hearts blood + str/dex/sta excellencies

[StarHawk]

Alrighty then... I could not find my question in my searching...


Our Subject: Lunar Bob is a full moon bear totem lunar. Lunar Bob has STR 4 DEX 2 and STA 4 and APP 1. Bears according to the book have str/sta of 7. Lunar Bob does not have the knack to take the better dexterity of any given form, and is stuck with a dex of 2. Lunar Bob also has hearts blood rating 5 (41+ shapes) and has the first excellency in all his physicals (str/dex/sta)


The question: When using his Bear (spirit) form, does Bob use his Bear form does he get to use the charm based off his human traits, or his bear traits since both are technically his true form? The charm does not say specifically it has to be a true/spirit/etc form... I can not find a rule that says no to this either.


What if Bob also has the form of lets say ... a Water Dragon (SoTD: West) with a str 14 and sta 12. Could he then pump his str to insane levels? Is this even fair?


does anyone know of errata to say no to this?

 

[Tsuranis]

Its in a sidebar somewhere in the lunar book. Bob uses his natural traits (ie human) and the bears traits above this count as dice added from charms. If a hearts-blood form has a trait which exceeds the dice limit for your given natural trait then you still get the new forms full traits, but you cannot increase it any further with charms.


For example, in bear form Bob's strength is 7, but he can only raise it up to a total of 8 using 1st strength excellency.


Edit: Ignore this, for some reason I didn't see that you were talking about his spirit shape.

 

[Plague of Hats]

The question: When using his Bear (spirit) form, does Bob use his Bear form does he get to use the charm based off his human traits, or his bear traits since both are technically his true form? The charm does not say specifically it has to be a true/spirit/etc form... I can not find a rule that says no to this either.

There is a sidebar on page 128 of Manual: Lunars that covers this. A true form's Strength, Stamina and Appearance replace the character's own Attributes for all purposes (except minimum Attributes necessary to learn Charms) when the character dons a given true form. Other forms with Attributes higher than the character's true human form still grant bonus dots to Attributes in excess of normal dice-adding limits, but these bonuses also count towards dice-adding limits, so the Lunar couldn't add any more on top of a bonus that exceeds his human Attributes.

What if Bob also has the form of lets say ... a Water Dragon (SoTD: West) with a str 14 and sta 12. Could he then pump his str to insane levels? Is this even fair?

In the case of large spirit shapes, it's ostensibly fair because Strength and Stamina really aren't as important as other Attributes, you need extra Knacks to be able to take such shapes, and such shapes provide difficulties and weaknesses due to their size.

does anyone know of errata to say no to this?

Whether you like it or not, it's working as intended. If large spirit shapes are a problem for you, try to accentuate the difficulties of being 20+ feet tall (look to the warstrider rules for inspiration, perhaps).

 

[Virjigorm]

One of the key features of a true form is the ability to use its attributes as natural. Lunar dice-adders are already so limited that I've never had a problem with this as a ST.


I do happen to have a 5 Essence Lunar PC in a game I run who picked up the Emperor Ox Expansion knack. This makes the spirit shape and it's attributes pretty huge...


Also...his spirit shape is a sea dragon... it's pretty devastating...

 

[Kyeudo]

One of the key features of a true form is the ability to use its attributes as natural. Lunar dice-adders are already so limited that I've never had a problem with this as a ST.

Which is funny, since I've done the math and if you want to throw dice at a problem, nothing beats a Lunar's Excellencies when they have a 'rage' Charm active.

 

[Gylthinel]

I played with a guy that made a Lunar with a Tyrant Lizard (STR 14) spirit form. He then took brutal attack (perk from Scroll of Heroes) to use his Strength to attack. Adding his 5 martial arts, he then took up some form charm from Arms of the Unconquered Sun style (Glories: US) that adds your martial Arts to grapple attacks. So he's currently standing at 24 dice to attack. He also has the hearthstone that adds 4 to martial arts (don't recall the name, it's in the core book). That's 28 dice for about 6 motes. And it's for grappling, which is on the list for worst mechanic in the game (trailing Social combat and perhaps ahead even of flurries).


Question 1: do dice that add to grapples add to your attack rolls to establish the grapple?


Question 2: How many more dice can he get from excellencies?

