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Homebrew Exaltation - Awakened; Sometimes, an animal aspires to better things...
Topic Started: May 28 2016, 01:20 AM (353 Views)
Marr965

Most Exaltations are gifted to sapient mortals. Not so with the Awakened. They are lower animals who have just enough of a spark of intelligence to be able to who desire better things and instinctively understand how to achieve those better things - bizarre rituals, exotic tinctures and exact timings, usually coinciding with equinoxes or solstices, eclipses or planetary alignments. These magical trappings allow them access to the form - and mental power - of a sapient being and simultaneously Exalt them.

Static Powers
Wild Form - You can temporarily shed your preferred form and accept your birth form. You gain the Wild Shape feat, but you must choose the effects it has before beginning play.
Natural Psychology - You take an Xk0 modifier to Politics and all Social skills except Animal Ken and Intimidate, where X is your Awareness minus 4. X can be negative or zero.
Magic Allergy - Upon successfully casting a spell or having a spell successfully cast upon you, make a Willpower test with TN equal to the result of that spell's Focus Power test. Failure results in a forced use of the Wild Form power and loss of all powers granted by your Exaltation (including the ability to change back) for 1 hour plus 1 hour per check you got on your test.
Jaws that Bite, Claws that Catch - By spending 1 Wilding as a free action, gain a Bite or Claw natural weapon with the following profile: [Melee; 1k1 R; Pen 0; Brawling]. This weapon lasts for 1 scene and counts as magical.

POWER STAT - AWARENESS
As an Awakened becomes more integrated with society, their mannerisms become MORE like those of an intelligent menmber of the race they're pretending to be - until they enter their animal form. Then, the floodgates are released and their submerged instincts come flooding to the fore.
Resource Stat - Wilding. An Awakened's maximum Wilding is equal to the sum of their Wisdom, Willpower and Composure minus their Intelligence. Every time they enter animal form, an Awakened regains 1 Wilding, and they regain another point for each hour they spend in animal form.

Awareness Powers
AwarenessPower Gained
●○○○○?? - All animals start one relationship rank higher than normal with you and will not attack outright. Gain +1k1 to any social tests with animals and you may attempt them against animals as though you had the Wild Empathy feat.
●●○○○Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - You may go to 6 dots in all of your Physical Characteristics.
●●●○○Veridis Quo - You gain the Nekomimi Mode feat and your natural weapon is always available while using it.
●●●●○Fast Healing - While in animal or half-animal form, you heal 1 Hit Point per round, provided it wasn't lost to damage from an E, X or magical source.
●●●●●Human After All - You are no longer affected by Magic Allergy. In addition, rather than subtracting your Intelligence to determine your Wilding cap, you add it instead.

Awakened Animal Origin Assets
Bear Origin - Your natural weapon deals +1k0 damage, and while you are in animal or half-animal form, you gain +1 Resilience.
Crab Origin - Your natural weapon gains the Defensive quality and can be used to parry, and you gain Armour Plating (1) while in your animal and half-animal forms.
Mantis Origin - Your natural weapon gains the Tearing quality, and you get a +2 bonus on your Initiative rolls.
Salamander Origin - Your natural weapon has the following profile: [Melee; 2k2 E; Pen 0; Brawling].
Spider Origin - Your Bite natural weapon gains the Toxic quality, and you can spend 1 Wilding to gain a natural weapon with the following profile: [Melee; 0; Brawling, Snare]

Notes
Edited by Marr965, May 28 2016, 02:53 AM.
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Marr965

08:55, GMT, 28/05/2016 - Three-dot power has a name, one-dot power exists.
Edited by Marr965, May 28 2016, 02:55 AM.
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Kiogen

This is indeed a nice idea.

Magic Allergy is far too harsh. Maybe making the TN half the result?

Wildling, while indeed fluffy, makes them have potentially the lowest (or negative) amount of Resource points with unwieldy recovery. Consider revising.

I understand that both fix on Rank 5, but it is a long way there.

One dot power suggestion:
* Wild Empathy - All animals start one relationship rank higher than normal with you and will not attack outright. Gain +1k1 to any social tests with animals and you may attempt them against animals.

Three dot name suggestion:
*** Halfway there
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Marr965

Wilding has a really weird variability. You can start with as few as -1 Wilding (yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but you have to go all-in on Intelligence for that to happen) or as high as 12 (but you have to go all-in on the stuff that this Exaltation doesn't do well at - Mental and Social). It's also got a HUGE potential gain at five dots: 10 Wilding. I'll also point out that the Chosen has a potential lowest Favor cap of 2 (although if you're at the point where your Devotion is 1 as a Chosen, you're doing something seriously wrong). Similarly, the Paragon and Dragonblooded start with a cap of 2, and the Werewolf, Wraith and Promethean have low-caps of 3. Maybe I'll stick a low-cap of 2 on it. All that said, though, Magic Allergy should mean that an Awakened has decent Willpower, so I don't know.

