On Edgier Cult Mechanics

[Kaed]

This is actually several suggestions but they're all related to the same thing. Cultists.

The first came up briefly in a much older thread about a cult rework, but I'll bring it up again here - can we change the mechanic for drawing runes to take some of your blood instead of doing nonspecific brute damage to a random body part. It doesn't really make sense that you get bruises all over your body by slitting open your finger to draw a rune. In fact, changing all of the rune/cultist interactions to blood instead of brute damage would be great. Breaking bones because you left your body too long makes way less sense than you quietly bleeding out from blood drain to feed your astral projection - and it can be tracked as a ghost, because you can see yourself gasping, instead of having to jump back every so often to check if your bones are snapping or wounds are ripping open.

The second part involves actually adding something. I've noticed recently that the chaplain can get a pretty cool looking athame (fancy ritual dagger) that could definitely be modified into a sacrificial dagger for cultists to use. This could be summoned via rune like the book or armor/sword, and serves several uses.

-A concealable weapon that is thematically appropriate. Let's be fair, cultists is a word that invokes images of bloodstained daggers and sacrificial altars, not huge glowing swords that blatantly announce you are a cultist to everyone in eyesight.

-Potentially, helping you with rune activation. See, of you have a sacrificial dagger, you can draw more of your blood to power a rune. Can imagine is working as +1 cultist for ritual purposes of rituals, but costs you a bunch of extra blood to do it this way (and possibly splatters it). Basically, this allows the 3 cultist runes with only 2, but is very taxing on the dagger holder. (This does not work with Nar'sie summons, because he consumes souls, not blood).

I would also like cultist sacrifices to be reworked. Right now, sacrificing people via the sacrifice rune (and raise dead rune) gibs them. I feel this is sort of a product of the original cult, where sacrifices were a way to learn runes, and the corpse couldn't be reused for that. Now that words aren't a thing, it has no purpose other than to kill someone in a very complicated way with no benefits other than looking gross.

I propose instead of gibbing them, thier heart is torn from thier chest, and either consumed to revive a cultist (in the case of raise dead) or becomes an eldritch heart (name a work in progress), which is visually identical to a phylactery, except it gives out a small amount of red light. The sacrificial heart can be used on a rune that normally takes multiple people (the sacrifice rune and Nar'sie rune not included, but maybe you can use it as a token to revive the dead when fully charged) to be activated it with a single person, but has a limited number of uses before turns to ash. I guess you could also use it to power the cult pylons.

As part of this change, you can no longer sacrifice the dead, and simple mobs should still be gibbed. To make it still mechanically the same as the old sacrifice, a new tag/status should be added to the mob of the deceased humanoid, which renders them uncloneable and also as a description on examination that clearly indicates they have a hole in their chest and their heart is missing. Maybe also that they look like they're screaming? Spoop it up, mang.

[Scheveningen]

I would support more edginess with cult mechanics provided the method of being able to do so isn't convoluted in some manner.

If the sacrificial dagger could also double as a potent self-defense weapon it'd be interesting. The way I'm thinking is that it is a "thin-air" weapon that you may draw from. Upon casting a specific rune designed for imbuing the capability to draw such a weapon on yourself, that is, so no one starts the round with such a thing, keeping within the whole effort requirement to obtain power. The cost being, every time you draw the weapon and materialize it into your hand, it costs a small amount of your maximum blood reserve. At the same time, striking mobs with blood will steal their blood to absorb into your own reserves. You can dematerialize it again by causing a certain prompt to happen, if the blade drained sufficient enough blood then there's no downside to it. If the blade was not sated enough with blood then it will apply the same maximum blood reserve drain again.

An unapologetic buff to the classic cult blade and instead designing it into a cult zweihander that has the same thirst for blood, cleaves and also imbues its wielder with damage resistance & near-immunity to crowd control effects would also be really excellent as well.

[Kaed]

I would support more edginess with cult mechanics provided the method of being able to do so isn't convoluted in some manner.

If the sacrificial dagger could also double as a potent self-defense weapon it'd be interesting. The way I'm thinking is that it is a "thin-air" weapon that you may draw from. Upon casting a specific rune designed for imbuing the capability to draw such a weapon on yourself, that is, so no one starts the round with such a thing, keeping within the whole effort requirement to obtain power. The cost being, every time you draw the weapon and materialize it into your hand, it costs a small amount of your maximum blood reserve. At the same time, striking mobs with blood will steal their blood to absorb into your own reserves. You can dematerialize it again by causing a certain prompt to happen, if the blade drained sufficient enough blood then there's no downside to it. If the blade was not sated enough with blood then it will apply the same maximum blood reserve drain again.

An unapologetic buff to the classic cult blade and instead designing it into a cult zweihander that has the same thirst for blood, cleaves and also imbues its wielder with damage resistance & near-immunity to crowd control effects would also be really excellent as well.

 

I like the idea of making the dagger an item that isn't there until you call it. Kind of like arm blades.

But also be pretty cool to make the cult sword do more and have some penalties and costs.

Edited February 14, 2018 by Guest

[Scheveningen]

I was thinking that in terms of a penalty, the cult zweihander has an unquenchable thirst for blood that effectlvely cannot be dematerialized or removed from the hands of the wielder (aside from cutting their arms/hands off). Not sating it with blood continuously drains blood from its wielder. Some other cultist has to dispel them somehow if the wielder of the cult blade wants to stop their Highlander mode.

[Kaed]

I was thinking that in terms of a penalty, the cult zweihander has an unquenchable thirst for blood that effectlvely cannot be dematerialized or removed from the hands of the wielder (aside from cutting their arms/hands off). Not sating it with blood continuously drains blood from its wielder. Some other cultist has to dispel them somehow if the wielder of the cult blade wants to stop their Highlander mode.

 

I prefer to have a way to dematerialize the cult sword until you need it, but only if it's been sated with enough blood (it starts out inactive/immaterial until you draw it the first time). This would help deal with the problem of the cult blade being a huge hassle to have around once you initially summon it, since it comes packaged with the robes and you can't avoid spawning it right now.

Maybe you just initially want to have spooky robes, without a giant glowing sword that you can't get rid of.

... Say, you know what else would be cool? If when you drew your cult Doom sword, your cult robes change from drab Gray a more thematic black and red to match the rest of Nar'sie content, and turn the edginess up to 11.