Five Earths, All in a Row

[Prince Charon]

A short Q&A on magic and thoughtforms

Originally Posted by Maximara

* How long do "spells" take to cast?

Highly variable, but if you don't have some form of Adept (Time), it takes between a few minutes and a few hours to perform a ritual (the normal time for that specific ritual, plus any extra time to get a skill bonus, or minus reduced time if you're in enough of a rush that you're willing to accept a greater risk of failure). If you do have Adept (Time), it could take only a few seconds to prepare a ritual, though Energy Accumulating rituals tend to take longer even then, as you need to draw in enough minor spirits to power the result that you want. Either way, if you set a ritual to trigger at a specific condition, activating it takes however long it takes to enact that condition (which might be a fraction of a second if you plan it right and have the right training, or could take a fair bit longer - conditions could be just about anything that fits your style and situation, though in-game, the GM can forbid ridiculous ones).

Originally Posted by Maximara

* What attracts these thought forms to take certain actions (like making everyone with the Spock surname look like the character)?

Too many things to list, but in general, you just need enough of them (which could be hundreds, or a single powerful one) to think 'this will be interesting and in our preferred genre.'

Originally Posted by Maximara

* Are they more inclined to answer direct requests or just give out power on a whim (which on the surface seems to have happened in Blue, Green, and Orange).

<Kosh>Yes.</Kosh>
(It varies by spirit or spirits, in other words.)

Originally Posted by Maximara

* If these thought forms are formed out of belief why do some of them seem out of character to how they are generally depicted on the Earth they appear?

In large part, this is due to spirits merging with or controlling/influencing other spirits, as well as people holding contradictory beliefs that affect how spirits think, and more than one spirit having a similar 'identity.'

Originally Posted by Maximara

* How common is the psi magic? Basically Infopunk Earth turning into 21st century Technomancer?

Not exactly like Technomancer, obviously (very different form of magic, for one thing, so a lot of stuff works differently), but in terms of commonality-of-magic alone, it's probably starting to get close.


Thoughts?

[Prince Charon]

One of the unfinished templates that I thought I'd be done making sooner:

Common Demonic Vampire, Work In Progress

Attributes

ST +10 (Without HP; Psychokinesis, -10%) [70]; IQ -1 [-20]

Secondary Characteristics

Per ?; Move +5 [25]

Subtotal:


Advantages

Doesn't Breathe [20]
Injury Tolerance (Unliving; <limitations>) []
Night Vision ? [?]
Unaging [5]

Perks

Subtotal:


Disadvantages

Bad Temper []
Infectious Attack [-5]
Laziness []
Lecherousness (15) []
Vulnerability (Fire; x4; Common) [-60]
Vulnerability (Sunlight; x4; Very common) [-80]
Weakness ('Holy' objects; 1d cor per minute; Common) [-40]
Weakness (Sunlight; 1d burn per minute; Very common) [-60]

Quirks

Subtotal: -


Skills

Subtotal:

Total:

Notes

One of the most common varieties of Vampire on Dieslpunk Earth/Earth Two, very similar to the vampires in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer setting. These vampires are common not because they are all that powerful, but because they pass as humans well, and have an easy reproductive strategy. The presence of 'tainted' or 'corrupted' psychic energy ('evil/demonic' Aspected Sanctity) can help with this, but even when away from such, this form of vampire tend to reproduce faster than most other varieties, on top of the fact that relatively few of the other vampire types are able to accelerate their reproduction in this manner.

Vampires of this type do not have souls (save in the unique case of Liam O'Connor, currently employed by the US Army(2)'s Demon Research Initiative). When applying the template, examine the host's mental disadvantages. 'Positive' mental disads like Code of Honor, Honesty, and Sense of Duty are often reduced in intensity or scope in the conversion, or lost entirely, or are twisted into something evil. Phobias may be lost or reduced in severity, or they may not be, depending on how appropriate they are (fear of fire is very fitting for a vampire, for example). 'Negative' mental disads other than phobias tend to either stay the same, or get worse. Remember that the person who used the body before death is a different character from the vampire that rises from the grave. The once-living character may also appear as a ghost or similar spirit.

