/ore/ One Roll Engine General

>Leave an encounter long interference attached to the victim.
Gotcha; makes sense to me! That's a super nasty power bro, I love it.

>To be honest, I tried that and couldn't figure it out at the time, I realised how flexible it was when I saw Hit me? Hit You! on the last thread.
Like I said, what you cooked up is perfectly readible; the Ready to Play Extras and Flaws in WT are meant to serve as much as guidelines for DIY efforts as they are discrete building blocks. It's especially helpful if one expects to have multiple characters with that kind of internal power point economy. i can certainly see it coming in handy.

So as an experiment I thought I'd try stating out Arsene in Monsters and Other Childish Things.

ARSENE

HIDES BY: Vanishing into its kid's subconscious
FAVORITE THING: Stealing

HIT LOCATIONS
1-2.................Fancy, Blade-Lined Legs 6d
>Attacks, Defends, Awesome x1, Wicked Fast x2

3.....................Dapper Attire 3d
>Useful (pockets for hiding things), Tough x2

4-5...............Nimble Claws 8d
>Attacks, Useful (picking locks and pockets), Wicked Fast

6-8..............Wings of Darkness 8d
>Attacks (Wind, Curse), Useful (windy flight), Defends, Awesome x2, Gnarly x2

9.....................Glowy Eyes 5d
>Useful (see the invisible)

10..................Gentleman's Tophat 5d
>Useful (magic tricks)

I figured that you should be able to add one Elemental effect to an Attacks Quality for free (on the grounds that it's as likely to help you as hurt you), and each additional effect cost 1d, hence the point cost on Arsene's Wings of Darkness.

Now, here's the question: what if we gave these locations Wound Boxes on a per die basis? So Arsene's top hat has 5 boxes, his wings have 8 boxes and his legs have 6. That way damage from a fight doesn't make the persona less effective until a location is full of damage. Thoughts?

So one thought I had would be to add a new Monster Quality: Resist. Resist always affects a specific element, so you'd have Resist (Fire).

If you hit a Monster at a location that Reists your element, your attack only inflicts half its normal damage, rounded down. So 1 damage becomes 0.

Resist x2 has the same effect, except the other half of the damage is reflected back as an Area attack.

Resist x3 has the same effect as x1, except for each point of damage cancelled, you can roll an Area die and heal that much damage to your Persona to those locations.

How do these sound? Too complicated? Are elemental resistance too much of a pain in the neck to worry about in a tabletop game?

This approach also makes it so that it's difficult if not impossible for a Persona or Shadow to be untouchable by a specific element, since you'd need to apply the Resistance to each location separately. That way you don't run into a situation where a character is rendered totally useless because his strongest attack just gets absorbed completely by the target.

I've been spending weeks shilling Monsters and other Childish Things anytime anyone brings up Persona campaigns.

It's nice to see my hard work has paid off.

Same here; we've probably been in a few of the same threads.

What do you think about my comments here: >Now, here's the question: what if we gave these locations Wound Boxes on a per die basis? So Arsene's top hat has 5 boxes, his wings have 8 boxes and his legs have 6. That way damage from a fight doesn't make the persona less effective until a location is full of damage. Thoughts?

...
I'll be honest, I don't think that's a positive.
At least, there should be a way to have full immunity.

So my players have decided to improve their standing with their city's parahuman crime force by leasing themselves as bounty hunters to take down some of the town's more dangerous characters. Here's the one that I'm siccing them on next session. His power is below, and the police dossier on the guy is attached.

ERUPTION (1 pt per die)
>Attacks Extras and Flaws [Touch Only-3, Delayed Effect-2, Non-Physical+2, if/then-1 (must have direct skin contact), Traumatic+1] Capacities: Touch
EFFECT: By making direct skin-to-skin contact with a living thing, Crackerjack can reconfigure the chemical composition of their body tissue into a powerful subcutaneous explosive. The longer and more complete the contact (represented by greater Width), the more powerful the explosion.

Crackerjack has no direct control over when these explosives will detonate. Each time Crackerjack uses this power on someone, he rolls 1d. On each subsequent Round, the afflicted character must roll 1d at the start of their Declare phase for each bomb that has been planted in them. If their die matches the one Crackerjack rolled for that bomb, it will detonate at the start of that round’s Resolve phase, before any actions take place. Each subdermal explosive is tracked individually in this manner, and each inflicts Shock and Killing based on the Width of the initial roll to activate this power. Armor cannot protect from this damage.

Crackerjack can defuse his own explosives by touching them; moreover if he is rendered unconscious, any unexploded bombs he’s created will automatically revert into benign subcutaneous cysts.

I'm mostly thinking here of wanting to avoid a situation where a player's thematic choices in their Persona's design makes them sort of terrible against a specific enemy. It's annoying in a single player video game when you get to a boss and discover that one of your party members can barely touch them because they resist or are immune to their element; if that party member was actively controlled by a person, I see it as being crippling.

That said I'm open minded and it's not just my project. I'm just trying to coordinate good ideas we have.

I imagine a full panic on the first contact.

