General WoD Discussion #2: Its time to Celebrate!

[ocel]

Lets hope this will be the second of many general threads relating to the World of Darkness setting.Here is the first General Thread: #1: Assemble. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207704)

[Selrahc]

Continuing from the OWoD is the aftermath of Exalted conversation... it was also implied that Exalted was the result of Divis Mal's universe creation in the Aeonverse.

[Morty]

Of all the oWoD gamelines, I think it was Hunter: the Reckoning that was most influenced by the "Creation is WoD's past" conceit. The Imbued were supposed to be heirs to Solars somehow. I'm not sure how that was supposed to work.
Mind you, while I haven't read Imperial Mysteries, I choose to ignore the idea that each splat has a superpowered being or class of beings looking out for it. I prefer my nWoD without godlike beings playing it like chess.

[The Glyphstone]

Considering that was the worst part of OWoD IMO, I tend to agree with you.

[Lord_Gareth]

Considering that was the worst part of OWoD IMO, I tend to agree with you.

I agree...conditionally. The worst part of oWoD's setup was that those almighty cosmic chessmasters were omnipresent, incapable of ever missing information, and constantly meddling in global affairs on an absurdly personal level. Part of nWoD's great victory - an appeal - is its large emphasis on local affairs. Certainly, travel games are possible and fun! But the important bit is that what a character does in their home town or city is not only important, but significant, you know?

Once you start screwing around with Archmage level play, though, you've entered into a new genre of horror entirely (Lovecraftian, not gothic) and left 'local' behind about as definitively as it can get left. Cosmic chessmasters make perfect sense as enemies in such a setup, and the glory of it is this - unlike in oWoD, THESE chessmasters don't/can't/won't compromise free will on a massive, unstoppable scale. Chances are high that your character and their local problems mean precisely bubkis to them, y'know? They've got bigger fish to fry - mostly the ones that cause various kinds of apocalypse - which means that you can justify using them as much, or as little, as your group likes without totally re-writing the meta-plot.

[CN the Logos]

Of all the oWoD gamelines, I think it was Hunter: the Reckoning that was most influenced by the "Creation is WoD's past" conceit. The Imbued were supposed to be heirs to Solars somehow. I'm not sure how that was supposed to work.
Mind you, while I haven't read Imperial Mysteries, I choose to ignore the idea that each splat has a superpowered being or class of beings looking out for it. I prefer my nWoD without godlike beings playing it like chess.

I agree completely. Anything that makes the players in a roleplaying game insignificant is, to me, a bad thing. Stories where the main characters are helpless to control their own destinies might be interesting, but if the players have no agency, why even bother with the dice? Just spend an hour or three telling your players how badly their characters fail at everything they set out to do (or succeed, but if it's not due to anything they've done, it's just as pointless).

Now, I admit, sometimes tragedy is entertaining (for lack of a better word), but one of the key parts of tragedy is that the tragic hero is in some way responsible for their fate. If they really don't have any chance for a happy ending, or at least to avert the catastrophe, then it's just a really depressing shaggy dog story.


Once you start screwing around with Archmage level play, though, you've entered into a new genre of horror entirely (Lovecraftian, not gothic) and left 'local' behind about as definitively as it can get left. Cosmic chessmasters make perfect sense as enemies in such a setup, and the glory of it is this - unlike in oWoD, THESE chessmasters don't/can't/won't compromise free will on a massive, unstoppable scale. Chances are high that your character and their local problems mean precisely bubkis to them, y'know? They've got bigger fish to fry - mostly the ones that cause various kinds of apocalypse - which means that you can justify using them as much, or as little, as your group likes without totally re-writing the meta-plot.

Portraying epic level magic users as Wizard Cthulhu is probably the most sensible use of them I've heard. I prefer reading cosmic horror to playing it, but at least the players have some freedom in this scenario, even if it's only the freedom not to meddle in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Of course, they will meddle because there's no game if they don't, and if Wizardthulhu notices at all, they're doomed. So it still feels like curtailing player freedom to me, but I admit this is a matter of taste. A lot of people like Call of Cthulhu, after all. :smallcool:

[Lord_Gareth]

Portraying epic level magic users as Wizard Cthulhu is probably the most sensible use of them I've heard. I prefer reading cosmic horror to playing it, but at least the players have some freedom in this scenario, even if it's only the freedom not to meddle in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Of course, they will meddle because there's no game if they don't, and if Wizardthulhu notices at all, they're doomed. So it still feels like curtailing player freedom to me, but I admit this is a matter of taste. A lot of people like Call of Cthulhu, after all. :smallcool:

Well, there's still room to vary things. I, personally, am a big fan of handing my players enough rope with which to hang themselves. Sure, they can go screw with Wizardthulu. Maybe they even win. But now that they're in charge of reality...they have to run it. And if they thought being the monarchs of one, tiny, insignificant little Freehold was a headache....

[Sydonai]

Of all the oWoD gamelines, I think it was Hunter: the Reckoning that was most influenced by the "Creation is WoD's past" conceit. The Imbued were supposed to be heirs to Solars somehow. I'm not sure how that was supposed to work.
Mind you, while I haven't read Imperial Mysteries, I choose to ignore the idea that each splat has a superpowered being or class of beings looking out for it. I prefer my nWoD without godlike beings playing it like chess.

Don't forget the "Red Lady" and ""Black Dragon", which were obviously the Scarlet Empress and Ebon Dragon.




Speaking of an Exalted/NWoD crossover, I've seen several comments sayibg that the description of the Abyss in Imperial Mysteries is disturbingly similar to the Wyld. What if they actually were the same thing?
(And what would this mean for the rumor that Vampirism is an abyssal plague?)

[Morty]

Don't forget the "Red Lady" and ""Black Dragon", which were obviously the Scarlet Empress and Ebon Dragon.

I'm not familiar with either of them. Were are they mentioned?

[TheCountAlucard]

I'm not familiar with either of them. Were are they mentioned?Kindred of the East, the Scarlet Queen and the Ebon Dragon get more than a few mentions there.

[Eurus]

So, end-of-the-world scenarios aren't too uncommon. It's all but directly implied that they happen on a semi regular basis, or would if not for the distant intervention of eldritch mage horrors and the like. But does anyone have experience with running a genuine Judeo-Christian Apocalypse?

I'm experimenting with one in my game. Basically, the premise is that the Rapture has been on hold for a few hundred years now. Every few decades, a potential messiah is born... and the Lucifuge makes sure that it doesn't survive to maturity, buying humanity a few more years of life in the meantime. The occasional groups of self-appointed bodyguards has been so far ineffective at keeping the kid alive, in the rare cases that they find him/her before the Lucifuge does.

So I'm kind of curious about which team my PCs side with. Prevent the end of the world by killing a kid, or save the kid and kill billions?

[Lord_Gareth]

So, end-of-the-world scenarios aren't too uncommon. It's all but directly implied that they happen on a semi regular basis, or would if not for the distant intervention of eldritch mage horrors and the like.

Not quite. A ton of them are prevented by Wizardthulu, it's true, but the wonderful nature of the nWoD is that it is, in many ways, self-policing. Second Sight, for example, has a whole chapter dedicated to how ordinary mortals prevent this kind of thing on a regular basis themselves. Hunters obviously have a tie into it, Mages constantly fight the Abyss, that kind of deal. Part of the reason the whole world is going to hell, though, is everyone's so busy preventing the apocalypse that no one's doing the 'maintenance work', as it were, or sometimes even actively contributing to the problem.

WizardThulu handles the Thulu level issues, but there's plenty of others, y'know?

[Eurus]

Not quite. A ton of them are prevented by Wizardthulu, it's true, but the wonderful nature of the nWoD is that it is, in many ways, self-policing. Second Sight, for example, has a whole chapter dedicated to how ordinary mortals prevent this kind of thing on a regular basis themselves. Hunters obviously have a tie into it, Mages constantly fight the Abyss, that kind of deal. Part of the reason the whole world is going to hell, though, is everyone's so busy preventing the apocalypse that no one's doing the 'maintenance work', as it were, or sometimes even actively contributing to the problem.

WizardThulu handles the Thulu level issues, but there's plenty of others, y'know?

Fair enough. It's a wonder that the world is still in one piece, really.

[Lord_Gareth]

Fair enough. It's a wonder that the world is still in one piece, really.

Indeed, but I do think that's the key, really. Much like Hunter reminded storytellers that the existence of T3 Conspiracies is as much a shining beacon of hope as it is a messed-up set of psychotic murderers, the mere fact that the nWoD still exists is a sign that positive change is possible, and that lasting good can happen.

