Rules I overlooked

[Trusk'our he/him]

I thought it would be fun to go over some of the rulings for the Cosmere RPG I initially overlooked, and to hear from others their thoughts on those and of course if there are any other subtle rules they overlooked. 

 

• Only the Elsecalling and Lightweaving Surges appear to not require an open hand to perform the base external Surge and their talents- everything else does. The Distant Soulcasting talent is finicky as it says your Soulcasting range is now 20 feet and no longer requires touch, but it doesn't say you no longer need an open hand. I think this may have been done to help balance the power of Radiant characters versus Heroic characters, since this is a non-issue in the books (Kaladin and Bridge Four use two-handed spears but can just momentarily pull a hand away to use Adhesion or Gravitation on something, and Lift I'm pretty sure uses her feet to affect the ground the Feruchemist slips on).

• Unarmed Attacks do not need an open hand to perform, and it seems that they can always be used as an offhand attack even with both hands full. This could be useful with high strength and expertise in Unarmed Attacks, since two-handed weapons shouldn't interfere with such an offhand attack as I understand it.

• The second ideal for Radiants makes the enhance action is always a free action and doesn't expend Investiture (though you do still need to have at least 1 Investiture in reserve). I legitimately thought it served only to Empowered a PC for a scene and act as a necessary buffer in between the 1st and 3rd ideals. So there's something actually cool there, which is nice.

• Enhanced attributes do not contribute to defenses, HP, focus, or Investiture. Singer forms do not count as part of the Enhanced condition though, so they still do. It was funny how (the people in my last gaming group) we did add these to our stats initially, and it's pretty busted.

• Weirdly, on pg. 186 of the Stormlight World Guide, it says in the middle of the far top-left Using Actions paragraph "Rosharan adversaries with an Investiture pool can also use the Breathe Stormlight, Enhance, and Regenerate actions from chapter 5 of the Stormlight Handbook (though Fused and Regal characters breathe Voidlight from their infused spheres, not Stormlight)." Given that the Regenerate action can change from statblock to statblock and that it's directly put into every Fused's statblock but not Regals', I think this part was made by someone else and not aligned correctly with the actual statblocks (not to mention that Regals really shouldn't be able to do those things canonically).
 

[Frustration]

Well Regals can use voidlight in some ways, at the very least they can get it from the song of prayer, and Venli asking for lots of it wasn't considered unusual.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Well Regals can use voidlight in some ways, at the very least they can get it from the song of prayer, and Venli asking for lots of it wasn't considered unusual.

True. I was (and still am) actually thinking of giving Fused the ability to spend three actions and become vulnerable in some way to recover Investiture via the Song of Prayer, but I don't think we see most Fused actually do this in canon, at least not on screen (perhaps Lezian did, though he could also have had a stockpile of spheres wherever he retreated).

This still shouldn't mean Regals can regenerate or enhance their physical abilities on top of what the Form typically provides though. That would basically make every one of them a low-Ideal Radiant, and there have been plenty of opportunities for fatal injures against them to be healed (it would be a cool story beat to have Odium tweak the system during the True Desolation though. Grant more power to Regals in order to push his forces even more, and the PCs get caught up in it).

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

This still shouldn't mean Regals can regenerate or enhance their physical abilities on top of what the Form typically provides though. That would basically make every one of them a low-Ideal Radiant, and there have been plenty of opportunities for fatal injures against them to be healed (it would be a cool story beat to have Odium tweak the system during the True Desolation though. Grant more power to Regals in order to push his forces even more, and the PCs get caught up in it).

Honestly if all regals could do that I'd understand why the Desolations were so bad.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

You might get a laugh out of this, but I didn't realize that character's start each Combat with their Weapons automatically drawn without needing to use up an Action unless they're surprised. I was doing a solo Stonewalker's campaign and had to go back and redo every chapter 1 combat scene because of how much that changed.

[Trusk'our he/him]

14 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

You might get a laugh out of this, but I didn't realize that character's start each Combat with their Weapons automatically drawn without needing to use up an Action unless they're surprised. I was doing a solo Stonewalker's campaign and had to go back and redo every chapter 1 combat scene because of how much that changed.

Gonna be real, I don't think we were even aware of the auto-drawing rule, we just ignored that function all together and assumed everyone's weapons were always drawn.

Though, redoing multiple combats does seem a bit excessive to me. I'm more of the mind that you just accept how things played out and change from thence on. Did it really change the story that much?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

Though, redoing multiple combats does seem a bit excessive to me. I'm more of the mind that you just accept how things played out and change from thence on. Did it really change the story that much?

More of an OCD-ish thing, since I'm both the players and the GM I'm kind of just doing whatever I want.