That's what I'm hoping. One of my player characters wears basically a full body catsuit so she'll probably be fine, unless she gets swatted across the face.

The way I plan for the fight to unfold is that he's got a posse of low-lifes that are basically there to run interference and restrain people so he can touch them freely. I doubt anyone's going to die (it's basically the equivalent of 100% armor piercing gunshot) but they're gonna get hurt reeeeal bad.

So...
How many dice does this weirdly named sod throw?

Well my player characters are very high level due to being in a campaign for about 3 years, during which time they've gone from 250 pt characters to about 400 pts.

I'm thinking probably 5d+1wd, but I may bump it up to 6d+1wd. I want to be sure that the power goes off at least once during the fight and from my experience those numbers should to the trick. He's got Willpower to throw around anyway for bonus dice if that's too low to be viable.

It also goes to show how meaningless the point -per-die costs in WT can be. This guy has a very unpleasant, nasty power that's dirt cheap. I could easily make it way, way more dangerous for almost no extra cost, but my goal is to make my players_afraid_ of getting a limb blown off, not to actually do it. He's just the 2 of Clubs; they've got a lot more guys to go through before they reach the Aces.

I have a bit of a challenge for anyone up to it. Can you stat out this vampire seeking missile in wild talents? I was thinking of using the system for a tsukihime inspired setting, but I'm not sure if it or mutants and masterminds fits better.

+100 affection to whoever kills her

How powerful a missile are we talking? Is it like a rocket propelled grenade or is it like an anti-tank weapon?

Add Disintegrate for maximum limb blowing.

So there's really two ways to do this. One would be to build a weapon from the ground up, like this:

VAMPIRE SEEKING MISSILE SYSTEM 6d+2wd (5 pts per die; 70 pts)
pts)
>Attacks+1 Extras and Flaws [Area+5, Penetration+3, (Bulky, Adaptated, Manufacturable) Focus-2, Depleted-1, if/then-1(Wiggle Dice can only be used against Vampire targets), Slow-2] Capacity: Range
EFFECT: This rocket-propelled grenade system is designed with a special guidance system that homes in on targets with vampiric traits, triggering its 2 Wiggle Dice when used against the vile foes. Against all targets it inflicts Width+1 in Shock and Killing, penetrates up to 3 levels of armor, and deals out 5 Killing Area dice. It comes with 7 missiles that must be manually loaded after each fire.

This version is a stand-alone Miracle that you can buy additional dice in for 5 pts a pop. This would work nicely if you want to point to an object in the game world and say "This a vampire seeking missile launcher. It costs 40 pts for the wiggle dice, plus 5 pts per additional die".

However, Wild Talents is a very versatile system, and there's a more abstract-yet-elegant system I think for doing this.

VAMPIRE MISSILE GUIDANCE SYSTEM 2wd (3 pts per die; 24 pts)
>Attacks [Augments+4, if/then-1 (only against Vampiric Targets), Attached-2 (Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher)] Capacity: Range
EFFECT: This special guidance system can be affixed to a conventional rocket propelled grenade weapon, allowing to home in on targets with vampiric traits. In doing so it grants +2wd to the user's dice pool, provided that the target is, indeed, a vampire.

(1/2)

With this, you don't need to worry about recreating the statistics of an RPG-- instead we've created a special power that's attached to the existing weapon. So if you give this to a character with an RPG launcher, you're saying "this character's RPG gets +2wd when shooting Vampires." When you attack a Vampire with it, you're rolling Coordination + Weapon (RPG) + 2wd, and you deal damage according to what the book says an RPG does (Width+1 in Shock and Killing, Penetration 3, Area 5). If this was attached to a more powerful rocket launcher it would inflict even more damage, but it would still cost the same because it's priced for the "vampire seeking" part, not the rocket launcher part.

Figured I'd ask here, since the game finder wasn't giving me any luck. A friend of mine's running a Monsters & Other Childish Things game online, we're looking for 1-3 more players. Game's at 5pm GMT on a Sunday. Anyone want in?

Link to the game's discord: discord.gg/Zp8vAt
It's a single-use link, since Discord won't let me make three-use ones. Post if it's already been used, I'll make another.

This sounds awesome; wish I was in a position to join. Any details about the story?

DM's kept the details hushed up so far, but in broad terms, a bunch of horror movies and stories actually happened in some form, but the bad guys won and rewrote reality to avoid being remembered. The PCs, 10-15 year old students at St Hatebrand's* Catholic School, saw the truth in their dreams somehow, and when they woke up they were bonded with the monsters they dreamt about.

*An actual saint. The GM did not make up that name.

Well this went in a completely different direction than I thought it would.

The character I posted, Arcueid, is a true ancestor (which is like a fey/vampire creature and where vampires descend from) that is responsible for the near extinction of other true ancestors as well as other powerful vampires. At the time of tsukihime, she sleeps and only wakes up when one particular vampire reincarnates - so she can kill him again. The universe itself has a lot of complicated concepts and she in particular has some pretty strange abilities.

