Thia Halmades

My question has always been this: There’s this whole thing about abortion. But no one is willing to step up with daycare. Or the cost of healthcare. Or defund the military by a few million — against its trillions — to rebuild our public school system. You can’t save the children then forget about them. It’s not about being Christian; it’s code for racism and suppression of women.
 
I freely admit to spit-balling here. The “war on Christianity” is all a giant gambit based on Roe v Wade; if we have abortions, then women may not have children unintentionally and thus may finish their education, get jobs, and do better than men. It’s way, way more complex than I’m explaining here, and gets into health care, day care, education, etc. But that’s “the gist.” It’s not actually Christianity, it’s about oppression.
 
 
 
Oh, no. That was clearly a sign from his true master, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself.

This is purely dependent on how serious you want it to be. 
 
That’s it. That’s my whole answer. Comedy is minor, if we start getting into the hormones and how men and women are actually quite different, moderate. I don’t see it as major as it’s not adding or removing powers.
 
Wow. I just realized @dmjalund avatar changes colors all by itself. I feel lame now.

My question has always been this: There’s this whole thing about abortion. But no one is willing to step up with daycare. Or the cost of healthcare. Or defund the military by a few million — against its trillions — to rebuild our public school system. You can’t save the children then forget about them. It’s not about being Christian; it’s code for racism and suppression of women.
 
I freely admit to spit-balling here. The “war on Christianity” is all a giant gambit based on Roe v Wade; if we have abortions, then women may not have children unintentionally and thus may finish their education, get jobs, and do better than men. It’s way, way more complex than I’m explaining here, and gets into health care, day care, education, etc. But that’s “the gist.” It’s not actually Christianity, it’s about oppression.
 
 
 
Oh, no. That was clearly a sign from his true master, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself.

My question has always been this: There’s this whole thing about abortion. But no one is willing to step up with daycare. Or the cost of healthcare. Or defund the military by a few million — against its trillions — to rebuild our public school system. You can’t save the children then forget about them. It’s not about being Christian; it’s code for racism and suppression of women.
 
I freely admit to spit-balling here. The “war on Christianity” is all a giant gambit based on Roe v Wade; if we have abortions, then women may not have children unintentionally and thus may finish their education, get jobs, and do better than men. It’s way, way more complex than I’m explaining here, and gets into health care, day care, education, etc. But that’s “the gist.” It’s not actually Christianity, it’s about oppression.
 
 
 
Oh, no. That was clearly a sign from his true master, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself.

My question has always been this: There’s this whole thing about abortion. But no one is willing to step up with daycare. Or the cost of healthcare. Or defund the military by a few million — against its trillions — to rebuild our public school system. You can’t save the children then forget about them. It’s not about being Christian; it’s code for racism and suppression of women.
 
I freely admit to spit-balling here. The “war on Christianity” is all a giant gambit based on Roe v Wade; if we have abortions, then women may not have children unintentionally and thus may finish their education, get jobs, and do better than men. It’s way, way more complex than I’m explaining here, and gets into health care, day care, education, etc. But that’s “the gist.” It’s not actually Christianity, it’s about oppression.
 
 
 
Oh, no. That was clearly a sign from his true master, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself.

Pence is so full of crap he's drawing flies now?

The as-yet-undiscovered side effects are risky, however. 
 
To revisit "rage monster:" 
 
The drug works by opening the user's psche, tuning him in to cosmic probabilities, which he can unconsciously manipulate to stack the most minute of details in his favor (hence "instant success").  The effects are most intense about ten minutes after the second drug is ingested and least about sixty seconds. 
 
The side-effects, however, last up to one hour.  As the mind slips away from its unconscious cosmic awareness, it fights to retain it.  The psychic backlash feeds desperation and panic into any unguarded consciousness nearby, easily up to a thousand meters. 
 
The end result is the creation of blind berserker rage within the minds of all who are affected (failed EGO check).  This (murderous?) fury will last (amount by which roll was failed) d6 in minutes?  Hours?  Days? 
 
The drug user collapses and suffers 4d6 Con drain
 
---------------------- (break for merged stuff) - - - - - - 
 
 
Sorry, Thia: 
 
Looks like we cross-posted.  I was intrigued by the idea of alternate interpretations for "rage monster," and had not realized there was a turn-based system in play. 
 
I will see my way out.  (I work 12-14 hours a day; six days a week.  "turn based" means I probably won't be available when my turn comes around). 
 
Still, I will keep watching! 
 
And my replies have been merged, so let me go back up there and break them.   

Unbeknownst to the players, the assassin is still lurking in the rafters of the church, clad in black body armor with twin katanas on her back. She moves with Olympic level agility, capable of clinging and swinging in near silence. She killed the deacon, but she has her reasons — that tip he gave the players wasn’t exactly out of the goodness of his heart. As she evaluates the situation, the screech of tires and the yammering of voices shouting orders come from outside, and bullets start blasting holes of light through the front doors along with the chatter of uzi and AK fire. 

