Found Arcana – chapter 3 OOC
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Found Arcana – chapter 3 OOC
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That works. I like the point of Small Unit Tactics, as that seems to fit with Jhonny. None of us have it either.
Don’t shoehorn fights in on my behalf. I’m an old school “best run is where you don’t fire a shot” type, nor do I need individual attention. But I’ll admit that it’s a bit of a running joke in my head at this point that Mato – who, in another game, had one similarly bloodless run before this campaign began – has never been in a fight through four chapters/missions.
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With Bobby and Mato in the run, and Jawsey out, it seemed like a natural for a good brawl (AM can address a lot of different situations). But I wasn’t going to force it.
Anyway, the items:
The bayonet is a force 5 Athame (blood magic foci).
– I think four successes on an Arcana roll (with supporting astral perception) should be able to figure out that it is associated with blood magic (since none of the group has likely investigated a blood magic foci before)
– Finding a buyer who would pay its value could be challenging. A mundane collector might pay 1000nY without provenance, if you can find such a collector. A talismonger might pay something if they think they can extract some magical value out of it (or have bloody connections), but many would not touch it. Could also make an interesting entry in a trophy case.The frame is custom. It is something like a re-usable Govi (Street Grimoire, sort of like a temporary vault of ages for Watchers), but not quite. If it contains a picture with a person in it, it can be used during a Create Watcher ritual. For the low cost of point of physical damage (treated as unresisted drain) it acts as a Govi for that Watcher until the next new moon (so up to 29 days). The watcher’s form resembles the person from the painting, and the Watcher can be activated (removed from the suspension of the Govi) and ‘inhabit’ the painting to look out as if it were the person in the painting, without being any more obvious than any other magical painting.
– It will honestly be quite difficult to determine its function, I think. Asensing would figure out that it is some sort of ritual focus. 4 hits on Arcana should again figure out the blood association. The full functionality would take either some inspired experimentation or a very hard extended test.
– Without figuring it out all the way, a talismonger might pay 500 in hopes that they can figure it out and get more value out of it. A collector or researcher might pay twice that for the novelty factor. If its full use can be sorted out the value would probably go up to some thousands for somebody who wants the unique item, maybe more to somebody who hopes to reverse engineer the formula to obtain something not widely known. Or AM might want to keep it?The right person may pay fairly well for it, as it is a formulation that is either unique or very rare — on the other hand the association with blood magic could bring various problems.
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The Draco Foundation and/or the DIMR might be interested in the athame. At least, that’s how I play it when I GM. Here’s the relevant text from Dunkelzahn’s Will:
“To further encourage an end to the use of blood magic by Aztechnology and other parties, I offer a bounty of 1 million nuyen on any blood mages captured alive and delivered to the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research for the purposes of studying the effects of blood magic use on metahumanity. I further authorize the Draco Foundation to provide suitable rewards for the receipt of verifiable accounts of blood magic use, the rewards to reflect the usefulness of the information provided.”
I rule that they’re interested in athames, but opinions may differ.
In other news, and in honor of talking our way through most situations, I have advanced Mato’s Charisma to 3 so that he can be our quaternary face. Actually, with the liberal use of Edge, he’s passable.
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I like it. SMT is one of the most fun skills to have 😀
As for analysing the artifacts: Bobby isn’t half bad at Arcana and Assensing, so I’d give it a try:
Assensing: 10d6t5 3
Assensing: 9d6t5 3
Assensing: 8d6t5 1
Assensing: 7d6t5 4
Assensing: 6d6t5 1
Assensing: 5d6t5 0
Assensing: 4d6t5 1
Assensing: 3d6t5 2And that’s where Bobby would stop 😉
Arcana+Logic: 9d6t5 2
Arcana+Logic: 8d6t5 2
Arcana+Logic: 7d6t5 1
Arcana+Logic: 6d6t5 1
Arcana+Logic: 5d6t5 1
Arcana+Logic: 4d6t5 1
Arcana+Logic: 3d6t5 2 -
We can work together and get much better results.
By the way, I am looking to take the remote sensing ritual it seems to fit this game, and I never tried ritual magic before.
Perhaps along with detect individual?Any other suggestions for useful spells/rituals?
I
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Extended mindnet could prove valuable. Also Homunculus ritual is really, really great if we carry a little concrete sculptur with us: Nearly indestructible bullet sponge
After Bobby’s absense he’ll have acquired the following things:
Initiated for a Powerpoint: Elemental Body (Hermit Ordeal)
Fleshsculptor II Mastery Quality
Elemental Attunement Mastery Quality
Edge 3 from 2
Barehanded Adept (Spells: Extended Spatial Sense, Analyse Device, Shatter Shield and Mind Link): So Bobby will be able to communicate at least with one of the team. -
Ahh, the Awakened.