[Morty]

Speaking of psychotic murderers, an idea for a Hunter conspiracy crossed my mind recently.
I don't have a name yet, but they would believe that the heroes of myth - Heracles, Achilles, Beowulf, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Ilya Muromets, what have you - were Hunters, who fought the monsters openly and protected humanity from them. However, humans grew complacent, so the monsters were able to corrupt them from within and make it so humanity was no longer capable of producing such mighty heroes. Which reduced the world to the sorry state it is in now. The members of the Conspiracy would think it's up to them to recapture the glory of the ancients and beat the monsters back. Their method of accomplishing it would be to become like the heroes of old and fighting monsters, then swaying the masses.
Their Endowment would consist of special techniques of training, purification and meditation that would allow them to perform specific superhuman feats - possibly they'd be tied to particular mythic heroes, but given the sheer number of such individuals, it may not be possible.
Not sure about the recruitment process. Perhaps they'd seek out individuals they deem worthy of becoming heroes, by the virtue of their skill, prowess and, although they'd never admit it, being crazy enough. Then they'd test them both secretly and openly.
Their approach to monsters would be very simple - everything unhuman and/or using supernatural powers is an impurity which must be cleansed. Beowulf didn't think too much about ripping off Grendel's arm and neither do the members of this conspiracy. However, their Vigil would be defined by following in the footsteps of ancient heroes. They'd obsessively search for any evidence of them or even new twists in the myths. What's more, when hunting they'd try to follow the patterns, believing that this way they can get closer to their legendary progenitors. A hunter of this conspiracy preparing to fight a warlock would seek parallels between their mission and any legendary figures who also faced evil magic-users.
As for the general attitude of their members... there would be a very strong elitist vibe to them. After all, they're heroes - better than the teeming masses. There would be a number of people with Nazi-like or outright Nazi ideas about "blood purity" among them. And apart from that, well, they're people who want to be Heracles. It doesn't cry "sanity".

That's what I have so far. Details are still missing, obviously - their history, mostly - but I wanted to hear your thoughts. One thing I'm not too sure about is whether they'd recruit anyone or just those they decide have the blood of the heroes in their veins... however they'd determine that.

[Fouredged Sword]

That is awesome, but throw in a mix of "he who fights monsters" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeWhoFightsMonsters) and let that take off.

Maybe have meditative abilities that allow characters to enhance their abilities, but they require a willpower roll when you come down to prevent a derangement like effect. Have the abilities cost 2+ willpower to use, but if your vice matches the dominant vice of the power the cost is reduced by 1 willpower, but the willpower roll to avoid the backlash is at -2.

Strength of the gods (0000) - Wrath dominant. Spend 2 willpower points. For the remainder of the scene, on all strength based rolls you act as if you had spent willpower to increase the die pool of that roll. Spending additional willpower will not increase the die pool further, but you may risk willpower, but any extra die gained from that do not stack. You may release this effect at any time, but the effect continues until you calm down. Calming down requires an extended action (1 roll per round, roll willpower, requires one success per roll that benefited from Strength of the Gods). Any turn that you do not gain any successes on the calming roll you attack the nearest target, friend or foe.

[CN the Logos]

Speaking of psychotic murderers, an idea for a Hunter conspiracy crossed my mind recently[...]

Mirrors has rules for both extraordinary mortals (which you could use) and a full fledged major template designed to emulate the likes of Heracles et al. It's quite a bit more powerful than Hunter endowments, but it'd probably work unless you really wanted intra-Hunter crossovers.

Now, I come bearing something I promised at the beginning of the last thread. Some changes to vampires: designed to be slightly closer to folklore in some respects, and just a bit more crossover friendly in others. I figured I'd share given that some of you were complaining about vampires not being crossover-compatible on account of their being extremely flammable. Where not mentioned otherwise, the rules are as described in the actual Vampire book (e.g., vampires still have to try to stay awake during the daytime even though the sun no longer sets them on fire.

So, without further adieu...

Damnation and the Embrace:

The vast majority of vampires are Embraced as described in Vampire: the Requiem. However, it is not unknown for certain mortals to simply not die when they should, instead simply "waking up" an evening or two after death as one of the Undead. Maybe they were hideously evil, maybe they were cursed, or maybe they were just so pissed off that they don't mind damnation if it comes with the opportunity for sweet, sweet vengeance. Whatever the reason, these vampires are the Damned.

The Damned have clans just like any other Kindred; in this variant, the clans are more like different vampire subspecies and don't imply an unbroken chain of Embraces going back to the first member of the clan, although vampires of a given clan are generally similar enough to form alliances based on their common ground. However, the Damned are always the founder of a new bloodline, which always has some sort of symbolic value regarding their mortal life and reason for being Damned. This is how new bloodlines are created in almost all cases. You can either create new bloodlines for PC Damned or just refluff a bloodline that wasn't going to show up in your chronicle anyway. Or use an official bloodline as a starting point and switch a few things around; it's hardly impossible that the same (or a similar) discipline has shown up more than once in the long history of vampirism.

Bloodlines Are Thicker Than Water:

All vampires have the option of starting with a bloodline at character creation. In the case of most vampires, this is passed down to them by their sire along with their clan, although a vampire who doesn't want to take on her sire's bloodline can reject it during the process of being embraced, begin unlife with no bloodline, and later be initiated into a bloodline compatible with her clan as described in the default rules.

Bloodlines work as follows. Vampires who are part of a bloodline gain another in-clan discipline and an additional weakness beyond the one typical for their clan. The bloodline may also swap out one of the parent clan's disciplines for another. Typically speaking, the swapped discipline should be broadly similar in function to the one replacing it (e.g., physical disciplines should be replaced by other physical disciplines, and mental by mental) but the Storyteller may elect to waive this requirement if the character gains yet another weakness, the bloodline weakness is especially severe, or if s/he simply decides that the bloodline's in-clan disciplines don't give it an unfair advantage over more "typical" bloodlines.

Tasty, Tasty Blood:

Vampires are not required to drink vampire blood after reaching a certain Blood Potency level. That goes against the entire point of vampire folklore (that they are parasites that plague humanity) and is quite frankly contrary to everything we know about the food chain. However, older vampires do require more vitae to awaken each evening as their connection to the primordial forces of entropy and death becomes stronger. Vampires who don't have enough vitae in their systems to awaken go into topor and lose Blood Potency as described in Vampire: the Requiem.

Blood Potency - Vitae Consumed per Night:

0 - 1
1 - 1
2 - 1
3 - 2
4 - 2
5 - 3
6 - 4
7 - 5
8 - 6
9 - 7
10 - 8

Torpor:

Vampires who have their health boxes filled with lethal can remain active until the end of the Scene before collapsing into torpor, and if they can clear at least (5 - Stamina, minimum of one) health box(es) of all damage before the Scene ends, do not fall into torpor at all. Vampires continue healing normally in torpor, and once the torpored vampire has cleared at least the minimum number of health boxes they would have needed to avoid torpor in the first place, they can start making a Resolve + Composure roll once each evening (immediately upon healing sufficient damage, and each night at sunset afterwards); success means the torpor ends.

If the vampire doesn't have the vitae to heal sufficiently, use the system as written on page 175 (and probably roll up a new character). Voluntary torpor also works as written (V:tR, p.176).

Mirror, Mirror:

Long story short, vampires are seriously inconvenienced by mirrors and cameras. However, the nature of this weakness is slightly different from what the majority of vampire hunters (and new vampires) expect. Barring a few oddities (Lasombra, hollow Mekhet, etc...) vampires show up just fine in mirrors and on camera. They show up better than fine, in fact. They show up perfectly. While this isn't typically enough to prove that the vampire is a walking corpse by itself (except in the case of ultra-low humanity vampires and some Nosferatu), it is enough to trigger the instinctive sense that the vampire is a predator, and for humans that pay close attention, the true appearance of the vampire (somehow both sickly and hideously predatory) gives the human a good idea of what they're seeing.

Humans who get a good look at a vampire in a mirror or on camera roll Wits + Occult, with success indicating that they realize they're dealing with something inhuman, although they may not know what. In this day and age though, the word "vampire" should spring to mind quite quickly. Even if it doesn't, the vampire's mental disciplines suffer from the Humanity cap on social interactions for the rest of the Scene when used on the person who saw through their glammer, as her instinctive revulsion limits the effectiveness of the creature's supernatural powers. After the Scene ends, she doesn't necessarily forget what she saw, but the horror is no longer immediate enough to have a fortifying effect.

It's worth noting that seeing the vampire casually walking past a security camera isn't enough to give this roll, in most such cases the camera isn't going to be getting a close enough look at the monster to give anyone watching the footage more than a brief twinge of wrongness. People who already know that vampires exist (and thus what to look for) however, can actively look for vampires on such footage by rolling Intelligence + Occult.

The Accursed Daystar:

While they don't burn up in sunlight, vampires are weakened by it, and the sun burns away much of the illusion that allows them to pass for human. Whenever a vampire goes out in sunlight, use the sunlight damage chart on page 173 (plus clan weakness if applicable) to figure out how much damage the vampire would be taking a turn. Apply that number as a penalty to all physical ability rolls and reduce the vampire's effective level in all disciplines by that number until his level of exposure changes. This rule replaces the Humanity cap on daytime actions described on page 184 of Vampire: the Requiem.

In addition, any vampire taking a sunlight penalty of three or more cannot feign life with vitae, and the effect of any vitae spent to augment physical attributes is halved (one vitae provides only one additional die to physical dice pools). If the vampire had already spent vitae to activate the blush of life prior to taking the sunlight penalty, he loses its benefits gradually over the course of about ten minutes.

(Note: Out of deference to the movie, I've been considering having the Nosferatu still be burned by sunlight, or at least have that as a weakness of some bloodlines. However, this gives me two problems. One, they'd have to have a pretty substantial advantage to counterbalance that, and two, I'd have to redo the Mekhet clan weakness, since increased sunlight vulnerability would become the Nosferatu's other thing. Maybe I'll just have it be a bloodline weakness particular to Orlok or something like that.)

[Morty]

That is awesome, but throw in a mix of "he who fights monsters" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeWhoFightsMonsters) and let that take off.

