Snuffed - A Morbid Hack

Sorry for creating another thread, but I'll just stick to dropping the links in here for the sake of space.

Snuffed is my ongoing idea for a PBTA hack where the cast are a ragtag bunch of otherwordly ghouls, ghosts and supernatural arseholes who're stuck in an unwelcoming and unfulfilling afterlife where (un)life is dull and often very brief, and where the only pleasure, and power, to be had is via going into the mortal world and doing horrible things to the living. Some want to rule, some want to pass over, some just like making the squishy little lifesacks go splat. Whatever.

For the best mental shorthand I can think of, imagine the waiting room in Beetlejuice, only with more bitching, infighting and casual homicide, with occasional trips into the very finest B-List Horror flicks of the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Any and all critique, questions, support, abuse and lobbed bricks will be welcome and/or dodged.

Links:

The Core Playbook

The Gloom Playbook

Completed another playbook:

The Vessel

...and another:

The Ripper

Ideally there will be another four or five, just to hit all the main 'types' of spooky bastard, then I'll run some one-shots to test it out.

I love the Ripper. I have a penchant for violent characters with simple solutions to difficult problems i.e. HIT THEM IN THE FACE. Is there any way a Ripper could get more weaponry?

EDIT: Just spotted the ability to spend Creep for stuff, sounds good. It looks like the Ripper playbook has an error, it says "Vessel Signature Moves" in the appropriate space. Additionally, at what point can signature moves be selected?

Hey, thanks! I'm thinking of altering one of the moves to allow the Ripper to take a secondary weapon, or perhaps alter the Tools Of The Trade section to reflect a sidearm much like the Gunlugger's playbook.

Signature Moves are at the 'advanced' stage where the player's filled up their basic advances - the idea behind them was twofold: to have each Playbook have some form of 'final form' of ass-wreckery, and also so that each Playbook could have something entirely unique to them alone.

I'll fix the errors quick sharp.

Every single basic advancement? But what if I never have use for Sly, already have +3 Wrath, or don't really want to go for moves from different playbooks?

But ignoring all of that:


Signature.

Moves.

Are awesome.

I really like how it's not possible for other playbooks to take Sig Moves from other playbooks, really works well with the capstone idea you've got going.

(My one criticism of the Sig Moves, is WHY WON'T YOU DIE makes Needs More Gun obsolete. I like both moves, I just wished they synergised somehow)

If you don't mind me asking, what other playbooks do you have in the works?

That's actually a fair point about the advancements. I might shuffle that down to maybe a minimum of four or five basic advancements before making any bigger ones available. More Gun and WWYD also need some balance. I might make it so the Ripper gains +1 Armor Vs Arcane if they take both.

In terms of other playbooks, I've got (WIP Names):

o The Loci (Poltergeist - Think a Chopper but a little less stompy)
o The Revenant (Curse/Revenge Ghost - Great when they're satisfying their motivations)
o The Old Firm (Fallen Angels/Demons who aspire to regain their former power)
o The Sleeper (Mortal who can project themselves into the Afterlife)
o The Padfoot (Spirit animal, nature spirit, avatar that represents something greater)

AW has 5, which I feel is a good balance. I made a Gloom into a trickster-haunter, working behind the scenes to manipulate silly mortals into screwing themselves over. Is that the kind of thing the Loci/Poltergeist does, or is that solely the purview of the Gloom?

The physical armor to arcane armor was exactly what I was thinking. Is there a way to get armor apart from moves? Can it be purchased with Creep?

I didn't want Armor to be something that any class could afford - I figured it made sense for some of the playbooks to naturally be tough, and others could always pick some as a cross-playbook move, but I felt that some of them would be naturally squishier than others. Their in-built resistance to physical damage once they get to 2 Vitality was my way of compensating for that.

Anyway. Playbook? Playbook. You wouldn't like him when he's angry...

...and he's always angry.

The Revenant

In AW and most hacks, playbooks don't usually start with stats at +3, and require an additional -1 to have two stats at +2.

There's a reason for this, having to do with the fact that, mathematically, higher stats actually do tend to matter more. Thus, the way you've currently got it set really encourages the use of those stat-lines that are more...focused.

The Revenant also has a +3 Wrath stat-line and a Move that can take it to +4, which seems like a bad idea statistically. You might want to add the standard (max. +3) into the FUCK OFF move.

So far, Snuffed has +4 as the maximum. It's just a thing, AFAIK.

Hey DMW, as Spwack said, I was aiming to have Snuffed playbooks have a higher upper limit for some stats if it made sense. In the case of the Revenant, although they're Wrath-heavy, their overall stat balance is actually only +2 instead of +3, so they're designed to be more hard/weak than a jack-of-all-trades type.

Just as a counter to that, I get the feeling that the +3 to a stat to begin with is the stats someone will choose. Flat. There is no real reason not to pick it. Now, battlebabe will always have a +3 to cool. That is just a thing, and allows for more choice. For any of these stats, the +3 seems to be the optimal stat choice, even when the total is less than other pools.

Solution: If it has a +3 in one stat pool, they all have a +3.

Fair point, actually. I might retool them with that in mind. Given that their Rage pool is dictated by that, it might be fairer to have it that way.

Derp.

Hey DMW, as Spwack said, I was aiming to have Snuffed playbooks have a higher upper limit for some stats if it made sense.

Ah, gotcha. Missed that. Though, thinking about it, since that makes the +3 Wrath statblock the only one that can ever get a +4...that migvht make the inequalities of the stat-blocks a little worse.

In the case of the Revenant, although they're Wrath-heavy, their overall stat balance is actually only +2 instead of +3, so they're designed to be more hard/weak than a jack-of-all-trades type.

I'm not necessarily arguing they need to be jacks of all trades, or that they can't be hyper-focused. I'm saying, much like Spwack mentions, they should probably be equally focused. The third Revenant stat-block is just miles better than the fourth in every meaningful way, for example. Ditto the 'Average' Vessel stat-block compared to the others, or the second Gloom stat-block compared to that playbook's other options.