Currently trying to decide whether I want to give these vampires disads and/or or quirks corresponding to each of the seven deadly sins. Some are easier to justify than others, but I'm not sure that it's consistent with the source material.

Not sure how good their Night Vision should be; 5, maybe? They cannot see in total darkness, and they don't see as well as the Slayer (who also cannot see in total darkness), but they see much better than humans do. Also, trying to decide whether a bonus to Per is justified by the show.

The IQ of a vampire is the average of the IQ of the human whose body it is using, and the IQ of the blood demon (which average around 8, though some may be better or worse). Vampires usually have fairly decent memories of their hosts' lives, and thus it is not unreasonable to boost the five-to-ten IQ skills that the host used the most often back to the level they were before the loss of intelligence. Also, the point-value of the template depends to some degree on the power of the 'parent' blood-demon, in that a more powerful 'parent' is more likely to have offspring that start out at a higher level than the average fledgling.

I need a way to express the fact that vampires are easily penetrated by piercing and impaling damage, especially from wood and such, but normally do not take much damage from it if the heart isn't penetrated by hard organic material, or the central nervous system isn't seriously damaged. Some sort of modifier on Injury Tolerance (Unliving)? A vampire can be staked by its own rib if hit correctly.

The combination of sunlight being both a Vulnerability and a Weakness that does burning damage (which tends to set the vampires on fire, activating that vulnerability) is a GM call that not everyone would allow, but works given the combustion speed that vampires have. The effective damage from direct sunlight is thus 8d per minute. Vampires that are under water are not damaged by sunlight, and this needs to be noted in the disad line. Might end up replacing this disad combination if something better is suggested, but BtVS vamps are very flammable (apart from old, tough ones that don't go up in smoke immediately, possibly indicating that they bought down the Vulnerability a little, or bought up HP), and do appear to catch fire in sunlight.


Thoughts? Suggestions?

[RedMattis]

So, if someone gets a Psionic Jammer (which based on the limitation value isn't terribly rare) of some sort near these guys they drop to human strength? That seems a bit unusual for what seems to essentially be a Buffy-vampire. I didn't look through the thread for a Slayer to check if they the same limitation, but otherwise decently informed vampire hunters would probably hunt with a briefcase-psi jammer and makeshift flamethrowers (even 1d6-1 of fire damage from a glorified spray-bottle flamethrower could be instantly lethal to a vampire).

Another note, holy symbols might harm them, but taking a mere average 3.5 damage after being in their presence for a full minute makes them almost completely useless as a weapon against vampires. More of a deterrent really since since a vampire likely doesn't want to go looking around for you in your home if their skin is quickly melting off due to symbols on the wall while they are in there.

As for the extreme vulnerability to heart-damage, you could reverse the scaling of the Achilles's Heel limitation and give them something like "Fragile, Unnatural (Wood+Vitals only, -70%) [-15]". (I assume the combo of wood+vitals is "Occasional" in part because it is a known weakness of vampires)

For Vulnerability I'd assume Wood+Vitals would be "Occasional" again, though I might stick the rules for Alternate Abilities on the Vulnerability (divide value by 5), and probably some of the other since they are already getting a lot of points back for their vulnerability to Fire. Adding wood to that isn't terribly much of a change.

Since I'm assuming these are mostly meant as NPCs the point values shouldn't matter terribly much, but anyway, I'd be cautious about giving too many points for weaknesses and vulnerabilities if used as player characters. Currently they are already getting more points back for not handling fire, sunlight, or holy symbols back than what a player with Cursed* [-75] would, and frankly while the weaknesses are really terrible they aren't [-240 points] worth of terrible. For that many points a player could buy high enough DR to ignore the vulnerability, and high-end enhanced "Warp" and just teleport around during the day and probably still be getting points back from the overall package.

