Simple Folk

[zedturtle]

Oh, it's not for Hobbits... I just thought Sam was an excellent example of "Simple Folk".

[Deadmanwalking]

One possibility would be to have it replaced entirely (including the 'Innocent' Trait) by the normal Cultural Blessing once you get a Flaw, and possibly costing a bit of xp (1 or 2, probably) to make that transition.

That'd give the right feel without being too mechanically punitive, and would make sense for a lot of the Cultural Blessings, too (for Lakemen, Bardings, and Beornings in particular). Maybe not the Dwarven or Elven ones, but I'm not convinced Simple Folk makes a lot of sense for them in the first place.

[zedturtle]

One possibility would be to have it replaced entirely (including the 'Innocent' Trait) by the normal Cultural Blessing once you get a Flaw, and possibly costing a bit of xp (1 or 2, probably) to make that transition.

That'd give the right feel without being too mechanically punitive, and would make sense for a lot of the Cultural Blessings, too (for Lakemen, Bardings, and Beornings in particular). Maybe not the Dwarven or Elven ones, but I'm not convinced Simple Folk makes a lot of sense for them in the first place.

That's a brilliant solution. I think I would go with no cost, as you've already paid the price, so to say.

[Deadmanwalking]

That's a brilliant solution.

Thanks! Happy to be of assistance.

I think I would go with no cost, as you've already paid the price, so to say.

Well, it depends if you think that people who've had this Blessing and then swapped it are better off than those who started with their standard one.

[zedturtle]

That's a brilliant solution.

Thanks! Happy to be of assistance.

I think I would go with no cost, as you've already paid the price, so to say.

Well, it depends if you think that people who've had this Blessing and then swapped it are better off than those who started with their standard one.

Well, anyone who is going to the regular CB is, by definition, paying for it by losing the benefits (I think this way, I'd go with unlimited usage and the Trait, making it painful to lose).

[Deadmanwalking]

Well, anyone who is going to the regular CB is, by definition, paying for it by losing the benefits (I think this way, I'd go with unlimited usage and the Trait, making it painful to lose).

True, but if both of them have spent the same amount of Hope and the one with Simple Folk has reduced Shadow a couple times more, he might go into the phase of the game where he has Permanent Shadow with quite a bit more Hope. That's no small thing, and quite possibly worth some xp, and he might've gotten some extra AP with 'Innocent' as well.

Basically, is it to everyone's advantage to always take this Blessing if the changeover costs nothing?

I'm not sure. But it seemed worth considering as a potential balance issue.

[robert_pat]

What if invoking this Cultural Blessing resulted in the character gaining a number of Temporary Shadow Points equal to the number of Permanent Shadow Points they have? That way it can be freely invoked if you have no flaws, and becomes progressively more costly to invoke the more flaws you gain, while still allowing it to be used at any point in a character's adventuring career.

Additionally, this would have the benefit of keeping a character "Simple Folk" for their entire career. The idea of swapping out Cultural Blessings seems a bit odd to me. The whole idea of Cultural Blessings is that they represent a characteristic intrinsic to a given people.

[Falenthal]

This one's difficult, Zed, as I can imagine dozens of ways to go with this idea. Not to say that I am a genius, just that there's a myriad option and everyone will like different ones better.
We could have a Deadly Archery Thread Revisited here...

First of all, I have a player who wanted to play something like this at the start of his character. He wanted a 14 years old boy and he proposed to pick up the Reckless Trait from his Background (I think that's the name, I have the book in spanish). Of course, we know that Traits are not Flaws, but it's difficult to use Reckless positively. Also, it was our first contact with the game, and we still didn't fully get the mechanics of Traits. He, being a Vampire: TM GM, considered it to be a Flaw which he roleplayed as hard as he could.

After some adventures and some experience, he undertook a fellowship phase to change from Reckless to Bold, which he considered to keep the personality of the character, but in a more mature way.
Just to say that you can use the RAW to represent all this growing up.

But we all know how tempting it is to come up with new rules and discuss them here, so...

I'd first say that losing or changing this Blessing shouldn't (IMHO) be tied to gaining a Flaw, but only to gaining the first Permanent Shadow Point. I'm just thinking that maybe in the future we'll have more Flaws more other reasons than a Bout of Madness and maybe not all have to do with falling into the abyss of Darkness. Glutton could be Flaw and is not incompatible with innocence. Permanent Shadow Points have more to do, as I see them, with having a taint in one's soul.

If you want (or like) to have a new rule to represent and emphasize the turning of a boy into a man (or something alike), here's an idea, surely not mechanically balanced:

* Whenever the hero uses a Fellowship Pool Hope point to recover his own's, he recovers two points of Hope instead of one. Also, whenever he gains Shadow Points for an action, he gains them double.

An innocent person recovers easier his faith in the good, but is also more shocked by the evil.

[poosticks7]

I appreciate what you are trying to do here but a thought just occurred to me (after reading Falenthal's post)

Why not just have him pick innocent as a trait and leave the cultural blessing alone? It allows the player to maintain his character concept and gives him something to play with - would be a lovely trait to have in fact, lots of roleplaying to be done.

I really don't think you need to attach new rules to it as such.

Although that has got me wondering about Cultural Blessing Variants.... hmmm wonder if we might see something like that in the Adventure's companion.

[zedturtle]

I appreciate what you are trying to do here but a thought just occurred to me (after reading Falenthal's post)

Why not just have him pick innocent as a trait and leave the cultural blessing alone? It allows the player to maintain his character concept and gives him something to play with - would be a lovely trait to have in fact, lots of roleplaying to be done.

I really don't think you need to attach new rules to it as such.

Although that has got me wondering about Cultural Blessing Variants.... hmmm wonder if we might see something like that in the Adventure's companion.

He specifically raised the idea of a different CB... he doesn't think his current one (Barding) matches his character concept very well.