 

[Persell]

Any dice added to a grapple will state weather it applies to the attack roll or to maintain the grapple. I can't actually think of any that do both off the top of my head. As for excellencies, he could add 14 to his strength. Though woe be him if he tries to grapple someone with a razor harness as a Tyrant lizard. Ow.

 

[Gylthinel]

Any dice added to a grapple will state weather it applies to the attack roll or to maintain the grapple. I can't actually think of any that do both off the top of my head. As for excellencies, he could add 14 to his strength. Though woe be him if he tries to grapple someone with a razor harness as a Tyrant lizard. Ow.

I haven't looked at a razor harness in, literally, years. Hmmm...


I would think that the 14 dice would be reduced by the dice he gets from his form charm, since those are dice from charms.

 

[Persell]

Dice caps only apply to the use of the Excellencies. Usually any way. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Any charm that adds X-Attribute/Ability functions outside of this. It's one of the reasons MAs are so useful.

 

[Mr. S]

I played with a guy that made a Lunar with a Tyrant Lizard (STR 14) spirit form. He then took brutal attack (perk from Scroll of Heroes) to use his Strength to attack. Adding his 5 martial arts, he then took up some form charm from Arms of the Unconquered Sun style (Glories: US) that adds your martial Arts to grapple attacks. So he's currently standing at 24 dice to attack. He also has the hearthstone that adds 4 to martial arts (don't recall the name, it's in the core book). That's 28 dice for about 6 motes. And it's for grappling

I'm just curious here, but what exactly does a grappling tyrant lizard do? Is he holding the target in his mouth or something? Maybe sitting on him? Please let me know if said player had some sort of a cool stunt for this, as I've often been at a loss for ideas when trying to grapple with a lunar.

 

[Tsuranis]

Dice caps only apply to the use of the Excellencies. Usually any way. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Any charm that adds X-Attribute/Ability functions outside of this. It's one of the reasons MAs are so useful.

I'm... fairly sure this is incorrect. If you can throw me a quote saying otherwise then I've been making a mistake for a while though.


Ultimately it doesn't usually make much difference outside of excellencies either way though, unless you're deliberately trying to min/max.

 

[Persell]

Maybe I just interpreted it wrong. *rereads*....yep. >_> So he would be able to add 9.

 

[Gylthinel]

I played with a guy that made a Lunar with a Tyrant Lizard (STR 14) spirit form. He then took brutal attack (perk from Scroll of Heroes) to use his Strength to attack. Adding his 5 martial arts' date=' he then took up some form charm from Arms of the Unconquered Sun style (Glories: US) that adds your martial Arts to grapple attacks. So he's currently standing at 24 dice to attack. He also has the hearthstone that adds 4 to martial arts (don't recall the name, it's in the core book). That's 28 dice for about 6 motes. And it's for grappling[/quote']
I'm just curious here, but what exactly does a grappling tyrant lizard do? Is he holding the target in his mouth or something? Maybe sitting on him? Please let me know if said player had some sort of a cool stunt for this, as I've often been at a loss for ideas when trying to grapple with a lunar.

Yeesh... get this, the Tyrant Lizard was using the 4 Arms of the Unconquered Sun form, which has an attack that explicitly says it uses his "open palm." Yes, that means the Tyrant Lizard was striking with all of his chicken-armed glory.


When grappling, he either stomped down on his hapless victim or clamped them in his jaw. It was less of a grapple and more of a crush-to-death. Both visually and mechanically, since there's no beating a guy with nearly 30 dice to grapple B4 excellencies are used.

 

[cyl]

Yeesh... get this, the Tyrant Lizard was using the 4 Arms of the Unconquered Sun form, which has an attack that explicitly says it uses his "open palm." Yes, that means the Tyrant Lizard was striking with all of his chicken-armed glory.

TAE KWON DODO !!!


... sorry I had to get it out of my system :mrgreen:

 

[Gylthinel]

Yeesh... get this, the Tyrant Lizard was using the 4 Arms of the Unconquered Sun form, which has an attack that explicitly says it uses his "open palm." Yes, that means the Tyrant Lizard was striking with all of his chicken-armed glory.

TAE KWON DODO !!!


... sorry I had to get it out of my system :mrgreen:

If only I'd thought of that....