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| Deathlord; Deathkings 3: Resurrection | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 16 2017, 02:03 AM (706 Views) | |
| Username | Nov 16 2017, 02:03 AM Post #1 |
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Another take on Death-king, with some buffs and some nerfs and changes to things that just didn't work well based on player tests of the Exaltation during a campaign as well as another player expressing interest in playing one in a different campaign. Just putting out the mechanics of them first before I put some fluff together for them, although I did work some out just from describing features. Still in flux of course but best to get it posted so things can start getting addressed.![]() Static Powers: Soul Trap: A portion of the Deathlord’s soul is trapped (usually willingly) in something that is not their body, known as a Phylactery. This makes them immune to a normal true death, though this requires them to defend whatever object, place, or person houses their soul; in this state their soul is easily destroyed by any serious attack on it unless it is being actively protected. If statistics are required, their soul has 10 HP and Resilience equal to the Deathlord's Necrosis, although they may burn a hero point to recreate their Phylactery should it be destroyed. While the Deathlord’s Trapped Soul is still safe, death is merely a setback. When the Deathlord perishes, they return to life at the location where their soul is housed, fully healed, in 2d10 - Necrosis days. However, if the Deathlord should die with no existing Phylactery then their death is permanent! Vigor Mortis: Deathlords have the Undead trait and do not need sleep, nor do they age. Additionally, they only suffer the death effects of criticals to the Head or Body. However, they do not heal over time or respond to mundane medical efforts and may treat the Hardy feat as optional if it appears on their progression. Magical spells and resource points heal as normal. Secrets Of Life And Death: Obsessed with immortality, the Deathlord is hopelessly necromantic. Deathlords start with one rank in Necromancy and can always advance Necromancy as though it appeared on their current class tract. When casting a Necromancy spell, the Deathlord can spend Antilife equal to the spell's level minus half their Necrosis (to a minimum of zero antilife spent required) to prevent any Psychic Phenomena the spell would cause. Soulless: Having your soul sundered does have some drawbacks. While separated from your Phylactery you may not spend hero points, although they may still be burnt. In addition, spending antilife pulls back the mask of mortality you possess to reveal the soulless horror you are. The more your tell increases, the more horrific you become, functioning as gaining a Fear Rating for the scene equal to the half number of antilife you have spent in the scene to a maximum rating of your Necrosis. Only the living are affected by this Fear rating. Power Stat: Necrosis Necrosis is death, and is a measure of how closely you walk the line between undeath and oblivion. As the Deathlord's Necrosis increases, they become increasingly distant, eerie and unsettling as they distance themselves further from their lost mortality. Low Necrosis Deathlords may have a hollowness to their tone and a dullness in their eyes, while as Necrosis increases they may lose the ability to laugh, have no reflection or even at times be unable to have their voice carry electronically. At high Necrosis, Deathlords tend to forget what it was ever like to be alive or that they were ever alive at all, their time as a mortal seeming like a vague dream lost upon waking. Resource Stat: Antilife A Deathlord has Antilife equal to their Necrosis*2 + Intelligence and Composure. Deathlord's regain one Antilife each time they kill a living thing that has a soul of about the size of a housecat or larger. The Tell of a Deathlord is a stench of death and general wrong-ness around them that affects all living things. As they spend Antilife, their visage shifts to reveal the soul sundered monstrosity they truly are, their eyes burning with spectral flames and their bodies appear to whither into desiccated husks, while the minds of mortals are instilled with an unnatural understanding of the futility of life. Necrosis 1: Wake The Dead: You may touch a dead body and expend an Antilife to reanimate it as an undead slave with your Necrosis in current hitpoints. They gain the Undead and Mindless