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Old 09-07-2009, 03:47 PM   #11
Havard
 
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Default Re: House Rules?

Wow, so much feedback. Excellent! It's going to take me a while to go through it all, but there are some excellent suggestions there! Thanks alot everyone :)

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Originally Posted by Rocket Man View Post
Welcome back!
Thanks! I dont get to game that often and In Nomine has been a tough sell on my players, but now that we have gotten through a few sessions, I think they feel differently about it :)

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If you're curious about house rules, this thread had quite a discussion going for a while: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=13919
Excellent! This will give me alot of ideas :)

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Old 09-07-2009, 03:59 PM   #12
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Charisma by vessel level:
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Originally Posted by rknop View Post
The problem with this is that it rules out having a very durable but off-putting vessel-- which you can imagine that (say) some Calabim would love to have.
That is a point. My problem was that noone wanted to bother with charisma. Sure my game is going to be combat heavy, but I do include a fair share of roleplaying elements. Still, starting CPs arent really that plentyful, so I guess they felt they needed points for skills and songs.


1d6 initiative:
Quote:
I like that. I have to admit to not being fully satisfied with the IN combat system, but I hesitate to tweak because I just know I'll end up turning it into GURPS :) I might base it on the best of (agility, precision, perception), or some such, to give quick characters an advantage.
The one thing I disliked about using agility is that it gives me the chance to effectively decide whether my NPCs will go first or last since Im going to determine their agility scores. I like a bit more randomness than that.

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I only use a couple of house rules; the most important one is that I modify Disturbance to not be *quite* so sensitive to the perception and Celestial Forces of listeners, and to have a smoother drop-off in terms of how easy it is to hear something at different distances.
I'm stealing this one! The standard rules were giving me a headache.

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One place I have these house rules listed is:

http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/php/Omar...php#houserules
Even more for me to read, this gets better and better! :)

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Old 09-07-2009, 05:40 PM   #13
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Thanks! I dont get to game that often and In Nomine has been a tough sell on my players, but now that we have gotten through a few sessions, I think they feel differently about it :)
I am hoping I'll get to this point with my friends. I know they are all really curious about the game, some of them have been going to Wikigames for info, and others get the chance to ask me.

It's my first game ever so I am pretty nervous...
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Old 09-07-2009, 07:43 PM   #14
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It's my first game ever so I am pretty nervous...
As long as everybody's having fun, you're doing fine...
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Old 09-07-2009, 10:30 PM   #15
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As long as everybody's having fun, you're doing fine...
Agree. But it's what their individual definition of fun is that is worrying me.

LOL
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Old 09-08-2009, 10:04 AM   #16
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Agree. But it's what their individual definition of fun is that is worrying me.

LOL
Keep in mind that everyone is supposed to have fun, including you. And the players should take their share of the responsibility for that too. You are not supposed to be an entertainment center :)

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Old 09-08-2009, 04:27 PM   #17
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.

* Untrained skills can be used at -2. Not all skills can be used untrained.

Any thoughts on these? Or do you have others?

Havard
I use -0 For untrained skills remember odds of success on a TN 6 (average characteristic for a celestial) are less than 50% so it's hardly easy to use skills you don't have.

In addition:

Non-Need Celestial Discord doesn't short Essence recovery.

Small Weapon is based on (Agility) instead of (Precision)
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Old 09-16-2009, 02:55 AM   #18
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House Rules for my campaign were mostly because I hadn't played in 4 years and it turns out my memory was a bit bad...

- Initiative is based on an agility check. All your actions happen during that period.
- Ignore stun rules. It's no fun to have your PC skip a round.
- When you are vessel killed, you may assume celestial form rather than enter trauma (helps keep them included in the sessions - we have a LOT of vessel deaths)

- Seraphim resonance is untargeted: while it's up, anything said within earshot of them is evaluated for Truth. This has lead to a lot of really interesting reveals as people speak while the resonance is up
- Shedim have to corrupt every host they possess, regardless of duration (the Shedite player body hops 5-10 times a day, and this is the only thing keeping him in check)

- Resonance and Dissonance both usually have "dramatic flair", making it obvious to nearby celestials when either occurs. A particularly bad session for our Seraph PC had little black tally-marks burn in to the air next to him each time he lied :) (This can be turned off if a character wants to be subtle)
- I'm also working on new resonances for Cherubim, Malakim, and Mercurians, but there's already a thread for that :)

(And yes, I run an angels-and-demons cooperating campaign.)


