Chilling touch attack for undead idea

[b-dog]

I am thinking of a power that ghosts and other undead might possess where the ghost strikes a PC and then it does damage as normal but then the PC suffers a penalty to all rolls of the same amount as the damage done by the ghost. So a ghost or vampire strikes a PC and damages him for 8 points of damage them all of the PCs rolls are at -8 until the wound is healed. Holy water can also be used to cleanse the wound and remove the penalty to skill rolls but does not heal the physical damage.

[zoncxs]

That is extreme, maybe make it -1 penalty per successful hit. With more powerful ghosts/undead upping the penalty.

[Anders]

-8 to all rolls is really crippling. That is a lot of penalty to eat. It pretty much means you're useless at everything except two or three skills.

[Kromm]

The most powerful Curse spell causes -3 to all rolls; there's no way to go past this. It has two specific "escape clauses": a spoiled notable success or a Remove Curse spell. Only clerics with Power Investiture 5+ may cast it, and it costs 20 energy and takes six seconds. There's no reason why undead should be more powerful than this . . . a central conceit of DF is that, at the highest levels, clerics outmatch undead.

Something more like this would fit better:

Impure Injury: Track HP of injury this specific monster (not all monsters with this ability) inflicts on a given victim. Read the tally as energy points in a Curse spell (Spells, p. 51) cast automatically as follows: -1 after 3 HP, -2 after 10 HP, or -3 after 20 HP. Healed HP subtract from the total; e.g., 17 HP gives -2, but if that person is fully healed, it takes another 20 HP (not 3 HP) to inflict -3. These penalties don't "stack" with themselves, the Curse spell, or anything similar – a greater penalty dispels a lesser one. Unlike the Curse spell, Impure Injury won't cancel a notable success and go away on its own. But also unlike Curse, it can be removed by not only the Remove Curse spell but also the Esoteric Medicine (Holy) skill, which requires one dose of holy water per -1. Impure Injury resists Remove Curse and Esoteric Medicine using the monster's Will.

[b-dog]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The most powerful Curse spell causes -3 to all rolls; there's no way to go past this. It has two specific "escape clauses": a spoiled notable success or a Remove Curse spell. Only clerics with Power Investiture 5+ may cast it, and it costs 20 energy and takes six seconds. There's no reason why undead should be more powerful than this . . . a central conceit of DF is that, at the highest levels, clerics outmatch undead.

Something more like this would fit better:

Impure Injury: Track HP of injury this specific monster (not all monsters with this ability) inflicts on a given victim. Read the tally as energy points in a Curse spell (Spells, p. 51) cast automatically as follows: -1 after 3 HP, -2 after 10 HP, or -3 after 20 HP. Healed HP subtract from the total; e.g., 17 HP gives -2, but if that person is fully healed, it takes another 20 HP (not 3 HP) to inflict -3. These penalties don't "stack" with themselves, the Curse spell, or anything similar – a greater penalty dispels a lesser one. Unlike the Curse spell, Impure Injury won't cancel a notable success and go away on its own. But also unlike Curse, it can be removed by not only the Remove Curse spell but also the Esoteric Medicine (Holy) skill, which requires one dose of holy water per -1. Impure Injury resists Remove Curse and Esoteric Medicine using the monster's Will.

Thanks for the correction. Could there also be something like impure wound for sanity blasting Elder Things? Where you steadily gain a penalty to your Will as you go more and more insane? Maybe Remove Curse can heal the broken mind of the PC? And what about vampires who drain blood? Can they also cause penalties to Will rolls after they feed on the PC?

[Kromm]

You could easily replace the generic -1 to -3 curse with a focused Will penalty. Whether it would ever matter is another question.

Heroic 250-point delvers with weapons and armor aren't likely to give a vampire time to suck blood. That's why the vampires in Monsters are smart enough to leverage their great strength by wearing DR 7 armor themselves and using heavy two-handed weapons. The blood-sucker who sneaks up and bites people is a horror trope; hack 'n' slash vampires are for brutal combat.

Likewise, Fright Checks that blast sanity aren't going to matter that much to delvers, given their high stats and all the bonuses on p. 10 of Exploits. Usually, Elder Things are scary because they have weird, dangerous combat powers like teleportation, telekinesis, tentacles, and freaky gaze and touch attacks that bypass DR. Losing your mind to them is horror, not hack 'n' slash.

Remember that the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is a single-genre game focused on hack 'n' slash. For genre blends, there's GURPS, which more strongly supports horror. This is actually the biggest single difference between the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy – the latter isn't so much hack 'n' slash fantasy as it is kitchen-sink fantasy, which spans epic fantasy, hack 'n' slash fantasy, historical fantasy, horror fantasy, steampunk fantasy, and even science fantasy.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

I am thinking of a power that ghosts and other undead might possess where the ghost strikes a PC and then it does damage as normal but then the PC suffers a penalty to all rolls of the same amount as the damage done by the ghost. So a ghost or vampire strikes a PC and damages him for 8 points of damage them all of the PCs rolls are at -8 until the wound is healed. Holy water can also be used to cleanse the wound and remove the penalty to skill rolls but does not heal the physical damage.

The closest I can think of would be Symptoms (DX Penalty) but that can't be "per damage" it has to be "when you've lost a % of HP" (either 1/3 or 1/2 or 2/3)

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Plane

The closest I can think of would be Symptoms (DX Penalty) but that can't be "per damage" it has to be "when you've lost a % of HP" (either 1/3 or 1/2 or 2/3)

Well, Symptoms exists in GURPS but not in the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Even in GURPS, though, nothing prevents monsters from working however they work . . . they are not (and should not) be built on character points, so you can just say "every N HP lost causes effect X," where X can be a penalty to something, energy points toward a curse (as in my example), or whatever you like. For hack 'n' slash monsters, the question isn't whether you can build it using full-on, complicated GURPS, but only whether it's fun.

[b-dog]

How about this as an idea for vampire charm that does not totally stink? Instead of the PC rolling and then if he fails is under the control of the vampire. Instead the vampire puts say a -5 penalty to the PCs skill roll and if the PC rolls below the penalty then he gets to do what he wants. But if not he does what the vampire wants. So maybe the PC has has a Will of 16 and the vampire is using charm gaze at -6 penalty power. So if the PC want to use his sword to attack he must first roll he Will and he must roll 10 or lower to use his sword but if he gets 11 or higher he does what the vampire wants.

[b-dog]

Anyway, the idea with the above system is that the PC has a chance to do something if he rolls successfully but he also has a chance to be controlled by the vampire and do what the vampire wants. So the PC is not completely sidelined as with the regular charm spell or power. This keeps the PC active in the game and maybe the PC could spend some fatigue to increase his odds of succeeding