LunarHouseRules/ExpandedHeartsBlood

Lunchtime!

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Heart's Blood as written is, like, the worst Background ever. You can pick up Heart's Blood 1 in play without even ruining the flow of play.

ST: "You enter the Majestic Emerald Basin and set up camp." PCs: "In the evening, we begin hunting local animals and devouring whatever we can find." St: "Right, well, you've picked up Heart's Blood 2. Congrats."

Heck, you can snag Heart's Blood 5 in a downtime by announcing your character spends a week eating all the animals they can find. Why buy it at character creation?

So I put together this little background mod, to demonstrate a considerable amount of time spent hunting and consuming the Heart's Blood of creatures that probably did nothing to you. Enjoy.

Revised Hearts Blood

X You have not bothered to hunt. What, you have something better to do? The only shape in your Library is your Totem form.

* Prowling your region, you've sampled the local population. Your Library includes most common, non-predator animals (rats, cats, dogs, lizards, foxes, goats, fish) in your home region (region being northeast, southwest, central north). Your lack of true dedication to consumption has kept rare or predatory species out of your diet, so no great cats or weird poisonous spiders.

** You've combed your region and its borders, searching for dangerous or elusive prey. Your Library includes all common non-predators and a selection of local predators (great cats, river dragons, rapace, siaka) and rare species (weird, elusive beasts that you will probably make up), plus a collection of non-predators from your general Direction (North, South, East, West).

*** Your palate is cultured and experianced, having roamed the entirity of your Direction. Your library contains all non-predators and nearly all predators from your region, most non-predators from your Direction, and a variety of predators and rare species from your Direction. Plus, your prowess as a hunter has been proven, as you have managed to kill and consume one of the mightiest beasts of Creation. Your Library includes a single super-predator, such as a tyrant lizard, pelagic dragon, or giant squid.

**** Wandering far and wide, you have supped on the strong, weak, and the weird. Your library contains an exhaustive selection of your Direction, predators and non-predators alike. Your library also contains most common, non-predator animals from your neighboring Directions and a well-kept, if not complete, menu of standard predators from those Direction. You are a predator among predators as well. You now have three super-predator forms.

***** Creation is your dining table. Your knowledge of your home Direction's fauna is incomparable, and your library ranges from pole to pole in all directions. Your library contains most non-common, predatory, and rare species of Creation, as well as five super-predators.

Notes

Heart's Blood is also a dice adder!

• Add Heart's Blood to Athletics checks made in a form from the Exalt's Library (not including his totem, DBT, or homid forms), reflecting the capability of the Exalt to pick a form especially suited to the task at hand (flying in high winds, balancing on roofs, jumping through trees) IF the Exalt is within an area he is familar with regarding his background.
• Add Heart's Blood to Stealth checks made in a form from the Exalt's Library when guardians may be looking for anything out of the ordinary. Similar restrictions (no DBT!, familiar region) apply.

Keeping track of forms is less a matter of book-work and more a matter of considering where the character is from and where she's been. Use your best judgement to consider whether your character would have an appropriate form or not. With a low Heart's Blood, your cruel Changing Moon might only have a raiton form, but at a higher level, he may have a pheasant, pidgeon, and a miniature pteradactyl form.

These levels only reflect what kind of forms are available to the character at the start of play. Additional animals can be eaten as the game progresses, but it will have little impact on the Heart's Blood score as the sheer volume of animals necessary to raise the Heart's Blood score requires time and effort (otherwise known as downtime and XP).

Once you reach Heart's Blood 5, additional super-predator forms can be bought for three Experiance Points in downtime.

Humans are included in this Background. The notes on variety apply to the appearance and ethnicity of humans. If you have Heart's Blood 1 and live in the Central South, you probably have a couple of dark-skinned individuals in your Library. If you had Heart's Blood 4, you'd have dark-skinned individuals of every shape and age, plus a choice selection of olive-skinned sailors and some Scavenger Lands folk. If you feel your character wouldn't be eating people with such alacrity or levity, you don't have to have those forms.

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Comments

This frigging ROCKS. Did I mention it rocks? I love it lots, a whole lots? This feels SO much more right than the current Heart's Blood BG. - DS

This is an excellent revision to the Lunar Background, and if I ever have the pleasure of running or playing in a Lunar-centric game, I'll do my best to see this rule is used. - BillGarrett

One of my players pointed me a this and wants me to steal it, so I believe I shall. This is much better than the original. -- TheT

I like the spirit of this revision a lot, but I am very hesitant to allow Lunars to start with a superpredator in their libraries. (Can you say "Full Moon with HB 3, Towering Beast Form, a tyrant-lizard totem and a few levels of Deadly Beastman?") I would be inclined to create a separate version of Heart's Blood for superpredators and other strange animals -- something that would be to this HB as Artifact is to Resources, if that makes any sense. While this wouldn't totally solve the problem, it would at least allow more ST control. I like this quite a lot otherwise, though, and am very fond of the dice-adder elements. -- AntiVehicleRocket

