so being a skilled human was still useful. Will hold off spending the experience points until I get a better feel of the campaign.

 

Professionals are absolutely useful...in my opinion they are the least limited of the Origins. I would recommend you read this document: Professionals; it covers the special considerations they get within the setting.

[Killer Shrike]

Casting call...I'm planning to run a HtbM session on Jun 1 / 5pm / At Ease Games  unless I hear otherwise. @Scything and @King Red have indicated they intend to continue playing Joey and Killroy.

 

@Steve, @Durzan Malakim, @WilyQuixote, @thuddgun ... haven't heard from you guys yet. If you're doing new characters lets see em, otherwise let me know what's going on w/ Murgatroyd or Drew. Thanx!

[Killer Shrike]

Here's Killroy, updated. King Red indicated he wanted to save his XP, so no real change...he has 13 XP to spend.

 

Here's Joey, updated. The main theme was buying off the "only at night" lim on some of his core abilities.

 

Here's Drew, updated. He upgraded a CSL with  pistols to an Overall Level (always a nice thing to have) and upgraded his Head Shot PSL's to  be Any Location PSL's.

 

Here's Muragtroyd, updated. He also has 12 XP to spend, if Durzan chooses to keep playing him. 

 

 

I opted to track Drew's and Murgatroyd's respective MVP awards as Perks worth  -1 point each, which is functionally the same as 1 XP, but allows  me to keep track  of where the XP came from and make sure it doesn't get "erased" if we do a XP bump later.

 

 

 

[L0rd_Magg0t]

Sorry for the quiet. Been hymning and hawing on ideas for a toon. 

 

Had a question on how to do it. So I was thinking of a martial artist that has a ( what ever you favorite fighting game is ie Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc) finisher move.

Heres something I have so far.

 

Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Damage Over Time (3 damage increments, damage occurs every Segment, +3 1/2) (135 Active Points); Required Hands Two-Handed (-1/2), No Knockback (-1/4)  ( want to put a limitation that target and attacker has to stay in HtH range to get additional damage ticks.

 

As a alternative would Autofire with a time delay on additional hits after the first work?

 

Lemme know what you think.

 

 

[Steve]

I've emailed in a character for consideration, trying to follow the examples of the iconics. I shall be there on Saturday.

[Killer Shrike]

Ya, I'm looking it over now.

[Killer Shrike]

On 5/28/2019 at 4:10 AM, L0rd_Magg0t said:

Sorry for the quiet. Been hymning and hawing on ideas for a toon.  Had a question on how to do it. So I was thinking of a martial artist that has a ( what ever you favorite fighting game is ie Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc) finisher move. Heres something I have so far.

 

Hand-To-Hand Attack +6d6, Damage Over Time (3 damage increments, damage occurs every Segment, +3 1/2) (135 Active Points); Required Hands Two-Handed (-1/2), No Knockback (-1/4)  ( want to put a limitation that target and attacker has to stay in HtH range to get additional damage ticks.

 

As a alternative would Autofire with a time delay on additional hits after the first work?

 

Lemme know what you think.

 

Sorry, I started to respond yesterday, and got really busy w/ work.

 

Why not write up both ways, and we can take a look at them side by side? Also consider making a custom Martial Art Maneuver, perhaps with a "Must Follow..." element; I'd allow a variant such as "Must Follow Con Stunning" for instance.

 

One thing I will point out is that the power level of characters in the setting is much lower than Street Fighter. So Ryu is out; Jet Li's character from Lethal Weapon 4 would be about right for a "bad ass martial artist" in setting for a Professional. Supernatural characters can push that a bit, but have to be careful to not let normal people see them using their obviously supernatural abilities.

 

As a reference point, some hth melee focused iconics are:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Killer Shrike/JimmyChen/150/Jimmy Chen.HTML

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Dorothy Michaels.html

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Wayne Wales.html

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Horace Logres.html

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Forosati Nik.html

 

http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/Varanasi.html

[Durzan Malakim]

Apologies for the long silence, but I've been trying to decide if I want to continue playing Murgatroyd (FYI I learned the name comes from the phrase "Moor Gate Road"). On the plus side, I've got a VPP that can in theory handle anything as long as I have time to prepare and can build spells that fit the campaign. Also, Murgatroyd fills the support damage buffer and damage negation role, which was useful in our last adventure. Lastly, in theory at least our future adventures may require knowledge skills that the pure combat-monkeys don't have, but Murgatroyd does or can have.

