FourWillowsWeeping/SiderealsHouseRules

Chargen Rules

• 25 bonus points.
• You start with a Fu and an Essence of 2.
  • You may buy them up at the standard cost.
  • TheCastelessAbility has costs for raising Fu.
• You get 20 charmslots.
  • You can allocate them to Techniques or Charms as you like, in 5-slot blocks.
  • Please take at least five Charms.
  • Please take at least 5 Techniques.
  • Ideally, each character should avoid taking Fu Styles that other characters have, but I won't be strict on this.
• You can sell back a charmslot (after allocating them) for 4 bonus points.
• Since there is no Martial Arts Ability, you don't need to buy dots of it as normal Sidereals do.
  • Endings and Battles characters should have 2 dots of War.

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• Each character chooses one other character to like, and one to dislike. These may be the same person.
• Each character will be given a bureaucratic title.
• I'll elaborate your Sifus. You've got more or less free rein with other Backgrounds.

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You have your total College dots in effect points to distribute between Resplendent Destinies of your Colleges. See Merciful Osprey's sheet for some nice RD writeups.

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• See TheCastelessAbility for Martial Arts rules.
  • See FourWillowsWeeping/SiderealsHouseRules/SwordAndBanner for the implications this has for Sidereal Charm trees.
• See this page for rules on Stunt Dice. Ignore the Great Curse stuff.
  • On second thought, you may add dice to your PDP, or you may use them immediately as standard stunt dice.
• See Unified Ability Theory for Craft, Linguistics, and Melee in this game. Ignore the implication for other Abilities.
• See NewSiderealCharms on how to introduce new Charms into the game.
• Lunar society as depicted in Lunars does not exist. The Wyld might not either. Keep this in mind when choosing Charms.

Charm Errata

Breaking the Wild Mortal & Ordained Bridle of Mercury

These cost 1 XP per point of the bound being's permanent Essence, plus 1 dot if you want to pick the target yourself. Picking your target means you get to write up their character sheet.

Of Truths Best Unspoken

Additional Sidereals, a Yellow and a Purple, may join into this prophecy. They do not gain access to the vision it grants; instead, they add their Essence to the Lore rolls of the trinity.

Of Things Desired and Feared

This requires a Yellow, Green, and Purple. This prophecy can be performed with a perfect Circle; if so, then it will provide three prices rather than one. Only one must be paid to achieve the chosen goal.

Auspicious Prospects

Once per session, you may invoke this charm to say, "Auspicious Prospects tells me...," and have its message be true. I'll try to think of a way for this to work, but I may ask you to change your idea if it's completely nonsensical.

My Views On Unclear Things

Charms

• Always always always clear Specialties with me, including applications of World-Shaping Artistic Vision, Systematic Understanding of Everything, and the Methodology of Secrets.
• "Sidereals can always use their Virtue with this Charm" means that that Virtue is automatically relevant and the Virtue use does not contribute to the per-story limit. Virtue-channelling is always applicable to exactly one dice action. This means that if you want to add your Temperance to all three attacks that Harmony of Blows grants you, you need 3 WP to do it.
• One cannot gain Essence through stunting while under the effects of the Heartless Maiden Trance.
  • Stunt Essence is available normally to targets disabled with the Dream Confiscation Approach, though Stunt Willpower is not.
• You need a weapon to activate the Willful Weapon Method but you don't need to ever throw it.
• You can still parry an uncounterable attack with Crimson Palm Counterstrike, or counter an unparriable one.
• Unweaving Method and any prayer-strip Charm are the prerequisites for Shadowlands Circle Necromancy.

Astrology

• I don't like the way that astrology "drops off" of low-Essence targets. Instead, now the "dropped off" effects do not end; they are simply overridden and have no effect.

Comments

Hmm, I don't know about that Player Dice Pool thing. Sounds risky. :)

Slightly more seriously, a bit of advice, from having used the PDP in my game; liberally give them away, or players will start to hoarde Player Dice. Also, be aware that Player Dice add some weirdness to the expected probabilities; since they only add to a single roll, they don't allow someone to increase their number of actions per round by quite as much, or gain the benefit multiple times when using Extra Actions. DS

I've done it too; thanks for the pointer. - willows

PDP seems to be a fantastic idea. Tell me, do you let it fully interact with the spending of WP? Personally, I don't like the WP thing at all. Clebo

When I used it, PDP supplimented WP spending, on either virtue channeling or the single success. It didn't really seem much of a problem.

Out of curiousity (I've been a Storyteller System gearhead for too long) what don't you like about WP spending? DS

I don't like the WP spending for several reasons. First, players (well, my players) forget it all the time and it thereby loses function. Second, I don't like player control in certain critical dice rolls. They can ensure of having at least one success, which means no botch, and a fair level of success. Third, I think it entices players to try to tweak their virtues into function where they shouldn't be applicable. This often leads to time-consuming discussions. The same thing goes for stunts, so I house-rule that stunts only get essence, no dice. -Clebo

Wow, that's utterly bizarre. But, I guess that if you don't like it when your players have agency, then that's the way to go. Less power to them! - willows

As it happens, my players don't bother with PDP for the most part; they stunt on the things that they want to be effective about! I'd certainly allow it to overlap with WP-spending, but since I'm not some anti-WP advocate, that's not that odd for me. - willows