Sir Lawrence Dawkins is of the oldest families of England, and related on his foreign grandmother's side to French nobility. So, it was easy for him as a young man in the Fourteenth Century to go on a quest as he told his relatives in search of a fingerbone of St. Thomas the Doubter. He visited castle and noble house, received plaudits for his courage in braving the trails, and generally did nothing with great enthusiasm.
Because he had no intention of finding the fingerbone that touched Jesus' side.
He did not believe in any of it. Magic and miracles were for fools. However, it was pleasant how attentive young noblewoman would get when he mentioned his holy quest, and how the defences of their chaperones would drop when he pledged on that same quest that he would be honorable.
Dawkins had some conception of what the word 'honor' meant. He redefined it in his own mind as 'stupid'. He was a latent sociopath with enough conscience that he could have held himself in check, and became a decent human being if he had tried. He didn't bother.
Still, even with his breezy charm, his utter lack of scruples, and his opportunistic attack on society in a way that totally shocked those of his peers who finally understood him (which was usually shortly after he shoved them off a castle battlement in the dark of night), the trail of 'accidental deaths' and 'broken hearts leading to suicides' amongst the young nobility drew attention from Rome.
A canny priest who had seen all manner of evil began to search. Feeling alive like he had not in months, Dawkins fled before him into Russia. And there he met a young noblewoman who had not heard of his past since he had outraced tales of his ill. And she had something to show him.
The fingerbone of the Saint.
Well, this was just too funny for Dawkins who went along with the gag. Once she showed it to him, he snatched it up, and threw it in a river. To her aghast face, he confessed that Thomas had possessed him, and made him do it.
It might have worked, but the Saint decided to intervene.
Thomas showed up, and cursed him. Dawkins claimed to be a doubter, and in need of faith. Thomas laughed at him, and condemned him as a liar.
"You have faith already. A faith in your own self. I was in doubt, and needed evidence. You are in no doubt, and discard what evidence you find if it disagrees with your will to run your life as you please, like a rabid skunk amongst harmless puppies you run."
Dawkins sneered.
"If you're real, then Darkness is real as well. I call upon them."
"Granted." The sound echoed from the earth.
"He is cursed to burn before the sun as he is a rebel to lawful authority. He may not enter a house without respecting the authority of the homeowner." Thomas said quickly.
"He feeds off the innocent with his charm. He will do likewise but more so in the future. Blood he will drink, and no woman, nor man shall be able to resist the smile he holds." The Darkness replied.
"He will fear and tremble before the signs of the True God as a witness to all of his power." Thomas countered.
"He will have power and strength beyond that of mortal man to bring fear, which is the true power, over all men." The Darkness replied.
"He will be dead." Thomas countered.
"But his soul shall be as the ghost, and it shall be caught, and held to his body." The Darkness countered, and it chuckled. "Three curses, three blessings. Tell me, Saint, have you gotten the better of me?"
"O Great Shadow, I know your plans. Can you tell me mine?" And Thomas was gone with his fingerbone, and the young noblewoman. And the Darkness was greatly wroth, and it broke the earth in convulsions for many miles for it did not know what the Saint had in mind for the Light is ever obscure to those of Darkness.
And thus, Sir Dawkins became one of the undead, a vampyre. He was Dammed, already dead, and aware that once he died certain judgment awaited him. And so he was full of hatred when the priest came on to him.
But the priest was a verser, and had many tricks which a medieval mind did not understand. However, Dawkins did get a bite out of the priest, and become infected with scriff. So when the priest blasted him with a psionic disintegrator rod, the vampire versed out.
Skills and all that later...
Eric
Sir Lawrence Dawkins
Persuasion 2@3
Charisma 2@2
Animal Magnetism 2@4
Strength 2@3
Stamina 2@2
Resistance 1@9
Density 1@1
Flexibility 1@8
Agility 1@9
Hand/Eye 2@1
Intellect 1@7
Intuition 1@8
Willpower 1@7
RSV 1@10
MSV 1@10
TV 1@6
DV 1@7
Geas: May not enter house without permission.
Geas: He must cringe before presented Holy Symbols of Neutral and Good aligned faiths. The presenter is not required to be a believer.
Note: In magical worlds where the Sun is not evil (Neutral or Good aligned) or the creation of evil entities, the Sun will attack him if he is in sight of the Sun. The attack is Lethal every six seconds.
Charming Smile: He must be seen. He must be wearing superlative clothing in good fashion for the area. He must be clean and well-groomed. Obedience and Enslavement Magic 10@9. Skill 2@1. One minute baseline.
Animate Self: He is a ghost attached to his body. Mag 13@8 skill with him at 2@5. He must absorb the blood of the innocent daily in order to rise the next day.
Grooming 2@5. He is very skilled at dressing and bathing himself to the 'nines'. This is a broad based skill as he is able to dress in a toga or samurai dress or three-piece suit with equal facility. He tends toward formality in dress.
Conversation 2@3. The Doubting Knight is a very graceful, and amusing conversationalist.
He carries with him several suitcases which are full of clothing for various eras, and gold coins, and several swords, and pistols.
