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The Dark Souls
Topic Started: May 18 2016, 12:35 AM (398 Views)
PoliteViking

I have been lurking a long time, stealing your content for my home game, and I've also been brewing a little myself. Though I'm not too well versed in the mechanics. Mostly I wanted to throw around ideas, because this setting is the shit.

So here I present the (Very WIP) Dark Soul Exaltation (If my lore is contradictory I apologize. Please let me know.)
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Legends from the time of the Tiamat Heresy speak of the three Eladrin heroes who discovered the First Kiln, an artifact designed to gather the souls of all life in a Crystal Sphere, and bestow it's user with that power. They each used the Kiln, gaining incredible power at the cost of uncountable lives. But what they had not intended for, was a fourth witness to their ascendance. So small and primitive was he, that the heroes had paid him no mind. This pygmy found one soul, a Dark Soul, forgotten even by the Kiln itself. This Pygmy took this Dark soul and gave it's power to all of his descendants.

The Three used their newfound power to usurp what was left of the Dragon Empire, and propped themselves up as God-Kings. It wasn't long until their power began to fade. Izilith, in her hubris, tried to build a new Kiln, the results were... less than successful. She and her Daughters of Chaos were turned, irrevocably into twisted abominations. Nito went deep, deep underground, to find peace in darkness. Lord Gwin, however, was going mad at his loss. In his madness, he returned to the Kiln, and activated the Dark Soul. The purpose of the Dark Soul was to feed soul energy into the Kiln, allowing it to be activated once more. Gwin was slain by a Dark Soul, coming to take his birthright.

You are a descendant of the Pygmy, and you have the power to feed the Kiln. Most who have the Dark Soul are eaten away by it until they hollow, becoming little more than zombies. You're different. You have tasted powerful souls, the souls of Lords. And you have seen the bones of Gwin. You have seen the First Kiln. And you used it.

Tell: Dark Souls are noted by the Darksign, a black vortex on the left shoulder blade of the Cursed. It is the means by which you absorb souls to send to the First Kiln. The more souls you gain in a scene, the more it grows, the more it howls for more souls.

Powers:
-Darksign: When a creature of at least level one dies within Humanityx5 meters of you, you gain one soul.

-Bonfire: Each Dark Soul is connected to a home Bonfire. An ever burning flame that you kindle with souls instead of wood. Gain one dot in the Holdings background to purchase a place to keep your bonfire. When you rest at your bonfire, you heal twice as fast as normal.

-Cursed Undead: When you die, your body will reform from the embers of your bonfire 1d10-Humanity days later. You will have 0 souls, and you must make an alignment check. If you ever reach 0 Devotion, you may burn a dot of humanity to stay at 1 devotion and in the game. If you ever reach 0 Humanity or Devotion in this way, you will become Hollow, forever a mindless killing machine. When you respawn at your Bonfire, you take -1 to all characteristics (to a minimum of 1) until you spend souls equal to your level at your Bonfire.

-Lordsoul: You may add 2 to your size if you wish, and you may wield two handed weapons in one hand if you do. If you do not, gain.... (something else)
--------------------------------
Power Stat: Humanity. Representing how much of you is left unscathed by the curse. When you start the game you will be at least slightly hollow in appearance, but as your humanity increases, you will become more and more like your former self.

Resource Stat: Souls. You start with 0 souls, and gain them as per the Darksign ability. You have a maximum of Humanityx3.

O Estus Flask: A favourite among Dark Souls, this flask stores souls in the form of a liquid. When you are at your bonfire, you can put souls into it. When you drink from it (a half action) you heal 2 hp per soul drank. (As opposed to the 1-for-1 heal of normal resource stats)

OO Get Good: Gain a free level in a sword school, gun kata, or magic school, and one characteristic category of your choice (Physical, Social, Mental) can go up to 6.

OOO The First Sin:

OOOO Soul Memory: When you kill an Exalt, you may, (at the cost of 1 soul per level of your foe) put +1 into any characteristic they had that was higher than yours, up to +6. You also gain +1 to two skills they possessed. This bonus lasts until you die or use it on a new Exalt.

OOOOO Crowned Lord: You have surpassed the Darksign, the Kiln, and the Curse. You will no longer Hollow when you die. You will still return 1d10-Humanity days later, without degeneration or the stat penalty. You will still have 0 souls though.



I plan to make Assets for some of the covenants as well. So, honest feedback?

P.S. Sorry I thought I put this with exaltations. whoops.

