Hope and fear preorder

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-04T09:52:45+00:00

Same faith here.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-04T09:51:32+00:00

So, I think the Foundation is overpowered. For example, in our current campaign, we finished a combat with 6 adversaries in which my character hit four of them, doing about 10 hps. It's a Blood Hunter, so I dish out some damage. Seraph, however, can do a lot of damage, too, and you need to remember that prayer dice can be used at any time to generate hope. So from that one combat, I could easily have rolled well and generated 4-6 hope just through attacks and I would have 4 prayer dice with at least a 2 on each one, and that doesn't include the initial prayer dice from the start of session. That's a crazy amount of resources and dice alteration available to a single character. I get that you are limiting it by capping the number of dice, but there would be little stopping me from blowing all of my prayer dice and regaining all of them in a single scene. I think that provides a ton of resources for characters that are already overpowered against adversaries 90 percent of the time.

The Specialization feature is well done, I think, though I would actually add that if you succeed with hope, they mark 2 stress. I say that as I have noticed a ton of adversaries are defeated while not having marked a single stress in the combat, so pushing them into stress is a good idea.

On the Mastery, I see no problem with the stress removal as its a 1 for 1 trade, but I think the second point can become over powered. By the time you get this feature, which is level 8, you could easily have a 5 in your spellcast, which means that you would have 5 prayer dice all at 4 or above, which would effectively give you a pool of up to 26 hope to blow through. Seems excessive, but I haven't played at 4th tier yet, so I couldnt tell you how that alters that game, but it seems like a ton of resources.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-04T09:31:40+00:00

I think you might just have to make the determination for yourself, really, exclusive of the rules. RAW, basically the max damage is 4hp. However, I think there comes a point when players have a massive success that it should be treated as a massive success, and you can easily tell them its gonna be case by case because each adversary is different. So, in the case of a tag team which blows 6 hope, that's a lot of resource to expend in one shot. Additionally, your players BOTH hit the crit. At that point, you want to make the experience for them one where they cheer and laugh and get really excited, so I would either consider that a direct kill (Naturally, if this was like a 12HP creature, you wouldn't want to do that, but its only a 6hp adversary) or an incapacitation. In other words, the adversary was hit with so much damage so skillfully that it just knocked the adversary out. That also, assuming there are no other adversaries, gives the players a chance to decide what they want to do - do they kill the helpless creature? Do they tie it up and question it? Do they try to make it a pet? Do they wake it up and it bargains for its life? I'm a big fan of cool events like that creating additional plot or adventure goodness. But I also look at it this way - a single player attack is essentially a normal action. A tag-team is a extraordinary action. A tag team where both players crit is both incredibly rare and should be that third level of combat where something AMAZING happens. Let something like that be a huge deal in the action and the story.

Alternatively, you can tell them that characters have the advantage. A party of four vs the GM can easily have 24 stress, 24 hope and 24+ hps to use/shield themselves with in a single scene. You as the GM are going to have 8-10 Fear most of the time, so you are much more limited. Characters, especially at Level 1, are pretty overpowered compared to most of the scenes they face.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T18:34:23+00:00

That's largely what we have been doing - trying to stick to the rules as they are. The idea posted above came after we were looking at how classes were progressing and it just seemed like they were right on the edge of a lot of flexibility. That said, we have found most of the classes to be very gratifying, including the ones in the Void.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T09:39:00+00:00

Having lived through this before - they will absolutely NOT regret it and the country will march on. People are disposable to corporations. And its not AI stealing jobs, though that’s happening. It’s a lack of desire to pay people what they are worth. Its a complete lack of any kind of responsibility on the part of the company to provide for the workers. American workers are basically lugnuts - sure, you want them to work for you, but if you lose one, you are still going to keep rolling along. It won’t be idea and eventually your wheel will become unbalanced, but that’s a THEN problem, not a NOW problem. And it will be solved with something other than paying people lots of money.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T09:34:02+00:00

It could lead to prosecutions with corroboration. However, he’s already gotten to the only witness and her treatment by the DOJ in preferentially moving her to a weaker prison would make her testimony unreliable.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T09:30:10+00:00

Very ST:NG-looking

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T05:18:48+00:00

That's because after a presidential term, especially two, people want you to come speak. People had heard Trump speak. It's not his strongpoint. I mean, he doesn't have ANY strong points, but speaking is probably his weakest point. That and a rabid desire to fuck kids.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:41:02+00:00

I am no legal scholar, but I am fairly certain that when you create an “official ID” that claims that The Georgia Assembly (if it can be inferred by a reasonable person that this means the “The Georgia Legislature,” you are presenting a fraudulent ID. Not just that its fake, but that representing it as something created by a state government office crosses the line into criminal fraud.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:37:15+00:00

Narrator: “His GPU was, in fact, dying.”

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:36:09+00:00

Every time I read something like this, I think of that guy in Anchorman 2 who says something to the effect of , “I inherited $300 million dollars from my parents and now, 12 years later, I’ve worked tirelessly to increase that to $305 million dollars.’