Maybe have meditative abilities that allow characters to enhance their abilities, but they require a willpower roll when you come down to prevent a derangement like effect. Have the abilities cost 2+ willpower to use, but if your vice matches the dominant vice of the power the cost is reduced by 1 willpower, but the willpower roll to avoid the backlash is at -2.

Strength of the gods (0000) - Wrath dominant. Spend 2 willpower points. For the remainder of the scene, on all strength based rolls you act as if you had spent willpower to increase the die pool of that roll. Spending additional willpower will not increase the die pool further, but you may risk willpower, but any extra die gained from that do not stack. You may release this effect at any time, but the effect continues until you calm down. Calming down requires an extended action (1 roll per round, roll willpower, requires one success per roll that benefited from Strength of the Gods). Any turn that you do not gain any successes on the calming roll you attack the nearest target, friend or foe.

I'll have to give some thought to their Endowments. I haven't really decided how they'd look like except in very general terms.


Mirrors has rules for both extraordinary mortals (which you could use) and a full fledged major template designed to emulate the likes of Heracles et al. It's quite a bit more powerful than Hunter endowments, but it'd probably work unless you really wanted intra-Hunter crossovers.

I'm aware of those rules, but I don't have Mirrors, unfortunately. I might buy it sometime in the future, but it's not certain. Either way, this Conspiracy wouldn't be real heroes - just normal mortals who really want to be heroes. So while I could use those rules for inspiration, they wouldn't work as they are.


Now, I come bearing something I promised at the beginning of the last thread. Some changes to vampires: designed to be slightly closer to folklore in some respects, and just a bit more crossover friendly in others. I figured I'd share given that some of you were complaining about vampires not being crossover-compatible on account of their being extremely flammable. Where not mentioned otherwise, the rules are as described in the actual Vampire book (e.g., vampires still have to try to stay awake during the daytime even though the sun no longer sets them on fire.

So, without further adieu...

Damnation and the Embrace:

The vast majority of vampires are Embraced as described in Vampire: the Requiem. However, it is not unknown for certain mortals to simply not die when they should, instead simply "waking up" an evening or two after death as one of the Undead. Maybe they were hideously evil, maybe they were cursed, or maybe they were just so pissed off that they don't mind damnation if it comes with the opportunity for sweet, sweet vengeance. Whatever the reason, these vampires are the Damned.

The Damned have clans just like any other Kindred; in this variant, the clans are more like different vampire subspecies and don't imply an unbroken chain of Embraces going back to the first member of the clan, although vampires of a given clan are generally similar enough to form alliances based on their common ground. However, the Damned are always the founder of a new bloodline, which always has some sort of symbolic value regarding their mortal life and reason for being Damned. This is how new bloodlines are created in almost all cases. You can either create new bloodlines for PC Damned or just refluff a bloodline that wasn't going to show up in your chronicle anyway. Or use an official bloodline as a starting point and switch a few things around; it's hardly impossible that the same (or a similar) discipline has shown up more than once in the long history of vampirism.

Bloodlines Are Thicker Than Water:

All vampires have the option of starting with a bloodline at character creation. In the case of most vampires, this is passed down to them by their sire along with their clan, although a vampire who doesn't want to take on her sire's bloodline can reject it during the process of being embraced, begin unlife with no bloodline, and later be initiated into a bloodline compatible with her clan as described in the default rules.

Bloodlines work as follows. Vampires who are part of a bloodline gain another in-clan discipline and an additional weakness beyond the one typical for their clan. The bloodline may also swap out one of the parent clan's disciplines for another. Typically speaking, the swapped discipline should be broadly similar in function to the one replacing it (e.g., physical disciplines should be replaced by other physical disciplines, and mental by mental) but the Storyteller may elect to waive this requirement if the character gains yet another weakness, the bloodline weakness is especially severe, or if s/he simply decides that the bloodline's in-clan disciplines don't give it an unfair advantage over more "typical" bloodlines.

Tasty, Tasty Blood:

Vampires are not required to drink vampire blood after reaching a certain Blood Potency level. That goes against the entire point of vampire folklore (that they are parasites that plague humanity) and is quite frankly contrary to everything we know about the food chain. However, older vampires do require more vitae to awaken each evening as their connection to the primordial forces of entropy and death becomes stronger. Vampires who don't have enough vitae in their systems to awaken go into topor and lose Blood Potency as described in Vampire: the Requiem.

Blood Potency - Vitae Consumed per Night:

0 - 1
1 - 1
2 - 1
3 - 2
4 - 2
5 - 3
6 - 4
7 - 5
8 - 6
9 - 7
10 - 8

Torpor:

Vampires who have their health boxes filled with lethal can remain active until the end of the Scene before collapsing into torpor, and if they can clear at least (5 - Stamina, minimum of one) health box(es) of all damage before the Scene ends, do not fall into torpor at all. Vampires continue healing normally in torpor, and once the torpored vampire has cleared at least the minimum number of health boxes they would have needed to avoid torpor in the first place, they can start making a Resolve + Composure roll once each evening (immediately upon healing sufficient damage, and each night at sunset afterwards); success means the torpor ends.

If the vampire doesn't have the vitae to heal sufficiently, use the system as written on page 175 (and probably roll up a new character). Voluntary torpor also works as written (V:tR, p.176).

Mirror, Mirror:

Long story short, vampires are seriously inconvenienced by mirrors and cameras. However, the nature of this weakness is slightly different from what the majority of vampire hunters (and new vampires) expect. Barring a few oddities (Lasombra, hollow Mekhet, etc...) vampires show up just fine in mirrors and on camera. They show up better than fine, in fact. They show up perfectly. While this isn't typically enough to prove that the vampire is a walking corpse by itself (except in the case of ultra-low humanity vampires and some Nosferatu), it is enough to trigger the instinctive sense that the vampire is a predator, and for humans that pay close attention, the true appearance of the vampire (somehow both sickly and hideously predatory) gives the human a good idea of what they're seeing.

Humans who get a good look at a vampire in a mirror or on camera roll Wits + Occult, with success indicating that they realize they're dealing with something inhuman, although they may not know what. In this day and age though, the word "vampire" should spring to mind quite quickly. Even if it doesn't, the vampire's mental disciplines suffer from the Humanity cap on social interactions for the rest of the Scene when used on the person who saw through their glammer, as her instinctive revulsion limits the effectiveness of the creature's supernatural powers. After the Scene ends, she doesn't necessarily forget what she saw, but the horror is no longer immediate enough to have a fortifying effect.

It's worth noting that seeing the vampire casually walking past a security camera isn't enough to give this roll, in most such cases the camera isn't going to be getting a close enough look at the monster to give anyone watching the footage more than a brief twinge of wrongness. People who already know that vampires exist (and thus what to look for) however, can actively look for vampires on such footage by rolling Intelligence + Occult.

The Accursed Daystar:

While they don't burn up in sunlight, vampires are weakened by it, and the sun burns away much of the illusion that allows them to pass for human. Whenever a vampire goes out in sunlight, use the sunlight damage chart on page 173 (plus clan weakness if applicable) to figure out how much damage the vampire would be taking a turn. Apply that number as a penalty to all physical ability rolls and reduce the vampire's effective level in all disciplines by that number until his level of exposure changes. This rule replaces the Humanity cap on daytime actions described on page 184 of Vampire: the Requiem.

In addition, any vampire taking a sunlight penalty of three or more cannot feign life with vitae, and the effect of any vitae spent to augment physical attributes is halved (one vitae provides only one additional die to physical dice pools). If the vampire had already spent vitae to activate the blush of life prior to taking the sunlight penalty, he loses its benefits gradually over the course of about ten minutes.

(Note: Out of deference to the movie, I've been considering having the Nosferatu still be burned by sunlight, or at least have that as a weakness of some bloodlines. However, this gives me two problems. One, they'd have to have a pretty substantial advantage to counterbalance that, and two, I'd have to redo the Mekhet clan weakness, since increased sunlight vulnerability would become the Nosferatu's other thing. Maybe I'll just have it be a bloodline weakness particular to Orlok or something like that.)

Interesting. I prefer the rules as written in Requiem, but this looks like a good variant. I've never been particularily interested in bringing the Kindred close to the vampiric folklore, though.

[The Glyphstone]

So the primary change to bloodlines is that you can start with one at BP1 instead of BP2, if it's your sire's bloodline?

[CN the Logos]

So the primary change to bloodlines is that you can start with one at BP1 instead of BP2, if it's your sire's bloodline?

Pretty much. I never saw what the big deal was with restricting them in the first place, given that they come with an additional weakness to counterbalance their additional in-clan discipline, and some of those new weaknesses are pretty severe.

It also (hopefully) puts a little bit more emphasis on bloodline as opposed to clan; NWoD clans in my mind being broad, nebulous things that give vampires of the same clan some common ground but don't really work as the basis for an organization. I just think that conspiracies based on heritage are something a smaller, more restricted bloodline would be better at, and wanted to make bloodlines a more prominent part of the game.

[The Glyphstone]

I think it's because the 'default' starting characters are assumed to be BP1, freshly embraced newbie neonates. It lets you spend Merit dots on extra BP, but does subtly discourage it; increasing BP in-game makes it a milestone other than 'stepping stone to BP 3' by connecting it to the awakening of your blood's innate powers more deeply.

[CN the Logos]

I think it's because the 'default' starting characters are assumed to be BP1, freshly embraced newbie neonates. It lets you spend Merit dots on extra BP, but does subtly discourage it; increasing BP in-game makes it a milestone other than 'stepping stone to BP 3' by connecting it to the awakening of your blood's innate powers more deeply.

