I am working on running the Dead Stars and have noticed a discrepancy. Miss Book has the Strange Physiology trait and has the Necrotic ability as do all slaugth. Because of the Strange Physiology trait, she dies when her wounds equal zero, so how does she take criticals for the Necrotic Ability to come into effect? Also how is a d10 damage going to hurt my PC's when almost all have armor 6 and toughness 4? I am just going to add 4 to it, but the overall design of the scenario has a hard time challenging near Ascension Level characters.

Rich Gain
Jester's Playhouse

gunnergain said:

Well, those are some pretty interesting points. Technically, per the RAW in this matter, only the killing blow (as that would technically be the "critical") would activate Necrotic. Sort of a blast of revenge from the grave. I'd go so far as to say that one might even want to consider any attack which would kill a Slaugth as triggering the spray, but only effect those within melee; maybe out to point-blank (3 meters).

As to the damage, hard to say. You might consider treating the affect as being a none-damage triggered instance of the Toxic weapon quality, instead of a normal hit. Have each Acolyte in melee make a Challenging (+0) Toughness test to determine if they are effected. Those who fail their toughness test then take 1d10 Impact damage which ignores armor and toughness. As to where the damage is applied, may want to roll that too. Remember, the spash of necrotic fluids can be dodged, but not parried.

Hope that is a little helpful, though nothing official.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The description of the Necrotic trait is a holdover from the original Slaugth stats from the GM Kit adventure "Maggots in the Meat." Those Slaugth also have the Undying trait which states: Slaugth cannot be Stunned and ignore penalties for being injured they are only stopped by Critical Effects that inflict "killing" results. They are immune to toxins and diseases.

The later rules for the Undying trait in Disciples of the Dark Gods omit the bit about Critical Effects, but it's really crucial to the indestructible nature of the Slaugth, so I'd keep it.

Strangely enough, while Miss Book's stats omit this trait, the profile for the Slaugth Harvest Construct list yet another version of the Undying trait.

Ferau said:

I have used Slaught like this since MitM. If they just died at zero wounds it would be kinda boring -

when my acolytes (close to ascension) fight the slaught and their constructs they often decided to target limbs in order to get critical results that would cause them to weapons or become less mobile