Apr 22, 2019, 9:16 PM

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

Would they work with their own sheet section in a simple list like merits, or are they more complicated than that? SO is reading the book and hogging it, so I can't go and look.

Touchstones are linked to the Clarity track at specific points that depend on the character's Composure rating.

  • Max Clarity is Wits + Composure + Icons.
  • First Touchstone is Composure + 1
  • Maximum number of Touchstones available, therefore, is Wits + Icons.
  • An additional Touchstone is a merit.
  • Gaining and losing of Icons is pure RP.
  • If a Touchstone is covered by Clarity damage (minor or severe), they cannot use it.
  • If a Touchstone is lost by reduction in Wits, Composure, or most likely Icons, they can keep it just not use it until they increase Max Clarity. (I assume they could also engage Sanctity of Merits. Can't imagine why not.)

So my challenge is figuring out a friendly system for linking the Touchstone to the Clarity level. Right now I'm going to make people make the Touchstone value equal to the position in the overall list: 1st, 2nd, etc., and the code will work out which Clarity value that is.

However, there are other games that use Touchstones: Vampire. Werewolf, vaguely. Geist. In Vampire and Geist, they're linked to your Power Stat which is far less flexible. (In Geist it's still how well you get along with your ghost friend, so it can go down easier than in many CoD games.) So the Touchstone (*) merit needs to be flexible.

It'll happen. I still have all of Chargen left to go, so it can wait a bit longer before I finalize on it.

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For the insanely nerdy, here's my current notes on the system:
https://gist.github.com/thenomain/c4743193634c3bb05ddc37604e071f4a