p_clapham

I put this together a while back as a "Pulp" Heroic ability, and now I'm considering it as a possible Edge.  I'm not sure though, most of the Edges have been relatively simple, this seems a little too complex.

Improvised weapon master

Requirements: STR 15, One close Combat Style or Unarmed at 75%

Hero Points: 5

Duration: A number of rounds equal to their CON

Almost anything is a deadly weapon in the hands of this character. The game master will determine what properties if any the improvised weaponry will have in the event of a Combat Maneuver. The character may use their Unarmed skill or a close Combat style when attacking with improvised weaponry. Use the following chart to determine damage.

ENC less than 1 – 1D3 damage

ENC 1 – 1D4 damage

ENC 2 – 1D6 damage

ENC 3 and greater – 1D8 damage

The game master has the final word on how much damage a given object does. A length of rope may be ENC 2, but he may rule it will only deal 1D3 damage because of its weight. Certain objects may not be appropriate as improvised weapons such as feathers, or candles. A lit candle on the other hand.

Prior to working on my Edge system I was putting together some new Heroic abilities instead.  One of them was Improvised "Weapon Master".

Improvised weapon master

Requirements: STR 15, One close Combat Style or Unarmed at 75%

Hero Points: 5

Duration: A number of rounds equal to their CON

Almost anything is a deadly weapon in the hands of this character. The game master will determine what properties if any the improvised weaponry will have in the event of a Combat Maneuver. The character may use their Unarmed skill or a close Combat style when attacking with improvised weaponry. Use the following chart to determine damage.

ENC less than 1 – 1D3 damage

ENC 1 – 1D4 damage

ENC 2 – 1D6 damage

ENC 3 and greater – 1D8 damage

The game master has the final word on how much damage a given object does. A length of rope may be ENC 2, but he may rule it will only deal 1D3 damage because of its weight. Certain objects may not be appropriate as improvised weapons such as feathers, or candles. A lit candle on the other hand.

It seems to me that for NPCs you could skip the whole game mechanics thing and just let evil necromancers (anyone heard of a good necromancer?) do what they do.  Being the villain means never having to say you're sorry (or justify your abilities).

 

I can't envision a campaign where you'd have PC necromancers.  I mean, the player-characters are supposed to be the good guys, right?

I had a "Good" necromancer in a fantasy game a while back.  She was sort of a necromatic Agatha Hetrodyne, creating zombies for a better tomorrow.

Sold!

One thing I am considering is allowing sorcerers to take extra time on their spells. This would add either to their sorcery(grimore) skill or their manipulation. That way solitary practitioners can cast more potent spells, and groups even more powerful ones.

I've started a thread in the Legend section with my ceremonial magic rules.

Here are some rules I've come up with after perusing through Enlightened Magic.  It is pretty much just a slow version of the Sorcery rules with some bells and whistles from Lankhmar Unleashed.

Two different kinds of Magick

Low Magick: Minor spells, typically one or two intensity that can be cast in one or two combat actions, but cannot be manipulated. These are taken from the Folk Magic in Runequest6 and Common Magic from Legend. Low Magick spells have a Magnitude equal to the magic points used in casting them, and take a number of combat actions to cast equal the magic points spent in casting them. Low Magick spells cannot be combined with other Low Magick or High Magick spells.

High Magick: Greater spells that can be manipulated or even combined with other High Magick spells, but are ritualistic in nature and take much longer to cast. High Magick uses a modified version of the Sorcery rules. It takes ten minutes per magic point spent on the spell to cast High Magick. An additional advantage of High Magick over Low Magick is that it can be cast in groups. High Magic Spells are subject to the Law of Sympathy and Contagion.

Sympathy/ Contagion is rated from a one through five depending on the strength of familiarity between the Sorcerer and the target. Sympathy can be represented by being simply acquainted with the target, to knowing detailed information about their life, such as the names of their loved ones or their social security number. Contagion is a magical connection between objects that the target held or possessed. This ranges from a briefly handled object to actual pieces of the target's body such as fingernail clippings or hair.

1. The caster has never met the target before, and has no token the target has held at any point. -20% to the caster's Manipulation skill

2. The Caster knows the target's name, knows some details of the target's life, recognizes his face, and/ or possesses a item once touched by the target. This adds +5 to the caster's Manipulation skill.

3. The caster has met the target on several occasions, and/ or possesses one of the target's personal items. (A weapon, lock of hair, or a piece of clothing). This adds +10 to the caster's Manipulation skill.

