[nWoD] Unusual Contracts, Power Tiers, and ex Miscellania

[Lord_Gareth]

Welcome to my miscellanious topic on various aspects of the New World of Darkness. Feel free to answer as much, or as little, as you wish of the following:

Changeling
Fang and Talon, Elements, Communion, and similar Contracts are some of the most powerful that Changelings can draw upon, and many players like to choose unusual focuses, such as Corvids (that is, Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Rooks), Color, or Gold. At what point does something become too broad or untenable? A player of mine wants to take Elements (Flesh). Another one, playing a Gravewight, is seriously considering Communion (Bones) and Fang & Talon (Maggots). Are these too specific? Too broken or broad? I run into enough headaches with Elements (Metal) and its ilk. Help?

Power Flows Through Me
In oWoD, werewolves and mages dominated the scene in terms of personal power, both in terms of creature vs. creature and scope of the game. These days, White Wolf has been trying to make everything comprable, and a newborn lupine no longer dusts millenia old elders out the gate. Still, a heirarchy of power exists. What supernatural is most powerful, overall? Which has the easiest power advancement? Personal power? Temporal power? Please, please explain why you've chosen those ranking.

Crossovers
I could use some advice, full-stop. I'm actually toying of a city idea where the local Kindred domain and the Changeling freehold are actually the same political entity (the Boneyard). Any advice on that specifically would be met with much huggles and great joy.

[Semidi]

Changeling:

Metal is too general. Make them pick something like steel, iron, bronze, gold, etc.. Outright ban a lot of elements like the radioactive variety.

Communion (bones) and Fang & Talon (maggots) would both be fine as would elements (flesh) I think. I usually don't think of elements so much as the technical kind (e.g. elements (carbon)) but kind of broadly defined so you can get elements (fire) elements (electricity) and so on.

Power:

In terms of power, it's hard to say beyond just that mages are the most powerful (Mage: anything you can do I can do better). Werewolves are also extremely strong, so I'd put them at second.

Beyond that, I'd actually put Hunter: the Vigil hunters in third place. After that, vampires, after that, changelings. I'm not too familiar with Geist or Promethean.

However, it's all kind of fuzzy. All of it is extremely case by case depending on the variety of supernatural and if they're built for combat or even to combat a certain type of supernatural.

If this is all put outside the realm of just combat and maybe, "in general" power, I'd put vampires dead last as they're the most ignorant of the broader supernatural world and have the hardest time dealing with stuff like spirits, ghosts, and alternate realities. A lot of times hunter groups know more about the supernatural than vampires do.

Crossovers:

It'd be really cool to see Invictus blood oaths mix with Changeling pledges. But yeah, the two supernatural groups are just... kind of different... it's hard to see them interacting, at least for me.

[Lord_Gareth]

Any other comments, folks?

[Project_Mayhem]

I second that mages are more powerful. We were doing some mock up 1v1 fights with various characters in our mage campaign - it turns out that my character, Raz, (Mastigos, Mysterium, Space 4, Matter 2, Mind 1) Kills anything that doesn't kill him in one round before he can 'port. Because:

Turn One - Enemy does whatever. Raz 'ports to the mysterium demesne.
Turn 2+ - Raz apports knives/ grenades/ c4 etc. (He's a gunrunner) into your general vicinity until you stop breathing. Or turn to ash.

Other than a 1HKO, or 1 turn save or suck there not much anyone who isn't a mage of space/prime can do.

[Edge]

Changeling
Fang and Talon, Elements, Communion, and similar Contracts are some of the most powerful that Changelings can draw upon, and many players like to choose unusual focuses, such as Corvids (that is, Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Rooks), Color, or Gold. At what point does something become too broad or untenable? A player of mine wants to take Elements (Flesh). Another one, playing a Gravewight, is seriously considering Communion (Bones) and Fang & Talon (Maggots). Are these too specific? Too broken or broad? I run into enough headaches with Elements (Metal) and its ilk. Help?

These are all fine, I believe. IIRC, metal is listed as a sample element in the core rulebook, so it should be fine.

Of note is that Elements (Flesh) was brought up on the WoD forums a fair while ago, and it was pretty much universally agreed that it was fine as long as it couldn't target living creatures.


Power Flows Through Me
In oWoD, werewolves and mages dominated the scene in terms of personal power, both in terms of creature vs. creature and scope of the game. These days, White Wolf has been trying to make everything comprable, and a newborn lupine no longer dusts millenia old elders out the gate. Still, a heirarchy of power exists. What supernatural is most powerful, overall? Which has the easiest power advancement? Personal power? Temporal power? Please, please explain why you've chosen those ranking.

Mages are the most powerful due to sheer flexibility. Second place is a toss-up between Werewolves and Prometheans. The Uratha claim this spot due to a rather heavy combat focus on their innate powers and Gifts, whilst still having enough utilitarian powers to be good outside of ripping and tearing. Prommies can come back from the dead once (or more often if they're an Osiran or pick up that Lineage's Bestowment) and nearing the end of their Transmutation trees can become truly insane (punch to cause an earthquake or turning oneself into a living nuke, anybody?). Vampires and changelings are tied third. They may have powers that allow them to go toe-to-toe with Uratha or Prommies, but they typically require more finesse and pre-planning to use. Hunters come in last due purely to mortal fragility. I know nothing of Geist.

My comments in bold.

[The Glyphstone]

Sin-Eaters would definitely be above Hunters, though I'm not sure where they'd be in relation to Changelings and Vamps. On the resilience scale, they beat out everyone else...while no harder to kill than an ordinary human in most cases, they have a minimum of 4 built-in resurrections (assuming you don't care about your Synergy/Morality, and start at 7). Offensively, they're quite potent, and the sheer flexibility of the Manifestation/Keys mechanic gives them a ridiculous amount of utility in and out of combat.

So if having 1 free resurrection alongside offense is enough to make Prometheans battle for second, I'd put Geist at a healthy third/fourth, behind Mage/Werewolf/Promethean and ahead of Vampire/Changeling/Hunter.