* (The disadvantage where the GM will attempt to kill you every meeting and nothing good _ever_ happens to you, and everything bad happens to you first and worst)

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

So, if someone gets a Psionic Jammer (which based on the limitation value isn't terribly rare) of some sort near these guys they drop to human strength?

Might come back to this later, but this part I know I need to comment on: Undead in this setting are normally animated by psionic effects. If someone gets a fully functioning unspecialized psi jammer near an undead being in this setting, the most likely result is that the body keels over dead until the jammer is turned off/out of range. Whether the undead gets back up again depends on the type of undead, though the blood demons of this type are stubborn enough that unless the body started to noticeably decay, it would get back up once the psi jammer is gone.

Psi jammers that effective are less common, though. Most psi jammers are more limited, e.g. a type that only works on psi effects that are outside the user's body, in which case a vampire of this type would remain at full strength. If it had hypnotic powers, or some other such thing, those would be neutralized, though.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Might come back to this later, but this part I know I need to comment on: Undead in this setting are normally animated by psionic effects. If someone gets a fully functioning unspecialized psi jammer near an undead being in this setting, the most likely result is that the body keels over dead until the jammer is turned off/out of range. Whether the undead gets back up again depends on the type of undead, though the blood demons of this type are stubborn enough that unless the body started to noticeably decay, it would get back up once the psi jammer is gone.

Psi jammers that effective are less common, though. Most psi jammers are more limited, e.g. a type that only works on psi effects that are outside the user's body, in which case a vampire of this type would remain at full strength. If it had hypnotic powers, or some other such thing, those would be neutralized, though.

I wonder if there are means to suck out and capture the thoughtform (demon in this case)?

Makes me imagine an evil thoughtform flitting about, switching between host bodies quickly to escape pursuit like in Fallen.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by warellis

I wonder if there are means to suck out and capture the thoughtform (demon in this case)?

Tricky, and honestly it would be far easier to just kill the vampire. Much less tricky for beings with souls who are also possessed.

Originally Posted by warellis

Makes me imagine an evil thoughtform flitting about, switching between host bodies quickly to escape pursuit like in Fallen.

Well, probably not a vampire's blood-demon (would require a vampire that was also a rather skilled magic-user), but certainly possible for other types.

[Inky]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Remember that the person who used the body before death is a different character from the vampire that rises from the grave. The once-living character may also appear as a ghost or similar spirit.

I won't start discussing this at length in a thread that's about the whole Five Earths setting, unless you want to (especially since there's already been a discussion about that elsewhere in these forums, if you're interested: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...33#post2364233 ), but I don't think that that is how it's supposed to work in BtVS. I think they are, in fact, supposed to be the same people. I'd been reading a lot of The Glass Scientists and other Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde variations, so maybe I tumbled to the idea of "the same person, as they would be if they were minus a few important bits" quicker than some people did? Not sure though.

That doesn't prove that it's like that in Five Earths, though, since these aren't those but a magical imitation of them. In fact, if the thoughtforms responsible were basing their efforts on what the majority of viewers thought it was, or what the first viewer they met thought it was, rather than what the writers thought, then from the discussion I've seen on the Internet the Five Earths version probably would go the way you described.

As for crosses, you're right that as seen in the series they'd be a rubbish weapon if it was just about damage. The thing that matters is that the vampires also have a Phobia of them (or maybe it'd work out better mechanically as a Dread with a self-control roll added; the Phobia rules don't seem to have much to say about what you do when what you're trying to do is have your character approach the object, which is nearly always what you want to know with BtVS vampires and crosses).

"The Master" helpfully spells this out in the "nightmares" episode in Series 1, for the benefit of a new vampire:
(pointing at a large cross)
"This symbol, these two planks of wood, it confounds me. Suffuses me with mortal dread."
(puts his hand on the cross)
"But fear can be mastered."
(is smouldering slightly)
"As can pain. Learn the lesson."

Older vampires buying off some of their vulnerabilities/weaknesses compared to fledglings sounds about right. As well as the above, we've seen recurring vampire characters (mainly Angel and Spike) taking all sorts of liberties, dashing across somewhere in daylight and getting away with it, and mooks going up in a fireball within seconds. That could be just plot armour, but equally it would work to say it wasn't.