That's a good point, but it really does depend on what sort of vampire you're looking to play. For me, I'm perpetually stuck STing, and I'll probably always be playing with my girlfriend, who was playing Masquerade before I knew what a White Wolf was. And she admits that while the fluff of some of the clans was awesome and all (she's a Sabbat player, and for the Requiem game I'm setting I've had to convince her that no, Belial's Brood does not an appropriate PC make), she was in it for the tone. That is, she unapologetically enjoyed Masquerade's whole "undead superhero" thing.

Now, I'm big into the personal horror, the creepiness inherent in becoming a monster and trying to find out how low you're willing to sink, and in emphasizing the vampiric condition as a curse, but I sort of see her point. Part of the appeal of roleplaying (or reading, or watching...) vampires for a lot of people is the fact that while they've more or less sold their souls, they've got some neat (albeit occasionally horrifying) things in return.

The other part of roleplaying a vampire that interests me (and her as well) is the immortality... And not just the potential immortality, but being able to get into the mindset of someone who's seen things that no one alive has, someone who measures life in decades or centuries rather than years. Starting as people who were just Embraced last night creates a very different sort of chronicle. Not a bad chronicle at all; there's a lot of interesting possiblities in RPing someone just starting to work his way through the stages of monster grief (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StagesOfMonsterGrief), it's just not the chronicle I want to run all the time.

[Lord_Gareth]

I...disapprove of these house rules, severely. In particular, the alteration to the 'prey list' of blood potency. Vampires need increasingly dangerous prey to hunt for a few reasons, but the biggest two are this: first, it helps reinforce the Sleep of Ages theme. Second, it really hits home when you become a monster so foul that even your own kind revile you.

[CN the Logos]

I...disapprove of these house rules, severely. In particular, the alteration to the 'prey list' of blood potency. Vampires need increasingly dangerous prey to hunt for a few reasons, but the biggest two are this: first, it helps reinforce the Sleep of Ages theme. Second, it really hits home when you become a monster so foul that even your own kind revile you.

You're certainly allowed to disapprove, but I stand firm on changing the "must eat vampires" thing to simply requiring more vitae for two reasons.

First, IRL, it's much more efficient to eat herbivores than carnivores, because each link between you and the source of your energy had to expend a bit more of that energy in keeping itself alive. Since all vampires require blood from some source, it's obvious that the source of their animating energy isn't in them. It comes from living things, and any vampire drinking vampiric vitae is just drinking what his victim took from a mortal (or his victim's victim... somewhere down the line it came from a living source.

You could argue that the older vampires need their vitae to be concentrated in another vampire's system first, maybe reduce human vitae to the efficacy of animal vitae rather than make it totally ineffective, but that doesn't address my second reason for the change. Vampires are supposed to be unholy monsters. They're supposed to hurt innocents, or at least mortals who haven't been actively Damned by whatever force is in charge of their world. From my point of view, putting another step between them and the humans they victimize deemphasizes the fact that no matter how you try to pretty it up, a vampire is a moving, slightly decayed corpse that eats people. Eating other monsters is inconvenient due to the vinculum, but it could be morally justified, and nothing about a vampire's condition should be morally justified. Under these rules, a vampire could try to eat only bad people, but that's still more in keeping with the theme I'm going for than a monster that only eats other monsters.

If you're worried about a world filled with ancient elder vampires manipulating everyone, I don't see that being a huge problem here. One, eight vitae is more than the average human has in his body. BP10 vampires under my rules are either going to be constantly looking for victims to take a little bit of vitae from each (and not doing much else... and still probably killing victims on a quasi-regular basis), or they're going to be killing a person a night (and are probably going to be killed either by hunters or younger vampires who don't want mortal attention drawn to them).

Of course there will be the occasional Methuselah who does well despite the odds, but having such creatures exist was never my problem with OWoD fluff. It was the fact that they controlled absolutely everything that I didn't like, and between them having to constantly refill their hemorrhaging vitae pools and the fact that 6 to 9 dot disciplines no longer exist for them to beat the rest of undead society over the head with, I think that problem is greatly lessened.

[TheCountAlucard]

One, eight vitae is more than the average human has in his body.Is it, really? :smallconfused:

From my understanding, since you don't quite "track" Vitae on a mortal character, it's translated into a point of lethal damage.

If they only have so much blood that they're completely out of it when you've filled up their health track with lethal damage from feeding, then you very easily have the possibility of a human who can be saved from complete exsanguination, since you only die when your rightmost health box is filled with aggravated damage... :smallconfused:

[Cirrylius]

I...disapprove of these house rules, severely. In particular, the alteration to the 'prey list' of blood potency. Vampires need increasingly dangerous prey to hunt for a few reasons, but the biggest two are this: first, it helps reinforce the Sleep of Ages theme. Second, it really hits home when you become a monster so foul that even your own kind revile you.

You disapprove of them as general alterations or for crossover games specifically?

[The Glyphstone]

Is it, really?

From my understanding, since you don't quite "track" Vitae on a mortal character, it's translated into a point of lethal damage.

If they only have so much blood that they're completely out of it when you've filled up their health track with lethal damage from feeding, then you very easily have the possibility of a human who can be saved from complete exsanguination, since you only die when your rightmost health box is filled with aggravated damage...

Here's what the Red Book says:

A vessel has a number of Vitae equal to its Health dots. In
game terms, an average adult human contains seven points
worth of Vitae. When a vampire feeds from a vessel, each
Vitae taken inflicts one point of lethal damage on that vessel.

Remember that a mortal character reduced to zero
Health points goes into a coma when her last Health box is
crossed off. She isn’t actually “bleeding to death,” as the vampire
has already taken all her blood, but the state represents
her remaining will to survive.

And the Black Book:

A mortal being who has lethal
marks in all of his Health boxes is utterly overwhelmed and dying. Maybe heÕs bleeding internally, his lungs are
punctured and he canÕt breathe, or he has suffered burns
over most of his body Ñ whatever is appropriate for the
kinds of injuries sustained. Each minute thereafter in which
your character receives no medical attention Ñ mundane
or supernatural Ñ he suffers one more injury. One Health
box currently marked with an X is upgraded to as asterisk
for aggravated damage, from left to right on your characterÕs
Health chart. Once all boxes are filled with asterisks, heÕs
dead.
So yeah, that completely exsanguinated mortal can be saved...if he gets more blood in 7 minutes.

[CN the Logos]

Is it, really? :smallconfused:

From my understanding, since you don't quite "track" Vitae on a mortal character, it's translated into a point of lethal damage.

If they only have so much blood that they're completely out of it when you've filled up their health track with lethal damage from feeding, then you very easily have the possibility of a human who can be saved from complete exsanguination, since you only die when your rightmost health box is filled with aggravated damage... :smallconfused:

V:tR, page 164: "A vessel has a number of Vitae equal to its Health dots. In game terms, an average adult human contains seven points worth of Vitae."

Taking a point of Vitae does inflict a point of lethal damage (so you could fill a person's track with aggravated damage by drinking from them when they were already wounded and gain Vitae for doing so), but Vitae =/= maximum amount of lethal damage a human could possibly take. At the point where a mortal's Health track is filled with lethal, they start upgrading one point of lethal to aggravated per minute until they die or get medical care appropriate to their injuries, whichever comes first, so a vampire that takes even the seven that they do have probably kills his victims unless he feeds just a few feet away from someone who's going to call an ambulance as soon as the vampire is done.

Not that you don't know it, since you've been making WoD related posts on this board for longer than I've been playing the game, but it bears emphasis: NWoD mortals are really fragile.

ETA: What's the vampiric equivalent of a ninja?

[The Glyphstone]

I have Internet Celerity 5.:smallbiggrin:

[Mono Vertigo]

Small question concerning V:tR!
Here's the situation:
A and B are vampires, and B is wearing the Mask of Tranquility. They briefly notice each other at a night club which they both now is frequented by vampires; A triggers a frenzy roll in B (who succeeds), but they don't pay attention long enough for them (or their Beasts) to become familiar with each other.
Later, B goes spend some time meditating in a quiet place, still wearing the Mask of Tranquility. A goes in that place, and being naturally silent, B, who's still meditating, doesn't notice him.

Problem: I was playing B.
A's player tells me that although B doesn't have to roll against frenzy, because the two vampires' Beasts are not familiar with each other yet, B should still get the urge to attack/flee, and have sensed A's presence.
I don't remember reading that in the core book (which doesn't mean much, admittedly, having had the book for a short while and being likely to have skipped important paragraphs). It doesn't seem to make much sense to me; I know vampires tend to dislike each other, but I did not know they were supposed to have those urges past their first encounter, or that one could sense the other in those circumstances.
The roleplay situation was resolved OOC as, even though A's player couldn't give me a reference, he said he's played V:tR for years and has always done things that way. It's minor and doesn't disadvantage me, so I accepted playing things this way.
I'm, however, still confused.
Who's right? A's player? Me? Nobody?

[The Glyphstone]

Predator's Taint, page 168:

Even if a vampire has met another Kindred
before, the initial “surge” of the Beast takes place every time
the two make contact, though it is far more manageable than the
initial contact of the unknown.

On the other hand, it does say the flare of Beasts only occurs if you're aware of the other person, and you get no special vampire detection abilities...so I think A was wrong here specifically, but would have been right if you hadn't been meditating.

