Going to be posting these as they become relevant.

1) I will be trying to move the game along once roughly every 2 days minimum. Waiting on slower players is fine, but my games keep dying and I have no desire to see this one go.

2) Post actions. I am a reactive GM. The standard method of these things go as follows:

Player: I do this
Me: This Happens
Player: Then I do this

 Discussions are fine, but keep in mind that, until someone DOES something, I'm sort of stuck twiddling my thumbs. Again, I've had games die because no one wanted to take action.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:36, Mon 29 Apr 2019.

 Extended actions will be handled on a "per success" basis. Essentially, you will determine the action you want to take, I'll determine the target number, and it'll take you however long it'll take you to reach those successes. Most things will be handled in rounds.

 Now, particularly time consuming tasks, might take minutes (a conversation), hours (a ritual), or even days (making a magic item).

 What I've been noticing recently is that the current method of applying armor and defense (as subtracting die) doesn't work as well in Play by Post as it does in tabletop form as players make their rolls without consideration for target Defense or Armor (which is, by the way, something I want to encourage as it keeps the game moving nicely)


 SO, instead, targets will add their Defense and Armor rating to Stamina to soak attacks (assuming your defense and/or armor applies to said attack).

 However, if you cannot normally soak a type of damage (lethal for mages, for example), you do not get your Stamina to the roll and cannot have more successes than your defense + armor (assuming the armor is rated to handle lethal).

 The roll will essentially determine if Defense + Armor was retroactively subtracting a die that missed or a die that hit. The armor only allows the soak against the type of damage it would normally protect against.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:16, Fri 19 July 2019.

Here is a rough list. This list is for entities with human durability. If you have nonhuman durability, like a werewolf or vampire, then your stamina applies to things that your superhuman durability applies to.

Nonlethal= Stamina + Defense + Armor
Lethal = Defense + Armor
Firearms = Armor
Aggravated Damage = Supernatural Armor (or abilities)
True Damage = Defense? (maybe)


 True damage is the aggravated damage of aggravated damage. It is extremely rare but this is just to denote that it does exist. Depending on the situation, you may be able to dodge it but true damage will bypass most magical and physical barriers.

 In addition to the normal rules of a ward/ban, opponents of particular power an strip away multiple layers of a ward with a single roll. To do so requires a number of total successes equal to the potency + the potency -1 (so 7 successes to strip away 2 layers of a potency 4 ward (4+3) and 10 successes to break a potency 4 ward entirely (4+3+2+1)). This allows for particularly powerful mages to overpower weaker wards.

 I'm dividing Downtime into 3 main types (mostly because I keep getting asked questions by different people and I keep accidentally giving them different answers so I have different people following different rules and I apologize profusely for that).

Unrestricted Downtime

 You have access to anything you need and weeks or potentially months to "do stuff". You can raise any stat, skill, or supernatural ability.

Time Restricted Downtime

 You only have a day or a few hours to unwind. You can use this time to "train". Basically, you can spend 1 XP per hour you have of downtime to raise a skill and roleplay that you are training that skill over multiple instances of time restricted downtime.

 Magic or time intensive skills (like computers) can't be trained during Time Restricted Downtime.

Resource Restricted Downtime

 You do not have access to the equipment required to raise the skill (for example, on a desert island, you wouldn't have access to a car so couldn't increase your Drive skill).


Supernaturals

 Supernaturals other than mages do not need access to tutors to raise their supernatural powers unless they wish to learn something from a discipline that they don't have.

 Mages do not require a tutor to acquire their first dot in an Arcanum unless it is an inferior one.

 After that, they will require a tutor with at least the dot required to learn that dot.

 Rotes always require a tutor.

 Talion counts as a tutor (if he ever gets out of jail and stable enough to serve as one) and can teach magic even during Time Restricted downtime.

 Merits and abilities that provide multiple attacks are not allowed. I've had far too much abuse in previous games to allow players to have them nor will I ever use them against players. Even a machinegun only gets one roll.

 I'm going to let people go up to 24 hours without sleep.

 For every hour past that, you begin taking a cumulative -1 penalty to rolls until you reach half your dice pool. That remains until 48 hours pass.

 After 48 hours pass, you get another -1 cumulative per hour penalty. These stack until you're at 1/4 of your dice pool. That remains until 72 hours pass.

 After 72 hours pass, you get another -1 cumulative per hour penalty that stacks until you reach a chance dice.

 Once you start accuulating penalties, you need to sleep for 8 hours before you can begin removing dice penalties. After you sleep for 8 hours, sleeping for the 9th and each hour beyond that will remove 1 dice penalty.

 Often severe sleep deprivation must be recovered over several days.

 Since some of you are expressing interest in Archmastery and one of you already is, I'm adding this:

 When you get XP, you automatically get the same amount of Arcane XP. This is used to power Imperial Spells and add Imperial Spell factors to spells.

 However, that Arcane XP does not remove the need for Quintessence as a material component (Quintessence being the metaphysical "price" paid for the casting of the spell). Note that an Archmage gets some "all purpose" quintessence from their own body that can pay the cost for any Imperial Spell.... but, usually, the quintessence must loosely correspond to the spell being cast.