Oh, oh. Got it. The drugs are completely normal except they are part of a unique trial that’s being given to soldiers through the VA. This thing goes all the way... TO THE TOP!! The two abnormal ones will only work when both are taken, one is a primer and one is an activator — the order they’re taken is irrelevant, and the timing is irrelevant, it can be active for up to 3 months (because science). When BOTH hit the system, it turns people into... what?
 
What’s the actual effect of having both of these things in your system at once?

However, hidden in every bottle, are two tablets of a new designer drug, which you wouldn’t know just by looking; only after exposing them to black light do the highlighted drugs pop. While this may seem exceptionally complex and obtuse, it’s at the height of the war on drugs. It’s critical that the odds of them being caught mid-shipment are minimized and that they can pass muster by all except the most dedicated investigator. They want to use standard routes then get them into the hands of local pharmacists with whom they have their network. From pharmacist to street pharmacist.

Where the disconnect lies isn’t in your idea; “Mentor” is a well established trope, Galahad was I believe the most loyal of all the Knights of the Round, etc. It’s that you’re taking something that is broadly embedded in the “who” of a person, and making a mechanic around it, and calling it a “what.” 
 
Who is Jean-Luc Picard? (You can wiki it). WHAT is Jean-Luc Picard? He’s a Starfleet Officer, specializing in Sciences, and helms what was at the time, the pride of the fleet, and its flagship, the NCC-1701-D, “Enterprise.” So if I’m building Picard, I’m going to be focusing on the what, and will lay some details and ground work for how I role play him as part of “who” he is.
 
I am considered an exceptionally loyal person; I cost 1 less point when people put me on their character sheets as a high level contact (I cost the same as any other acquaintance) but I’m SO LOYAL that I’ll cover part of your cost to keep me around. It’s WHO I am. WHAT I am is a 6’4” hyper minded video gaming bad ass with specialization in gaming, cooking, tech, and mortgage banking. I have a lot of CHA based skills and I use them liberally. 
 
So you’re making this sort of big deal around the mechanics of “who” someone is, and it just doesn’t jive with me. I think the idea, on the whole, is interesting, but there’s also the part of my brain that says “these things come from role playing.” Which of course leads us to one of Thia’s Rules: “It’s not enough to dislike it, you have to offer a solution of some kind or shut up about it.” My solution is this:
 
Keep your general concept, but instead of shoehorning it into how people are playing, leave it to them to “trigger” those events and bonuses. For every 3 role-playing actions that mark someone as, say, generous — they get a token they can cash in for the benefit “Pay it Forward;” the character’s generosity has, in some way, returned to them. It could be a temporary ally (see; Summon for a series of fights), free lodging “You saved my boy from a week of slavery, your money is no good here.” And so on. And in case you think that’s the “kind” hero as you describe it, it isn’t. Generosity with money isn’t always a kindness; it can be a matter of expediency, it can just be how that character solves problems.
 
Take Kage, my Rogue/Warlock. Kage solves his problems, more often than not, with gold. Because of this, Kage has “walking around money.” And he’s always on the edge of being broke, but — after he’s done threatening, interrogating, and otherwise making your life difficult, he always says words to the effect of “Wow, that was stressful but very enlightening. Take this gold, get yourself a hot meal. Thank you so much for your time.”
 
Watching NPCs react to that doesn’t get old. He promised an enemy combatant they wouldn’t be dead and he’d buy them breakfast. They aren’t dead; they got knocked out and left on a rooftop — with their bow — and a gold piece. Kage is true to his word. What you have is the start of a framework for rewarding specific kinds of heroic actions, and I would bend it toward doing that, which gives people plenty of latitude and keeps options open, instead of closing them off.

As the players fight off or run from the gunfire they remember the mausoleum and find a secret door.  There is a computer panel that opens and it leads to?  Where does it lead to?

*flips through channels, sighs heavily.*
 
Your powers grow weak, @Old Man.

I've read through it a couple times and I have to say I'm not tracking this.  None of this has anything to do with archetypes as I understand and use the term.
 
To me it sounds like you are trying to codify D&D style alignments without defining good and evil.
 
I am probably off point, but that is what it sounds like to me.

I never understood why people got so hung up on the whole STUN/BODY “he’s not dead?!” ...thing. Monsters die when they hit 0 BODY. That’s just a thing that happens. Only major NPCs get the same benefits of PCs in terms of not being gacked at 0 BODY. It isn’t 15 napping goblins, it’s 15 very dead goblins, including at least one decapitation.

I’ve read through it, but what I see is kind of a mess. The reason for the D&D archetypes — your “four core” and their subclasses — is because they’re drawn from history, or the story gestalt, or the collective subconscious, and then sufficiently romanticized to have a look and feel, then mechanically built to reinforce that. HERO, of course, unless you build those class packages everyone can kind of do their own thing within the boundaries of the campaign. First, campaign limits, good idea. ALWAYS a good idea. But.
 
