FlayerIV
2016-01-05, 08:00 AM
Okay, so a couple of months ago we were playing through an ongoing campaign and we were all given randomly generated characters to play. I got loaded with a Sin-Eater from Geist, which none of us had actually seen before so had no idea what I was doing. A quick search on various forums offered me very little to work on, no optimization boards, in fact the only thing I could find was "Get Boneyard! It's the best thing they have!" often followed by "Industrial manifestation is cool"
Well, I beg to differ. And while I'm going to do some poking around to see if I can find any optimization boards for World of Darkness that includes Geist (if I can't, expect a flood of WOD Optimization entries from me in coming weeks), I'm going to offer my two cents here. Please note, that this ia a mechanics thread and some of these mechanics fundamentally change how your Geist game will operate.
GEIST MUST HAVES:
PYRE-FLAME CAUL
So the first Must Have for Sin Eater is Caul, specifically Pyre-Flame, and this is a Must Have beyond all reason. It's pretty straightforward once you spot it, but I'll walk you through it. The first rank of Pyre-Flame Caul reads as follows:
The Pyre-Flame Caul kindles a flame within the Sin-Eater’s breast that eventually consumes his body. He always feels warm to the touch, as though he’s running a fever, and can cause his body to glow as bright as a bonfire. Anyone trying to attack the Sin Eater suffers his activation successes as a penalty to the attack roll.
PFC is powered by an Occult Roll. So upon activating the Caul, you basically get free defence and a torch you can turn on and off at will. Very useful in dark environments or in games set before the Industrial Revolution. But the real kicker is Caul Rank 2.
The Sin-Eater’s body is a crucible. He can take one point of lethal damage to gain three points of plasm.
Now, if you flick to page 81 where the book deals with plasm (the equivalent to essence, mana or vitae for powering abilities) the following line should be highlighted:
Spending a point of plasm as a reflexive action allows the Sin-Eater to bulwark against a single health level of damage of any type. At the end of the scene, these wounds convert to bashing damage. See “Ectoplasmic Flesh,” on page 172
And on Page 172
A character may spend a single point of plasm as a reflexive action to temporarily negate a single point of damage. The type of damage makes no difference. Plasm readily absorbs the aggravated damage caused by the claws of a rotting ghoul as it does the damage from a gunshot or a beer bottle upside the head.
And thus we have an infinite energy loop. Activating the Pyre-Flame Caul, the Sin Eater inflicts one point of lethal damage on themself to gain three plasm. They then reflexively convert that point of lethal damage down to bashing, which heals in fifteen minutes. In effect, they just gained two points of plasm for free. Repeat until full. You now never have to worry about acquiring plasm again, which is good because the more you learn about the Underworld, the more you learn that the GM can literally rewrite the rules of the game while you're playing it making any sane character actively more terrified of the Underworld than Changelings are from the Fae.
Note: A counter-argument might be that you can't dampen damage made against yourself, but in counter to that other than the fact that the rules clearly state you can do it against any type, you also have recourse to the Stigmata Caul which literally allows you to detach one of your own limbs without causing any damage at all to yourself, and also can cut himself to create a pool of his blood at the cost of one bashing damage. Listen to your GM, but RAW at character creation you can have an infinite energy loop that simultaneously makes you a tank in combat and against ambushes without even needing any skill dots, merits or experience.
CEREMONY BIND ANCHOR ....