She doesn't actually use a missile system, so much as she is the missile system. Although I feel like having access to actual missiles would make her job a lot easier..

Ah, my mistake. I've never seen the source material you referred to so I thought you were being literal.

Someone who knows more about it would probably be able to put her together easily. Does she have any peculiar abilities that we could stat up?

Last Thread

How complex can the resistance/weakness stuff get in the Persona mod?
They could be pretty specific in the actual game.

That's a freaking sweet and super original idea for a Monsters game. If it goes through you have to share the details.

That's all up in the air right now. It really depends on how we decide to implement it.

As it stands, a Persona GM can totally establish a list of common Elements in their setting, and configure the resistances of their Personas and Shadows as they see fit. It could be as simple as "Weaknesses = +1 Damage from attacks, plus Knock Down".

See this post: for how a Persona could theoretically be built in Monsters and Other Childish Things, and the one after for an idea for how Resistances could work.

The other way I thought Resistance could work is a simple 1:1 with Weaknesses. Gain a universal Resistance to one element, and you have to match it with a Weakness to another. It means that you wouldn't end up with enemies with a single weakness and a million resistances, but it could be a fair trade-off for simplicity and playability.

Bump for something I'm working on in a bit...

So let's talk for a second about Stats and Skills in Monsters and Other Childish Things.

In MaOCT, kids have five Stats: Feed, Guts, Hands, Brains and Face. These map pretty easily to the main player stats of Persona:

Feet-----> Diligence
Hands --> Proficiency
Guts ----> (Stays the same)
Brains --> Knowledge
Face ----> Charm

As I see it, each of these can still be associated with the stated body parts, since it's hard to show your manual proficiency if your fingers are busted, and you can't very well out-think someone if you've got a concussion.

In MaOCT, each Stat also has 3 Skills:

FEET (Diligence)- This represents your overall athleticism and ability to move around without looking like a dorkus.
>Dodging (Avoiding attacks)
>Kicking (Putting the boot to stuff, whether people or obstacles
>P.E. (Running, jumping, climbing, etc)

GUTS (Guts)- How tough you are. Also your literal midsection
>Courage (Standing up to bullies and elder gods)
>Wind (How in-shape you are)
>Wrestling (Grabbing onto stuff and not letting go)

HANDS (Proficiency)- Manual dexterity and coordination
>Blocking (stopping things from hitting other things)
>Punching (fighting with purpose)
>Shop (working with your hands)

BRAINS (Knowledge)- How smart and alert you are
>Notice (spotting things before they kill you)
>Out-Think (figuring problems out)
>Remember (book learning)

FACE (Charm)- How cool, clever and popular you are
>Charm (making people like you)
>Connive (lying and tricking people)
>Putdown (sick burns)

These are the skill as written in the vanilla project; question is, should they be changed in any way to make them fit Persona better?

Doing this conversion, I feel like Dodging and Blocking should be swapped for thematic reasons, and that Kicking and Punching should be reflavoured as well, maybe. Emphasize the difference between using them to tackle physical obstacles with aggression and fury vs care and precision, instead just being a matter of which body part you are using. Maybe change Kicking in Brawling? Not sure.

> I feel like Dodging and Blocking should be swapped for thematic reasons
I see where you're coming from, my one thought would be that I feel like it requires a lot more coordination to block a punch coming at you than to try and step out of the way. Then again both require timing and accuracy to pull off, so I'm not so sure. The general idea behind Feet/Diligence is that it represents your overall fitness and physical condition, which may require reworking/redefining Wind, for instance.

>Kicking and Punching should be reflavoured as well, maybe. Emphasize the difference between using them to tackle physical obstacles with aggression and fury vs care and precision
This was my line of thinking too. What if we change Kicking into "Beat Down", since it's the brute force option; whereas Punching could be "Fighting" for more direct strikes?

So you use Fighting to knock a bully onto his back, and then Beat Down to kick him until he stops moving. You can also use Beat Down to kick open a stubborn locker or break a door in.

What about doing stuff like bashing compared to piercing like the attack types in persona? or smt in general, they split the physical types of attacks

So like instead of 'Kicking', its Bashing, where you break stuff with how strong you are, as opposed to Striking instead of 'Punching', where you try to accurately strike vital points

I agree that both Dodging and Blocking require similar amounts of accuracy and timing, and that both could go under Proficiency. In this case, I feel like Dodging fits more under Proficiency because I figured it would require more movement and coordination to move your entire body as opposed to just your arms. As well, Proficiency is the stat that is canonically increased whenever Protag dodges. I see Blocking under Diligence as being representative of persistence in the face of whatever you might be defending yourself from.

I think Wind is fine as is? I see the difference between Guts - Wind and Dilligence - P.E as being the difference between Sustained Exertion vs. Sudden Bursts of Exertion.

I like the contrast between Beat Down and Fighting, though I think it's important to allow the use of Beat Down in direct combat. I like that four of the Stats in MaoCT can be used for combat and dealing damage, and feel that should be preserved.

