Can I get an example on how Tempest for the Whisper works as a weapon. Is it rolling Attune like you would a Hunt or Skirmish to cause harm basically or something more?
Tempest: You can push yourself to do one of the following: unleash a stroke of lightning as a weapon—summon a storm in your immediate vicinity (torrential rain, roaring winds, heavy fog, chilling frost/snow, etc.).
Here’s how I’d handle it. Yep, the Whisper uses Attune to smite a foe with lightning. Position is determined the usual way but when looking at effect, I’d almost always say (unless maybe the target was a Hull) that lightning would grant potency as conventional defenses don’t work against it, so effect may be increased.
Then you factor in the push, which can either add +1d, effect, or allow them to act despite injury. If they push for effect, the could very well get that bumped up to extreme (read, wickedly fatal harm).
Ok so If I gather correctly I could for example: Have 2 in Attune, Push myself to get the lightning bolt. So 2d attune to throw it and it (say risky-standard for base) would become risky-great because of the special ability. Then I could push again to make it 2d risky- fatal (cost of 4 stress)?
Almost, you get the effect of the push and of the Tempest. So if you push your self (2 stress) you could get +effect and then if the GM rules that you have potency (likely, due to the lightning) you could get +effect for that as well and go to Risky with Extreme effect.
The key here is that tempest (And the other abilities powered by pushing) grant the special ability in addition to the push! It’s pretty rad.
Sean Nittner thanks for clearing it up I found what you were talking about in the book, but it does lead me to another question. Since that is a push move and does special extra things does that mean a character could do a lesser version of it (say a shadowy touch attack) with attune? I am reading over magnitude now, seems like that might be how its handled if so.
Drop Dice I think that would be determined by your group. Personally, I’d say that was possible but not out of the gate. Maybe the Whisper learns the Shadow Touch ritual (defined using the ritual rules) or has gained access to a pre-cataclysm artifact.
Sean Nittner Sorry to poke at you since I asked it before, but since it’s on the topic, I was unclear on the changes to Tempest in some ways. Or maybe someone else can help 🙂 Tempest seems as though it’s been simplified, but I’m unclear as to whether it has lost its extreme flexibility? Since it no longer costs Stress but instead requires pushing yourself (which, granted, cost 2 stress generally), can you still select a Magnitude for it, or somehow increase the cost to envelop a larger area or to last longer than a moment (or does it no longer last only a moment for the storm aspect)? Was that level of on-the-fly flexibility was deemed too much?
Etrius MacGuffin, yep, tempest was remodeled significantly. It has a fixed cost now (you can’t pay more to have it do extra) but it’s outcome is still flexible.
Do you want to have the lightning arc through and hit three people? Sounds reasonable, but now you’ve got magnitude going against you so maybe you hit them all but with lesser effect.
Do you want the the storm to be huge? Sounds like you’ll need great (possibly even extreme effect). Maybe you get that through pushing and other dominant factors, or maybe you do an setup action of opening all the windows in the house and calling the storm around you with your lightning hook for extra effect.
So the short answer is that Tempest just does what it says it does (not what it used to do in previous editions). The long answer is that what Tempest can actually accomplish is to be determined at your gaming table.
So it was reworked entire and I should forget how it used to work. Thank you 🙂 I super appreciate you taking the extra time to write out those examples on how it might be still modified on the fly though; that’s immensely helpful! It sounds like Tempest will still be quite useful and can still probably do things like cause a wind to blow guys off a certain individual and blow the roof off the building 😀 I had started to despair that it looked like it couldn’t.
Sounds great. In terms of flexibility, look at the examples for Not to Be Trifled With “you might break a metal weapon with your bare hands, tackle a galloping horse, lift a huge weight, etc” to get a sense of the flexibility you could get out of Tempest.
It’s possible that there is some confusion that comes from the line “When you summon a storm, the GM will describe its effect.” This is specifically saying it’s effect level (limited, standard, great, etc) not what does it do (obscure vision, push someone off a roof, crash a ship against the rocks, etc). That part is up to the player!
Oh! Should I submit a correction suggestion on the site John mentioned, suggesting this be re-phrased, or made to say its Effect or Effect Level, or was this only unclear to me? I’ll definitely look over those examples though. Thanks so much Sean, you’re a prince! 😀
Yeah, go ahead and send that in. John will review to decide if it’s a change he thinks is right for the text.
So it could be something like Shadow Touch Ritual (Area: 1 person [0], Range: Within Reach [0], Force: Adequate [1]) for 1 stress and another side effect (Level 1 harm Temporary, “Shadowhands”). Makes the users hands become entangle smoking shadows. They are immediately noticeable and make it hard to do anything that uses your hands aside from attacking. To perform the ritual you need to grind dreamsmoke into a fine mist, mix with water from the sea and soak never worn white gloves in the mixture for four hours, the gloves will become black and must be worn to gain the effect.
Sounds pretty bad ass to me Drop Dice!