[Lord_Gareth]

You're certainly allowed to disapprove, but I stand firm on changing the "must eat vampires" thing to simply requiring more vitae for two reasons.

First, IRL, it's much more efficient to eat herbivores than carnivores, because each link between you and the source of your energy had to expend a bit more of that energy in keeping itself alive. Since all vampires require blood from some source, it's obvious that the source of their animating energy isn't in them. It comes from living things, and any vampire drinking vampiric vitae is just drinking what his victim took from a mortal (or his victim's victim... somewhere down the line it came from a living source.

You could argue that the older vampires need their vitae to be concentrated in another vampire's system first, maybe reduce human vitae to the efficacy of animal vitae rather than make it totally ineffective, but that doesn't address my second reason for the change. Vampires are supposed to be unholy monsters. They're supposed to hurt innocents, or at least mortals who haven't been actively Damned by whatever force is in charge of their world. From my point of view, putting another step between them and the humans they victimize deemphasizes the fact that no matter how you try to pretty it up, a vampire is a moving, slightly decayed corpse that eats people. Eating other monsters is inconvenient due to the vinculum, but it could be morally justified, and nothing about a vampire's condition should be morally justified. Under these rules, a vampire could try to eat only bad people, but that's still more in keeping with the theme I'm going for than a monster that only eats other monsters.

You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

[Morty]

You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

I agree with what you said, more or less, but I don't think this is true. Last I checked, vampires whose blood is too powerful for them to feed on mortals are immune to becoming addicted to vampiric Vitae, but not Vinculum. Unless I've missed something.

[Lord_Gareth]

I agree with what you said, more or less, but I don't think this is true. Last I checked, vampires whose blood is too powerful for them to feed on mortals are immune to becoming addicted to vampiric Vitae, but not Vinculum. Unless I've missed something.

Oh hey, you appear to be correct (page 158 of the Red Book, "Elders, Addiction, and Diablerie"). Good thing I haven't had the chance to screw that one up in a game I'm running yet >.>

However, the presence of (likely mutual) Vinculums does not actually change the whole 'industry of violence' dynamic.

[Mono Vertigo]

Predator's Taint, page 168:


On the other hand, it does say the flare of Beasts only occurs if you're aware of the other person, and you get no special vampire detection abilities...so I think A was wrong here specifically, but would have been right if you hadn't been meditating.
Finally! A reference! And one I shouldn't have missed because it's within the first two hundreds pages! :smalleek::smallbiggrin:
Thanks a lot! Glad to see my error is not as jarring as I'd feared.

[CN the Logos]

Lord Gareth: Before I even get started, let me say that it's really, really unlikely we're going to convince each other of anything. If I liked Requiem exactly as written, I wouldn't be making changes to it. I only posted my changes to this thread so that people could catch anything I did that screwed up the mechanics too badly (I already know that I'll have to rework the Coils, so aside from that), or point out fluff consequences of my changes I wasn't thinking about (such as Glyphstone's noting that newbies starting out with a bloodline gets rid of the whole "learning to unlock your true vampiric potential" stage. I'll probably stick with what I've got for characters that were Embraced prior to a chronicle's start, but it's something to consider for a chronicle centered around a neonate). But we're not going to get anywhere arguing over taste.

That said, I feel compelled to explain my rationale behind certain decisions, so here I sit, writing this, knowing that I might as well be typing to a wall. It's probably some sort of really depressing metaphor for my life in general. Anyway:


You're missing a few things here.

First and foremost: the whole herbivore/carnivore thing is bringing science into something that operates under magical/narrative laws. The comparison is actively unhelpful at best and a Stephenie Meyer-class genre breach at worst.

That's subjective. Vampires are a metaphor for predation, disease, rape, and possibly serial murder, and I like them to fit with that theme. I also dislike arbitrary systems of magic.

Also, throwing the name "Stephanie Meyer" around like some sort of Your Vampires Suck trump card needs to stop. Not just from you, from everyone. Because the people I hear using it are generally defending Anne Rice style vamps that have about as much in common with vampire folklore (or even the Victorian horror fiction that codified the modern vampire) as Twilight's sparklepires. Not that there's anything redeeming about Meyer's writing, but you can't criticize her on fidelity to the original mythology when you're playing a game that involves vampires who get together in their vampire courts to discuss vampire politics. You've already left the genre, or at least the bits of it that interest me, long behind at that point.


Second: An elder vampire that needs to feed on his own kind is unlikely to just stalk and attack random vampires. The reason for this is simple: your average vampire is dangerous as all hell. And yet, they also need to ensure a steady supply of blood (oh, hey, incidentally - once a vampire becomes old enough to require vampire blood for sustenance, they're immune to any vinculums they don't already have. Check the core book) in order to fuel their powers and/or existence. How to do this? Well, the obvious answer is this - establish a herd.

How is a herd of vampires even going to become a thing? This isn't Masquerade, where vampires of BP 6 or higher (Generation 7 or lower, I know) have access to super-awesome secret elder only powers that the new kids can't compete with. That new kid could have as many dots in Dominate, Auspex, etc... as the elder trying to eat him. I mean, it's possible to get together a flock of wolves, sure, but it's not exactly a stable situation. That's the actual, metagame reason for the feeding on vampires thing; the elders need to sleep to keep them from railroading the new kids. Which sort of happens anyway with the large number of older (but not elder!) vampires that have pretentious Latin titles, but meh.

In my case, I like having a few crazy elder vampires around, but I don't want them to be all over the place, taking control of vampire society, so I wanted something that would hopefully result in a middle ground between Masquerade's "elders everywhere, in charge of everything!"and Requiem's "almost no vampire makes it longer than a century!" That's not the only reason for the change, of course, which leads me to...


But a herd of vampires is a very different beast from a herd of humans. A herd of humans is a group of unsuspecting mooks or blood dolls. A herd of vampires is an industry built on violence. Each of those vampires (and having more than one is ideal, of course, especially given the amount of vitae you may need to refresh each night) has their own feeding needs, which they inflict upon humans. But then they also need to feed you, which means attacking two or even three times the number of people each night in a spreading wave of callously planned malice. Even at blood potency 6 or 7 creating such a thing means deliberately planning (or at least accepting) a campaign of assault (possibly murderous assault) upon the unsuspecting innocent.

Does that sound like it's taking the edge off the moral consequences to you?

Do I look like the sort of person who answers sarcasm-laden rhetorical questions?

Regardless of the total amount of vitae taken, it's putting another degree of separation between the elder and his ultimate victim, and allows the vampire (and his player, if he's a PC) to put the ultimate mortal victims out of sight and out of mind. Making the elder having to directly harm his mortals makes the harm he does an immediate thing. Something he can't avoid thinking about, because he's doing it personally.

And believe it or not, I did consider that elder vampires should have a harder time maintaining their unlives, and that they should do more harm to the world around them. That's why I've written a BP 10 elder as needing eight times the amount of vitae that a BP 1 neonate does. He's still causing a lot of suffering. At sustenance-level feeding he's actually causing more harm than an elder under the default rules; a vampire only needs two vitae to heal the point of lethal damage that an elder who's drinking just enough to keep animate does to him, for a total of three lethal damage to (a) mortal(s) per night, versus eight damage per night under my changes. I just want the suffering inflicted to be up close and personal. Of course, as the elder needs more vampire blood to replace extra vitae spent healing and using powers, the default rules start pulling ahead in "total lethal damage done to mortals," but if your Methuselahs are active to the point where they regularly burn that much vitae on Discipline use and fighting things that seriously threaten them, you might actually be playing Masquerade. :smalltongue:

[TheCountAlucard]

Not that you don't know it, since you've been making WoD related posts on this board for longer than I've been playing the game, but it bears emphasis: NWoD mortals are really fragile.Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point. :smalleek:


Also, throwing the name "Stephanie Meyer" around like some sort of Your Vampires Suck trump card needs to stop. Not just from you, from everyone. Because the people I hear using it are generally defending Anne Rice style vamps that have about as much in common with vampire folklore (or even the Victorian horror fiction that codified the modern vampire) as Twilight's sparklepires. Not that there's anything redeeming about Meyer's writing, but you can't criticize her on fidelity to the original mythology when you're playing a game that involves vampires who get together in their vampire courts to discuss vampire politics.That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

[CN the Logos]

Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point. :smalleek:

If it bothers you, think of it as them having a bit more blood, but they can't provide the vampire with any more of the delicious life energy that she craves, and they've lost enough blood so that they'll be dead soon regardless.

That said, humans have survived some crazy ****, the brain can go without oxygen for four minutes before incurring permanent damage, and NWoD isn't much of a simulationist system anyway. Call it an approximation of reality and shrug at the potential weirdness, I suppose? :smallconfused:


That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

Oh no, fidelity to the source material is a secondary concern for me. What's important is that whatever rules for the monster you use, they should make sense and facilitate the story being told. I just mean that saying that her material is a breach of genre is sort of meaningless. Portraying vampires as sentient is, to some extent, a genre-breach.

From the little bit of her work I've looked through, the problem is that her writing is bad. Far be it from me to tell anyone that they're wrong to enjoy what they enjoy; if you want your vampires to activate their dread powers by singing showtunes (while dancing, where appropriate), that's cool. I'm going to roll my eyes a bit, but there's no disputing matters of taste. But bad writing is bad writing. :smallamused:

[The Glyphstone]

Fragile, they may be; I just find it odd that they can survive several minutes after being completely exsanguinated, and can even be saved from death at that point. :smalleek:

The human body is surprisingly resilient:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death

You can survive with no blood flow for 3-4 minutes, sometimes up to 10 minutes, before suffering brain damage at body temperature. Your other organs can survive up to 30 minutes with no blood flow; severed limbs can be reattached after 6 hours and still function.