Your idea, on the whole, isn’t resonating with me. I’m not seeing a proper build/link/benefit chain. To Hugh’s point, these benefits are comparatively minor in the grander scheme of things, and moreover, they are highly proscriptive and in some cases vague. What constitutes a worthy enemy? Is it always one? Can 20 lesser dudes constitute a worthy foe? To your ‘pure’ concept, if we go back to the literature, the common point of purity, from a story telling perspective, is to tarnish it and then gain something less abstract and more concrete. There are examples of characters who start pure and that’s their “thing,” but they are few, far between, and not nearly as memorable as, say, The Red Cross Knight, or the Iliad, etc. ANYWAY. My literature major aside.
 
Now that I’ve said that, I’m left to my primary issue: what I see here doesn’t work for me; I would love to give you what you’re asking for, but I’m not seeing a fully fleshed out idea. So you want to go off from the standard subclasses; Fighter > Paladin/Ranger, Rogue > Assassin/Burglar, etc. Before you can do that, you have to define where these things fit in your world, and why they fit and give them more “teeth” than what you’ve got here. I don’t mean to be a downer or harsh, but it’s kind of like a writer’s circle; if you’re looking for feedback, then my feedback is “this needs a lot of work before I can comment further.”

Unbeknownst to the players, the assassin is still lurking in the rafters of the church, clad in black body armor with twin katanas on her back. She moves with Olympic level agility, capable of clinging and swinging in near silence. She killed the deacon, but she has her reasons — that tip he gave the players wasn’t exactly out of the goodness of his heart. As she evaluates the situation, the screech of tires and the yammering of voices shouting orders come from outside, and bullets start blasting holes of light through the front doors along with the chatter of uzi and AK fire. 

I never understood why people got so hung up on the whole STUN/BODY “he’s not dead?!” ...thing. Monsters die when they hit 0 BODY. That’s just a thing that happens. Only major NPCs get the same benefits of PCs in terms of not being gacked at 0 BODY. It isn’t 15 napping goblins, it’s 15 very dead goblins, including at least one decapitation.

I’ve read through it, but what I see is kind of a mess. The reason for the D&D archetypes — your “four core” and their subclasses — is because they’re drawn from history, or the story gestalt, or the collective subconscious, and then sufficiently romanticized to have a look and feel, then mechanically built to reinforce that. HERO, of course, unless you build those class packages everyone can kind of do their own thing within the boundaries of the campaign. First, campaign limits, good idea. ALWAYS a good idea. But.
 
Your idea, on the whole, isn’t resonating with me. I’m not seeing a proper build/link/benefit chain. To Hugh’s point, these benefits are comparatively minor in the grander scheme of things, and moreover, they are highly proscriptive and in some cases vague. What constitutes a worthy enemy? Is it always one? Can 20 lesser dudes constitute a worthy foe? To your ‘pure’ concept, if we go back to the literature, the common point of purity, from a story telling perspective, is to tarnish it and then gain something less abstract and more concrete. There are examples of characters who start pure and that’s their “thing,” but they are few, far between, and not nearly as memorable as, say, The Red Cross Knight, or the Iliad, etc. ANYWAY. My literature major aside.
 
Now that I’ve said that, I’m left to my primary issue: what I see here doesn’t work for me; I would love to give you what you’re asking for, but I’m not seeing a fully fleshed out idea. So you want to go off from the standard subclasses; Fighter > Paladin/Ranger, Rogue > Assassin/Burglar, etc. Before you can do that, you have to define where these things fit in your world, and why they fit and give them more “teeth” than what you’ve got here. I don’t mean to be a downer or harsh, but it’s kind of like a writer’s circle; if you’re looking for feedback, then my feedback is “this needs a lot of work before I can comment further.”

*flips through channels, sighs heavily.*
 
Your powers grow weak, @Old Man.

I mean, you can build everything yourself regardless, but for me?
 
6th. I came in with 5th. I loved 5th. 6th is bigger, broader, messier in some ways if for no other reason than its scope, but it’s possibly the most refined of all the editions, and hands down my favorite. 
 
That said, if you like 4, do 4. If you have 5th & 6th and there’s a rule that you want to import, you know, do that.
Contemplating further, Persona would not be capable to its level of refinement outside of 5th or 6th. I twisted a lot of rules into new shapes but the ground work for those changes meant that things remained sufficiently balanced.

*flips through channels, sighs heavily.*
 
Your powers grow weak, @Old Man.

I mean, you can build everything yourself regardless, but for me?
 
6th. I came in with 5th. I loved 5th. 6th is bigger, broader, messier in some ways if for no other reason than its scope, but it’s possibly the most refined of all the editions, and hands down my favorite. 
 
That said, if you like 4, do 4. If you have 5th & 6th and there’s a rule that you want to import, you know, do that.
Contemplating further, Persona would not be capable to its level of refinement outside of 5th or 6th. I twisted a lot of rules into new shapes but the ground work for those changes meant that things remained sufficiently balanced.

Don’t you mean Masque of the Red Death?

*flips through channels, sighs heavily.*
 
Your powers grow weak, @Old Man.