The second must have is the ceremony Bind Anchor, p164, that allows you to put ghosts into a new anchor, but also allows you to create magic items called fetters, p201. These fetters allow you to trap a ghost into an item of your choosing, which you may then spend a willpower to make use of their most powerful Numina. So basically, free abilities. However it doesn't quite stop there. Binding a ghost is really simple, and there isn't a penalty for failure. By being a little creative in dialogue, you can probably get the ghost to willingly bind itself to you (it stayed out of the underworld for a reason after all and this is a great way for the ghost to never have to go down there). The GM may point out that the act of having Fetters can cause some ghosts to get instinctively mad at you, but the emphasis there is on some ghosts, and there are ways around that. For example, having abilities that pacify ghosts, a decent persuasion check for ghosts that have the ability to think, or simply not having the Fetters on your person when you don't need them. Only one player in your group really needs this ability, but so long as you can convince your party that it's a moral thing to do (which having done this myself can be quite fun to roleplay) you effectively start looking at good ghosts as potential allies, and unruly or violent ghosts as permanent magic items. Given that you also don't need to get plasm from residue or ghosts anymore, you probably actually will have a better relationship with ghosts in general since you don't need to eat them anymore.
As Ceremonies are bought like merits, you can easily spend 4 of your starting 7 dots on gaining this ceremony at creation and still have dots to spare.
OTHER MUST HAVES
INDUSTRIAL AND BONEYARD
Okay, so industrial and boneyard are really good, and they're mentioned by other players for some good reasons. Boneyard, in short, allows you to take control of a big patch of land and manipulate it, which can range from as little as changing the temperature a little, to turning off every electrical component in a building and putting everyone you don't like in line of sight to sleep. Pretty powerful stuff. However it's Industrial that I want to talk about the most right now as combined with either Caul or Boneyard it is incredibly powerful.
The Industrial Boneyard allows you to take command of a building or area and have full control of all mechanical things in that area. At rank three you have complete control of a single device in that area. At rank four you can move things telekinetically. At rank 5, you can control everything, right to the point of making chairs wrap themselves around someone sitting on them, or even psychicly move the chair over to them THEN wrap them up with it. Powerful right? Well here's the thing. Mechanical devices also includes landmines. Buy a few deactivated landmines, bury them, and then when you need it you can set them off at will. Unmanned automatic weaponry on the walls. Prepped C4 behind the wall plaster. At Rank 5 you can basically kill anything you want in a given area, and best of all you can even do this to your enemy's defences, like say by jamming every single gun their goons posses. Now this won't stop a lot of supernatural threats, particularly those that can acces the spirit world, but it's a damn good start.
The big thing about Industrial though, is combining it with Caul. If you got the Pyre-Flame Caul then you now already have Industrial Caul too. The Industrial Caul basically allows you to store items up to the size of a chainsaw inside your body, and when you want to use them you grow an extra arm for that purpose. Sounds cool right? Well it gets better. At rank four you can basically store a car inside your body, and at rank five you can store a car and five chainsaws. There are, however two major things that you need to clear up with your GM before using this as the rulebook is incredulously unclear about how this works.
1. If you store a car inside your body, does that also store everything that is loose inside the car without counting towards your limit, like say a car full of camping gear, or chainsaws? Personal answer: Yes, but you can't grow extra arms to pull the chainsaws out separate to the car itself.
2. Where does the stored item go? Personal answer: It's metamorphed into a pocket-plane of existence melded inside you. The other answer is it passes over to the Twilight, which would make you look really, really odd to anyone who can see through the twilight. But this is a vitally important question as theoretically, you could fill a car up with all of your fetters, or merge with the fetters themselves. There is nothing on this subject in the book but consequences could range from being able to use one Numina from each fetter every scene at will without ghosts being able to detect them (and thus never suffering the irrational anger of some ghosts), to looking so damned odd having a car sticking out of you in the twilight that it becomes impossible to roll stealth or diplomacy, ever.
Depending on your GM's answer to these questions, Industrial Caul/Boneyard become the best abilities to have after Pyre-Flame Caul. But remember, almost all the cool Industrial and Boneyard stuff are unavailable at character creation as they really kick off at rank three and up, so you will need to spend xp to get the cool stuff making both Industrial and Boneyard nowhere near as useful at creation as either Caul or Pyre-Flame.
MISCELLANEOUS
So there are a lot of other fun combinations and things to try out with Geist, but there is one fundamental rule you need to remember when playing Geist.
DO NOT, GO, TO THE UNDERWORLD.