 

On the minus side, building a spell in-game is dull time-consuming work. I'd prefer to build a library of acceptable spells to speed up game play rather than make everyone wait for me to crunch the numbers and get approval. Perhaps if I have the group's help in creating my "spell book" we can focus on playing the game rather than having to take rules-breaks. The other down-side with Murgatroyd is his unreliability. He is essentially Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Good for a laugh, but potentially a TPK causer if he freezes up at the wrong moment and doesn't perform in a crunch. I'm worried that this combat paralysis makes him ill-suited to combat-heavy missions, which I suspect we will run quite often given how much of the party is DPS-focused. I'm tempted to spend XP to reduce the frequency of "Losing His Cool", which is currently at 11 or less to activate and 11 or less to recover. @Killer Shrike can I spend 5 XP to change the activation frequency to 8 or less?

 

The other possibility I'm considering is playing Ezra the holy-sword-wielding disciple. He's a straight-forward DPS, which our party already has plenty of. I'd prefer to save Ezra as a backup character if/when Murgatroyd meets his end.

[Killer Shrike]

6 hours ago, Durzan Malakim said:

Apologies for the long silence, but I've been trying to decide if I want to continue playing Murgatroyd (FYI I learned the name comes from the phrase "Moor Gate Road").

 

I actually knew that...I looked it up long ago when Panpiper offered the character because until then I had only heard it said by a cartoon character and didn't realize it was a name. It is amazing the things gamers learn in pursuit of our hobby 

 

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Also, Murgatroyd fills the support damage buffer and damage negation role, which was useful in our last adventure.

 

He can fill that role, if he chooses to. But he doesn't have to.

 

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Lastly, in theory at least our future adventures may require knowledge skills that the pure combat-monkeys don't have, but Murgatroyd does or can have.

 

Yes.

 

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On the minus side, building a spell in-game is dull time-consuming work. I'd prefer to build a library of acceptable spells to speed up game play

 

I would prefer that spells be worked out in advance when possible as well. Particularly given we only get to play twice a month, I keenly feel the loss of minutes to rules grubbing at the table.

 

On the other hand, given some people play w/ a laptop running HD at the table, whipping up a spell when absolutely necessary isn't necessarily a show stopper in extremis.

 

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rather than make everyone wait for me to crunch the numbers and get approval. Perhaps if I have the group's help in creating my "spell book" we can focus on playing the game rather than having to take rules-breaks.

 

Ya, spells he casts during play should definitely be kept track of. For instance WilyQ's last HtbM character Miles was a wizard, and he built up a pretty decent spell list of go-to effects over time. 

 

My preference is that you might come up with a handful of spells up front (there's already I think 4 spells that Murg has cast or had on a printed sheet thus far, so that plus 3-6 more), and then grow that one or two spells a session until you have a comfortable repertoire.

 

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The other down-side with Murgatroyd is his unreliability. He is essentially Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Good for a laugh, but potentially a TPK causer if he freezes up at the wrong moment and doesn't perform in a crunch. I'm worried that this combat paralysis makes him ill-suited to combat-heavy missions, which I suspect we will run quite often given how much of the party is DPS-focused. I'm tempted to spend XP to reduce the frequency of "Losing His Cool", which is currently at 11 or less to activate and 11 or less to recover. @Killer Shrike can I spend 5 XP to change the activation frequency to 8 or less?

 

Absolutely. If you're piloting the character, you get to drive his character arc / growth. You could also swap out 5 points of complication for a different 5 points of complication if you don't want to spend XP on it. Just describe how his recent life experience has changed his situation, outlook, hang ups etc to justify it, and no big deal. Given the literally reality bending adventure he just went on, there's all kinds of fodder for change. The main sticking point is to not make the core character unrecognizable. 

 

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The other possibility I'm considering is playing Ezra the holy-sword-wielding disciple. He's a straight-forward DPS, which our party already has plenty of. I'd prefer to save Ezra as a backup character if/when Murgatroyd meets his end.

 

Ezra would have been AMAZING in the Cthonic dimension, but that was more or less the optimal conditions for him. In the "real" world, running around with a glowing sword is a serious drawback / impediment. Keeping the supernatural a secret is literally half the job of Monster Hunters. The whole point is, if you do your jobs right, the normies have no idea that anything out of the ordinary was going on and remain unaware of the supernatural.