[closetgeek44]

Obviously saw Dark Knight and Bane may be one of my favorite villains atm. Was trying to think of how to create a Bane type character to use in a WoD game setting. Maybe he's not a mortal? Maybe a different splat? Maybe he's an immortal? A veteran Rahu? A seasoned Gangrel? etc...

If he is a mortal, what would his attributes, merits, skills, etc...be?

I'm looking for any kind of input.

[erikun]

The tricky part is that a lot of Bane's character is about his backstory, methods, and motivations, not his "powers". Overall, he is just a very tough person with a lot of strength and pain relief, and some rough greco-roman wrestling training (from what I could tell).

His backstory seems similar to a Geist, or someone who has died and came back to live out life again. While I'm not as familiar with it, he also seems similar to a Promethean, at least for his body.

If I was more familiar with the systems (sadly, I am not) I would just make him a mortal with a few appropriate gifts and training in a few fighting styles. To use Vampire's disciplines, I'd give him Vigor, Resilience, and a few ranks in Dominate... for spoiler reasons below.
A big part of Bane's character in the movie was his ability to speak at the people in Gotham and get them to either revolt or stay indoors. Bane's takeover of Gotham wasn't so much with strength of arms but with manipulating and convincing everyone to do what he wanted them to do.

Edit, and more spoilery bits below.
Talia as a Vampire might actually work out really well for your purposes. She could easily possess Dominate and Majesty, using them to hold together the League of Shadows. Bane would be a ghoul, with the "Bane Juice" (not in the movie, but from the comic) being Talia's blood and granting him his discipline powers. Yes, it doesn't work out perfectly as Talia frequently wanders around in daylight, but could make an interesting idea if you want a Talia-ish and Bane-ish character for a game, rather than trying to reconstruct the existing characters.

[closetgeek44]

The tricky part is that a lot of Bane's character is about his backstory, methods, and motivations, not his "powers". Overall, he is just a very tough person with a lot of strength and pain relief, and some rough greco-roman wrestling training (from what I could tell).

His backstory seems similar to a Geist, or someone who has died and came back to live out life again. While I'm not as familiar with it, he also seems similar to a Promethean, at least for his body.

If I was more familiar with the systems (sadly, I am not) I would just make him a mortal with a few appropriate gifts and training in a few fighting styles. To use Vampire's disciplines, I'd give him Vigor, Resilience, and a few ranks in Dominate... for spoiler reasons below.
A big part of Bane's character in the movie was his ability to speak at the people in Gotham and get them to either revolt or stay indoors. Bane's takeover of Gotham wasn't so much with strength of arms but with manipulating and convincing everyone to do what he wanted them to do.

Edit, and more spoilery bits below.
Talia as a Vampire might actually work out really well for your purposes. She could easily possess Dominate and Majesty, using them to hold together the League of Shadows. Bane would be a ghoul, with the "Bane Juice" (not in the movie, but from the comic) being Talia's blood and granting him his discipline powers. Yes, it doesn't work out perfectly as Talia frequently wanders around in daylight, but could make an interesting idea if you want a Talia-ish and Bane-ish character for a game, rather than trying to reconstruct the existing characters.

The point you make in your second spoiler seems fairly accurate as a relationship analogy.

Bane does afterall act out of love and devotion to Talia pretty much from the get go, and while he acts as her enforcer he does seem to possess a formidable intellect and charisma of his own.

I think in each splat there is a Bane-ish template (why I mentioned Gangrel) but could easily be turned into a Nosferatu (hence the mask).

I'm not familiar with Geist so I'll take a look at it and see what it offers as well. A few of the immortal templates seemed like they could be used to create a Bane-type character as well due to many of them being very tough to kill.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Spliced the Bane-build thread into the main WoD thread.

Burble.

[erikun]

I'm not familiar with Geist so I'll take a look at it and see what it offers as well. A few of the immortal templates seemed like they could be used to create a Bane-type character as well due to many of them being very tough to kill.
Geist, as I mentioned, is all about characters who have died and came back to life. That is the whole point - the characters get their powers from having been dead and resurrected. This parallels Bane and
The Pit, which is basically a metaphorical death and resurrection. Getting out of the Pit is pretty much as close to having died and being reincarnated as you'd get to a non-magical setting.

Promethean was mentioned as well, as they are pieced-together creatures of unnatural toughness. Especially in Dark Knight Rises, Bane is very much a character that was taken apart and put back together in his new life; the parallel is what I first thought.


Note that both fit the theme of the Bane character, not necessarily the power set or capabilities. I mentioned Vampire because, beyond being most familiar with it, Vampires are well known for their ability to manipulate things. Bane (along with Joker) were primarily manipulators, so while a Bane-vampire or Joker-vampire may not make the most sense from a Vampire lore standpoint, the system does definitely grant them the most appropriate abilities.

(Resilience and Vigor, or Strength-boost and Soak-boost, are in most WoD systems that I know of. In that regard, it isn't difficult to build a strong toughman in almost any of them.)

[Yuki Akuma]

Objection!

Sin-Eaters get their powers from sharing their souls with horrible ghost-gods, not from having died and come back.

If anything, Prometheans are the ones whose powers come from being resurrected - although they're not the same person as the person who owned the corpse they were made from.

[comicshorse]

( Because I love Changeling)

Bane is an Ogre ( with plenty of Contract of Stone) who was abducted by his Keeper and held in The Pit. There he remained until Talia ( Fairest) arrived and the two forged a friendship with Bane protecting her.
Eventually Talia escaped Arcadia and found friends and a adoptive father in a group of Bridge Burners. She lead them deep into Arcadia and in a daring raid they freed Bane and fled.
Now she and Bane are working on their greatest plan. Gotham is home to many Trods and if the world is to be saved from the true Fae they must be destroyed no matter what the cost. It has taken many years of planning but now they have a weapon powerful enough to take out all of Gotham's Trod's at once.

[CN the Logos]

So, curiosity (and the possibility of crossover in a game I'm running) compels me to ask:what's the deal with NWoD werewolves? Maybe it becomes totally obvious on a thorough readthrough of their rules (I've got the book, but have only had time to look it over so far), but I've heard them compared unfavorably to hunters. So before I bother coming up with details for the werewolf-centric subplot I've been wanting to run for awhile, could someone tell me why they're apparently stuck at the bottom of NWoD's tier list, and what if anything can be done about that?

[Selrahc]

but I've heard them compared unfavorably to hunters.

If so, you've heard wrongly.

Werewolves have some weaknesses that make them certainly amongst the weaker supers. But they do have a lot of positives.

Weaknesses-
Gauru form is very fleeting. For most non-combat focussed wolves, it will only last 3 turns.
Silver weakness is something that basically any non-werewolf foe can quite easily exploit, and negates some of their biggest strenths
Shapeshifting relies on luck and takes, or becomes a big essence sink.
In order to learn higher level powers, werewolves need to pay a premium by first increasing renown. Massive XP sink and less choice. Comes with a roleplay restriction(you want Honour renown? You have to act exceptionally honourably.)
The totem mechanics as written, are kind of ludicrous. I think if WW was doing werewolf now, they would probably have created something similar to pledgecrafting.
In general, the Gifts and Rituals that werewolves have access to are on the lower end of the power curve of supernatural abilities. Not useless, but generally rather specific in function.
Social penalties and Rage checks mean it is very hard to function in mortal society for any werewolf not particularly socially adroit.

Positives-
Alternate forms provide even the weakest werewolf with basic combat competence akin to a fairly combat focussed mortal.
Lunacy means that mortal antagonists basically can't confront werewolves.
Harmony is easily one of the more flexible and forgiving of the Morality meters.
Regeneration against everything but silver(and other agg. damage) is quick and handy, with easy in combat healing.
Access to the spirit world gives a whole other angle for attack against all spirit blind foes. It also gives a source of allies and information that outclasses anything in the mortal world.
Werewolves operate as a society a lot more readily than most supernaturals, and will attempt to compensate for others weaknesses. Dedicated pack fighting is something werewolves actively learn.
Once the Renown requirement is done, Werewolves have free access to gift lists and can cherry pick gifts at any level without having to learn prerequisites.


I'd happily put Werewolves on a level with Vampires and Prometheans, and the only reason I'd put Changelings above them would be pledge crafting.

[Sydonai]

Alternate forms provide even the weakest werewolf with basic combat competence akin to a fairly combat focussed mortal.
Lunacy means that mortal antagonists basically can't confront werewolves.
Harmony is easily one of the more flexible and forgiving of the Morality meters.
Regeneration against everything but silver(and other agg. damage) is quick and handy, with easy in combat healing.
Access to the spirit world gives a whole other angle for attack against all spirit blind foes. It also gives a source of allies and information that outclasses anything in the mortal world.
Werewolves operate as a society a lot more readily than most supernaturals, and will attempt to compensate for others weaknesses. Dedicated pack fighting is something werewolves actively learn.
Once the Renown requirement is done, Werewolves have free access to gift lists and can cherry pick gifts at any level without having to learn prerequisites.