Okay seriously, the underworld can be fantastic fun, and amazing, and really lets your GM run wild, so when I say that remember that if the plot demands it, go with it. But that said, if you have a choice of doing things without the underworld, go with the other option. The Underworld is the place that everybody fears, including Mages and the True Fae. But not only that, the rulers of the underworld can literally rewrite the rules of what counts as a death sentence at any time. Ask someone a question? Death. Eat something? Walk out with a book the guy in charge gave you and said you could keep no problem? Well it wasn't when he gave it to you but about two seconds before you crossed the threshold to leave the rules of the universe changed so now it's Death. And not just Death, we're going to drop you into the Abyss for ultimate perma-death. Every region of the Underworld is governed by rules, but those rules can be rewritten at any time at a whim. They're also undeniable, the people who enforce those rules don't have a consciousness. They simply know a law has been broken and proceed to enforce the sentence - the rulebook explicitly states that they can't be talked to. Basically, if you don't trust your GM for whatever reason, or if you're playing a game where the NPC characters have living personalities (aren't just plot constructs) which means that a GM would have to break their own immersion to give you an out, don't go into the Underworld. Now granted, both of those points are metagame points, so you can judge the merits of it at your own discretion, but the fact remains that your characters should be terrified. Even if you trust the GM, and you know it's going to be fantastic, your characters should practically never want to set foot in the underworld because it is deadly to you.
Also, the rulebook is entirely unclear as to what happens to your powers when you go to the Underworld. Entirely unclear. Especially the Caul powers which require you to merge with your geist, which is kind of hard when you're both now locked in with physical bodies, with no access to the twilight (meaning that you arguably can't use the Industrial Caul and any items stored in your body are entirely inaccessible, or worse). Wherever possible, STAY in the physical realm, and with the exception of twilight avoid all other realms of existence at all costs.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it. A basic guide to powergaming with the Geist rulebook. At some point if I don't find a better guide somewhere else I might write this up as a full on guide, with colour coding and such. In the meantime, I hope it's been of benefit to the burgeoning Geist players out there, either as a 'how to' or a 'what to avoid'. As for the burgeoning GMs, Geist is a system of amazing possibility, use it wisely and be warned of the Pyre-Flame infinite loop.
Well, I beg to differ. And while I'm going to do some poking around to see if I can find any optimization boards for World of Darkness that includes Geist (if I can't, expect a flood of WOD Optimization entries from me in coming weeks), I'm going to offer my two cents here. Please note, that this ia a mechanics thread and some of these mechanics fundamentally change how your Geist game will operate.
GEIST MUST HAVES:
PYRE-FLAME CAUL
So the first Must Have for Sin Eater is Caul, specifically Pyre-Flame, and this is a Must Have beyond all reason. It's pretty straightforward once you spot it, but I'll walk you through it. The first rank of Pyre-Flame Caul reads as follows:
The Pyre-Flame Caul kindles a flame within the Sin-Eater’s breast that eventually consumes his body. He always feels warm to the touch, as though he’s running a fever, and can cause his body to glow as bright as a bonfire. Anyone trying to attack the Sin Eater suffers his activation successes as a penalty to the attack roll.
PFC is powered by an Occult Roll. So upon activating the Caul, you basically get free defence and a torch you can turn on and off at will. Very useful in dark environments or in games set before the Industrial Revolution. But the real kicker is Caul Rank 2.
The Sin-Eater’s body is a crucible. He can take one point of lethal damage to gain three points of plasm.
Now, if you flick to page 81 where the book deals with plasm (the equivalent to essence, mana or vitae for powering abilities) the following line should be highlighted:
Spending a point of plasm as a reflexive action allows the Sin-Eater to bulwark against a single health level of damage of any type. At the end of the scene, these wounds convert to bashing damage. See “Ectoplasmic Flesh,” on page 172
And on Page 172
A character may spend a single point of plasm as a reflexive action to temporarily negate a single point of damage. The type of damage makes no difference. Plasm readily absorbs the aggravated damage caused by the claws of a rotting ghoul as it does the damage from a gunshot or a beer bottle upside the head.