I can agree with switching Dodge and Block. Maybe change Dodge to "Reflex" so it fits in with Proficiency a bit more naturally?

For Beat Down, the way I saw it, the distinction is that it's kind of for attacking things that can't or won't fight back. It's similar to A Dirty World where you roll Vigor + Courage in a fair fight and Vigor + Wrath to beat on the inferior.

A bully can use Beat Down against a nerd who's too timid to fight back; it's to his advantage because it allows him to manhandle the kid and show off how much stronger and tougher he is. The nerd, though, remembers his idol Bruce Lee and taps into his Relationship with Kung Fu Cinema and rolls Fighting to hit him back. The attack wreck the bully and he goes down, and then the Kid unleashes with Beat Down.

I_think_ it works because Fighting is ONLY for fighting people, whereas Beat Down can work on inanimate objects, but it *doesn't* work on things that can fight back. That's how I see it at least.

I also figure that we can change "Remember" into "Academics" since that's more in line with its intended purpose (and it lines up with another Persona skill from P3)

>I_think_ it works because Fighting is ONLY for fighting people, whereas Beat Down can work on inanimate objects, but it *doesn't* work on things that can fight back. That's how I see it at least.

I could see that. I've read through the Core Rules for MaoCT and most of the supplements a few times, but I've not had the opportunity to actually play the game myself (my attempts to run Games always end before we can even get to character creation).

Well the balance we need to strike is between the Stats "feeling" right from a thematic standpoint and actually playing correctly. Remember in MaOCT, hit locations are a thing. So if a Kid gets hurt the dice come up 1, that's damage to his Feet, so he twisted his ankle or something.

On the one hand it works nicely for us, since by making the stats more abstract they allow for different kinds of damage (drain a character's Diligence and he's too exhausted to go on), but we also should be sure to remember that not ALL conflicts are psychological. Sometimes that dick Rico decides to give you an old-fashioned Hurtz Donut and almost breaks your pinky for Hands damage.

Here's what the book says about it that we should keep in mind:

>When you take a hit in a conflict and lose dice from a stat, you and the GM need to decide how it happened and how to play it out. Getting hit in the “Hands” means your manual dexterity has been hurt in some way. That could mean a bruising punch in the arm, or it could mean that the other guy embarrassed or frightened you so badly that you’re shaky and weak, or selfconscious and clumsy.

>A “hit” to your Brains leaves you rattled and confused. And so on. This flexibility is supposed to encourage you to diversify your character a bit. Each stat has a skill under it which is useful in a scrap. If your Feet get knocked out from under you, then it’s Handy to be good at Punching.

mechanics wise, how is Godlike different from Wild Talents?

They're practically identical. The few differences I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Superhumans have a special pool of Will Points that are used to buy powers instead of having them just be part of the character point total.

2. Powers are less reliable; every fight between Talents is a battle of willpower unless one or both have the Robust quality attached to their ability

3. Extras and flaws are different and the specifics of how to create a power aren't quite the same. The system is more inclined towards creating characters that have One Weird Trick they can do instead of a wide array of powers (but both still work).

4. The skill list is different, since Godlike is specifically about playing during WWII, but that's not really a big deal.

The actual pencil, paper and dice parts of the games aren't very different at all, it's mostly the behind the scenes stuff.

Also, I'm off for tonight, hopefully we can continue this discussion tomorrow. Some good stuff here.

One last thing: do you think Wrestling still fits along side Beat Down and Fighting?

Oh boy how could I forget that! Hopefully the synthetic limb clinic will be open after the fight is over.

I'm not sure it does anymore. I'm not sure what you might replace it with either. If we wanted to add another skill related to combat, I would consider adding a Marksmanship skill (depending on how much you want to hew to P5 over P3 & P4), but that wouldn't really fit under Guts.

Maybe we could associate a Marksmanship skill with Diligence, representing your ability to focus and steady yourself both physically and mentally when handling a firearm or similar weapon, remove Blocking from Diligence, rename it Resistance or Resilience, and then put it under Guts, representing your ability not necessarily just to defend yourself from incoming attacks, but to withstand things like inclement weather or other similar environmental hazards? Useful for things too indiscriminate to be Evaded.

If we decided to include a Marksmanship skill.

>Resilience
I like it.

I currently am full up on players but two spots might open up. Here's the text dump on the setting.

>You've been having dreams, weird fucking dreams. They look exactly like those old horror stories from the 70s and 80s. Moving comics about superhero Dracula, black and white luchador serials where they wrestle monsters, and slasher flicks about nightmare creatures killing stupid teenagers. The stories you've been dreaming always end with one thing, the heroes lose to the villains and the bad guys warped reality so nobody ever remembered them.

>Now this would be weird enough by itself but the weirdest part? They're real. They've been talking to you, helping you out at school, and even if nobody else see's them you do. So what is it? Did the villains really win or are you just crazy?

>You are a 10-15 year old kid at St Hatebrand's Catholic School. The school has nuns, a church, everything that can squash your hopes, dreams, and creativity. The worst part is they are incredibly strict. The music, movies, and books that the Decency Laws make illegal is pretty easy to find at a public school but here it's nearly impossible and if you get caught? Well let's say there are worse things than detention!

