I’m confused regarding how to burn my vaylen’s extra bodies. This is a vaylen that began as Human Dilettante; then made a career as Vaishyen (Encoder and Vaishya itself) and then took the scientific expertise to go hunt for the human’s worlds, as Scientist-Diplomat.
(This is a relationship to the actual FoN; a sterile Forged Lord who became obsessed with cloning himself to perpetuate his linneage. Hence, the vaylen’s tempting offer…)
I had a ton of RPs burning him up, so I thought this scientist has a ship, a hidden Cryo Chamber in it, and frozen spare bodies, stolen stock from his past as Encoder/Vaishya. So he would have a first, human body, a used Vaishyen body; and then cloned Ksatriyen and Child bodies to “swap” to in case of trouble or to infiltrate the humans from another point of view.
(I even planned a Mukhadish, since this human world has them in abundance and it would allow for yet another vector of approach).
How do the rules work here? I wasn’t aware that bodies had their own skills; I thought that happened only when hulling in the actual game as “Jumping Bodies in Play” suggests… I now it would be rare for Vaylen to collect hosts, but this is a powerful geneticist back home, so it made sense for him to be able to clone spare ones…
The Naiven character starts the game with all skills picked up at their final attribute levels for the primary host. Figure out the base skill exponents for skills rooted in physical stats for all bodies. All bodies know all physical skills that the Naiven has experienced (as per page 198). Advancement on physical skills stays with the body that earned it.
The note spanning the page break on 192-193 about only getting the bonuses from in-caste lifepaths is saying that a Vaishyen body can’t have skill and stat bonuses applied to it from a human caste lifepath. It’s an extension of the note on page 189 that says Vaishyen stat pool bonuses can’t be applied to a Ksatriyen body. If it’s the characters old Vaishyen body, it probably has the bonuses from whichever Vaishyen lifepaths you took (+2M at least) but those bonuses are only in play when you’re in that body.
Thanks, I was reading an old thread and I kind of understood what you say here about stats and stats bonuses; but now is much clearer.
My questions/problems now are twofold:
Can I have a Ksatriyen/Shudra body without having actually been one, i.e. without a LP in those settings? I know the default is to consider the additional hosts rules as keeping old bodies you actually lived in; but in fiction this guy is a geneticist, and I was planning on him to keep some cloned bodies for himself; even if those bodies never left the vats and are empty of experience/skills. It wouldn’t hurt much since I have only one or two physical skills; everything else would transfer without issue. Anyway, that wouldn’t be RAW, right?
The wording on p. 192 is ambiguous: “… and only if the player took lifepaths from multiple castes when burning his character” doesn’t explicitly say you must have lifepaths in X to have X body (though I now suspect that’s what implied…).
Even if I stick to the old vaishyen body alone: where do its skill points come from? I mean, my Naiven has kept everything he learned as vaishyen, so its pointless to “build” the body’s skills separately again. What am I missing here? And even if they’re separated… under what constrains I build it? The rules seem to imply that I must build it as a whole different character, but that sounds weird to me: for one, I have no idea what’s the fiction behind it, that is, where did he picked up those skills, if it was mine the whole time? And from a gameplay perspective, it looks way overpowered: what’s stopping a vaylen player from having a ton of new skills raised to the max, just from a walk in a different LP and a few resource points?
1 - i think you can have any body you purchase with resource points (i think the cost is 3). they don’t have your physical skills.
2 - fictionally, you’re missing the fact that there are SOOO MANY naiven, that as soon as you were put into your human body and shipped off to the iron empires, that your old body was immediately grabbed by the next in line. laws of supply and demand. usually Vaylen lifepath setting is for outcasts from vaylen society.
not sure what the rest of your question is, but regarding picking up skills, your naiven had the skills, the body adjusted to them by practicing during the long trip into human space.
as far as being overpowered. yes. the vaylen are intended to be. that’s why they’re winning. but remember, if this is a 2IC relationship character, they are capped at exponent 4 and 2 LPs less than their relationship FoN
Cost is 1, 2, or 3 (depending on type). The worm can encode the physical skills that it knows (which is why physical skills learned as a Ksatriyen are still available to a Vaylen, though the advancement will need to be re-purchased). However, as mentioned in Jumping Bodies in Play any new bodies will be at the skill root without any advancement either from practice or skill points spent at character burning (since advancement in the case of physical skills is the body getting better at the skill).
Thank you both for clarifying this gray area… One more question (actually, the explanation of number 2 from above): the skills/lifepaths I give to the extra bodies… are they the ones I have in the, say, “master LP list” for the naiven? Or do those bodies come with a history of their own?
For example, my main character has only gone through Encoder and Vaishya from the Vaishyen setting, then went on as a vaylen infiltrating human worlds. When I burn the vaishyen extra body; do I stick to those lifepaths or can I use the others in the vaishyen setting? That would imply, in the fiction, that the bodies had a previous owner and/or (vaylen gods forbid!) lived free from the worm at first… is that correct?
Stick with those lifepaths. The body doesn’t really know anything (that got ripped out when the first worm crawled in), it just happens to have the muscle memory for doing stuff.