And thus we have an infinite energy loop. Activating the Pyre-Flame Caul, the Sin Eater inflicts one point of lethal damage on themself to gain three plasm. They then reflexively convert that point of lethal damage down to bashing, which heals in fifteen minutes. In effect, they just gained two points of plasm for free. Repeat until full. You now never have to worry about acquiring plasm again, which is good because the more you learn about the Underworld, the more you learn that the GM can literally rewrite the rules of the game while you're playing it making any sane character actively more terrified of the Underworld than Changelings are from the Fae.
Note: A counter-argument might be that you can't dampen damage made against yourself, but in counter to that other than the fact that the rules clearly state you can do it against any type, you also have recourse to the Stigmata Caul which literally allows you to detach one of your own limbs without causing any damage at all to yourself, and also can cut himself to create a pool of his blood at the cost of one bashing damage. Listen to your GM, but RAW at character creation you can have an infinite energy loop that simultaneously makes you a tank in combat and against ambushes without even needing any skill dots, merits or experience.
CEREMONY BIND ANCHOR ....
The second must have is the ceremony Bind Anchor, p164, that allows you to put ghosts into a new anchor, but also allows you to create magic items called fetters, p201. These fetters allow you to trap a ghost into an item of your choosing, which you may then spend a willpower to make use of their most powerful Numina. So basically, free abilities. However it doesn't quite stop there. Binding a ghost is really simple, and there isn't a penalty for failure. By being a little creative in dialogue, you can probably get the ghost to willingly bind itself to you (it stayed out of the underworld for a reason after all and this is a great way for the ghost to never have to go down there). The GM may point out that the act of having Fetters can cause some ghosts to get instinctively mad at you, but the emphasis there is on some ghosts, and there are ways around that. For example, having abilities that pacify ghosts, a decent persuasion check for ghosts that have the ability to think, or simply not having the Fetters on your person when you don't need them. Only one player in your group really needs this ability, but so long as you can convince your party that it's a moral thing to do (which having done this myself can be quite fun to roleplay) you effectively start looking at good ghosts as potential allies, and unruly or violent ghosts as permanent magic items. Given that you also don't need to get plasm from residue or ghosts anymore, you probably actually will have a better relationship with ghosts in general since you don't need to eat them anymore.
As Ceremonies are bought like merits, you can easily spend 4 of your starting 7 dots on gaining this ceremony at creation and still have dots to spare.
OTHER MUST HAVES
INDUSTRIAL AND BONEYARD
Okay, so industrial and boneyard are really good, and they're mentioned by other players for some good reasons. Boneyard, in short, allows you to take control of a big patch of land and manipulate it, which can range from as little as changing the temperature a little, to turning off every electrical component in a building and putting everyone you don't like in line of sight to sleep. Pretty powerful stuff. However it's Industrial that I want to talk about the most right now as combined with either Caul or Boneyard it is incredibly powerful.
The Industrial Boneyard allows you to take command of a building or area and have full control of all mechanical things in that area. At rank three you have complete control of a single device in that area. At rank four you can move things telekinetically. At rank 5, you can control everything, right to the point of making chairs wrap themselves around someone sitting on them, or even psychicly move the chair over to them THEN wrap them up with it. Powerful right? Well here's the thing. Mechanical devices also includes landmines. Buy a few deactivated landmines, bury them, and then when you need it you can set them off at will. Unmanned automatic weaponry on the walls. Prepped C4 behind the wall plaster. At Rank 5 you can basically kill anything you want in a given area, and best of all you can even do this to your enemy's defences, like say by jamming every single gun their goons posses. Now this won't stop a lot of supernatural threats, particularly those that can acces the spirit world, but it's a damn good start.