If you're still interested even though my game isn't Jojo or Persona contact me on Discord.

Username: NoEyesZalgo#1547

>mfw I already shilled for this same game ITT
well this is awkward

Morning bump

As I said to the other guy, I wish I could be in on this because this idea rules so hard. MaOCT doesn't need to be Jojo or Persona to be awesome; it's great on its own.

I love the idea of a marksmanship skill but I think it should go under Proficiency, since it's a fine, precise skill vs Diligence which is more about overall physical conditioning.

So how about if we replace Wresting with Fighting and replace Punching with Aiming? That way you can use it to shoot a gun, pass a basketball or throw eggs at the principal's car.

So how about this:

FEET (Diligence)- This represents your overall athleticism and ability to move around without looking like a dorkus.
>Block (stop things from hitting other things)
>Beat Down (Hit stuff that can't hit back, like trash cans and prone victims)
>P.E. (Running, jumping, climbing, etc)

GUTS (Guts)- How tough you are. Also your literal midsection
>Courage (Standing up to bullies and elder gods)
>Wind (How in-shape you are)
>Fighting (Facing off against foes who can fight back)

HANDS (Proficiency)- Manual dexterity and coordination
>Reflexes (getting out of harms way)
>Aiming (shoot your dad's hunting rifle, pass a basketball, throw rotten eggs)
>Shop (working with your hands)

BRAINS (Knowledge)- How smart and alert you are
>Notice (spotting things before they kill you)
>Out-Think (figuring problems out)
>Academics (book learning)

FACE (Expression)- How cool, clever and popular you are
>Charm (making people like you)
>Connive (lying and tricking people)
>Putdown (sick burns)

I've still got Block as a Diligence skill; I've replaced Wrestling with Fighting and Punching with Aim. I feel pretty good about these changes but the discussion is far form over.

Regarding moving Block to Guts, it makes sense, but my qualms are:

1. What would we switch it with? We could do Wind but the reason Wind is in Guts is for "getting the wind knocked out of you". That said it does fit well with Diligence too.

2. I like the idea that Diligence lets you stand your ground physically (Block) while Guts lets you do it emotionally (Courage).

Wild Talents (among others) conversion guide for Base Raiders (written by the creator) from another thread:

So since we have character skills more or less in place, the question we need to approach is "What are the key elements of Persona that need to be added to Monsters and Other Childish Things"? Like, is it *necessary* to have a Persona spell/skill list? Or is "can attack with Ice" enough?

(disclaiming that I've only every plaid Shin M. T. and might not actually know what you're talking about)

M&OCT already has recommended monster "classes"
Elemental: Add "attack" to every part
Vegetable: Add "tough" to every part
Inside Out: [something else really vague]

I recommend making *better* and *just suggestion* types though.

cont.
Gonna note this for other M&OCT fans, I find that in-play monsters tend to come in limited types anyway. There're beast types, physical damage hybrid and large animals (giant wolf, half man half shark pro-wrestler, giant bug); incarnations, monsters that embody an element and associated concept (a snowman who freezes at the touch and induces apathy representing both meanings of the word "cold", a black ghost arm with invisibility who can literally see secrets themed around shadiness and subterfuge, a living fireplace with the power to rouse suppressed passion... including guilt that represents both "holiday spirit" and "infernal punishment"); and cranky and/or crazy wizard/witch types who are so warped with exaggerated age that the can be considered ghouls or monsters more than humans.

Then they follow particular subtypes:

Beast: Normal But Bigger, Animal/Human Hybrid, Gross; combined with a grounded and subtle theme with a contradiction, such as "conventionally disgusting but well meaning", "in tune with a bestial nature but driven to uphold a strict code of honor" or "overly protective of all children but compulsively driven to frenzies of extreme rage"
^physically powerful and challenging but fun to RP as

Incarnation: literally any aspect of the human emotional range, a single element and a single NOT SUBTLE related theme (note: "elements" don't need to be natural, a golem of spark-plugs and gears who upholds order and systemic perfection OR takes joy in and tries to support all types of innovation)
^usefuls centered around their themes making them situational aces for the player

Humanoid: Crazy Old Wizard a little out of touch with reality, Mysterious Old Witch who may have hidden purposes, Peaceful Giant of few words who's in tuned with nature, Cunning Plotter who's basically Jafar
^LOADED with usefuls that are as good as getting the players into trouble as they are for getting them out, and also making settings richer with shenanigans

Persona has the same thing, except the classes are connected with Tarot Arcana, so that Persona of the Emperor Arcana tend to be powerful, domineering figures, whereas Persona of the Lovers Arcana are usually gentler, healing types. Magicians are usually tricksters, Empresses are regal and matriarchial, Moons are mysterious, etc...

Discussions about Arcana are tricky because in the previous thread we kind of came to an understanding that we don't want them to impose harsh limits, but rather serve as guidelines for how a Shadow or Persona should behave and what abilities it *should* have instead of what it *can't* have.