He has versed in and out of a number of worlds in the hundred years he has been a verser. He's been first to NagaWorld, and from thence to Plantations Past, Present, Perilous, and beyond that to the Plane of Infinity.
Is that good enough for a character description?
It seems very well done. I'm suitably impressed.
I would provide a separate note after the character concerning the probable combat stats of the sun, but it would likely be a range of stats to provide a base for different worlds. Since the only thing that really matters is ranged strike value, I'd give minimum and maximum Hand/Eye and Intuition, and the minimum and maximum RSV that comes from those numbers. After all, the sun is attacking RF10, but what's it's chance to hit?
--M. J. Young
Wouldn't this be an area of effect attack? We can ignore strike and target, along with size modifiers and cover for the purposes of attack success, keeping movement modifiers only if the movement would carry the vampire out of the sunlight. Instead, we allow the vampire a simple check against its TV for a damage category penalty if successful, and whatever portion of cover value the referee deems effective (e.g., a stone wall yes, armor no) directly reduces damage done by its percentage value.
Personally, I'd give the sun a 3@10 Intuition (all-seeing, all-knowing) to serve as its Mag BRA and slap on a 3@10 SAL in - whatever this attack is. That's important, isn't it? At least for bias purposes? Anyway, that's a base 80% + double the sun's magic bias, and we don't need to bother much with the vampire's defenses.
My problem with treating this as a one-on-one attack rather than an area is it suggests that, were several vampires to step into the sunlight at once, none of them would be attacked as often because the sun would be forced to divide its attention and attacks between them.
Good thinking, Scott. That's an excellent way to handle it.
--M. J. Young
I confess to paraphrasing from the rulebook for the first paragraph; I've never actually used an area-effect attack before and had no clue how they worked.
Eric: with a level two Strength and Stamina, it's more likely that his Density is 1@3 (unless it was reduced by something in the past). That would boost his TV to 1@7 and his DV to 1@8.
It seems like the best option for the sun's attack is a M1@10 Torture Spirit Power. That would mean that at 3@10, baseline damage would be Lethal +10pts, and the vampire would need to roll a successful Willpower check (Sun's RS = simple/difficult/none) on every hit or else be unable to act due to the pain.
The bias means that in any world with a level one magic bias and a curve of at least 11 - basically, almost any world that's not flat-lined - our Dawkins will burn. In a 1@ world, this will be the Sun's highest biased skill, giving it an 82% chance of success. For higher-biased worlds, we would need to consider if the Sun has any other skills that might raise its bias level and boost its chances above that. If the Sun is ever credited with creating a magic item, for example, its bias shoots to 15@, boosting its success to 110%.
For simplicity, I'm ignoring all ritual modifiers, as well as bonuses for affiliation and religion skill. I'm just assuming they all work out to +0, and then I'm using the baseline damage and effect, with range and area both equal to "everything in sight." If you like, you can just as easily assume they all work out to something else, which would let you peg the Sun's success chance anywhere you want.
I'm also going with a base RF of 4, times three for skill equals 12, or once every five seconds. In a 1@ world, this gives Dawkins an average of ten seconds in the sunlight, fifteen if he's lucky. If you like, you can reduce the SAL to 2@10 and set the RF to 5, which keeps it at once every six seconds and knocks the damage back down to Lethal (without the +10 damage points), incidentally reducing the success chance to 70% plus bias. That leaves him with a more comfortable eighteen or twenty-four seconds to get to safety - provided, of course, that he can make his Willpower saves.
Edit - actually, the above calculation ignored the simple check he gets against his target value - but then, it also assumed the lowest possible bias in which he could take damage. In a 15@ world with a 15@ Sun, even a 2@10 version of the attack has a 100% chance to hit and deals an average of 10.5 intensities every six seconds. Even if he makes that TV check on one of the first two attacks (which the odds are against), he's toast in twelve - eighteen if he's lucky.
I'll work on the Sun with the excellent suggestions once I get over laughing at giving the Sun stats....It makes sense, but it seems so strange to the modern mind, I expect.
So perhaps tommorrow.
Thanks to the both of you.
Now I was going to go with just an 'auto' attack. But I do like the idea of different Suns having different level powers.
Great work, all around. With each successive piece, it seems you're getting more and more polished. Um, just one thing, uh, my game...
Oh, and, BTW, I now have an artist on board for the comic I've been developing. If we happen to get picked up by a publisher, would you want to write a few issues or develop some story arcs?
I should have made a separate post to inform you David, mea culpa. Your game is ready. The site is just not registering it for some reason.
And oh yeah! That'd be great.
Eric
No problem. E-mail to me and I'll post it to the thread. I might also suggest clearing your browser's cache and cookies.
As to the comic, I'll send you material when I have it. I'm still trying to get my mind wrapped around the characters and I need to pick someone's brain.
Y'know, I actually like the idea of the Sun being forced to pick and choose who it is attacking. Its just so unusual.
But I'll probably go with the area effect.
I need to work on this one, and just finish up the last 'Sun' bit, and it will be done.
So basically, I'm bumping it to remind myself to work on it.