1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.
1. Care to elaborate? Shapeshifting is good for Harmony; not shapeshifting for 3 days is even a Harmony violation at Harmony 8 and above.
2. Again, care to explain? At best, you have ST fiat, but if the ST is granting every NPC that fiat, he may as well just remove Lunacy from the game entirely, since it clearly isn't doing its intended job. Also, I don't know how he expects the werewolves to do theirs.
3. Only if your ST has it out for werewolves, in which case I have to wonder why he's running WtF in the first place. The core book even explains that, no, none of what you said is accurate. The Lunacy protects the Uratha from revealing themselves. Using bite attacks is not consuming the flesh of human or wolf, it's standard practice for wolves and werewolves in forms with bite attacks. You bite, tear, and spit, not bite, tear, and swallow. Besides, even if some blood or chunks of meat do make it down your gullet, you're not hunting for food, you're not gaining essence from it, you're not even actually eating anything. And smacking a packmate upside the head is not betraying the pack. Dominance battles are a regular thing for werewolves.
4. Silver stops the regeneration, there's Darius' unique fighting style, but it only functions for someone in Dalu form, what are the others?
5. Spirits do not all hate werewolves, unless, again, your ST is vindictively opposed to werewolves. Yes, lots of them dislike werewolves, but the Firstborn and Lunes like werewolves, and other spirits are mostly ambivalent. You have heard of totems, right? You know, the spirits that act as patrons for a werewolf pack, and provide them benefits? Or spirit allies? Not all spirits hate werewolves.
6. Yes and no. "The Low Honor the High; the High Respect the Low." If a werewolf disagrees with his/her alpha, they can say so. They have to be respectful, but so does the alpha or elder. If the younger wolf has a serious beef with the alpha or elder, they can challenge the alpha for dominance, but that may not be a good idea. The High got to where they are by being quick, cunning, and yes, strong. Not every sign of disagreement or argument has to devolve into a "pissing contest," and in fact usually won't.
7. Care to explain? If you don't have the XP to purchase Renown or Gifts, then obviously you can't use gifts you haven't bought. Once you've bought them either via XP or Renown, however, you can use them as much as you like, as long as you can pay the essence or willpower cost. What RP restrictions do you mean?

[The Glyphstone]

1.Alternate forms might be useless depending on the ST's interpretation of Harmony.
2.Lunacy can be ignored by spending willpower, and it doesn't outway the cons of Death-Rage.
3.How much of a problem Harmony is heavily depends on the ST's interpretation. Shapshifting can be seen as "revealing the existance of werewolves". Using any bite attack can be seen as "cunsuming the flesh of werewolves/humans/wolves". Something as small as smacking an irritating packmate in the head can be seen as "betraying the pack".
4.There are at least three methods to harm werewolves that exploit their regeneration, one is a crippling fighting style that anyone can learn.
5.Spirits all hate werewolves, except for Lunes that love you and drive you crazy by accident.
6.Werewolves operate in a society based on having a pissing-contest at the slightest hint of an argument and give the win to the physically strongest four times out of five.
7.Gifts are useless if you don't have enough xp for them or you can't use them due to role-play restrictions.

Whatever ST introduced you to W:tF did it horribly, horribly wrong.

[Selrahc]

What RP restrictions do you mean?

I think he is talking about Renown.
Renown doesn't really ever prevent you from using *gifts*. It just pushes your character towards certain ways of acting. This isn't really a specific criticism of the tangible "Select whatever gifts you want" benefit, so much as a reiteration that renown can be restrictive.



stuff

Uh. Sure. If your ST is out to stop you from playing the game, then I guess werewolves are quite hard to play. :smallconfused:

[Sydonai]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)

[The Glyphstone]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)

That sucks...

As for the gift, remember that the Pure are a dangerous force in their own right, that sounds like it'd be a good anti-Pure Gift to have (or something the Pure would use against the People).

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood. My grandfather died about a month ago, my grandmother died less than a year before that, and I just got kicked out of a house my family lived in for seventy years.

(There is a gift that makes healing make wounds worse rather than better, I think this includes regeneration. Pretty sure its a Fire-Eyes fever/plague gift.)
My sympathies. I lost my little brother about a month and a half ago, so I sympathize.


As for the gift, remember that the Pure are a dangerous force in their own right, that sounds like it'd be a good anti-Pure Gift to have (or something the Pure would use against the People).
Mostly something the Pure use against the People. I'm trying to remember where it is... Wolfsbane, perhaps? I know I've read about it.

[The Glyphstone]

If it's a gift from a plague-spirit, you're probably right.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Actually, I think it's a thing Rabid Wolf gave his tribe. Because that's a thing he would do.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

New Mummy blog (http://whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/2012/07/25/136/) on Cults, the equivalent of Lodges/Bloodlines.

Highlights: Mummies often have powerful mortal support systems. Being as they seem mostly to have been leaders of one sort or another before being mummified, this makes a lot of sense.
3 main types of cults: the occult cult (obviously), the conspiracy cult ("tell their followers they’re working for the CIA or the Bilderbergers"), and legitimate businesses ("it could be a profit-generating private equity firm, or an NGO, or a think tank, as far as the outsiders are concerned."), all of which basically give the mummy a different array of resources, retainers, allies, contacts, mooks, etc.

[Urpriest]

That's not why her vamps suck, though - it's that she keeps trying to say, "Oh, but it's not magic - look at all this science, which, by the way, I didn't actually research before writing this stuff."

...that's thoroughly true of Anne Rice as well, though. From Taltos onward, Anne Rice vampires were supposed to be biological.

[Yuki Akuma]

It's not as if WoD vampires are particularly close to any folklore, either - how many stories have you heard about vampires activating their special powers using the magical powers of blood? At best, vampires will heal by drinking blood, but often it's just food.

[Mr.Bookworm]

So. Uh. How about that there WoD release list?


August 2012

VtR/nWoD- Silent Knife- A novel of the nWoD and VtR. 300+ pages, 6 x 9 PDF/PoD/ePub.

Vampire the Requiem- Blood Sorcery– This book explores the secrets of how vampires use blood in mystic rituals: new powers, in-depth histories of blood cults and infamous sorcerers. . 80 pages. PDF/PoD.

V20- Book of Nod: Restoration Edition– For the first time, the Book of Nod has been restored with new files that perfectly replicate the first edition but cleaned up- so that the text can all be read and many details of the art are finally able to be discerned. PDF/PoD

September 2012

Mummy the Curse– The nWoD from the point of view of the deathless, ancient keepers of the Curse. 264 pages. PDF/PoD/ Deluxe Kickstarter

Mummy the Curse- A separate release of the SAS contained in the main book– 40 pages. PDF/PoD.

V20- Children of the Revolution– This book explores the lives of vampires created during or part of moments in history where Revolution ran wild. Woven throughout are more secrets and hidden history of the already established background for VtM. 120 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

October 2012

MtAw- The Left Handed Path- The Legacies disdained and feared by doctrinaire mages. Heretics and Apostates, The Mad, the Scelesti, and Reapers. They embrace madness, steal souls, or worship the Abyss. 96 pages. PDF/PoD.

Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition– In style and philosophy a matching volume to V20. Developed by Ethan Skemp w/ Bill Bridges and Eddy Webb. 500+ pages. PDF/PoD/ Deluxe Kickstarter

W20- The Skinner SAS– An SAS adventure to be playtested and used by the official playtest team The Wrecking Crew at conventions throughout convention season. Features the arch-villian Sam Haight as he was originally: a driven mortal willing to slaughter Garou in order to become one by wearing their skins. 40 pages. PDF/PoD.

November 2012

Mummy the Curse- Guildhalls of the Deathless– This book delves deeper into the factions within the Mummies: the Guilds, with new Merits and powers and detailed background information. Also offers the first “chapter” of a three part adventure designed to lead from supplement to supplement in a three part story arc. 160 pages. PDF/PoD..

V20/cWoD- Hunters Hunted 2– One of the seminal CWoD books revised and updated for V20 featuring a look at the organizations around the world who hunt, study, hide the truth about, the Kindred. 120 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

MtAs- Convention Book: New World Order– As promised, this book is one of those in the Convention Book series that wasn’t finished when cWoD ended and which has been clamored for ever since. 84 pages. PDF/PoD.

December 2012

WoD- God Machine Chronicle Fiction Anthology–. This volume combines already published stories from previous nWoD sourcebooks, and unreleased ones leading up to and hinting at the God Machine Chronicle that touch on the fear and horror that lurks within the World of Darkness. 300+ pages. 6” x 9 “ PDF/PoD/ePub.

W20- Book of Changing Breeds– A deeper look at the Fera building on the info in W20. 160 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

V20- Anarchs Unbound- A revisitation of the old Anarch Cookbook, Anarchs Unbound examines the large scale of the Anarch experience (domains, the Movement inside other sects’ domains, overthrowing tyrants) on down through the local and personal scale of the Anarchs (being in an Anarch brood or coterie, “growing up Anarch,” converting from other sects, and maintaining deep cover or nomadic Anarch ideals). 120 pages. PDF/PoD. Deluxe Kickstarter

January 2013

Mummy the Curse- Book of the Deceived– The sixth, Lost Guild that are the dark reflections of the Arisen. Here is where we explore their true history and beliefs and provide all the info necessary for them to be played as characters. Also contains the second “chapter” of the story arc adventure with focus on the Sixth Guild menace 120 pages. PDF/PoD.

