Did anyone tinker with the idea to include clerical content and powers into a BitD game? I am thinking of creating great old ones like in bloodborne in place of gods, granting demonic powers to followers and cultists.
Also the idea of doing a set of compendium classes resonate in my brain. This would include Special abilities, new itemoptions and some new contacts.
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I also considered the compendium class style of options, but haven’t made any. They would be a fun way to extend the advancement options over a longer campaign.
I realised, that a whole playbook for alchemist or criminals accountaints dont realy do so much fun, so adding additional fields of Profession to the characters may be a good idea.
I’m not going to make clerical style stuff for the game, but if I was going to do that, I’d follow the pattern I used in Fictive Hack. I would give each deity about 5 special abilities associated with them, then make a page or so of special abilities they or other supernatural creatures might grant.
Then I would make an unstated special ability anyone could take, “Devotion” which would be like “veteran” except you could choose (or have chosen for you) special abilities from the thing (or things) you revere.
The charm here is that you don’t need a “priest” class, though you could make one by having no special abilities on the sheet but only ones picked up from the deity. “Channeling” would apply to sensing, connecting with, and manipulating divine energies.
Yes, thats by now the best approach to the ingame handling I would prefer. Doing it as a whole playbook was a bit to much, as I liked it to available for all characters in a way.
Andrew Shields That’s pretty much exactly how I was considering offering flavorful compendium classes that function as conditionally unlocked overlays on top of the base playbooks.
It is pretty cool having something you can give a faithful devotee of a supernatural power without fundamentally changing their class.
I’ll just put this here in case anyone wants to look at it.
https://fictivefantasies.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/fictives-portable-pantheon-2012.pdf
Its cool to toggle ideas between you guys. I will try to create the Supernatural / Devotion sheet for my players, as we have a faithful follower of the Church of the Bleeding Angels and the Lady of Dismal and Ruin in our group.
I’d love it since my group is a Cult crew, but not much has come of the deity’s nature or involvement.
Oh, we played 30 minutes and the Devoted Lurk, got suked into the Domain of the eternal Flood of Blood, full with giant sculptures bleeding from their eyes. He woked up with a knife in the hand and a dead Inquisitor bound to a chair, obviously gutted.
Josephe Vandel In a case like that, you might make a special ability open to him, since he made the sacrifice to his patron (willingly or no) and put him in debt rather than making him wait until he can buy the special ability.
I’d consider something like “Binding spirit” and have the one he gutted always in his shadow, ready to hold any target immobile for up to an hour, and that time could be extended for as long as the target bled.
The target could only break free using some method that can repel a ghost.
I’d probably add the visual of the ghost using his guts as binding rope, and silently screaming in pain, fear, and anger as he was forced to serve. This would cause 1 stress every time his services were required.
Very nice yet unpleasant visions you have Andrew 🙂
I will try to explore the Deity which he serves and such details like your suggested ideas will flow in narratively first. To be honest, I am rather a low crunch GM. Last time we played 3hrs even without a single score, but a lot of characterplay. For some unexpected reasons, we ended up with nearly each character was playing out his vices, which was a disturbing turn of things and let to said encounter with the Blood Deity (Vice:Faith)
Josephe Vandel Blades in the Dark certainly encourages low crunch, which is why the only mechanic I offer in that special ability is that it takes 1 stress to activate and lasts up to an hour or as long as the target bleeds. =)
There is a huge difference between putting things together for play at your table, and packaging things for other groups to use. For your group, you can come up with special abilities as they seem appropriate rising out of play, like the one I did, instead of having to put together a deity package another game table could use.
Though once things DID rise from play, it could be fun to go back and streamline and adjust. Maybe what rises out of play encourages each special ability to take a human sacrifice and repurpose it to do a different thing for you. The first one was a moment of creativity.
But then it turns into a more systemic thing. Other adherents of the path use their ghosts, and you find yourself aiding or countering them. It turns into a necromatic Pokemon match at some point, with horrible ghosts tearing at each other.
And maybe if your ghost is destroyed, that special ability becomes the ability to enslave another ghost, and once you do, then you have that ghost as a special ability in the special ability “socket.”
That ends up being pretty cool, and fun to streamline and share, but it all started with a desperate moment of improv and coming back to consciousness next to an eviscerated corpse. Good times.
Andrew Shields you are a Pandora’s Box full of ideas. Quiet a lot of stuff my players encounter on a suptle and invisible part of the gamemastering was inspired by some of your input in this group. I just wanted to say thanks for that. I wasnt realy critisising your inmput before, I was just a bit surprised how fast you could put it in a way and form I didnt even considered before.
Josephe Vandel Thank you! I appreciate that. =) And I’m happy to help.
For my Cult group, I’m considering making a compendium-class-like list of abilities and maybe items or friends for each of the deity descriptors, especially the two they chose: Alluring, and Sinister. I’m considering looking at the original Skinner and Maitre’d to see if anything stands out as portable.