With the slow increase in spell TNs with Magic School ranks, I was considering making it be the TN of the spell.

Wild Empathy is already a feat (in the Druid classline), but I like the idea.

Given I've been using the names of Daft Punk pieces for the Awareness powers, I might use Veridis Quo (which means something like "for what purpose") for the name of the three-dot power.

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Kiogen

Personally, I think that enforcing a rigid playstyle/character type by Exaltation is kinda wrong. Concider adding "Owl" or "Fox" or something that allows making smart or cunning characters into the Assets.

Well, the average Focus Power test is fairly high, and it is affected by a multitude of feats, as well as having much more rolled dice. So opposing it with plain Willpower is just plain "lol no you fail". Making it a TN of the Spell is viable, but it kinda backfires against spells that rely on a number of raises (eg Energy Bits).

I suck at naming things.
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weredrago2
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He Who Posts Too Much
What exactly is the goal of this Exalt? What's the selling point you would advertise to convince people to play as an Awakened over something like the Werewolf?

Natural Psychology should just be a static penalty, like -1k1 or -2k1. It should be something inherent to the Exalt, and not something that goes away (or reverses) with time.

Why is Magic Allergy a thing? I can't even figure it out from a fluff perspective, because it's such a strange penalty to tack on this Exalt and severely disincentivizes you from making a spellcasting character.

Why does Intelligence subtract from your Wilding? I mean, I know 'why', but why would you put a penalty into resource calculation? It gives you juice more for having a lower rating in a Characteristic.

There's probably more I could say, but I'll stop there. This Exalt has problems, because all I'm getting from it is a poor man's Werewolf with penalties that far outweigh the benefits.
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Midboss57
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I think the magic allergy comes from the Feng Shui RPG where I'm assuming this exaltation is inspired from. Long story short, magic turned these animals into humanoids and magic is the only thing that can turn them back (something they are not keen on).
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Marr965

Yep. You got it, Midboss.

Maybe I'll add Ant (for social characters) and Crow (for mental characters). Got to come up with appropriate boosts for the natural weapons, though. That's what I've mostly been going for with the Assets.
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Nobody Important

Natural Psychology is... extremely weird. Suffering -3k0 to all Politics and Social tests is crippling, especially for a potential face-character. Admittedly, it decreases over time but why have a variable penalty?
Magic Allergy is crippling. Like, hideously crippling. Enemy spellcaster hits you with a spell; you become useless for an hour.
Jaws that Bite, Claws that Catch: Dragonblooded get those for free, without having to spend a Breath, even.

Wilding: Seems like you'd never want to wait in animal form for an hour, because in one minute you can regain 10 Wilding just by shifting in and out of your animal form. Penalizing a player for playing an intelligence-based character seems harsh.

Awareness 1 should probably just outright give you the Wild Empathy feat, so that you don't have to buy it twice.
Standard "+cap on (X attribute) power. It's weaker than the Daemonhost, but... That's the Daemonhost. It's fine.
Gaining a single (not even very good) feat for your third power dot is pretty weak, but I'm sure there's some combo I'm not seeing that makes this stronger.
Fast Healing is an ability that the Werewolf gets at FH 1. You're getting this at Awareness 4. This is somewhat underpowered, needless to say.
Human After All: Assuming you haven't invested heavily in intelligence because you get screwed over by it, this is effectively +2-4 Wilding at Awareness 5, which would be nice if there was anything to spend it on, really. Also, you no longer suffer your crippling, crippling magic penalty. Now you can actually play the game!

Assets: I should point out that these are very similar to Dragonblooded Blood Quickening. Dragonblooded can also take an asset on top of their blood quickening, though.

Overall, this exaltation is extremely restrictive to characters that don't fit a very specific archetype -- you can ONLY play a combat monster with this exaltation, because you're penalized heavily for face, skillmonkey (Int requirements, usually), and spellcaster roles. On top of that, I'd rather play a werewolf since it's bonuses aren't even that strong. There are some interesting ideas here, and it's nice to see an exaltation idea that doesn't start off flagrantly overpowered, but this exaltation really needs a draw, something to make you consider it over other options.
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Marr965

Thanks for the feedback, Nobody. I'll try and work something out.
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