traits and lose any Exaltation powers in this state due to being a mere undead simulacrum of their former self but otherwise keep their existing statistics and will follow your commands to the spirit and letter of your wishes. Each session or day, whichever is longer, you must expend an additional Antilife for each such Undead Slave you possess, otherwise the slave falls dormant as if actually dead, although you may spend Antilife equal to the level of slave to wake them once more. Some extremely powerful beings such as Dragons may be immune to this power. Necrosis 2: Festering Ruin: Once per round as part of any damage roll, you may spend 1 Antilife to add your Necrosis as rolled dice to damage and grant the attack Festering property. Necrosis 3: Corpsecrafter: When using Wake The Dead to reanimate an undead slave, you may add one of the following traits to the target by spending an additional Antilife for each trait added: Amphibious, Crawler, Dark Sight, Fear (1), Quadruped. You may also spend 2 Antilife to add the traits Phasing, Flyer or remove the Mindless trait. Maintaining an undead slave with these traits costs additional Antilife each session or day, whichever is longer, equal to the cost of Antilife when the traits were added. Necrosis 4: Neverborn: The Deathlord becomes immune to fatigue, and their Resilience increases by 2. Necrosis 5: Necropotence: As a free action, the Deathlord may sacrifice any number of hit points to regain that amount of Antilife at the end of their turn, or sacrifice 3 hit points to gain the effects of spending a Hero Point. This cannot cause critical damage or use Temporary Hit Points to function, and if it would, Necropotence automatically fails. ![]() Dark Art Assets: Art of War: Most don't fear Death, just want it takes to get there and you have endless eons to perfect both. The Maximum and starting Hitpoints of you and your Undead Slaves are increased by your Necrosis, and when you use the Festering Ruin power the effect lasts for a number of damage rolls up to your Necrosis rather than just one. Art of Flesh: Fear of blood tends to create fear of the flesh. Surely there is cause to fear in your ability to craft flesh. You may use Antilife to bend, twist and shape the form of your Wake the Dead Undead Slaves into a item of your liking that functions as if made of Symbiont in all ways, expending a hero point along with a number of both Antilife and Undead Slaves equal to the artifact dots of the item you are creating. At least one of these slaves must be of a level equal to or greater to the Artifact dots of the desired item: weaker beings simply lack the soul strength necessary to fuel the dark rituals. Art of Magic: The tides of the warp hold no secrets from you, as the you have nothing but time to learn them. You gain an additional Magic School of your choice along with Necromancy via your Secrets of Life and Death power, and may treat that school as Necromancy for interaction with abilities, feats and other effects. Art of Decay: All that you touch whithers to nothing. Creatures in contact with you take 3k2 Rending damage every round, with the special rule Tearing. While in a grapple, you gain a natural weapon with the following profile: 3k2 R, Brawling, Tearing. This weapon may always be used with special attacks that use the Grapple action. You regain hitpoints equal to half the wounds these attacks inflict, rounded up. Art of Obsession: It's been said that you can't take it with you, but you solve that by refusing to let go. It only takes you one day to return to life, and you may craft and have additional phylacteries above the normal limit of one equal to your Necrosis without needing to burn a Hero Point, though it takes a number of days equal to your Necrosis to craft a single one. You return to your most recently crafted Phylactery when you return to life. Art of Life: Your knowledge of Life and Death allows you to transcend the normal antithesis that is the Deathlord's existence. You ignore the Deathlord's normal restriction on spending hero points while separated from their Phylactery and may heal normally instead of being restricted entirely to magical healing or resource points. Art of Death: In the end, it call comes down to Death. Escaping from it and granting it instead unto others. All Deathlords know this, but you elevate it to a true art form. When you would gain Antilife from killing something, you gain additional Antilife equal to half your Necrosis, rounded up.
Edited by Username, Jun 17 2018, 10:15 AM.