I do think that the Arcana should have sone kind of mechanical effect, although I'n not exactly sure what.

Maybe each card grants bonuses to certain kinds of actions, depending on what Arcana that character has?
I'm thinking maybe each card has a single mental action bonus that applies to the human a physical one that applies to the persona; Strength could give a bonus to willing through something fir the human while giving the persona bonuses to something like close combat.

Hmm not a bad idea. A Feedback loop.

One idea that was proposed previously is that you assign an Arcana to your Relationships, and the rank of that Relationship gives you Monster Dice that you can use to create Side-Personas that compliment your main persona. These aren't as versatile as your main persona-- they can only do a couple things and can't take as much damage-- but they let you do things in and out of combat that your Persona may not be able to.

So as an example, if you have a Relationship with a Magician (someone linked with learning and skill, like a teacher or a fellow student), you get 5 monster dice per rank in that relationship. So you can use those dice to make a Jack Frost with 4d in Attacks(Ice) and Useful(frozen hijinks).

If you improve your Magician to rank 2, you get another 5d that you can use to improve your Jack Frost, or you can turn them into another Magician Persona with some other ability.

This feeds-back into your kid by having more voices trying to influence them; having powerful Magician Personas floating around your psyche encourages you to try and outwit and trick people, maybe offering you bonus dice to do so.

Unrelatedly, I'm SO GLAD the series did away with those, like, 35 weirdly intuitive and inconsistent demon types

Hmmm. If you trust your players and they at least loosely understand all the Arcana archetypes allowing them to opt into classification and encouraging them to live up to them in their own way in stating and RPing characters will be all you need. If that works then the "classes" will have mechanical weight.

If they haven't played the game or you think power-gaming will be an issue, limiting certain types of qualities (or those types of useful of certain strengths) to certain Arcana might be useful, such as limiting all heal-other abilities or healing abilities with more than so many dice exclusively to Lovers, though this doesn't apply just to Usefuls. Putting minimums or maximums on the number of dice one can invest in attacking/defending parts or speedy/tough/sweet bonuses might add depth. Alternatively, altering the prices of Usefuls and Qualities based on Arcana (such as the Awesome quality costing 3 XP for Emperors as opposed to the usual 5xp) might be viable if a little more complicated and harder to balance.

It should be noted though, as always, that Awesome is broken as hell and needs to cost more dice than the PDF suggests. I suggest cutting Awesome into parts. A homebrew "Exacting" quality that simply guarantees a free "called shot" combined with Gnarly (adds 1 to all succeeding Attack sets) and Sweet (adds 1 to all succeeding Useful sets) basically adds up to the vanilla's Awesome quality.

I just assumed each PC would only be able to have one Persona. With multiple PCs in a session allowing side personas could lead to versatility/skillsetoverlap overload if it's not done carefully. (also a lack of defined character concepts)

I'm sure either could be done OK though.

The way I see tgings, only one PC per gane should be able to have wildcard-esque abilities, similar to the games. That, or it's a trait that you can add onto your character to give them those capabilities while severely powering down their initial persona.

I'm glad we're having this discussion because it's something we need to work out: what place, if any, should Wild Cards have in the game?

We shouldn't want to end up in a situation where one person is special because they can have multiple Personae. Moreover, the strength of MaOCT, and Persona to a certain extent, is the feel and aesthetics of "this is my Monster. It's unique to me, and it's a part of me." One of the complaints about Persona 5 in particular is that Arsene is an awesome, evocative design and it sucks that he becomes obsolete before the end of the first Palace. Meanwhile the other party members have unique, interestingly designed Personae that are never obsolete.

I suppose, then, there are three options:

1. Everyone is a Wild Card that acquires a collection of Personae based on their Relationships. This is perhaps the "Pure Persona" route.

2. Nobody is a Wild Card: your Persona is yours, and it is your only one. It may evolve (which brings into mind Persona 1 and 2), but you keep it from beginning to end. This is perhaps the "Pure MaOCT" route.

3. Main-Sub Personas. Everyone has a Main Persona, but they can summon Sub-Persona with limited, specific abilities for certain tasks. These Sub Personas are linked to your Relationships. This is a mix between #1 and #2.

4. You can be a Wild Card, but at a cost. Maybe you don't have a Main Persona, or maybe it's not as good as everyone else, so you make up for it by having a bunch of other, lesser Personas at your disposal. This is the "Pure Persona" route. Personally I don't like this one, but your mileage may vary.

We could, of course, include rules for all 4 options so the GM and players can choose.

Doh, meant to say four options

Personally, 2 and 4 are my favorites since it still lets the party members have a specific niche they can fill without other party members butting in on it too easily.
But as you said, we can just do them all and let GMs decide.

3 is the way Persona Q does it.

Hey! Does anyone have that guide for converting WoD to ORE? I want to run an Orpheus game but I hate the White Wolf system.

Oh man there's actually an ORE conversion specifically for Orpheus *somewhere* but I can't for the life of me find it. I think it was posted on /tg in the distant past but Google is failing me.

