I have a couple of questions about undead characters. Say a player dies and becomes a ghost; do they keep all their special abilities from life? If so, do these abilities go in the “Veteran” section on the undead playbook?
Vampires have Strictures and one of them is “Bestial”:
“When you suffer physical harm or overindulge your vice, your body twists into a horrific bestial form until you next feed without overindulging”
1. How does this manifest in the narrative?
2. How monstrous does the character actually appear?
3. Are they feral? Do they lose their sense of person and become a literal beast/monster?
4. Does this happen after any harm, or just serious harm?
5. Can a vampire only feed as a downtime vice action? Or can they feed mid-mission?
The Vampire XP section also says:
“You displayed your dominance or .”
Or what? Is this a typo?
If a Vampire suffers fatal harm, they get “Level 3 Harm: Incapacitated” until they feed “long enough to recover”.
1. How long is long enough?
2. What does being “incapacitated” entail? Can you still move? Do you just feel weak?
3. What happens if you take more fatal harm or level 3 harm after taking incapacitated level 3 harm?
4. What happens if you take level 3 harm incapacitated whilst you have Bestial as a Stricture? Do you still “become the beast” so to speak because you took harm?
Bearing in mind I’ve never played or read Blades, just this community and some of the playtest bits:
1, 2. You remember in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that the vamps had a game face? I’m thinking like that, except more twisted. Hunched and sinewy and, well, bestial.
3. Your body goes. That’s the only bit mentioned there. I’d imagine that your mind becomes predatory and focused on the hunt, but that’s really up to the player how they want to play it.
4. Paper cut? No. A bit of broken glass? It’d be nice to see a character moment there. Someone slashes you with a knife in a back-alley brawl, not serious but that’s your blood there? It’s go time – or you start burning Stress to keep the beast in.
I’ve never had a vampire in my group, but here is how I would rule things. Obviously nothing I say is official or guaranteed to be correct.
Bestial questions
1. You look really scary and can no longer pass for human. That could be good or bad depending on what’s currently happening, but you’re certainly going to be drawing unwanted attention if you’re out and about. The spirit wardens are likely to get involved at some point.
2. I’d let the player say what they look like, just as long as the above holds true.
3. Rules as written I’d say no, but if the player wanted to play it that way I’d let them.
4. Any physical harm bad enough to warrant marking a harm box.
5. They can only clear stress as a downtime action, feeding during a score isn’t relaxing. I’d say the bestial condition requires a downtime feeding to dissipate, even though they’re free to feed whenever.
XP thing looks like a typo
Incapacitated questions
1. The sentence doesn’t say long enough, it just says “until you feed enough”. Basically you need to feed twice, each feeding fills 4 ticks on your healing clock, and you need to fill that clock fully to recover from all harm.
2. All level 3 harm is basically the same, regardless of the name you give it. Level 3 harm means you can’t take an action without help from another character or pushing yourself (take 2 stress).
3. The playbook says if you take arcane harm while in this state you are destroyed. This implies to me that physical harm doesn’t do much of anything. I’d fill in the lower harm boxes if there were any left, but you don’t die and you can’t take any more level 3 harm. If the vampire was part way through their recovery clock and they took more harm I’d reset it, but in all likelihood once they get to downtime they’ll fill that up with two consecutive actions.
4. Yes. So now you’re really scary looking and you’re incapacitated. I hope you weren’t counting on the kindness of strangers to get you to safety. Who are we kidding though, this is Doskvol, a stranger would just take your shit and leave you for dead anyway.
The vampire questions seem to be well addressed, so to address your first question re: dying and becoming a ghost, turn to page 67 of the 7.1 quickstart. Under “Spirit Characters”, it says that you add all of your current action ratings to those present in the new playbook, but for special abilities it says you keep any GHOST special abilities — not any other ones. It doesn’t mention taking up Veteran advances so I probably would rule that existing ‘ghost’ special abilities are just transferred over and you’ve still got the full allotment of veteran advances available if you want to take other abilities(or get back abilities that you had previously but lost upon death).
Interesting Mark Griffin I agree with almost all of that.
Only thin I have to add is I have a different understanding about Undead than you with regards to the second #3. I agree with how you answer until you say “implies to me that physical harm doesn’t do much of anything” – like yea, it does less, but I remain unconvinced that is the intent of Undead because I think at some point: you have no empty harm boxes and can’t follow the mechanic described anymore, so you would actually die at that point from the sheer destruction to the body.
And actually, there’s part of me that thinks that Undead shouldn’t be allowed to apply more than once anyways. IE The exit from that loop should occur when the level 4 harm is downgraded to level 3, and then REupgraded to level 4 harm because there is no level 3 left to mark. It should stick, and under this interpretation, the Vampire dies after the second level 4 harm (by then, don’t they deserve it if they refuse to take Trauma knowing this will just take them out of the scene anyways? Undead protects them, but only to a point in other words). or after any harm if the rest of the boxes are filled (because it gets upgraded all the way to the top with nowhere else to go)
Sure, if your vampire gets that fucked up then you can call them dead. Or you could say that even though their body is in a dozen pulpy pieces they’re still alive, and if the other PCs submerge those pieces in a vat of blood they’ll slowly coalesce back into the vampire’s form. I’m fine with either ruling, but the latter is more fun.
Okay so I don’t think we understand each other. I am saying both things you describe can happen at my table. I don’t know what is fitting or interesting about 4 lethal harms not killing a vampire
Imho: If they don’t resist, then they are in a dozen pulpy pieces and died. If they do resist, they don’t get chopped up/dead. If someone else resists, then again they are not dead but might also be chopped up as descriptive text (representing protection from harm that would have otherwise destroyed them utterly).
I guess you think I am just trying to naysay you, but really I just have added ideas about what to do with lethal harm and Undead, and am trying to get them All to be interesting possibilities
My guess would be that even if the body is destroyed, the vampire still survives as a ghost, unless they have the Bound stricture. In the case of a complete physical annihilation of the host body of a Bound vampire, I agree that the vampire dies. Otherwise it seems by the rules that vampires cannot be killed by physical harm. Since they’re just parasitic ghosts, and you can’t stab a ghost to death, I’m fine with this.
Ultimately though, it feels pretty edge-casey, and I’m not that hung up on it.
oh, right: Bound implies that without that the Vampire’s soul wouldn’t be bound to the body. Hm: seems to clear it up some for me in favor of what you are saying (ie: it doesn’t really matter if the body gets smashed, the undead spirit is intact and the body likely restorable – albeit “overwhelmed”). I am pretty sure this will get less edge-casey before printing too, as questions like the OPs crop up
I think all of these approaches are fine, and the game doesn’t stumble if different groups do it differently. But each playbook gets “designer commentary” from me for the various abilities, so there will be a bit more guidance there.