4. The caster is intimately familiar with the target. Alternately he possesses some of the target's saliva or tears. This adds +10 to the caster's Manipulation skill and one to the spell's final Magnitude.

5. The caster knows the target almost as well as he knows himself. Alternatively he possesses some of the victim's blood or a body part such as a eyeball or finger. This adds +30 to the caster's Manipulation skill and two to the spell's final Magnitude.

Group casting: One Sorcerer is designated as the leader of the circle, he is the one who directs the energy of the spell, and makes the final roll. The other sorcerers acting as assistants must know the spell in question in order to help in the casting. Each assisting sorcerer adds his base Sorcery(Grimore) and Manipulation scores to the final spell. All sorcerers casting the spell can freely spend magic points or points of POW to power the spell. In the event of a Magickal backlash all sorcerers involved in the spell are effected.     

Cool, this book definitely sounds like it is worth it. I had my doubts about another pirate book, but these stunts sound fantastic. I hope they put an equal amount of love into their voodoo magic rules.

I ordered it yesterday, I should have it in a couple of days, at which point I will do a quick review of the stunts.

Extremely annoyed at the multiple (see page XX) entries.

Very annoyed that wands are air (fire dumbass, they are shaped like a phallus) and knives are fire (its air).   The references are right there in the bibliography.

I'll get back to it later.

Factual info not necessarily needed for a game, but still.

I liked Enlightened Magic, but it isn't quite what I want in a ceremonial magic system.  I think I will end up using the Legend/ Runequest Sorcery rules with the modifiers from Lankhmar for "High Magic", and the folk magic from Runequest 6th edition as "Low Magic".

Okay this is what I have so far for "Stunting".

Prior to the dice roll the player describes how he is going about his action/ how his action resolves.  If this is described in a sufficiently cool and unique way the GM can allow the stunt to proceed.  The character makes his skill roll but instead of rolling two dice he rolls one additional tens dice and takes the better of the two dice.  If the skill roll is successful the character also gains a Hero Point.  If you are going for a game that focuses more on Magic points than Hero points, have the character regain a spent magic point.

I like this method.  It makes Brazier of Power very useful to necromancers and summoners.

I too heartily recommend Magic World and it's supplement Advanced Sorcery for your Necromantic needs. Advanced Sorcery has all the good bits so make sure you pick that up. 

One way I deal with permanent powers in my games is power reservation. I use it whenever I want a caster like a Necromancer or Enchanter that can have lots of permanent spell effects going but I don't want the constant POW donations to become too taxing. Let's say a PC with 16 POW creates a zombie that costs 6 magic points (or whatever your chosen system calls them), the PC then has only 10 magic points he can use. Those points stay spent and do not regenerate for any reason until the spell keeping the zombie alive is dismissed by the caster. Then, they come back at a normal rate. A player does not get an immediate 6 magic points to use when they dismiss the zombie, although you could allow a spell that consumes the corpse and the spark of life to give them the reserved magic used by the corpse immediately, which could be interesting. This reservation system very easily lets you tweak the points cost of spells to be as powerful as you want (most casters will have 16-18 POW early on) so that they can have 1-2 zombies, 3-4 zombies, or even more.
 
The system also balances itself out in the fact that the more of their magic points a PC has reserved the less flexibility they have in spontaneous spell casting. Someone with a small group of zombies probably only has a handful of points to cast with each day making their other options much more limited. You could even add another rule similar to how demons work. Each zombie could cost a certain amount of your INT reservation to keep alive thus lowering the number of spells you could remember if you try to keep a horde of zombies alive. Either of these systems creates an actual trade-off for PC's: Do I have consistent meat shields and sacrifice utility? Do I need more flexibility and less zombies?
 
However, for NPC's, do whatever you like. I plan on having one encounter for my NPC's where three sorcerers head to the site of an ancient battle, erect monoliths and imbue them with power over time, then using each other and the monoliths as a battery they cast a spell that resurrects hundreds of undead in hours slowly scouring the ground and resurrecting each buried corpse it crosses. Just keep it interesting. Advancing the story is more important at this point than balance. Just hand wave it off to corrupt power from dark gods, demons, or an ancient spell they found that they immediately hid when they learned it.

