Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Mercurius 07-05-06, 03:07 PM	Greetings, all. I don't know if this has been addressed before (and if it has, please let me know), but I want to get some constructive feedback on something. I like Heroes of Horror. It's a fun supplement that gives me a lot of ideas. And I like the *idea* of the Taint system, where-in Evil takes on a tangible, warping presense for characters, and those who face Evil do not walk away unscathed. My problem with HoH's taint is its severity. Particularly in the Corruption half of taint, the lowest rung of tainted traits are severely hampering (such as -10' to base speed :eek: ). Considering that even one point of corruption taint could lead to these horrible conditions, I am loath to introduce such features. A speed reduction like that is a horrible penalty to a character, and I don't think it serves any real benefit to the enjoyability of the game. In campaigns where taint rules are this severe, I'd definitely pick up the feat that makes me immune to taint entirely. So, what I want is some better ideas for Taint (Corruption and Depravity), particularly for the low levels. I was thinking of something like penalties to certain stats (no worse than a -2 penalty to two stats), possibly with a Will or Fort save (depending on the type of taint) to ignore the effects in any given day (so, if you have a low amount of corruption, maybe you have to make a DC 15 Fortitude save or suffer a -2 penalty to jump and tumble checks for 24 hours). Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone already taken a stab at this? Once I get access to my copy of HoH again, I'll see about throwing something together, but I figured I'd get the ball rolling and see if anyone else has any input. Thanks a lot for your time and help.
Hozart 07-09-06, 09:11 PM	Personally, and I don't think this is a solution, I just use the depravity taint rules. A character who constantly commits heinous acts starts to go more and more insane, and I'm fond of this concept. The corruption however, is, as you've already mentioned, so damn penalizing, that in my campaign one only takes these penalties they fall into a charnel bog or the like.
Mercurius 07-10-06, 02:00 PM	Yeah, it might be best just to use Corruption. I've been using a modified Sanity system since I read d20 Call of Cthulu, and I liked the idea of mental erosion via sanity, as well as spiritual and physical corruption via Taint... Might not bother with Taint at all... This begs the question, I suppose: What's the best way to retrofit all the Taint dependant elements in HoH then? Especially Taint Elementals. I just like the idea of them for some reason... Maybe some sort of disease or CON damage/drain or something...
Hozart 07-11-06, 08:49 PM	Well, for Taint Elementals, I let them keep their ability to hit someone with corruption, and in turn the corruption penalties in the book are still dealt. It's pretty much a poisonous attack, which one needs to get rid of through atonement, or to embrace. However, I did change the amount of taint necessary before symptoms start showing up. Depending on your constitution (10 is used in this example), I instead say that mild taint (1-5) doesn't show up till what is currently moderate taint (so 6-17 before mild symptoms), moderate taint doesn't show up until what is currently severe taint (so 18-41 before moderate symptoms), and severe taint doesn't show up till Dead/Insane threshold (I say from 42-91). And you're dead at 91. For more exact calculations, I multiplied the 42+ threshold by 13/6 and add 2 I think. The main reason I don't really like to have corruption too much except as mainly environmental hazards and monster attacks, is because particularly vile BBEG, who commits atrocities any time he gets the chance, may very well just fall down dead from too much corruption. To me, that doesn't make much sense, and I'd much rather have him go insane.