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| Username | Nov 16 2017, 02:30 AM Post #2 |
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Yes, another take on Deathkings, the third (or 4th if you count the lich semi-alternate exaltation too). I had a player in my previous campaign play a Death-king V2 and although he had some fun with it at times, some of the mechanics were so rough that he actually asked to be able to quit playing that character and use another one, which I allowed. I worked to address some of the issues that I see with Death-king v2 based on those tests. A few powers were reworded or renamed but it isn't really important, just adding a bit of distance between versions. Some such as Antilife instead of Blight or Rot tie into a slightly different take on mechanics and also work as an additional reference (to the Anti-life Equation). Also I changed the name to Deathlord in reference to the Deathlords of Exalted, although this does mean we have yet another Exalt with Lord in the name. Soul Trap works mostly the same as Phylactery, although the resilience of the Phylactery is once again based on your Necrosis. The fluff and mechanics now work as you shaving off portions of your soul, one hero point at a time. This also allows you to burn a hero point to create another Phylactery if the first one is destroyed. Vigor Mortis no longer grants Stuff of Nightmares, which is a bit overused for what it is in my opinion. You can still get it from going through Marr's Necromancer class if you really need it. You are still Undead like the first version of Deathking though and it was expanded to include not needing to sleep. I should remove the not needing to breath statement since undead already grants that. It felt more like a static power so it got switched with Wake the Dead. Hopefully with the loss of SoN, the new soulless penalty and not being able to heal as easily you'll have drawbacks enough. Secrets of Life and Death of course still gives Necromancy, but now gives a more creative bonus. The cheaper advancement was nice and spurs people to invest in necromancy but it means their not actually better mechanically with necromancy than other characters. With that in mind, Necromancy now costs the full amount but you can spend resource to cancel Psychic Phenomena with it. This does mean you could Push and use this to buff your necromancy spells if you like, although I may change it to exclude pushing. It currently allows the Resource cost to be based on the spell level compared to your Necrosis and can make the really low level Necromancy spells functionally Phenomena free. Take note that, as per the rules, you do round your Necrosis DOWN for this calculation. Soulless is another take on Shunned/Against the Living without just doing a boring Social penalty. Since your soul is in sense represented by your Hero Points, you can't spend them while sundered from your phylactery. You'll probably still not want to keep it with you however unless you're one specific Asset choice, but it is something to keep in mind. The Deathlord appears mostly normal normally, if a bit off, but when you start spending Resource you'll gain a Fear Rating. Fear ratings can be beneficial however, hence the hero point restriction. I had been considering having the Deathlord start with 1 less Hero Point to represent the one spent on the first phylactery but forgot to actually type that out. I might still add that. This version gets slightly more resource, due to having many more things that are resource intensive. If necessary, I can drop it back down again. Wake the Dead is probably the biggest change. The sad truth is that Minions really just don't work well for most things. Now instead, you can reanimate mortals you kill (so no exalts) as your undead slaves, although you will need to still pay upkeep on them. With mindless they're not able to cast some types of magic but it is still an option. I may well need to alter this further since this ability could be incredibly potent. Having an undead army is draining on your Resource, which is still somewhat difficult to get back, but it might be too cheap. I might make this blight expenditure cost the level of the thing each instead of 1 each. You can avoid paying upkeep and let them go to "sleep", but you'll need to pay extra to re-reanimate them. The second power stat ability is mostly the first power stat ability of the first Deathking. Doing extra damage helps to get things dead so you can reanimate them, because Wake the Dead and your resource regain mandate that YOU must be the one doing the killing, not a buddy or a cliff or an undead slave. Of course, this extra damage costs a blight too but if you really want that kill shot there you go. I also considered using the Lich's command dead ability. Augmented Summoning is now Dread Necromancer, after the class of D&D fame. It is changed so you can actually apply multiple traits on the same target (although limited by your Antilife spending, and remember you're still spending 1 to just Wake the Dead in the first place). Removing Mindless is worrisome due to more spellcasting but we'll see I suppose. Neverborn is just Necromastery. Since getting hitpoints back is a bit of a chore, it seems reasonable to make