Edits-
-Used Marr's hollowing mechanic as part of Cursed Undead.
-Removed Giant Dad, but moved the ability to static abilities, renamed it Lordsoul. The idea being that your character is like a DS post-game character. I want you to feel like a DS boss a little bit. I want to add a couple options so you dont have to be huge if you dont want... maybe give an option to mimic the Poise mechanic. or backstabbery.
Edited by PoliteViking, May 18 2016, 09:41 AM.
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stellatedHexahedron
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Noneuclidean Polyhedron
Never played Dark Souls, so I'm going to focus on crunch.

Traditionally, all exaltations have at least one downside. Just move Darksign to the Power stat entry and put a downside in its place.

Bonfire is...weird. It says you can't talk to the other Dark Souls, only gesture, and I've seen enough DS vids to know why. But couldn't you just bring a non-Dark Soul there and talk to them where the other Dark Soul could hear? Or just walk away from the bonfire and talk to them over there?

Cursed Undead should just say "alignment check" since all alignment checks are to avoid degeneration.

The First Sin is odd in that it gives you choices--but only 2. Doesn't necesarily need to be changed, it just sticks out is all.

Estus Flask should subtract from your max soul pool. Also, can it be stolen? Or broken?

Giant dad is probably overpowered and definitely very cluttered.

Crowned Lord and Soul Memory are underwhelming. Soul Memory can mostly be straight buffed, say, "When you kill an exalt, if they have a Characteristic higher than yours, you may spend a soul to increase that characteristic by 1, to a maximum of 6. The bonus is lost after 1 day or if you rest at your bonfire."
Not sure what to do about Crowned lord.
Edited by stellatedHexahedron, May 18 2016, 01:24 AM.
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PoliteViking

well, whenever you die, you may lose devotion, go insane and become an npc, that's a downside. I could work to make it more of a downside. The goal with this exaltation it to make a character that will die pretty frequently. Its hard to turn something thats a disadvantage in DS into an Exaltation. I may have to take more liberties.

I should clarify that you can talk to Dark Souls in person. You can basically scry on other dark souls while they rest. which is a blessing and a curse, because there's tons of dark souls, and not all of them are friendly. And they'll know where you are. They might be able to invade you (via a Darkwraith Covenant Asset) through your bonfire. This is to create a feeling of always being hunted for your souls. As a Lord of Light, you can talk via bonfire as well. (To represent Lord Gwyn's linking of the Bonfires in DS)

Every protagonist in dark souls makes a choice whether to Light the First Flame, sacrificing themselves o continue the age of Light, or to leave the First flame to sputter out, thus beginning an age of Darkness. Hence the two choices. I'll work on the fluff to make it all make more sense, maybe come up with a third option.

I'll work on Giant Dad, but the size bonus is important and Dark Souls characters routinely heft massive weapons in one hand. maybe just nix the armor/aura?

I'll fix the wording on Estus Flask, but basically, at your bonfire only, you can pre-spend souls to have Estus uses for later, and the healing is more effective than spending souls on the fly. And it should only be usable by you, or other Dark Souls, who already have one anyway, so stealing one is pointless.

I like what you suggest for Soul memory. I'll work on it.

Crowned Lord represents a third ending option added to the second dark souls game, to step out of the cycle entirely. By gathering these three crowns, you gain the power to never hollow again. Its a bigger deal in DS than DtD I suppose. I'll make it stronger somehow.
Edited by PoliteViking, May 18 2016, 01:58 AM.
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Marr965

I actually tried building a Dark Souls-based exaltation myself, but ultimately discarded it for being too difficult to tie fluff and crunch together appropriately.

You might want to grab one of the static powers I built: Curse of Undeath. You take -1 to all stats (except any that would be brought below 1), but this can be reversed by spending resource at a bonfire. However, if you die while you've reversed your Hollowing, this effect reverts. That would be a pretty hefty downside to the Exaltation, but also provide a way to deal with it, at the cost of a different downside (maybe a lowering to your cap?).

I also went a lot less meme-y, using in-game names and effects (Dark Sign, Curse of Undeath, Chosen Undead, Abysswalker, that sort of stuff). I kinda feel like DtD tries very hard to avoid being a ridiculous litany of memes, and is more a ridiculous litany of references.
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PoliteViking

I could always switch up the names of some abilities to be slightly less meme-y. I kinda like Get Good though. It's what every Dark Soul has to do to avoid going Hollow. It's got a ring to it, I think.
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weredrago2
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Heads up. I'm going to be bringing up some issues on this Dark Soul Exalt in Kiogen's thread.

Could we get a mod to move this to the Exalts subforum?
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