 

Part of the strategic considerations for players piloting characters who have abilities that shouldn't be used in front of witnesses, is figuring out how to shape scenes and control initiation of engagements to keep / move the action away from normies. This is similar to some versions of some White Wolf games, early editions of Vampire and Mage particularly, where maintaining the Masquerade or avoiding Paradox were a thing.

[Durzan Malakim]

Did anyone else notice our brand new Complication?

 

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5 Marked By The Elder Things

 

Oh what fun it is to die by one hoarse OP slay!

[Steve]

Well, my new character looks like it has been approved after some diligent editing work by our hard-working GM to fit the campaign.

[Killer Shrike]

And, we have Steve's new character, Baretta Colt. A Professional of the Survivor variety, this once seemingly helpless cheerleader was the last survivor of several monster related events. Setting aside her former cush existence as eye candy, she has gotten hard and trained herself Sarah Conner style to contend with the ugly truths of the world. Now she wields her gun enthusiast dead father's customized Colt 1911's against the forces of evil...all while rocking a halter top and pony tail. 

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

So, WilyQ opted to stay with Drew and Durzan opted to stay with Murgatroyd, thus the current line up is (pictures are clickable):

 

       

 

When @L0rd_Magg0t gets his character together, all in all it should make for a pretty capable line up.

[Durzan Malakim]

Ha ha, Baretta Colt's image really does match her distinctive features. The first thing I noticed was indeed her complication-granting features. Does the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series exist in this universe? Baretta will get a lot of comparisons to Buffy if so.

[Steve]

The picture actually inspired the character write-up, since I was having trouble coming up with a decent concept. Our GM was amused by her name, which I picked for an "action hero" sort of feel, but it does sound sort of stripperiffic too.

 

Comparing her to Sarah Conner in the later movies is pretty fair. She's actually kind of a mix of Zoey from Left 4 Dead with Jill Valentine from Resident Evil and Sarah Conner.

[Scything]

Hope you enjoy playing the character.

 

[Durzan Malakim]

52 minutes ago, Steve said:

I think I'll enjoy playing her. However, due to the lethality of the setting, she might only last one or two sessions before I have to come up with another character. 😰

 

Since Baretta Colt was a final girl survivor, she might benefit from the Miraculous Survival talent for 5 points, but perhaps her backstory is that she's already spent her miraculous survival, and now her survival depends on skill and training.

[Steve]

12 minutes ago, Durzan Malakim said:

Since Baretta Colt was a final girl survivor, she might benefit from the Miraculous Survival talent for 5 points, but perhaps her backstory is that she's already spent her miraculous survival, and now her survival depends on skill and training.

 

Yes, that would make sense.

 

I actually thought Murgatroyd would be toast in one or two sessions, and he's held on pretty successfully so far, except for needing a change of pants or two. We'll see how things go for him and the others that the Elder Things now have their collective eyes on.

[Durzan Malakim]

Murgatroyd's survival is mostly a matter of not being the highest priority target. His greatest threat comes from either creatures too dumb to prioritize targets or creatures too smart to ignore the seemingly harmless wizard in the back. His best strategy is usually "keep the meat shields happy" so that they use their meat as his shield.

[Killer Shrike]

Keep in mind vs some threats, he's the _most_ survivable. 

[Durzan Malakim]

Yes, having Supernatural Resistance is quite valuable when you are facing supernatural threats.

[Steve]

11 minutes ago, Durzan Malakim said:

Murgatroyd's survival is mostly a matter of not being the highest priority target. His greatest threat comes from either creatures too dumb to prioritize targets or creatures too smart to ignore the seemingly harmless wizard in the back. His best strategy is usually "keep the meat shields happy" so that they use their meat as his shield.

 

I understand this. I have always preferred warriors and thieves myself, so I'll leave the "subtle wizard" stuff to you.  

 

In a sense, they make an interesting contrast, since she is a far more physical sort that is somewhat resistant to fear and Murgatroyd is a scholarly type who needs his brown pants about once a session.

 

10 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

Keep in mind vs some threats, he's the _most_ survivable. 

 

Oh, I'm not dissing him at all. If Beretta manage to survive longer than a session or two, I'll be buying her a level or two of Supernatural Resistance, since it fits into her "Final Girl" survivor theme and is available to all characters.