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I see nice synergy with the growth/shape change spells. Body of hominculus is determined by material so the little statue can turn into a war elephant… 😉 but I am not sure that this is the right flavor of game for war elephants.
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Bobby’s already a war elephant, or at least can be in one initiative pass, so I don’t see the harm in one more.
What’s the Elemental Attunement quality? I know the Elemental Master quality, but that has a specific spell requirement.
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Elemental Attunement is a new Mastery from Better Than Bad (p. 161)
ELEMENTAL ATTUNEMENT
Cost: 5 Karma
Prerequisites: Adept Powers: Killing Hands, Ele-
mental Strike, and Elemental Body
Dedicating yourself to channeling the raw forc-
es of nature through your body, you have become
one with the world’s primal forces.
Change the drain from Elemental Body to func-
tion as follows: At the start of the Combat Turn af-
ter this power is activated, suffer 1 unresisted box
of Drain. The adept may choose Physical or Stun
each time they suffer this damage.At Bobby’s high magic rating the drain of Elemental Body might kill him if he lets it run too long.
But it’s just too damn funny to turn into a house cat that can knock out a Roadmaster with one claw swipe. -
Ahh, Better Than Bad. I was only on page 57 so I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I’m still only on page 57, but I skipped to the end to refresh myself on what’s back there.
@gilga Great IC post.
Does Jhonney only sell weapons or does he sell armor too? Can he, uh, get his hands on an osmium mace (14F)? Presumably for AM since her Loyalty is the highest. It’s completely impractical and a bit ridiculous but I don’t know else when I would get to use one.
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@beta
Anything you’re waiting for, or need from us to advance things? -
Sounds like the agreement is to sell the knife, and keep the frame?
I can frame to a discussion with 5-Finger Gao.
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Agreed. Let’s do it.
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Beta, I am finalizing AM that initiates to create an ally spirit (but does not yet make one).
I found a very nice submachine gun for her, kind of badass. If you were looking for instruction, I bet Jhonney is wicked on unarmed combat, and perhaps knows some Krav Maga as well. I would have given her a point but I spent all her karma.PS her sheet is updated.
Main news: I took some detection spells and the remote sensing ritual. Initiated for Ally spirit and learned invisibility (lessons from this run that she needs that spell).
Plans for after next chapter finally create the spirit. (likely F2 or F3).
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Sounds fun. Since they’re basically recurring characters, ally spirits can add a lot of personality to a game.
Mato, as a mundane, doesn’t have anything as interesting to do as initiate, so I’m working on filling in his dump stats (Charisma this time, Logic next) and rounding out his skills. It’s going to be a long, slow climb, but he doesn’t have many other places to go. Advancing his cyber is a no-go both due to expense and due to a lack of Essence. I guess he could upgrade some pieces to higher grades to free up some Essence, but that’s forty grand away or more.
Speaking of nuyen, how do we want to handle the downtime associated with initiations? Presuming everyone makes their roll, which is easy enough to assume that they will, it technically takes a month. Do we want to account for that month in terms of Lifestyle and Debt payments or do we want to go the “instant initiation” route? I only ask because we’ve been keeping a game calendar so far. You are the Awakened so this affects you and not me, which is why I wanted to check.
Speaking of game calendars, Chapter 3 was October 10, 2078, give or take a day. The Interlude will be later that week – maybe Friday the 14th or Saturday the 15th – and then I presume Chapter 4 will represent the second half of the month. (That’s up to Jack.) The Interlude is specifically designed to lead into / foreshadow a later chapter down the road, depending on our GMing sequence.
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I would have taken the whole month off for that.
As for the timeline, my chapter would kick off around 26th of October -
I’ve been trying to stick to standard SR times so far — I’ve had the karma saved up for a while to buy Jawsey’s magic up to 3, but didn’t get through it until now because of the time needed.
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So how do we want to handle multiple/overlapping initiations? Do we want to set November aside as Initiation Month for Bobby and AM? (I presume Jawsey will do other thing with his karma first, like Magic 3.)
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Despite AM’s fascinating in trying to overcome her conjuring deficiency, she’d rather work when given the opportunity to do so being so in debt. I imagine her initiation as plenty of hours of studying, and it has no mechanical effect if she completes it in the downtime between this chapter or within the downtime after the next. (The initiation only gives her to the possibility to create an ally spirit, but she has no karma to do so).
That said, let’s just move on as usual with Jack’s chapter, and then perhaps I’ll GM and it would be the time AM goes camping outdoors to make the breakthrough she needs to complete the initiation and create the spirit.
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