(no subject)

Last night's D&D: Fun.  Though I was quite drunk.  Lizardmen almost murdered my doggy, which means I've used my Rage for the day.  myki ruled in his new role as ORBITAL DEATH CANNON.  Then he set off disarmed loads of traps (in the army camp that he'd just detonated) using some sort of flaming sphere, which just rolled over them casually, and they were all EL9-10 traps, which meant the whole pary gained about 7000XP.  Huzzah!

Hmm ... looking through the SRD for the bit about activating a frost sword taking a Move action.  Here's the part that seems relevant:

Activation: Usually a character benefits from a magic weapon in the same way a character benefits from a mundane weapon—by attacking with it. If a weapon has a special ability that the user needs to activate then the user usually needs to utter a command word (a standard action).

Cock.  I was rather hoping there had been some confusion between "activating a magic item" (ie, a scroll or wand) and "turning on your lightsaber".  I can't see that shouting a word is equivalent to an attack, after all you're allowed to talk to other people as a free action.  Maybe "uttering a command word" is a more involved process that involves posing while the coruscating energies sweep across you.  THUNDERCATS - HO!  BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!  etc.

Interested by this bit under Icy Burst:  "Even if the frost ability is not active, the weapon still deals its extra cold damage on a successful critical hit."  Think we missed that... so, mixed blessings then.  Now, must get that Keen in there too and we're sorted.

Love from bacony

Which Muskehound are you?

Gender aside - yes.

Wait. Dammit! It didn't come with explanatory text. Well, it was some crap about everybody loving me, and enemies underestimating me.

Nothing about men in uniform.

Old news to some, I'm sure

Ooh, tantalising.  White Wolf know what they're doing, leaking fragments of information that the fans can overanalyse and conjecture over.  So, obliging then.

I can see what they're doing, turning the statistics into a legitimate 3x3 matrix plotting power, finesse and resistance against mind, body and soul social.  It always used to almost fit into that pattern, anyway, and it's a model that works.  (Though Willpower should be accordingly less expensive now, if it's not being used as your social stamina.)  The other interesting change is the removal of the "Appearance" attribute.  It was always kind of an anomoly; being technically "physical" it was a bit of a grey area where some effects were concerned, and anyway different people find different things attractive.  I guess now some GMs will have to put a bit more effort into NPCs' personal tastes and such - with some it may be "High Composure", others may go for "Extreme Strength" or just "Bleached Blond Hair".  Players who want to be beautiful, too, will have to describe it in specific terms ("high cheekbones, ruby lips and long, blond hair" etc).  It's kind of a shame, though, I always enjoyed dumping all my points into Appearance and being otherwise vapid, dim and physically useless... on the other hand, yay, now I can play characters who are non unattractive while remaining effectual.

I don't see why initiative mod would be Dex and Composure though - I'd keep it as Dex + Wits.

Mental skills are harder to use unskilled than physical or social ones (another interesting redistribution from Skills/Talents/Knowledges)?  I would have marked them harder generally, give them a higher difficulty or lower returns or something.  As it is all it takes is one dot and you've offset the initial difficulty.  Though, on second though, maybe that's the point - anyone can throw a punch, but if you've not been given a basic grounding in Medicine you don't have much hope of performing an operation.  As in general knowledge quizzes it's easy if you know it, nigh-impossible if you don't.

Also available on the White Wolf site is a preview for Aberrant D20.  Um.  hum.  I'm not sure how well that will convert to a class-based system - most of the appeal is the modularity of the powers (And why does the Adventure! character sheet have a Race box?  Given the majority of characters are firmly human - I suppose you may have the odd dinosaur man or what have you, but seriously).  I think I will stick with my Storyteller version for now thank you.  Still, it does have a good picture of that reknowned Magus, Divis Mal, on the page for what I can only assume is a Prestige class, being but five levels.

Well, we'll see.  Back to work, I suppose.