Found it!

>mediafire.com/file/4ws4dt616v215az/OREpheus.pdf

Also for good measure, One Roll Exalted:
>tricktonic.com/ORExalted/

I'm watching letplays now so I can give an actually informed opinion. I've run Monsters &OCT though.

If personas are going to be as customizable as Monsters (able to pick things up, operate independently of the PC, or to have any Useful) you NEED to limit each PC to one persona AND stress that a persona is a unified thing of its own and should read like a unified character concept, and not a deck for your player to hold their abilities. Lemme tell you, Monsters are supposed to be statted to fit a character concept and can get broken as HECK if they're powergamed and the DM doesn't know how to negotiate limits before char creation.

If, however, persona are just going to have the same types of moves they have in the games, even if their moves can be stretched (a little) to fulfill utility purposes, then collecting sub-persona should be fine.

On a side note, I encourage you to fix party balancing by limiting powergamers' non-niche abilities EARLY (like, before or immediately after first session--limit the scope of what to-often-useful abilities can be used for) and to bring any far less optimal builds up to speed with the party by helping the player, giving them tactical advice, and helping them expand their Usefuls into things they like, fit their original concept, and will actually be useful. Don't just pile weaker players with bonus XP hoping the issue will resolve itself.

This falls in line with my experience with the game as well. Since the game we're aiming at is, mechanically, 90% MaOCT and 10% Persona, the best result relies on the vanilla rules, recontextualized into Persona, instead of trying to impose Persona rules onto the core game.

So what we should do, then, is present Option 2 as the Default and Preferred Choice, but give rules for the other three if the GM and players really want them.

Also as far as skills are concerned, I'm thinking that there's no real point to hard-coding the Persona spell/skill list into the game; the players will normally get more enjoyment out of describing how their Persona rips the enemy apart instead of saying "I use Lunge!" or "I use Cleave!", etc...

Since you've got experience with MaOCT, what do you think about the question of Wound Boxes at the end of this post: . How would this affect the game do you think?

I think stuff like "wields thunder" or "curses things" is enough. The spell lists are mostly in the game just because it's an RPG, and the closest thing to those spells we should get are the buff/debuff spells.

Yeah, and most are "Lightning", "Lightning+1" and "Lightning MAX"

Yeah, and that mechanic already exists by giving a location Gnarly to inflict more damage.

Question: Should we change the names of the Quality Extras to make them more Persona-esque? Wicked Fast, Gnarly, Awesome, etc...

While I don't think it's *necessary*, I certainly don't mind it. I like the refluffing aspect of things.

>That way damage from a fight doesn't make the persona less effective until a location is full of damage. Thoughts?

In M&OCT the ongoing damage making a part less effective is supposed to simulate gruesome monsters taking pieces out of each other, and tension and desperation rising as wings getting tattered and bloody. It also makes it easier to "get" the current state of the fight and makes HP less abstract. I really like this personally, but I can understand why you might want a "they're A-OK until they're not" for battles that have more foes than PCs, battles that are fought in consecutive rounds where the later rounds are supposed to be close calls with a (non-defensive) berserker high. Consider how well these tonal changes complement or drag down the feeling of the series on your own, I'm only a few hours into the Letsplay. There are some mechanical complications though, and I'm going to explore them out-loud.

cont.

Specializing each part is really OP in vanilla. With the way qualities work making one part "pure attack part" and one "pure defensive" part is plainly more optimal than having versatile parts but the downside is that if one part is badly damaged or temporarily incapacitated (I can see ice, curse, or chain themed Usefuls doing this) you're out of whatever that part did, thus insensitivizing having at least two parts with any quality you NEED. Similarly, making few body parts with loads of dice is plainly better, a 10d+ part with loads of qualities is a MONSTER and, though very susceptible to incapacitating Usefuls, hard as hell to beat down. While generally better, people often find these builds boring to use.

Taking away the ability to reduce a parts strength with damage, even if a part can still be KO'ed, makes specialized and loaded up builds way stronger, as well as part-incapacitating Usefuls stronger.

Spec and loaded builds are already above curve so you'd need either a) every enemy and PC knowing this and knowing to spec themselves more-than-less like this, b) guidelines limiting how much one can do this (like "each persona must have A or B many parts, each additional instance of the same quality on the same part costs X more" or something like "each part starts out with 2d just for existing though it must have at least one dice spent on it, each hitbox this part contains gets it 4, not 5, extra dice to spend on it") and/or c) some sort of system that makes specialized parts less effecitve (such as a Pokemon-like elemental system, optionally making each additional attack type on a single part cost progressively more).

Any of these should be good enough. Incapacitating Usefuls barely ever get used in combat in vanilla and can be dooped simply by having two equally strong Attack parts so the advantage this change brings them over standard Attacks should be really good for them.

I don't know if it's even a good idea to translate qualities 1 for 1. Persona has a different fanbase than M&OCT and balance is more important, so if we have them at all they should probably be redone.

