Steve

Post-apocalypse fantasy is a good idea and can be fun if done well. Using dwarves could be like a fantasy version of the Morrow Project or Fallout. Who knows what they will find on the surface as they look for the other vaults…err, I mean strongholds.

“In the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you!” Sorry. Could not resist.

Part of the problem starts with defining the power level. It’s pretty easy to make 50 or 75-point town guards, policemen or soldiers, but a bit more challenging to make 500 or 750-point superhumans. In Hudson City, you could do a pretty focused police campaign with 100-point Normals dealing with street crime, or you could have masked vigilantes of 300-points all working to take down the Card Shark organization.

I’m not sure why, but having the holy symbol on the back of the hand gives me a Lensman vibe.

I suddenly have this image of a bar where Charm and Conversation get bonuses. People could pay money to use it.

A lab is usually used for analyzing something, so I guess an Interaction Skill lab would be for reenacting social scenes and analyzing the results? A genius scientist could have Westworld-type androids play other people as they try out different ways to handle an interaction, I suppose.

It’s probably not legal and seems pretty cheesy, but I just had a thought about setting up an NND attack so that it only works if you have the Life Support defense that would normally work against poisons. So, if you don’t have Life Support versus poison, it won’t affect you. The special effect explanation is it’s turning your own immune system against you, or something like that.

I wonder if you could model it by adding BODY to a person wearing armor like their being hit with an Aid effect, those added points getting worn off first by damage to the armor that would need to be repaired. Once the armor loses all its extra BODY, then all the damage that gets through its defenses starts coming off the character. Magic armor would still give the same rDEF as normal versions but offer more BODY increase. By doing it this way, it extends character survivability but doesn’t render them into being nigh invulnerable. It just takes longer to put them down.

Maybe increase existing armor values by +1 rDEF for every two points of rDEF they currently provide? Platemail would go to 12 then, which seems like it would be sufficient.

Well, to keep it at its absolute simplest in this one thing, you shouldn’t require players to calculate any skill roll modifiers based on Active Points. I would suggest setting the RSR Limitation at zero so their RSR roll is the Contact roll. That would be the RAW solution. The non-RAW solution would be to leave the RSR limitation as currently constituted and then not bother with Active Point modifiers to the roll. I suppose you could still have roll adders based on religious rank. That would just increase the roll and make the power more likely to activate, which makes a certain amount of sense. Higher ranks get listened to more often.

That’s good to hear. For the RSR, you could set it at -0 Limitation if you don’t want to have the roll reduced by the Active Points. That will eat up a bit of your cost savings. You could also leave it at its current value and just house rule that the roll is not modified by Active Points. You could also set up special perks that offset the minuses, perhaps earned as part of rank among the faithful, or don’t apply minuses for spells that are in the favored portfolio of a deity. Like the healing god doesn’t give any penalties to healing magics they provide, but other portfolios they also provide access to are less favored so have the penalties. Those are some other ways to give flavor.

If you’re trying to cut costs for the larger Active Point multipowers, I suppose you could use your “Good Standing” limitation for them but vary the limitation amount per the structure you are already using for the custom limitation. It would seem to make sense that wielders of higher-powered prayers could be watched more closely by the deity providing the power.

For a divine source, I think having a limitation expressed something like “must be in good standing with deity” would be a good limitation to replace the unspecified ones. This shows that they are getting their powers from a divine source. For a RSR, I like what the Narosia campaign setting used, having a deity as a Contact instead of a skill roll, and that Contact roll functioned as the RSR. There were also Perks that added to the roll for being a favored servant. It gave it a nice flavor that you are drawing upon your patron/matron for magical support.

In looking at these two clerics, I must be missing something that differentiates their magic from that of non-divine spellcasters. There is a minor multipower limitation on the greater multipowers that is unspecified in both builds, so maybe that is a common, faith-based limitation of some kind? The 15-pointed multipowers on each build don’t have a faith or standing limitation on them, so they seem more like magic spells than prayers.

Well, Captain America maintained a secret identity as he was America’s secret weapon, so a code name/secret ID would be in line with this.

I could see a Cosmic VPP in this (0 time, no skill roll), allocating points based on the DI’s instructions, so perhaps a form of No Conscious Control.

Bricks with an ability like “Super Strength Smash Through” (I think is the name) would be able to burst out of any Entangle if they can use it from within. I don’t really have a problem with them being limited to using it only from the outside of one. It strikes me as a game balance decision.

So it sounds like near-godlike entities can do this, but lower-powered sorts can’t. That said, I guess a human mage could take their Perseid buddy to Babylon. The Perseid just couldn’t go on their own.

Another question occurs to me regarding parterres. Do alien worlds have their own separate parterres without links to others? Or do all worlds in a given universe share them in some kind of greater structure that allows visits?

Since the Kings of Edom are singular, then what region of the Qliphothic Realms do they occupy? I thought they lurked amidst the dying worlds of the Qliphothic mirrors of Earth. They are apparently in a lower(?) plane of the tree since they have no alternates. It’s interesting to learn that they are singular beings. That definitely gives them a far stranger feel and makes them more of a threat. They only have to succeed once with just one Luther Black. They would also be causing problems for V’Han and her empire, and Edomite cults would be like a virulent infestation among her controlled worlds she can never completely wipe out because their source is beyond her reach.

This is an off-topic question, but it seems to relate. How would the Qliphothic Realms fit into this? Is there only one version attached to the entire multiverse or does each universe have its own linked version? If there is only one and the godlike denizens therein are also unique, DEMON becomes a multiversal threat, and there might be instances of different versions of DEMON working together across the dimensional barriers.

So, is there only one Faerie or are there infinite versions of Faerie unique to each universe? It might give Faerie an interesting feel if it connects to all Earths at once. That crazy Fae talking about weird things might just be talking about real things on a different Earth and can’t understand why it’s audience doesn’t get what it’s talking about.

Perhaps the OP’s Shadow Queen is an avatar (fetch?) of the far more powerful one from 6th Edition. Their powers might link them somehow. This would offer a larger potential plotline, making the mortal Shadow Queen a sort of decoy enemy, like a Doombot. Just a thought.

Cursing the top thousand wealthiest people in the world so that they all have the Curse of Midas. All that directly touches their flesh (food, clothing, living things) is turned into pure gold. This curse lasts until they die from either thirst or starvation, as everything they try to consume for sustenance also transforms. Other than death, it can only be stopped by them sending one billion dollars to a bitcoin address. Instructions are given via an internet video.

I was thinking more like a Neverland out of classic fairy tales and not the Disney version. Wonderland in the books can be pretty scary too. The Shadow Realm could be a very fairy tale-like world, filled with moral lessons and rewards for good children and horrific, perhaps fatal, endings for those that are bad.