"Plagued" Pursuit Brainstorming

[DeleteAccount]

OK, it so happens that by a series of events that just kind of pushed through, I have the Tyrant Plague (aka Hamelin) inside one of my players mind. To add to the insanity, said player is more then surprisingly cooperative about it. This of course will be a temporal thing (timeline wise this is all after the fiasco with Kirai but before he was able to reform himself, so now that he needs to get shit done, he's using another shell for the time being) but my player is more than interested in actually embracing the plague thing a bit gameplay wise, story wise it's simply Plague's influence changing him.

 

Right of the bat, Graverobber seems like a decent way to start it of and necromancy has a few spells that could easily fall into his sphere of influence (expensive lure, short ranged obey are spells I associate heavily with Hamelin), though I'd need to add a few more to substitute the more dead related ones into rat summoning, blight Immuto and Bleeding Disease.

 

Talent wise it seems to work swell enough since Deathly Pallor makes perfect sense and Macabre Infusions and Unholy Beacon is just swapping undead for "lost and vermin" and work out well enough (though unholy beacon could even be substituted for Nihilist). Morbid thoughts would probably work too since it makes sense for all the non manipulation spells in the hamelin crews to be based on crows.

 

Mastered Immuto and Mastered Magia are kind of junk because of how I play with grimoures (you don't find other grimoures, your grimoure grows with you as the campaign advances). Anyway, any other suggestions or ideas?

 

 

[zeeblee]

Looking over Hamelin's M2E cards, if you want this character's abilities/spells to function similarly you could shift the Beckon and Mind Control required suits to (which also makes Morbid Thoughts more useful).  While there is no way currently to say "this spell only functions on targets suffering from X" you could go with a modified version of Engulf dealing damage equal to an enemy's current Blight condition to mimic Bleeding Disease.  Though currently TTB also treats Blight differently (it reduces healing).

 

There is also the path of going down the modified Graverobber pursuit, but instead of standard magia + immuto spells you just give your player Hammelin's spells (probably in a piecemeal fashion).  While this means your player would be unable to alter them, they would still be fully functional and possess cool triggers (which TTB spells do not have).

 

And if you want to stick with TTB talents, in place of Mastered Magia/Immuto you could give your player the option for Great Fate.  That one really fits with the fact that he's now possessed by a Tyrant.  If you go with the magia + immuto approach for spells, then the Spell Affinity talent (Blighted Immuto) would fit as well.

 

As for summoning rats, perhaps adapt the Conjuring magia?  Then if you want to make a Rat King you have to use Animate Construct on X number of rats, and treat the new rat creature as a construct with construct points equal to the number of rats piled together?  (or some formula relating to that)  Then call it a Living, Nihilist, Beast, and/or whatever other genuses you want.

[Ad1]

Would you be able to make Blighted a condition?

 

If you made it a condition it could also be made an immuto that would then allow the condition to be added to an elemental spell. I'd consider looking at something like Intoxicated but instead of to WP make it:

 

Condition.

Blighted: A character with the Blighted condition suffers a to all Df duels.

 

As an Immuto:

Elemental Immuto Blighted (TN +1)

Any character that suffers damage from the Magia also gains the Blighted condition for 1 turn. This Magia may
be taken multiple times, increasing the duration of the Blighted condition by 1 turn each time. Or you could raise the TN to +2 or 3 and allow it to stack to Df duels.

 

It's a copy of blindness immuto. This will make it more likely that a character will suffer damage and with the ability to stack it means once you start down the road of being Blighted it becomes easier and easier to blight and therefore easier to do more damage to the target. You could also give a rat type the ability to use the Elemental Strike spell so they can also add the Blight in melee.

 

You could give the Fated character access to a grimoire with Elemental Engulf and whatever other spells you think appropriate along with Blighted Immuto and maybe poison, to represent disease, so the two immuto could be stacked. As for the Graverobber Pursuit tie it in with something like Arcane Musings for the elemental sorc spells and tweak some of the Pursuit talents to work on a unique Vermin or the Beast genus instead of Undead and you should be gold. You could also look at Shrug Off as a Pursuit Talent (without the pre-reqs) for your new Pursuit to replicate something like Nihilism. Healing could look at Long Days from the Drudge.

 

Looks to be lots of General or Pursuit Talents that will help make what you're looking at. Main issue is just to try and make sure when the pursuits are available doesn't cause too great an unbalance with the other characters. May also be worth considering it as an Advanced Pursuit so you only have to worry about 5 Talents, especially since it's story related and not likely to come up too often in a game.

 

Anyway just a few ideas off the top of my head, sounds like a lot of fun though that's for sure

 

Regards,

 

Ad

[zeeblee]

We actually already have a TtB official Blighted condition in the Fatemaster Almanac.

 

Target gains the following condition until 24 hours after the last application of the Blighted condition: “Blighted +1: Reduce all healing received by this character by 1, to a minimum of 1.” (p. 169, both Rat Catcher and The Stolen)

 

I like the Advanced Pursuit idea.  It makes the character lose the Twist Deck draw mechanic as well as Epilogue skill choice mechanic, but allows them to benefit from a stronger mix of talents because of it.

[DeleteAccount]

Thanks for your feedback guys. At the moment I'm going to go with a compounded effect of how Blight works in Malifaux and in Through the Breach (reduces healing AND increases each turn) and I'll also make it  a non stackable Immuto. Graverobber seems to pretty much fit the bill with a couple of adaptations and the necromancy list mostly gets the job done. Spellwise, I'll start him up with Bleeding Disease which causes damage equal to the blight on the target and Beckon, which I'll pump up to similar to Hamelin levels if he uses the flutes and he agrees to it. Immuto wise he'll have focus object (represented by the presence of the tyrant inside him, without him he is horrible at casting, with him things get a lot easier and intense), Blight and reduced casting since I will keep beckon at 2 AP.