Quite a lot of my "session finale" fights involve a character with a special power. Two examples: A Calabite whose power affects everything within range. A horde of Zombies (I treated it as a single creature, each HP was equal to 1 zombie. It was up to the players to explain how their attack was taking out multiple zombies :)) There are also a lot of other odd exceptions to the rules (one of the players is an ethereal who made a deal to gain the Lilim resonance)
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Old 09-16-2009, 03:36 PM   #19
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...I don't think anyone uses the stun rules. *grin* It's always on the list of house rules. I don't actually remember where they are described in the rulebook or even kinda what they are.

Initiative works as is well as long as the fight doesn't get too big, and I like that celestial powers go first. But I can see how rolling for it is important to a lot of people, given past game associations. In Fading Suns, it's handled creatively by making your initiative equal to your skill (as opposed to natural ability)...but in IN that wouldn't work because sometimes you add skill+ability, sometimes skill+Forces, sometimes just ability or just Forces, etc.

If you're having that much Vessel death, I would just wonder about disturbance. Widescale combat tends to be celestially really noisy, and that means everyone's coming to investigate. And no Superiors really approve of creating a lot of disturbance, because that reduces the chance of Tether formation (though honestly a metric f***load of disturbance should totally be able to cause a Tether to Hardcore if the surrounding situation is hardcore enough to the humans nearby). For example, the zombi fight you mention would have been almost deafeningly disturbance-causing, given that even undead are still human and killing one still causes disturbance for a celestial or ethereal.

Seraphim resonance that way is a bit more powerful, but not game-breakingly so. I've often been a bit relaxed as far as that goes myself. I've also sorta assumed that about Shedim, too (except Shedim of the Game!), though I've never ran a game with a Shedite player so it's never come up.

The "Dramatic Flair" I have a serious objection to, though. Resonance is the core natural ability of a celestial, and it's the one thing they can do that doesn't cause disturbance because it's natural for them to be doing it. Dissonance I can see maybe, since it's very inherently unnatural, but I don't think I would do that. I will say that the rules state that when you use Essence to pump your TN up, that makes your event supernatural by default, even resonance. This has led to cars with flaming tires making miraculous landings in my game (an Ofanite pumping his already resonance-pumped Driving roll with Essence) and such.

I find it a little disturbing (no pun intended) that in one session your Seraph lied several times. Unless he ended up with Discord or has a very lenient Superior who removed the dissonance...it seems you're playing a bit lighter with the whole concept of dissonance than the rules seem to suggest. Explicate?

Boss fights are always awesome. Calabim make excellent enemies for such, and are particularly vicious in celestial combat. Boss fight locales are also very important--I had the locus of a Death Tether be a smoky hole in the ground in the middle of the Tether to which the Death cultists threw their sacrificial victims. During the fight, several demons were kicked/pushed/teleported into the pit, only to rise a few rounds later after coming back from Hell. One of the cultists ended up in the pit, too...and didn't come back. And funky combinations as a result of GM fiat, Interventions, Superiors, or powerful Ethereals are always there for spicing up the game, like that Lilim-god you mention.
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Old 09-16-2009, 07:12 PM   #20
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Default Re: House Rules?

Not to nitpick, but there would be no Disturbance for Vessel Death.

Everyone and everything else...?

I like the stun rules. It gives a human a chance of at least getting away from a Celestial, or at least feel they are trying.

Yeah, Dissonance is a big deal. Two points are messing with my whole day! And getting rid of them is a nightmare. Sure the one 10 point thing rocks, but everything else is (and should be) hard.
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