Character Creation
-
Character Creation
-
Athan -
I’m a ‘bit’ behind the rest of you it seems. But this might help you get to know Jack a bit better.
At the end of the duo’s cover of “Royal Station 4/16” there was a decent amount of applause, for a place like this on a rainy Tuesday night. The guitarist plucked a couple of notes
used his slide to warp their sound around, and then he spoke.“Playing saxophone is mighty thirsty work, so Leslie there needs a beer break. So you’ll have to put up with just me for a few minutes.” He struck a string of downward sliding notes, stretching the last one out before moving to some gentle picking, not doing anything too fancy with the slide. After a few bars he said “Sometimes people ask me ‘Jack, how come you play the slide guitar, instead of playing normal-like?’ Maybe you were wondering the same, so I’m gonna tell you my little story.
“Quite some time ago I thought I was immortal and far too good at life to come to harm. Maybe you’ve had a similar time in your life, I don’t know.” He paused to allow for a few chuckles and a shout from the bartender “I was so young and stupid I got married!” Jack gave him a nod and replied “Well I didn’t do anything quite so dire as that, but I did underestimate the efficacy of modern munitions. In other words I got my fool hand half shot off.”
After a couple of sombre bars he continued “Now, at that time and place we did not have recourse to all the best medicine and cyberware. I was pretty convinced that I could heal it up on my own, but as I was also telling them that I’d suffered worse while fighting for Julius Caesar they chose to ignore my opinion. Funny that. Anyway, the best excuse for a doctor that we had on hand decided that the only choice was to amputate just above the wrist and cauterize the stump. A little barbaric but a tried and true solution that kept me from bleeding out or getting infected.”
“As it happens, I did not have the resources at that time to re-grow my hand or get it replaced with cyberware, so I had to make do with a hook. You can imagine that this was not a pleasant experience, used as I was to having two hands and all. There is a possibility that I was somewhat depressed, but truth to tell I don’t remember quite a bit of that period.” After a few notes he added “Turns out it only takes one hand to get drunk.” That was greeted with laughter and several patrons of the bar lifted their glasses or bottles in salute before taking a deep drink.
He transitioned into something more lively, almost a jig, before he wrapped up his story “One day I saw someone play a lap steel guitar, and I realized that I could strap a steel to my forearm and play like that. Gave me something to do, a way to earn a few more beers, you know? Eventually I got good enough to play with some kind of big names, gigs that paid enough to eventually get a hand re-grown. But by then I was just plain used to playing with a slide, and I didn’t see as how I wanted to grow calluses on my nice new fingers, so I just stuck with what I knew.”
A patron yelled out “What a pile of drek! You just want us to feel sympathetic.”
Jack smiled and replied “I don’t really need your sympathy sir, although I won’t mind if you give it. I admit that I may have omitted some details and dates, but every word of my story is true.”
By that time Leslie was returning to the stage, and Jack launched into the opening of “The Joker.”
-
You may all want to check out the advanced magic book that has just been released on PDF…!?
-
I’ve downloaded it , but so far haven’t had time to read more than the table of contents … but that was enough to tell me that I need to read more before building ‘Jack’.
-
OK, briefly gone through what you’ve stuck up on OP and have a few minor comments:
Jack/Vin: ok, no real comments on your character yet although I will need to rely on you for what all those martial arts stuff do as I never manage to retain that info…and following FA I guess you may be having a rethink anyway?!
Mercy/Sian: no sneaking or gymnastics, or tracking? With karmagen it’s worth investing a couple of points in the useful skills! Probably going to have focus addiction! We will need to establish what happens to you in the low magic eras…do you lose powers and weaknesses? Or just the powers <evil grin>
Ennui/Mazzika: Social skills lacking! See above. Do you need the ally spirit ritual? A decker that can’t search the matrix? Or does it badly at least? Don’t forget decking and rigging can’t be simultaneous (although I guess you could buy a high end agent to do matrix stuff)…and asthma? Have fun if we play in the industrial revolution!!!
Beta/Jack (now that could get confusing): no rush, Obi hasn’t done a character yet and neither has Mr J!
-
@Aria my character is up since a couple days. (Athan), working on finishing writing the background as we speak.
Very similar to Mercy’s but hopefully different enough to make it worth it.
We were discussing if she or her prey could have been the ones infecting my character.
-
@Aria
No problem, the MA stuff is actually pretty straight forward: Charge in, do damage, grab the target (so it’s within the BC Aura) and do more damage until target stops resisting 😉And as tempted as I am to incorporate the new stuff, I don’t think this is the game to do so.
(I’ll probably upgrade Isaint a bit in the near future. )
-
I just noticed something with you dual-natured types:
“Dual-natured creatures or purely astral creatures take a negative dice pool penalty to all actions equal to the background count.” p. 32 SG
And since we are talking about negative BC you can’t even get acclimated over time.
How do you function with those penalties? -
Well that’s interesting! Had skipped that part for sure. And indeed it would put a big detriment to playing the characters.
I had added Dual Natured Defender which would solve partially the problem, but that’s not very viable since it means the only time character can act is when losing all the critters powers too…
Mmmm…. pondering… -
Apologies for not replying on the BC issue, I meant to and then got distracted reading the FA goodies!
Two options for dealing with the Fifth Age, mana levels etc…mechanically they are nearly both the same, thematically slightly different…not sure which one I want to use, happy to listen to your opinions on the matter!
Option 1: The ritual of change you underwent at the end of the Fourth Age basically turned you in to very long lived humans until the mana levels rose sufficiently to reawaken your full potential. So your powers are there but limited by BC as normal and mundane abilities aren’t affected.
Option 2: You keep all your powers and weaknesses but can become acclimated (over time, lots and lots of time) to mana ebbs such that your mundane skills can be used without BC interfering with them. Mana obviously is still impacted as per normal rules.
Not sure if it’s specifically stated in the rules (it probably is), but if BC exceeds your magic rating your powers go dormant and can’t be used. Weaknesses, like sunlight allergies, don’t go away.
Log in to reply.