Alicornutopia

*is listening to the conversation*

I generally dislike time travel plots on account of they tend to make my brain hurt, and I do this kind of thing to have fun, not to make my brain hurt.

Re-reading the descriptions, I'm not sure I initially interpreted things the way Jalapeno meant. Thinking out loud a bit about 3 and 4:

Some bits from 3 do sound interesting to me; the desperation and the sense of things being connected. Uncovering secrets is more cool when you're working for that knowledge, but while uncovering the cheat codes of the universe and improving the world is a Good Thing, it's also a slow thing and not particularly awesome or satisfying as an RP goal; the difference between handing off the discovery to some top men who will exploit it and handing it off to "Top. Men." is basically invisible unless every episode skips ahead by months-to-years. If instead we had to put the pieces together personally to accomplish some task, either from time pressure (doesn't work that well with staying episodic) or because it was unsafe to share everything publicly until we've accomplished a goal (i.e. there's a conspiracy interested in keeping this secret, and in Eberron there are probably (precisely) a dozen possibilities for who), that would get some of the cool parts of 3 in a framework of 4. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be science happening, but a mix of science experiments, X-Files-y investigation, and occasional "SCIENCE!" is maybe more engaging.

Totally unrelated thought: What does artificers casting spells look like in Eberron, in your imagination? I mentally picture it like manipulating runic circuit diagrams or something similarly engineer-ish.

I find myself in agreement with PDV about the 3-in-4 idea, but I still want to emphasize the desirability of having a place for a character who is not Into Science in the plot.

There are enough non-prophetic discoveries for characters not Into Science, but I guess they do work better in the prophecy scenario.

From what I’ve learned in this thread about Eberon, there cannot be precisely a dozen anything. You might think there are, but you are missing one of the options.

A baker's dozen still counts as a dozen :-P

And yeah, I agree that thigns won't work terribly well unless there's room for non-scientists. Which could be guides and bodyguards, or just have some flimsy excuse like the woman (googles name... Marion Ravenwood) in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Not just room for non-scientists, in my case, but specifically room for somebody who has no good reason to be involved in science at all. That's a little trickier. (I might be able to find a convoluted excuse to involve him in science, but I'm not sure how easily I can do that.)

PlainDealingVillain wrote:A baker's dozen still counts as a dozen :-P

fun trivia: apparently one of the main religions (Sovereign Host?) has 12 major holidays, and one small holiday called "Baker's night"

I am sort of with holding any character creation, except for "Warforged Cleric of self if possible"

I must say that 4 appeals to me much more than, even more so now that more of it's structure has been revealed. In part because I like the whole "small bits of the setting being revealed one at a time"

If the idea were combined with the tribunal idea (which I think somebody mentioned), it seems like he might have an excuse by being some sort of noble or Dragonmarked or something, and thus him being required to be part of it. It’s not as good as the Mystically Destined Part of the Group idea, though.

If you want to throw a Stephen/Chainsaw at something, will he be bringing his brother and/or the rest of the family along (presumably as off-screen NPCs)? Or is he separable from them, like apparently happened with Cuddling Gods?

StevenChainsaws as a template blend don't come with a specific set of attached family members yet. (Stevens can also appear not-initially-attached to Jokers and/or without family, as happened in Cuddling Gods.)

But I am kind of disinclined to give a StevenChainsaw any kind of Obviously Special Family Situation. The one StevenChainsaw I've planned out in any detail (Sefton Hawke, Dragon Age 'verse) has a Special Family Situation but it's the "family used to be noble but then there were some disownments and poor financial choices" type followed by the "also, dead parent was secretly important" type; I guess I could swing something along those lines but I'd need to know more about my options.