it harder to lose them or get knocked out. Renamed it to reference the Neverborn from Exalted. Necropotence got a big nerf. It now gives 1 for 1 hitpoints to resource, stopping you from cycling for full heals whenever. It also allows the hero point expenditure even if you don't have any and even if you're not with your Phylactery, helping to counteract the effects of Soulless a little. Even still, those extra resources can be useful to help keep an undead army up and running. The assets were changed up somewhat as well, I'm not really sure well. Flesh is basically Vicissitude funtimes. It is making artifacts however, so I may add that they still costs Resource to maintain like your Undead Slaves do. Magic is based on Lich, but mixed up a bit due to the changes to Life and Death. It also allows you to double apply feats and such that apply to Necromancy to the other school, which is handy at times. Decay is Worms that Walks with the slight change that it can heal you. Rounded up might be too much, I may let it just round normally (and thus down). This is intended to help counteract the normal difficultly healing somewhat. Obsession is basically just Deathless but with a few slight changes. You can have less max phylacteries with it now mostly. Life is your pretty typical "lessen drawbacks of the exaltation" asset. Death works well if you are spending blight often and can be useful to help you keep a larger undead army going by giving faster resource regain. Whew, time for bed. Thoughts and advice on the changes? Edited by Username, Nov 16 2017, 02:42 AM.
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| Eisenritter | Nov 16 2017, 11:37 AM Post #3 |
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Old Iron Knight
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Deathlord is a class, which is why ReptileViking gave his original version such an awkward name. Now to actually read... EDIT: Pretty much all I have to contribute was already discussed and, apparently, summarily dismissed. Edited by Eisenritter, Nov 16 2017, 05:57 PM.
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| Username | Nov 16 2017, 06:02 PM Post #4 |
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It is, isn't it then? Death Knight of course. I did think of those while working on this and that's part of the reason why the Assets changed to exclude Deathknight, leading to a larger upheaval. Deathless was also changed since it shares the name with a Mummy ability. Hmm. Deathlord seems really fitting, although perhaps I could just rename them Neverborn and change the 4th power stat name to something else. Or maybe find another name for them. Lich is possible but those are already a thing in the monster section of the book. It deserves some thought. |
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| Username | Jan 9 2018, 10:23 PM Post #5 |
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A few updates. Changed the way Art of Flesh works, so now it requires at least one of the slaves to have level equal to the item you're making. Also made the Hardy feat explicitly optional since unless you have the Art of Life asset, you can't use it. |
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| Username | Jan 31 2018, 07:27 PM Post #6 |
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Big change to Deathlord and probably a questionable one, a change to the function of one of their main gimmicks (other than being hard to kill): Wake the Dead. Before Wake the Dead required the Deathlord to be the one to strike the kill and they had to use it immediately as they gained Resource from that kill. This made it a bit hard to ever actually use it. It also didn't work on things like Exalts. This was very intentional, since you don't want a player with undead Exalt slaves running around, one is bad enough. Exalts are normally very rare, but in some situations they can become more common. More than that, when players are having tough fights against high level enemies those enemies can often end up being Exalts too, limiting the available "good" undead slaves drastically. With both of these facts in mind, I made an edit. Now you don't need to be the one to strike the kill on the corpse. You just need to touch it and spend the resource. You also can use it to raise Exalts, but they stop functioning as Exalts. By Core, someone can't "Un-Exalt" but I fluff this here as the fact that they cease to be that same person once they've been reanimated, instead just a corpse slave in their shape and hijacking their body. I also left the disclaimer that really powerful things like Dragons can no sell it. As I'm typing this I think I'll add some additional disclaimers: It will need to be a recently deceased body. There's the worry of a player using this on the corpses of other players. I considered saying someone could spend a Hero Point to avoid it or making it require an opposed roll. I'll think on it. I'm also considering changing some of the kill scenarios. As it is, only Gizzards and head kill you. This is a bit odd in practice, since I figure you probably don't care about your internal organs much but having your body ripped to pieces and not stopping at all seems odd. |
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