You can choose any animal, even one you haven't yet consumed, as your totem. So yes, I can say Towering Beast Form, Deadly Beastman and Tyrant-Lizard. Of course, the DB form is based purely on the homid form plus Charm bonuses, so the totem is entirely irrelevant. This background is far, far more appropriate than the original version. One question, though; are you going to make characters spend XP to consume the heart's blood of things they encounter *during* the actual game? I'd say that superpredators the ST throws at one are fair game and free, if you can take 'em out, neh? $.02 &Arafelis

I'm not sure whether the "are you going to make characters spend XP" question is directed at me or hplovescats, but if it's me, I'd rule that there's no XP expenditure -- if you can take a superpredator down, I personally am not going to charge you XP to get its heart's blood. I'm certainly amenable to PCs having superpredator transformations; I just think it should be a meaningful individual event, not a perk you get for taking three dots of a background. Also, you're very right -- the real danger with a starting character with a superpredator totem isn't their beastman form, it's the fact that they can turn into a tyrant lizard as a 1-mote reflexive action, and thus Deadly Beastman is redundant. -- AntiVehicleRocket

It was actually directed at hplovescats, but on further reflection, I think I agree that especially powerful or exotic animals should use a different background. However, that would imply there was a mechanical method to differentiate between 'regular' and 'super' animals, which the game currently lacks. Arafelis

So does this background alteration as written, though; it's not a concept introduced by AntiVehicleRocket's idea of seperating the backgrounds. Ben-San

I don't see why this couldn't be an ST-call thing, personally; Lunar libraries are individualized enough that I'm not sure we need a mechanical separation between "regular" and "super" animals. Were it my decision to make as ST, I would say that the "super" animals would be the superpredators and anything with particularly unusual or supernatural powers (most of the things in CotW, for example). -- AntiVehicleRocket

That requires a lot of arbitration, especially if a player thinks he can turn into something, tries, and the ST calls him on it; doubly bad if it's in a stressful moment, as it likely will be. Unless the ST writes up a list of things that qualify as super animals, there's inevitably going to be some butted heads over that. The original background as written gives a little more leeway, since players won't feel they're being 'overcharged' if they have to 'forget' how to use a shape they've never brought into play when they go to turn into some animal the ST has deemed as a supercreature. That doesn't mean I disagree that super-animals deserve a focused background. $.02 &Arafelis

I think this is definitely an issue that needs to be worked out before the Lunar hits the table, yeah, because you're very right that otherwise it's going to end in argument that has the potential to ruin a session. My call on it would be that the ST should make it clear in character-creation that unusually huge, powerful, or supernatural forms should be vetted. If the Lunar player interacts with the ST enough about his character's background and experiences, it should work itself out. (My recommendation with this background revision would be to have Lunars make a "greatest hits" lineup of their common or preferred forms; it wouldn't be restrictive but would be a handy thing for both player and ST to have on hand.) -- AntiVehicleRocket

Agreed. The cruncher within me would still like a system of distinction; I haven't had the opportunity yet to play a Lunar, but I suspect that versitility requirements may upset that 'greatest hits' list applicabilty. "Anything with abilities beyond the first level of DeadlyBeastmanTransformation applied to your character" seems like it might be an appropriate warning-level. Arafelis

Well, the idea wouldn't be to limit versatility but would just be to have a shortlist of the forms the Lunar prefers; presumably they could still turn into a wide variety of things appropriate to their region. (Otherwise it's just the old Heart's Blood.) And yeah, I think "has powers and abilities beyond a first-level Beastman form" seems like a pretty good guideline for special forms, barring particularly bizarre Wyld wackiness. -- AntiVehicleRocket

Damn! Leave your page alone for a couple weeks, and debate sprouts like weeds! As far as superpredator totems go, I make no distinction between totem animals and super-predators. IF you are truly hardcore enough to take down a superpredator as one of your first acts after Exaltation, you deserve your superpredator totem animal. As for the fast transform, that's just one of the things you're buying with the background. Frankly, I'd be more scared of the Exalt with the (Artifact 3) Grand Daiklaive than the Tyrant Lizard Lunar. As for SP forms, buying those is like buying an artifact; you have to specify the form and submit it for ST approval before play. Finally, for characters who kill and eat SPs in play, I'd charge the character if more than one member of the Pack was interested in the HB, but I wouldn't bother if they were the only char involved. hplovescats

Yeah, I approve of SP forms if submitted to the ST before play -- I don't quite like it thematically (it puts events that should be exciting in-game events out of game and takes away growth potential from the PC), but I also don't like starting with Artifact for the same reason, and I can't deny that it's mechanistically possible and reasonable if the ST doesn't mind. -- AntiVehicleRocket (who would like an adventure with her Grand Daiklave of Realm-Destroying +5, please)