So, to recap: The other day I asked for helping in renaming an Embed. Someone called “darkfool” commented and gave us “Last Place You Look,” which we felt was pretty spot-on. I then asked darkfool to pick a number, 1 to 80. darkfool picked 8, so I count down 8 in the list of Embeds, and that gives us…Hush.
This one has popped up in playtest, but maybe you’d be interested to see how it works system-wise?
Hush
A skilled Destroyer can kill or incapacitate a target without either of them ever making a sound. The demon strikes the victim’s throat or solar plexus, silencing him, and then continues the assault. This Embed does not silence the sound of a weapon, firearm or otherwise, and so if the intended victim manages to produce a weapon to protect himself, the effect ends. Until then, though, no sound escapes the combatants and only muffled thuds result from them colliding with surfaces. A Destroyer can beat a man to death in kitchen with the people in the dining room none the wiser, provided he does it quickly.
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Brawl – Defense
Action: Reflexive
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The character’s first strike causes a loud, jarring, high-frequency sound. In addition to alerting anyone nearby who might be listening, the demon also runs the risk of blowing his Cover. The player should immediately make a compromise roll with a +1 modifier.
Failure: The Embed does not take effect, and combat makes the usual amount of noise.
Success: Combat makes no sound until either a number of turns elapses equal to the successes rolled or one combatant uses a weapon, whichever comes first. Even incidental noise (one participant being slammed up against a wall) produces only a muffled thump. Note that in order to use a weapon, the combatant’s player must make a roll to do so (a Weaponry or Firearms roll). Simply drawing the weapon does not break the effects of Hush.
Exceptional Success: The demon may target his opponent’s throat with no specified target penalty for one strike. If this strike connects, in additional to inflicting 0L damage, the demon inflicts the Mute Condition (p. XX) on the target for the duration of the fight.
Comments
9 responses to “New Embed: Hush”
Wow, thanks for sharing this. 🙂
Now we need to find some ways to earn a few more… >.>
Oh, I’m sure there will be opportunities. 🙂
Excuse me for my (probably) bad English. In Soviet Russia language learns you.
I think it’s kinda narrow. Only bare-handed fighting? I’m afraid that unarmed opponent is already weak. There is no need for silencing the harmless.
Also, I remembered old saying. “Never bring a knife to a gunfight.” It’s not about knife and gun, but idea is the same.
Because I have players who like to find odd uses for powers I like to try and ask myself questions before using them at the table. Here’s what comes to mind for me seeing this:
Could a demon with Hush strike himself or a friendly target, such as another demon in the circle in order to quietly cause some destruction? For example, if the Destoryer were to use Hush on an Interrogator friend the two of them could have a few rounds to bash down a door without making noise. Or, to preserve the ‘fight’ element, the Destroyer could throw the Interrogator through a window.
I’d let my players do it if they asked since it isn’t much more effective than being stealthy normally and any other Embed that it would conflict with is likely to be far more effective.
I really hope so; I like it when individually bought powers like this can be applied to a broad array of situations.
You already answered it – you’d let your players do it, so there ya go! 🙂
A lot of Embeds lend themselves to more “outside the box” interpretations, and my experience has been that it’s when powers get used in ways other than intended that makes for cool gaming moments. Obviously you have to be careful to keep the tone you want for the game (there was a comment on one of the other posts where some guy was concerned that someone might use Cause & Effect to throw an apple over a fence and nuke a city – really, dude? You’d let that work?), but beyond that, Embeds work the way they do precisely because demons know where the rules of reality get wobbly.
I really like the design philosophy you use.
Oh that is neat, feels very spy-esque. I’m curious while stuff like the body hitting a wall is muffled what about other objects in the environment being moved. Would splashing water be muffled, or if you knocked over a box full of glassware, etc.
Also, so does this mean for just Embeds alone there is 80 powers?
Yep. 80 Embeds, 40 of the other things, plus form powers. Demons have options, yo.