May I ask everyone’s experience or views on dealing with vulnerabilities of supernaturals, particularly for PCs, particularly vampires? Might there be a good way to have player input on whether vamps are subject to sunlight, fire, holy stuff, etc. in a way that everybody can live with? How do you decide how much or how many vulnerabilities to include? Thanks!
May I ask everyone’s experience or views on dealing with vulnerabilities of supernaturals, particularly for PCs,…
May I ask everyone’s experience or views on dealing with vulnerabilities of supernaturals, particularly for PCs,…
When we played our Roman Heist story we decided at the table which of the typical vulnerabilities affected the vampire. This way, we all were able to agree on what could be used, when, and by whom.
It’s a question that the EmCee could ask during character creation or during the first few sessions or establish before-hand if none of the players are using the vampire but there will be some in the city.
It may be too late, but my favorite approach to this kind of thing is to take up the weaknesses of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and demons with players before choosing playbooks. Not only does this mean that a given player has to take into account that they might not get the playbook they want, but players not planing to play them will also have input and you don’t have to be the bad cop. If you have the right kind of players, you might end up with really interesting critters like vampires who have to be staked with iron and buried head-down, or werewolves that are subject to normal weapons but are lion-sized giants like the Bête de Gevaudon.
If you want to look for inspiration yourself, Amazon has a good collection of $1(ish) books from before legends became all limited and consistent. The Book of Were-Wolves is a good example.
We had one Vamp who fed on emotions, so I asked that player what the deal was with that breed of vampires—”the breathtakers.” She wanted to be able to hang out with the other PCs in sunlight, so we said they could do that, and the NPCs of that breed ended up being less desperate (and thus less dangerous, and less relevant to the campaign) as a result. Then I just made up whatever rules I wanted for the other two breeds of vampires (deciding that the flesheaters disintegrate in sunlight—and are thus so restricted in movement and diet that they’re just cleanup crew cronies for others who can pay in fresh corpses—and the bloodsuckers who are just powerless and in pain in sunlight are precisely at the intersection of desperate and deadly that they ended up as major antagonists).
I just asked the Vamp player. “What are you weak against?” and also later asked if all vampires were the same.
Put it in their court
Whoever grabs a playbook, that player dictates what the kind of critter is like in the setting. Mistress of Ceremonies handles everyone that doesn’t get picked.