MISERYWORM: Wither Away

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
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ChrisDDickey
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MISERYWORM: Wither Away

Post by ChrisDDickey » Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:19 am

I don't really like how the Wither Away horror power gives a result in pounds lost per month. It seems balanced so that a human withers away over the course of 3 - 5 months. Appropriately horrifying. But a 900 pound Obsidiman withers away over the course of several years. And a 13 pound windling that looses step 24 pounds per month goes down awfully fast. I think the mechanics should have been balanced such that all races wither away over 3-5 months.

TheOracle
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Re: MISERYWORM: Wither Away

Post by TheOracle » Mon Jul 02, 2018 9:13 am

ChrisDDickey wrote:
Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:19 am
I don't really like how the Wither Away horror power gives a result in pounds lost per month. It seems balanced so that a human withers away over the course of 3 - 5 months. Appropriately horrifying. But a 900 pound Obsidiman withers away over the course of several years. And a 13 pound windling that looses step 24 pounds per month goes down awfully fast. I think the mechanics should have been balanced such that all races wither away over 3-5 months.
The same goes for the Nethermancer spell of the same name.

ChrisDDickey
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Re: MISERYWORM: Wither Away

Post by ChrisDDickey » Mon Jul 02, 2018 8:20 pm

Ah, I had not noticed that spell. I have never had call to read the high circle Nethermancer spells since my first read-though of the book years ago.

Sill, I think both ought to be something like percent of body weight, or something rather than pounds. As it is, the damage is pounds, and the severity of the damage is measured in percent of body weight. Just do that damage in % of body weight directly and the racial problem goes away.

Bonhumm
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Re: MISERYWORM: Wither Away

Post by Bonhumm » Mon Jul 02, 2018 10:40 pm

It could be seen as an infection or maybe cancer.

The infections would eat 'X amount' of calories worth of tissues per day, it does not care about the size of the larder (i.e. the name giver).

Similarly, a cancer would turn 'X amount' of healthy cells into cancerous cells per day. The size of the organs being unrelated to the progress. Thus a bigger liver would take longer to die than a smaller one.

Diseases (even artificial/magical ones) are not fair, most of them will hurt/kill babies a lot faster than a wrestler exactly because they have less resources to call upon.

But then we could start arguing on how do Windling survives hits from weapons that are both bigger and heavier than themselves so I guess it's ultimately in the hands of the GM.

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