Joke Races

Getting back up after being dropped to 0 HP is something similar to the Revenant from D&D 4e - they were only dazed (one action out of standard/move/minor) instead of immediately falling, but we don't really have a dazed status effect. Maybe something like this?

Back from the Dead
Whenever you drop to 0 HP or lower in battle, you do not fall and lose all your PiPs. Instead, make a saving throw at the start of your next turn. If you succeed, you are blinded. Repeat this action as long as you are below 0 HP, but above -20 HP. If you fail a saving throw, you immediately fall unconscious and lose all your PiPs.

What about how they could transfigure Apple Bloom? Maybe they can "turn" ponies into themselves as long as they lack Cutie Marks, or temporarily transfigure them?

The Protection of Sunny Town- 1/session
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Note: The target must be in physical contact with the Sunny Town Denizen to be afflicted.
Make an Arcana check at +5. Target helpless creature makes an opposing Endurance check. If you beat the target's check, take another. If the check is failed, the process is failed as well. At three successes in a row, the target helpless creature is transformed into a Sunny Town Denizen for the rest of the day, and must be healed at a DC of 35 to revert; additionally, this check must be made in direct sunlight. In this state, they do not benefit from their Cutie Marks, which are functionally useless in the Sunny Town Denizen state.

That good?

Well...they could also have that no endurance score thing. Since ghosts, robots and vampires have it.

So, I've spent some time thinking about the joke templates. Because I might be working on a followup to the Jokers campaign
Anyway, I went through each of them and made some changes to balance them a bit, as well as update them since the genetics update.
If you'd like to look at them and give some feedback, that'd be cool.

Robots:

Vampires:

Werewolves and Weretimberwolves were too close to hold both, so I suggest dropping Werewolves

Weretimberwolf:

Ghosties:

Half-Cloud:

Two-Sevenths Draconequus:

Monster Hunter:

And here's the document with the changes. link

Wow. This is... this is wonderful! I'd been planning to revise the joke templates once the races were officially updated to the 8-point system, but for you to not only save me all that trouble, but to go to the effort of balancing them...

All I can say is thank you. I've looked over the changes, and I don't see anything that seems to be amiss, so I'll implement them right away, and I'll be sure to credit you for these revisions, too. (However, I think I'll leave the vanilla werewolf in for a little bit longer; I want to hear other people's opinions on whether or not to remove it before I do so.)

Now, I feel that I should do something to repay this kindness that you've done me, Quietkal... Do you have a character or something that you'd like drawn? If so, feel free to stop by my thread in the Pony Tales Art section and let me know the details.

Kal, why did you do "Half-Clouds still gain the additional moves, but they cost slots to take into combat" for only Half-Clouds? That seems a bit unfair if others get bonus slots.

Thanks!
I can't take much credit, most of it was just updating them to newer terminology. (and taking out the effective 90 hitpoints on half-clouds)

That's a good point, ramsus. I did that because the talents don't really seem like core tenants of the race, something that they would always do, or always be able to do.
Rampaging robots will always fire lasers. Ghosties will always possess other creatures. Vampires will always siphon blood and be sparkly. It's just them doing what they do.
I'll grant that Steal Breath is probably something that Half-Clouds should always have, but the others just don't seem like things the race as a whole does.

So what can we do to resolve this?
1. Leave things as they are.
2. Just give all Half-Clouds the attacks.
3. Remake the attacks for Half-Clouds so they are more fitting for all Half-Clouds
4. Half-Clouds get something else to compensate for not being able to always take those three into combat
5. Ask Party Cat what we should do (Party)

I understand what your concern is, and I'm willing to work with you. Currently I'm leaning toward #4, but I don't know what that compensation would be.

Hmmm, we could go with 4 and just give them 2 extra lots of their choice to take in anything? I dunno. That might be nuts.

2 would be the easiest thing to do.

3 would probably be the best thing to do.

Let's avoid horrible balls of fuzz that make me ill.

Edit: I don't really see the issue with Rain on Your Parade.