 

Although balance could pretty easily be achieved, I'm not sure PC Necromancers are a good idea. Is this a world where everyone is running around with skeletons? Do they all walk zombies like your average middle class American housing development at 7 am? Are you planning to run combat constantly that PC's would need undead for? Combat is very deadly in BRP and should be used as a last resort. If you're planning for that much combat maybe this isn't the system for you. However Pokemon type battles with undead could be fun...

This is the article that got me thinking about the Boskop man.  It also has a interesting idea for serpent people too.  More like dinosaur people in this case.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20078_5-weird-directions-human-evolution-could-have-taken.html

I agree that the main thing is to keep the PP cost low for Stunts, and have the effect occurring in the same instance or round. Otherwise it will start to cross over too much with magic. I have not had the time to have a more in-depth look at Blood Tide's Voodou magic yet, but I will check that out today if no distractions occur.

Have you had a chance to look over those Voodou rules yet?  I'm very curious.

With the new mechanics from Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, I am thinking about some stunting mechanics similar to Exallted. Something like that could allow for faster repenishment of hero points. Alternatly the trait system from Fate could be another useful mechanic to consider.

Maybe, although cranium size does not necessarily affect INT - Neanderthals had a larger brain that modern humans, for example. INT is more to do with frontal lobe size, probably, but I am not a biologist or doctor.

For my purposes I am going to use them as a race of mental giants. They are going to be the wielders of sorcery, along with the serpent men of course.

I started something like this: a conversion of the Pathfinder/AD&D 3.5 feats into BRP powers. I start a little of things.  Here's is what  I had when I finally, inevitably, lost interest.

You got further along than I did.  I wasn't sure how to portray the skill bonus feats, I like what you did with them.  It strikes me that your method is a little more compatible with Runequest 6 than Legend.

I think their stats would be roughly the same as baseline human except for their intelligence which would be 3D6+6.  They might have been on the small side, so a penalty to STR and/ or SIZ would be appropriate. 

Thanks. So there's nothing actually written for BRP, even after all this time.

 

And it sounds like you're recommending 2nd ed Cyberpunk 2020. I appreciate your input.

That's a little surprising.  It does seem like there is more Fantasy out there written for BRP.  For cybernetic implants I'm thinking the Mutation rules might not be a bad starting point.

It covers Long Men, Short Men and Red Men, the equivalents of Cro-Magnons, Moderns (Grimaldis) and Neanderthals, each has its own Background and set of characteristics.

 

I will probably cover the Devinsonians if I do the Mammoth Steppe, as that will touch on the Altai, far to the south, where they have been found.

There's also the Boskop man.  Their official status is up for debate, but a race of big headed super intelligent humanoids would make for great gaming.

With the release of 5th edition I started thinking of a old project inspired by Classic Fantasy:  Running a D&D game using the MRQII rules.  Originally I was going to introduce character classes as a secondary profession complete with special abilities, convert some of the iconic D&D spells, and have players start off with a legendary ability or two.  That is pretty much copying what Classic Fantasy had done, which is one of the reasons why the project never got off the ground.  I have a much more original idea now.

In my Pulp Edge project I've converted several feats and class features.  I think this might be the best way to go about this.  Using the base Legend rules, with converted feats and class features available to players.  I'd go through the D&D spell list and try to convert them into common magic, divine magic, and sorcery.

Here are a few of the D&D edges I've done:

Cleave

Some of the more advanced feats like Whirlwind attack may end up being a little tricky.  With the edge system I did not have any edges requiring a prerequisite edge.  I'm either going to have to do that, or nerf some of the more powerful feats. 

I'll check it out, it sounds fantastic.

Incidentally I kept the pp cost low with my pulp edges in case I wanted to port them over into a fantasy setting. Several of them are just converted feats or class features from D&D.

This sounds interesting. How do the stunts work mechanically? Are they similar to heroic abilities?

I'm just getting thru my PDF copy of Blood Tide while I'm waiting for the hard copy to arrive.

Quite impressive I must say.

One thing that strikes me is that the Stunts could easily be ported almost directly into Astounding Adventures, and that would make AA a more complete Pulp game to my thinking.

A few name changes here and there, but overall these Stunts would work well in any pulp adventure setting, regardless of whether it's a Swashbuckling Pirates setting, or a Roaring 20s & Thrilling 30s adventure genre.

I am really enjoying this book from what I've read so far, it looks like a great addition to the Chaosium library

Are you going to explore the other branches of humanity that existed back then?

I have not - after reading through these forums, I'm beginning to think I need to own a copy of Legend...

The PDF is $1 the last time I checked.