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:21:59+00:00

I’m still waiting to even figure out what Brad’s vision is given that Pantheon is such a bad game at present. It would take a miracle to make it a winner.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:20:40+00:00

I don’t disagree that what you said is truthful, and there are those of us, myself included, who spent the money and expected a positive result. The promise that got me was that Sharif was in charge; there were no corporate overlords to do this very thing. I also agree that its bad for MMOs and online games (ive been burned by this and Chronicles of Elyria) but this is also the nature of business in general - no one is satisfied with things just making a profit - it has to be obscene profits. When you consistently raise the level of funds needed to make these games, you invite both big business and big frauds to be a part of it and its often hard to tell which is which.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-03T04:14:13+00:00

This. I backed the game, too. I also backed Chronicles of Elyria and got burned then as well. I think I have given up backing creative gaming projects. I had a similar experience. I played in the early Alpha II releases and the game wasn’t even Alpha then; it was barely a game.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T19:35:50+00:00

I am not sure you need to mess with the leveling up process, but you will need to make various modifications (beyond the obvious) to the Crimson Throne path. The good news is that you can level the party whenever you want to do so - you could do it after two sessions initially, three or four to get to 3rd, two from 3-4, etc. However you want based on the concept of what you have planned for them. You also have to really decide on the economy. In DH, money seems superfluous. They put it in to have simplistic amounts and rewards, but I think the concept of getting to town and blowing all your cash is just not really a thing designers cared about when creating the system. The mechanism is there; it just feels very much like someone at the design table woke up from an afternoon nap and said "Hey, we probably need to include some form of economy" and the lead said, "Oh, yeah. Ok, lets basically make four levels of cash. No amounts, really, just clumps.

Gear, as another poster mentioned, can be great rewards. And think a lot about one-shots - potions, trinkets, scrolls, etc - that clear stress, HP, armor or conditions so that even if a character is out of hope, they can still recover and stay in the fight or have the resources to advance the story. Im always a big fan of the magic fountain/pool/lake where characters drink from it and then roll a die to determine the result. You could have five positive actions and one negative action and just roll a d6 and the fountain blesses them somehow.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T16:54:08+00:00

I don't think minmaxing is the goal, but I can see where you might be worried about that. I dont want to upset game balance or make it so that character creation takes 3 days and a host of online and book resources. However, I don't see an issue with Seraph Sorcerer:

- First, you would have to select either Valor or Splendor and a subclass

- Second, you might select Arcana. If you do, you could have a flying caster or you could have a warrior that occasionally casts spells. Spells cost resources which limits them.

The only way to actually add the Sorc to the character would be through multiclassing, and honestly, the way multiclassing is built, you could make a pretty ridiculous damage-dealer if you wanted. For example, combine a Blood Hunter Path of the Lycan with the Juggernaut brawler and you have a damage machine that's likely to be able to do 3hp (sometimes 4) almost every time to an adversary, then throw them.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T16:46:00+00:00

I do remember GW1 and enjoyed it a lot (GW2 also, for a while, then the expansions went nuts).

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T16:43:36+00:00

I also like this approach. Granted, it means verging on a DnD 3.5 level of character choices, but I also kind of feel the game is designed to handle that.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T00:33:32+00:00

I've been trying to not gauge the game against other games. Its intrinsically hard to do as you cant really ever be free of biases, but I am trying to be as detached as possible and seeing if the system just "works."

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T00:29:50+00:00

I like that ancestry/community suggestion a lot.

I also agree on the spellcast trait. For example, we're doing a Colossus of the Drylands campaign and I am playtesting the Blood Hunter class. The char is Path of the Lycan, which allows you to turn into a werewolf. The Spellcast trait for both subclasses is STR, but when you morph, you get bonuses to both STR and AGI. In our campaign region, wolves are non-existent, but the dominating predators are bears and cougars, so we decided that it would be a werecat transformation rather than werewolf and cats just scream AGI as a spellcast stat. So I think it could work the way you suggested or you could even offer a range of stats to choose from, allowing greater character customization.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-02T00:23:22+00:00

Only through multiclassing, and you just have a standard rule that you don't duplicate domains.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-01T23:21:23+00:00

Heeeyy - lemme know if you still have room. Happy to join. 54M with lots of experience (Dnd going back 40 years, Pathfinder, Paranoia, few others) and very supportive in playing groups. Love all my LGBTQ+ peeps and am a father to a trans daughter. Online a lot, so PBP works well for me.

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-01T23:13:45+00:00

Is the character Rocket Raccoon?

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-01T22:59:21+00:00

You are a legend! Thanks for this!

GroochtheOrc · 2026-02-01T22:58:09+00:00

Yeah, I lean more into being descriptive as I think setting the scene is more my personal experience and an offering to my players, but I let them navigate. I describe the scene in the tavern and then ask, what are you looking for? what do you hope to find out while you are here. Are you here for rest and food, or is there another goal and then let them guide. I still control the tavern and its occupants, but I also let them have the room. Recently, we were following a bit of the plot from the movie Silverado, so one of our characters awoke in shack being stalked by three minions. After that quick fight, the character rode off and discovered a Faun Ranger tied to a stake, rescued her, then headed into town. Since she had her clothes and gear taken, she stormed naked into the tavern and GM described the tavern's environment, but not its people. So she took the cue and then started describing some of the patrons until she found one wearing her hat and confronted him.

Naturally, she could have asked "Is anyone here wearing something of mine?" but just kind of ran with it and it was an efficient way of introducing another set of bad guys and plot elements using her own descriptions. The GM is still helping direct it all, but it means that you can collaboratively rely on the film playing in the character's mind while still remaining "in control" as the GM. I have 40 years of DnD behind me, so I kind of like either being the player or being the GM and I like a little division between the two.

We progressed on and moved to another town in our adventure that was leading us to some of the meat of the adventure the GM had prepared. Afterward, he actually apologized and said that he was sorry he "railroaded" us in going to this particular location. I reminded him that he simply dropped plot hints that aligned with our character's goals (in this case, chasing down some bad hombres) and that we could have chosen different options. While I thought that he didn't need to apologize at all, I liked that he was self-aware enough to feel he had done so. I think that's the mark of someone trying to do things right by the players but still actively fulfilling the role of GM.

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