Fate loves you and when you look up you see the gods smiling. You are blessed and all those that follow in your wake are sure to share in your natural good fortune. Some might think you a little naive, but you truly are just blessed by the fates themselves and have no need to worry about anything.
- Relaxed:
- -2 to Speed Pool.
- Inability:
- You know nothing bad is going to happen to you, so why bother checking for danger? Perception-related tasks are one step harder.
- Inability:
- No-one is ever going to attack you, you’re blessed, whatever looks like an attack is surely just a welcoming embrace. Speed-defense tasks are one step more difficult.
- Inability:
- You are an optimist and everything will always work out for the best. Nothing has ever gone wrong for you and as such your mind has no natural defenses – intellect defense tasks having to do with your sanity are one step more difficult.
- Blessing:
- Everything goes your way and you can never fail. Whenever you roll a 1, it counts as if you rolled a 20. This is because you are blessed. The universe is a warm, caring place and even at worst your efforts make a real, meaningful difference.
Initial Link to the Starting Adventure
- Events couldn’t keep you away, any obstacle to joining in on this adventure just seemed to fall away.
- It looks like your contribution to the party could really make the difference and you want to share your blessing with others.
- You saved one of the PCs lives and they offered repay the debt. You laughed, telling them it was unnecessary but agreed to travel with them so they could ‘watch over you’, to make them feel less in your debt.
- Everything you know about fate has sent you down this path. You were meant to be here, the fates demand it.
Wow. People really don’t like this.
I didn’t downvote, but I can see why. Can’t get rid of those crit fails man. “Remember that time you did that awesome thing” is just as cool as “Remember that time you totally screwed up!”
That’s what gm intrusions are for. After all, crit-fails _are_ gm intrusions, but optional on the gm’s part and rewarding no XP. I don’t think it’s that different to change things such that the character only suffers critical failure by active gm intervention rather than passive.
I see your point, but I don’t think it’s the same feeling when a gm says, “Gm intrusion?” versus you rolling a 1 and everyone around the table laughing and shouting.
Mostly I can’t think of how to have an engaging experience without … some kind of risk. The only way this works to my understanding is to pretense the entire adventure around the idea that the character is the road runner. And thus, evil.
So…
… so very evil.
It’s not without risk, at most the player has 5% less chance of failing a roll and 5% more chance of a major effect. Yes, it’s eliminates player-derived _critical_ failure (i.e. no-XP gm intrusions, which are optional anyway) but they aren’t immune to GM intrusions.
Combat become far harder for characters with this descriptor, given a lower speed pool and a penalty on speed defense.
The comedy angle of this descriptor isn’t so much that the character actually _is_ blessed and magically immune to ill-fortune, but rather than they are _oblivious_ to ill-fortune. This is far more of a negative descriptor than a positive one.
That’s almost interesting. The language needs some work though, to match the above to what you just said here.
What you’ve described just now is “Delusional”.
In the characters opinion GM Intrusions are blessings in disguise. If you roll a “1” two or more times in a row, the DM only intrudes on the first roll. Intelligence -2. However the mind is a powerful thing, during an encounter you can spend one intellect point to automatically succeed your first defense check regardless of it’s target number.
Another spin on this would be ‘Dogmatic’, perhaps.
Personally I like it as it is, which is naturally why I wrote it that way, but also it’s pretty much an exact inversion of the Doomed descriptor from the In Strange Aeons glimmer, which is why I’m not to inclined to change it, as it’s an interesting exercise in inverting existing descriptors.
However, I’d love to see something more obviously aimed at “delusional” if you’d like to write it.
Sure thing.
I’m pretty sure it’s … a little unbalanced though I think a few people might enjoy it or have balancing suggestions.
Yeah, I really need to play test it to see how it pans out.
I don’t think it’s really as overpowered as it seems on first glance, though perhaps swapping it from a major effect to a minor one might be better in the long run. Given how overwhelmingly negative the descriptor is, with three things being made more difficult, two of which are extremely common (perception which comes up in many scenarios and speed defense, which is virtually all combat), plus the fixed reduction in speed pool, I think the bonuses of an additional 5% chance of a major action (and a drop of a 5% chance of a free gm-intrusion to no chance) are more than made up for by a _constant_ increase of difficulty across several aspects.
“during an encounter you can spend one intellect point to automatically
succeed your first defense check regardless of it’s target number.” – where is the rule for this? I’ve never read it.
Absolutely. Reading this I can only think of Kafuka Fuura.
Very good descriptor, a lot of inabilities for just a little increase of the % in the dice.
I think it’s all well balanced, at least most better balanced than many of the descriptor I’ve seem here so far. All this “it’s just as cool to take 1’s and 20’s” buzz in the comments are void, in my opinion. This descriptor is a matter of choice and it affects only you, meaning that any other party member may still row 1’s that fucks you up.
I’d create a blessed priest, or a very lucky jack with this descriptor, but I hardly ever play with blessed chars. Although I should sometimes.
And for those that think that GM intrusion isn’t just the same, I’ve just lost my daughter in game over a 3 of another char, which would be a plain failure in climbing up a rope, but the GM turned into an intrusion, sounded the alarm and she got killed before we were able to rescue her.
I’ve read in the comments: “In the characters opinion GM Intrusions are blessings in disguise. If
you roll a “1” two or more times in a row, the DM only intrudes on the
first roll.” — This is never true at the table I play at, no blessing at all on crit failures, and avoiding to receive intrusion in a row doesn’t seem like a pro in this case.
Good work man!