Day 15! Halfway through. Here's the daily for that:
Monday, 1/9: Point (1), the Sanctuary. (I'm going to be using the Sanctuaries to do two things. First is re-emphasize the Anointed's connection (via ritual) to the Church; second is to give some way to foreshadow some themes of the area. This is done from the description of it and a prayer set at each.) The place is new, but hastily-erected: it's half fallen apart. This Sanctuary's prayer is: "Pray for the forgotten, those left in the wake of disaster and war. May they find refuge and stillness." (If you're keeping score...nothing here has found refuge and stillness.)
Tuesday 1/10: Point (6), the walkway north. There's an encounter with 2 + 1/extra Scavengers on the way: by default half of them start behind you, but if you do something tricky on the approach you can avoid being surrounded. You can find a Wakizashi further up the walkway afterwards.
Wednesday 1/11: Saint Gratien, part 1. (This is the Major Threat in the area - because this is an interstitial region, he's optional, but you get some good stuff. Based on the Attribute combo, he's a Conviction/Knowledge enemy: relating to faith and corruption.) A tall, gangly man with no arms and desiccated skin. His clothes are half-rotted, revealing a carved lump under his skin under the right side of his chest.
Health 40, PD 1, MD 2, Poise 6. Pretty tough to stagger, pretty resistant to magic.
Trait: Any Mag. Harm received splashes to all nearby (at range 0B)
Thursday, 1/12: Saint Gratien, part 2. Gratien's actions are all Incantations. I pictured him as one of the original Anointed from the Age of Legends/Daggers, so he gets to have one of each kind: he learned Storm before it was a Blasphemy. (Will probably revise some of these in whatever cleanup pass I do, he's a little too anti-caster focused at the moment.)
Prayer for Wrath: Range 0T, Mag 2, Mighty 4, Forceful. (Uses when something's at Range 0-1.)
Invocation of Sanctity: Evade 3-, Spells only, reflects back at caster. (Uses when targeted by magic.)
Channel Storm: Range 2-4, Mag 2, Multi 5. (Uses when nothing is at Range 0-1.)
Dangerous Action: Projected Wrath: Range 1B-2B-3B-4B, Mag 4, Mighty 6, Forceful. Immediate: Move back 2, adds 1 to Encumbrance of all swamp tiles. (He'll initiate this at the end of a round when put below 30, 20, or 10: the Immediate thing happens, and then at the end of the next round the rest happens. It can be canceled by dealing 10 Harm or staggering him in the interim.)
His default Behavior is that he goes after anyone with Talismans.
Friday, 1/13: The Talisman of Saint Gratien (a reward for beating him) is a mass of bone embedded into his breastbone, carved into the symbol of the ancient Church. The corruption leaked into it causes it to repel magic in its vicinity.
Weight 3
1 Tier 2 Slot: Prayer
1 Tier 2 Slot: Invocation
1 Tier 2 Slot: Blasphemy
Parry (Spell)
Having 1 of each is unusual, but less flexible than most talismans, and most don't have Parry of any kind. Most are also Weight 1-2 instead of 3.
Saturday, 1/14: Invocation of Implacability. (This is another reward for beating him.)
Tier 1, Conviction 3, 4F
You're immune to anything that would add extra encumbrance (beyond Encumbrance from your equipment Weight). Lasts until the Region Clock advances.
Sunday, 1/15: Made an NPC. Barnabas is a pious low-country sanctuary tender. He'll ask Anointed to put Gratien to his final rest, and teach them the Invocation of Implacability in exchange for it. He also unlocks all Tier 1 Invocations/Prayers for selection between Regions - my plan is to allow players to choose 1 thing from a list that starts with "everyone's starting equipment" and expands out as they meet NPCs or find things.
Next week, I'll put Gratien and Barnabas in points 7-8-9 and assess what we're doing from there. Might use that last week as a polish week if I run out of content to fill. We'll see!
Hi there! I’ve released v0.1.3 of ANOINTED. This one’s mostly about combat tuning as discussed in my last post as well as more character options.
I made the changes described there to staggering/unstaggering.
Added and changed a bunch of keywords.
Added a LOT of new Armaments and changed default loadouts a bit. I also introduced the concept of Variants, which is to say an Armament with a few parameters or one Attack/Maneuver changed but everything else the same.
Spells have been split up as in that post! I also split them up into 3 categories per type (Sigil/Glyph/Inscription for Sorceries, Prayer/Invocation/Blasphemy for Incantations) which adds a little something to how they work.
Tweaked some of the enemies, including both Major Threats in the book. (Alphonse is now pure-fighterish.)
I’m going to be working on area/exploration/etc stuff for v0.1.4 next, I was planning to include it in this one but I figure it’ll take longer (especially because I want to include a “tutorial” area) and I didn’t want to delay it further.
Hi there! Been awhile because I’ve been working on The Infected World. But I’ve been thinking about and tweaking ANOINTED in the meantime a bit.
Tweaks for v0.1.3
Some general playtesting observations/changes.
Unstaggering needs to be worse for PCs and less bad for NPCs. The original stagger rules (each loses an action) made more sense in an earlier build of the game where each had two actions (more like APOCALYPSE FRAME). To that end:
PCs have half stamina instead of full at the start of their turn when unstaggering. This puts them on the back foot and forces them to reposition, defend, or if they’re feeling risky, overspend on offense after recovering.
Most enemies have an ability (usually defensive) that they do when they unstagger. For example, Spearmen will use Guard. This gives a little more of a cadence to a fight on the enemy side too.
Need to reconsider major threats and staggering/unstaggering too.
Changing a Harm/Defense tie from half Harm/stagger to full Harm/stagger.
This achieves a similar effect but it’s faster because everyone takes more Harm and acts more.
Made changes to the attribute spreads of the various Backgrounds to account for these changes. Each one now starts good at a unique combination of two Attributes.
Made a major change to how combat turns work - it’s now PC goes, NPC goes, back and forth. Yet another step away from LUMEN.
Added a bunch more weapons.
Made tweaks to enemies and changed how they were formatted. Now, conditions for using each ability are less nebulous and more precise. (This is preparation for GMless stuff.)
Changed formatting and terminology a bit so weapon/enemy ability entries are more concise.
Other little things.
Also, I’ve enabled community copies! Including one for everyone who’d bought it up to this point - thanks so much for your support for a game in progress!
Hi there! Wanted to think out loud about how attributes work. It’s been awhile since I thought out loud about design stuff.
Attributes: A history
So Attributes (or Approaches) are a standard LUMEN feature: they usually describe the way you’re going to tackle some obstacle and you roll that number of dice. In a typical LUMEN game that’s usually where they start and end. There are typically three of them.
v0.1.1 is out! Most importantly in this updates is the fact that it now has an epub release. I also tweaked a few things across the board though - typos, oddities, inconsistencies, and one or two “feels better” style changes.
I’ll be doing more substantial changes over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