I'd say yes on the Per. There was a newly turned vampire in Series 1 that bragged about it, and in Series 7 they used Spike as a bloodhound to smell out a trail of blood that a demon had left, and later on Angel said he could smell Spike on Buffy's clothes. (Do they actually have Night Vision, apart from that?)

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Inky

I won't start discussing this at length in a thread that's about the whole Five Earths setting, unless you want to (especially since there's already been a discussion about that elsewhere in these forums, if you're interested: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...33#post2364233 ), but I don't think that that is how it's supposed to work in BtVS. I think they are, in fact, supposed to be the same people. I'd been reading a lot of The Glass Scientists and other Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde variations, so maybe I tumbled to the idea of "the same person, as they would be if they were minus a few important bits" quicker than some people did? Not sure though.

No, the show makes it pretty clear on multiple occasions that they are separate beings that share memories:
"You're not looking at your friend, you're looking at the thing that killed him."
- Giles in the pilot.

Angel (Liam) and Angelus are not the same person, even if Angel remembers and feels guilty about Angelus's crimes. You are your soul, not your flesh (Yoda was right).

Originally Posted by Inky

Older vampires buying off some of their vulnerabilities/weaknesses compared to fledglings sounds about right. As well as the above, we've seen recurring vampire characters (mainly Angel and Spike) taking all sorts of liberties, dashing across somewhere in daylight and getting away with it, and mooks going up in a fireball within seconds. That could be just plot armour, but equally it would work to say it wasn't.

Yeah, the more powerful a demon gets, the more it can remove or shield its weaknesses, in general.

Originally Posted by Inky

I'd say yes on the Per. There was a newly turned vampire in Series 1 that bragged about it, and in Series 7 they used Spike as a bloodhound to smell out a trail of blood that a demon had left, and later on Angel said he could smell Spike on Buffy's clothes.

Maybe Discriminatory Smell, also. Either way, the question now becomes how good the bonus should be. 'I can hear the worms in the earth,' if taken literally, would mean that no-one could sneak up on them and they'd be far better at eavesdropping than they seem to be, so that might be the vampire being dramatic. Probably better to err on the side of plausibility, so high Per, but not 'able to literally hear worms moving underground' high.

Originally Posted by Inky

(Do they actually have Night Vision, apart from that?)

Maybe. Hard to tell, since being a visual medium (but not one where a 'Night Vision Goggles PoV' would have made sense), they didn't have people really in the dark that much. We can treat that as artistic license for some scenes, though.

[Inky]

I always took that as being Giles's information was off (as was not infrequently the case) and they found out different later. And some of the plot threads would make more sense if it wasn't. But it's your game.

Would be funny if they didn't have Night Vision! But might also get in the way of gameplay. As for hearing worms, exaggerating in the interests of being all dramatic would definitely not be surprising from a BtVS vampire!

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Inky

I always took that as being Giles's information was off (as was not infrequently the case) and they found out different later. And some of the plot threads would make more sense if it wasn't.

I don't recall them ever finding out otherwise, nor any plot threads that would make more sense with the vampire still being the same character as the late human, but my memory isn't perfect, and it was two TV shows with many writers who might not all agree on things.

Originally Posted by Inky

But it's your game.

Thank you. Still haven't been able to run a game in this setting, and not sure right now that I could.

Originally Posted by Inky

Would be funny if they didn't have Night Vision! But might also get in the way of gameplay. As for hearing worms, exaggerating in the interests of being all dramatic would definitely not be surprising from a BtVS vampire!

Yeah, very fitting indeed. Maybe I should include a quirk or Compulsive Behavior related to being overly dramatic or melodramatic? How should it be phrased, though?

EDIT: The reason I'm thinking that Compulsive Behavior might be a good fit is that while I'm blanking on specific examples, I kind of think that vampires in BtVS have gone melodramatic at times that it was detrimental to them more often than a quirk would require. Again, imperfect memory, what do others reading this think?