Fine, we'll ignore Party Cat...for now. (Party)
And I'll admit that these don't particularly give off the half-cloud vibe, but it's a place to start.
Possible set
[+2] Swirling Vortex -Standard Attack
Deal 1d8 damage to target creature suffering from a save ends condition. It suffers -2 to its next save throw.
[-2] Steal Breath -Minor Utility
Target creature takes ongoing damage 1 and is weakened (save ends both). You gain regeneration 1 until the target creature succeeds on its saving throw.
[-3] Busy Daydreaming -Interrupt Utility
Trigger: A creature uses a talent that includes you as a target
You may either take no damage from the attack, or ignore non-damage effects of the attack.

>doublepost
I don't know what my objection to Rain of Their Parade is. S

Possible #4
All Half-Clouds gain this talent at no cost to their regular allotment of talents, inside or outside combat.
[0] Shifting Winds -Minor Utility
Choose one combat talent you took into combat, and replace it with a combat talent you know. This talent cannot be selected.

Not sure how broken that is.

Isn't that something anyone can do anyways, as of Art Of War?

Grey Pen wrote:Isn't that something anyone can do anyways, as of Art Of War?

o.o
Yes. Yes it is. I completely forgot we could do that. Lemme keep thinking then.
[edit] Art of War lets anyone do it once per battle. My suggestion would be that Half-Clouds could do it every round.

Either way, a racial trait that gives combat advantages goes against the design of keeping roleplaying and combat separate...

Paper Shadow wrote:Either way, a racial trait that gives combat advantages goes against the design of keeping roleplaying and combat separate...

While you raise a good point, joke templates don't worry about the separation of combat and noncombat as much as official stuff. I mean, half the stuff templates get are combat-related.
...huh. Half the stuff they get is combat related.
[edit] Also, I do like the werewolf template, but with the weretimberwolf template as well they just seem like 2 sides of the same coin. With one having a canon presence.

Plus, they're...well...Joke templates. They're not meant to be used in a 'serious' setting...Serious in this case meaning that the rules of the game are being enforced as written, with presumably minimal Rule Zero action going on. I still like the templates, though, especially the concept of the 2/7 DE and Time Pony.

The way I see it, the better they fit into the rest of the system, the more likely GMs will be ok with using them without worrying about the effects. So maintaining the combat/not combat divide is probably a good idea.

I love the flavor of the joke races and the ideas behind them are epic. Really genius design and the rebalancing is fantastic.

The thing keeping them from being actively added to an official expansion is that they're fundamentally breaking a core rule of the system (which is find for joke races that aren't actually intended to be played with outside of a few joke campaigns). Ramsus is entirely correct that getting rid of the combat-applications of the joke races' racial traits would make it easier for GMs to actually incorporate them in games. If you don't want to do that and just enjoy the goofy spin-off (which is completely awesome), then that's great. But if you do want to at least make some variations of these joke races that follow the system's rules, it would be awesome to have these ideas in the game.

If you want to make the combat-bonuses into unique utility talents or combat traits, or even items, so that players can enjoy taking them as well to add to their character's flavor that could work well. For example, you can build the life-draining flavor of a vampire by taking combat talents that deal damage to enemies and then give you a benefit.

I don't recall saying that....

>brb flailing
Yeah, I think we could break the groups into utility talents/combat traits/items. Keep the templates as well though, in case someone wants to run them.
I'll get started on something like that later today, unless someone beats me to the punch. And then I'll still probably work on it.

Ramsus wrote:I don't recall saying that....

Really? Sorry, I must have misunderstood you then. This quote is what I'm talking about.

Ramsus wrote:The way I see it, the better they fit into the rest of the system, the more likely GMs will be ok with using them without worrying about the effects. So maintaining the combat/not combat divide is probably a good idea.

Sounds awesome Quietkal. Then you can have these as example characters (and the most broken things on the robots and vampires and such could require sever traits or such to build up to, meaning that they actually get stronger or get upgrades as they level up -which is a neat flavor) rather than one-size-fits-all races. It also means that robots don't *have* to take derp if they don't want to.


EDIT - Ramsus and I found out we actually were talking about the same thing after all. =)