The big thing about Industrial though, is combining it with Caul. If you got the Pyre-Flame Caul then you now already have Industrial Caul too. The Industrial Caul basically allows you to store items up to the size of a chainsaw inside your body, and when you want to use them you grow an extra arm for that purpose. Sounds cool right? Well it gets better. At rank four you can basically store a car inside your body, and at rank five you can store a car and five chainsaws. There are, however two major things that you need to clear up with your GM before using this as the rulebook is incredulously unclear about how this works.
1. If you store a car inside your body, does that also store everything that is loose inside the car without counting towards your limit, like say a car full of camping gear, or chainsaws? Personal answer: Yes, but you can't grow extra arms to pull the chainsaws out separate to the car itself.
2. Where does the stored item go? Personal answer: It's metamorphed into a pocket-plane of existence melded inside you. The other answer is it passes over to the Twilight, which would make you look really, really odd to anyone who can see through the twilight. But this is a vitally important question as theoretically, you could fill a car up with all of your fetters, or merge with the fetters themselves. There is nothing on this subject in the book but consequences could range from being able to use one Numina from each fetter every scene at will without ghosts being able to detect them (and thus never suffering the irrational anger of some ghosts), to looking so damned odd having a car sticking out of you in the twilight that it becomes impossible to roll stealth or diplomacy, ever.
Depending on your GM's answer to these questions, Industrial Caul/Boneyard become the best abilities to have after Pyre-Flame Caul. But remember, almost all the cool Industrial and Boneyard stuff are unavailable at character creation as they really kick off at rank three and up, so you will need to spend xp to get the cool stuff making both Industrial and Boneyard nowhere near as useful at creation as either Caul or Pyre-Flame.
MISCELLANEOUS
So there are a lot of other fun combinations and things to try out with Geist, but there is one fundamental rule you need to remember when playing Geist.
DO NOT, GO, TO THE UNDERWORLD.
Okay seriously, the underworld can be fantastic fun, and amazing, and really lets your GM run wild, so when I say that remember that if the plot demands it, go with it. But that said, if you have a choice of doing things without the underworld, go with the other option. The Underworld is the place that everybody fears, including Mages and the True Fae. But not only that, the rulers of the underworld can literally rewrite the rules of what counts as a death sentence at any time. Ask someone a question? Death. Eat something? Walk out with a book the guy in charge gave you and said you could keep no problem? Well it wasn't when he gave it to you but about two seconds before you crossed the threshold to leave the rules of the universe changed so now it's Death. And not just Death, we're going to drop you into the Abyss for ultimate perma-death. Every region of the Underworld is governed by rules, but those rules can be rewritten at any time at a whim. They're also undeniable, the people who enforce those rules don't have a consciousness. They simply know a law has been broken and proceed to enforce the sentence - the rulebook explicitly states that they can't be talked to. Basically, if you don't trust your GM for whatever reason, or if you're playing a game where the NPC characters have living personalities (aren't just plot constructs) which means that a GM would have to break their own immersion to give you an out, don't go into the Underworld. Now granted, both of those points are metagame points, so you can judge the merits of it at your own discretion, but the fact remains that your characters should be terrified. Even if you trust the GM, and you know it's going to be fantastic, your characters should practically never want to set foot in the underworld because it is deadly to you.
Also, the rulebook is entirely unclear as to what happens to your powers when you go to the Underworld. Entirely unclear. Especially the Caul powers which require you to merge with your geist, which is kind of hard when you're both now locked in with physical bodies, with no access to the twilight (meaning that you arguably can't use the Industrial Caul and any items stored in your body are entirely inaccessible, or worse). Wherever possible, STAY in the physical realm, and with the exception of twilight avoid all other realms of existence at all costs.
CONCLUSION
So there you have it. A basic guide to powergaming with the Geist rulebook. At some point if I don't find a better guide somewhere else I might write this up as a full on guide, with colour coding and such. In the meantime, I hope it's been of benefit to the burgeoning Geist players out there, either as a 'how to' or a 'what to avoid'. As for the burgeoning GMs, Geist is a system of amazing possibility, use it wisely and be warned of the Pyre-Flame infinite loop.