If we do have them, renamed would certainly be better unless most of the players are already familiar with Monster and it would confuse them. The names in monsters were meant to make parts sound like vivid descriptions from monster novels (etc. clenched in their awesome jaws, cleaved by their gnarly claws, whipped by their wicked fast tail). If we're not running with the holliwood monster theme, which I presume we aren't they should at the least be simplified and made easier to read. (ex. Wicked = "Speed", Gnarly = "Attack", Tough = "Defense", Sweet = "Handy", Awesome = should cost more, be modified or be taken out)

Once what qualities are going to be in-game are decided upon, we can name them however we want... but maybe we should avoid any non-cannon elemental-sounding terms that aren't actually elemental attacks. Having "Lightning" describe a part might be weird is the same word is also the gist of an attack type. If the persona fanbase is already used to "Lightning" = "just fast, not a damage type" than that's OK though.

As far as Elements are concerned, we should more or less leave that up to the GM of a given game. Elements aren't even consistent between Persona games; 1-2 have stuff like Nuclear and Water, 3-4 removed those entirely, 5 added Nuclear back and gave us Psi and then gave pure attacking skills for Curse and Bless.

One of the sections should be for the GM to figure out the Elements of their game. The primary thing for Elements is the Weakness/Resistance system, unless we want to implement P5's Technical Attack system that rewards you for taking certain actions against enemies under certain conditions.

on a scale of 1 to 10 how complex is a game of MaOCT?

I think we should just use 5's elemental system, and give GMs a little note talking about how they can add and remove elements as they please.

Where 1 is Lasers and Feelings and 10 is GURPS Vehicles, probably a 4.

Makes sense, although I think there are 6 traditional elements in SMT: Fire, Ice, Electric, Wind, Dark, Light, plus Almighty which is kind of outside the norm. Or am I forgetting one?

Also I wrote a quick thing up as an introduction to the idea of MaOCT + Persona

I'd like to hear arguments for- and against how Elemental Weaknesses should be handled.

>Idea 1: Resist Extra
The way I see it, a Monster's Tough extras should only affect "physical" (read: non-Elemental) damage. If you want to have defense against Elements you need to pick the "Resist" Extra, but Resist only gives you armor against 1 Element; each added Element costs 1d.

(Not sure how Weaknesses fit into this yet)

>Idea 2: Trade-Offs
Weaknesses double damage taken from attacks; Resistances cut them in half. A Persona or Shadow's weaknesses and resistances must balance out (that is, if you have 2 Resistances you must have 2 Weaknesses).

2 seems the most reasonable to me, although shadows at least should be able to have unbalanced resistances and weaknesses since they could in the games.

Whether or not there's elemental resistance, and how common it is, is pretty crucial to balancing character creation. We can't leave it on the fence.

I'd say 3/10

Simplifying it, if we can do that without loosing flavor, would be best, but other than that we should stick to the most generic cannon available. It should be easy as heck to memorize a ttg's elemental edges, and if GMs can make their own enemies we should be going for resistances and weaknesses that follow a consistent pattern and can be guessed from an encounter's themes and the enemy's descriptions. For instance, that like is resistant to like and weak against its opposite so something firy will always be res to fire and weak to ice?

Realistically, I read you, but I'm n

Adding or subtracting 1 or 2 dice makes a huge difference in ORE, I don't think we should bother with doubling or having anything.

===

I'm just throwing this out there, what if every spell you learn adds 1 res to that element and 1 vulnerability to the opposite? A hack-and-slash plated knight will be resistant to Melee but weak to Guns, an Icy Weeping Angle typed thing will be resistant to Ice and Holy but weak to Fire and Curse.

>so something firy will always be res to fire and weak to ice?
We should most definitely not do this. An angelic persona in the games is just as likely to be weak to curse as it is to resist or deflect it, or even be neutral to it. Not only that, it's unnecessarily restricting.

>I'm just throwing this out there, what if every spell you learn adds 1 res to that element and 1 vulnerability to the opposite? A hack-and-slash plated knight will be resistant to Melee but weak to Guns, an Icy Weeping Angle typed thing will be resistant to Ice and Holy but weak to Fire and Curse.
I'm not really feeling it. Not only do the resistances/weaknesses of persona not really change as they level up it's a little weird to force certain kinds of persona to have certain weaknesses just because of their playstyle.

Here's the beginning of the section on Characters. Pretty straight-foward so far.

>For instance, that like is resistant to like and weak against its opposite so something firy will always be res to fire and weak to ice?
In MaOCT you can roll Brains + Out-Think (I believe, might be Brains + Notice) to suss out weaknesses in Monsters, so this definitely fits the mechanics. I'd also say it's definitely a good idea to encourage a GM to provide "tells" in the description of an enemy as to what it might be weak to. Remember, each attack in Persona takes seconds to resolve, whereas in ORE, which has a very fast resolution system compared with other tabletop games, it's going take a good bit longer; and if it turns out that you just happened to pick the wrong element because you had no information on what might work, then it's just going to be frustrating.

Good stuff.
It's going to be awkward to balance the traits under this setting and redefined names, but this is definitely a great start.