February 2013

VtR Strix Chronicle Fiction Anthology–.As with the nWoD Anthology, this one contain classic and new VtR fiction that teases the new Strix Chronicle and provide a richer look at the terror created by the fear of these malevolent spirits. 300+ pages.6” x 9 “PDF/PoD/ePub.

W20- RAGE Across the World– Similar in content to the V20 Companion, this book will pull together lose ends and expand on several topics from W20, all based on a “travelogue” that provides deepened backstory to the struggle of the Garou.. 120 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

March 2013

nWoD- The God Machine Chronicle- This book combines both setting and rules info to create a default Chronicle for nWoD that still allows the sandbox play that nWoD is known for. The Chronicle focuses on the legends of the God Machine that first captivated readers’ interest in the nWoD core rulebook and presents a world darkened by its presence. The general history and specific rules changes of this Chronicle set the stage for the release of Demon: The ??? in August. 264 pages. PDF/PoD/ Deluxe Kickstarter.

MtAs- Convention Book: Progenitors–As promised, this book is one of those in the Convention Book series that wasn’t finished when cWoD ended and which has been clamored for ever since. 84 pages. PDF/PoD.

April 2013

Mummy the Curse- Sothis Ascends– This book examines the Sothic Turn; the cycle of existence that the Mummies live and die within. Since their creation, there have been five Turns and each is examined: one part historical setting, one part grab-bag of artifacts, powers, and antagonists. Also presents the final “chapter” of the three part adventure, with thematic content relating to the Turns. 160 pages. PDF/PoD.

V20- Rites of Blood- In simplest form, this is a collection of rituals practiced among the various Kindred sects but this isn’t just powers, but an examination of the sects themselves and how they use their eldritch mystical arts. There’s room for the major and minor sects: The Thaumaturgy of the Camarilla Tremere, the priestly rites and witchy sorcery of the Sabbat, the creepy and alien practices of the Tal’Mahe’Ra, “street” rituals from the Anarch contingent, and some of the mysterious ways of the Inconnu. And, of course, the sorceries of the Assamites and Setites, and new necromancies for the Giovanni. 120 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

May 2013

MtAw/MtAs- Mage Translation Guide– Provides the ability to translate characters from Mage the Ascension to Mage the Awakening and visa versa. 50 pages. PDF/PoD..

W20- Book of the Wyrm –.Creatures and spirits to challenge the Garou, including revised and collected info and backstory on such things as Pentex and Black Dog Game Factory. 160 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

June 2013

VtR- The Strix Chronicle- This book combines both setting and rules info to create a default Chronicle for VtR that still allows the sandbox play that nWoD is known for. The Chronicle focuses on the legends of the Strix- the owl spirits that prey on vampires. A threat unique to VtR and used to great effect in the historical Rome books, this book will show the effects of a world where the threat of their return has warped vampire society. Will contain default tweaks to the rules and in-depth history and backstory of just such a setting. 264 pages. PDF/PoD/ Deluxe Kickstarter

MtAs- Convention Book: Syndicate– As promised, this book is one of those in the Convention Book series that wasn’t finished when cWoD ended and which has been clamored for ever since. 84 pages. PDF/PoD.

July 2013

Demon Translation Guide –.Provides the ability to translate characters from Demon the Fallen to Demon the ??? and visa versa. 50 pages. PDF/PoD..

MtAs- Convention Book: Void Engineers– As promised, this book is one of those in the Convention Book series that wasn’t finished when cWoD ended and which has been clamored for ever since. 84 pages. PDF/PoD.

August 2013

Demon the ???– A new game line- answering many fan requests- a new look at those creatures of fire and darkness: fallen angels, nightmares from the nether realms, servants of the God Machine or something else entirely? Includes codified rule sets of those rules developed over the last few years including: Shards, SASs, Tiers, as well as a rich background for players to immerse themselves in. 320 pages. PDF/PoD Hardcover/ Deluxe Kickstarter

V20- Blood Diaries of the Clans- This volume would revisit the Clans as a collection of mini-clanbooks, with each clan’s subsection arranged in the same format. This title would give many new story hooks, character concepts, history, and clan-specific crunch that pairs rules with setting. In particular, the combo Disciplines, which were not covered in V20 but have been requested again and again. 240 pages. PDF/PoD/Deluxe Kickstarter

You would not believe how excited I am for the God Machine book.

[The Glyphstone]

So what's the God Machine?

[Mr.Bookworm]

So what's the God Machine?

Read the intro fiction of the core book! Starting on page 26, Voice of the Angel. It's pretty cool. I believe there's also a couple of references to it scattered throughout various nWoD books, but I'm not positive about that.

Also probably a veiled shout-out to Autochthon.

Also:


The god-machine built our world as a resting place for its First Children, whom men called angels or Ancient Ones. After a time, the ancients desired servants to dwell with them, servants who walked upright and had pleasing shapes, and who could speak. They sent the proper prayer-signals to the god-machine and were granted leave to do so. First the Ancient Ones took the beasts of the field and granted them the knowledge to speak and walk. But these animals retained their wildness and did not make good servants. They grew wicked and violent, and were cast into the wilderness. They were the Second Children, whom men called demons.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

But the Demons: the ??? book isn't coming out for a while after the God Machine book, so I don't know how closely the two will be linked... it's be awesome though!

[comicshorse]

So. Uh. How about that there WoD release list?



You would not believe how excited I am for the God Machine book.

Oh god they're bringing back Samuel Haight :smalleek:

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Oh god they're bringing back Samuel Haight :smalleek:

At least it says that he's "only" trying to become Garou by slaughtering them and wearing their skins. Could be worse.

[Morty]

Hm. First Mummy, now Demon? White Wolf is on a roll with new nWoD gamelines. I'm looking forward to finding out more about it. It's a shame there will be no more Hunter releases, though. It's my favourite gameline.
Speaking of Hunter, I have more about the Conspiracy I mentioned on the first page. Their Endowment is slowly taking shape. I decided to have it work like Goetic Gospels - three categories with up to 5 dots in each, but not more than 5 dots in total. Each dot would give you a new application of the Endowment. The three categories would be:

Strength - Invoking the legendary physical power and combat prowess of heroes like Heracles and Cuchulain. The powers from this category would give the Hunter increased strength and combat ability. At higher dot levels, they'd probably also get bonuses to fighting against multiple enemies. However, using those techniques would afflict the Hunter with madness and extreme anger. Pretty straight-forward.
Invincibility - Reflecting the nigh-invulnerability of men like Achilles or Siegfried, this category would bestow upon the Hunter great physical endurance. Not nearly close to real invincibility of course, but it'd offset the natural squishyness of mortals. The downside would be that every effect would come with one specific, crippling vulnerability - a literal Achilles' heel. However, I think it might be tricky to balance.
Cunning - This category would call back to the trickster-heroes of antiquity, like Odysseus. It'd give the Hunter abilities to help with solving problems and outwitting enemies. The pentalty would be terrible luck, bordering on divine curse.


What do you think? It's still rough and I don't have the name for the Endowment.

[CN the Logos]

If so, you've heard wrongly.

Werewolves have some weaknesses that make them certainly amongst the weaker supers. But they do have a lot of positives.

Weaknesses-
Gauru form is very fleeting. For most non-combat focussed wolves, it will only last 3 turns.
Silver weakness is something that basically any non-werewolf foe can quite easily exploit, and negates some of their biggest strenths
Shapeshifting relies on luck and takes, or becomes a big essence sink.
In order to learn higher level powers, werewolves need to pay a premium by first increasing renown. Massive XP sink and less choice. Comes with a roleplay restriction(you want Honour renown? You have to act exceptionally honourably.)
The totem mechanics as written, are kind of ludicrous. I think if WW was doing werewolf now, they would probably have created something similar to pledgecrafting.
In general, the Gifts and Rituals that werewolves have access to are on the lower end of the power curve of supernatural abilities. Not useless, but generally rather specific in function.
Social penalties and Rage checks mean it is very hard to function in mortal society for any werewolf not particularly socially adroit.

Positives-
Alternate forms provide even the weakest werewolf with basic combat competence akin to a fairly combat focussed mortal.
Lunacy means that mortal antagonists basically can't confront werewolves.
Harmony is easily one of the more flexible and forgiving of the Morality meters.
Regeneration against everything but silver(and other agg. damage) is quick and handy, with easy in combat healing.
Access to the spirit world gives a whole other angle for attack against all spirit blind foes. It also gives a source of allies and information that outclasses anything in the mortal world.
Werewolves operate as a society a lot more readily than most supernaturals, and will attempt to compensate for others weaknesses. Dedicated pack fighting is something werewolves actively learn.
Once the Renown requirement is done, Werewolves have free access to gift lists and can cherry pick gifts at any level without having to learn prerequisites.


I'd happily put Werewolves on a level with Vampires and Prometheans, and the only reason I'd put Changelings above them would be pledge crafting.

Hm, so we're talking low end of the power curve but workable with houserules. Has anyone here looked at the Werewolf Translation Guide? I've heard OWoD werewolves were super awesome; does it carry any of that over or was that due to other things that I, not knowing OWoD, am not aware of?


It's not as if WoD vampires are particularly close to any folklore, either - how many stories have you heard about vampires activating their special powers using the magical powers of blood? At best, vampires will heal by drinking blood, but often it's just food.

That's not mentioned in folklore, but it's not much of a stretch either. Humans eat food to stay alive; vampires drink blood to magically stay unalive. Humans burn calories in their food to do things; vampires burn magic in their blood to do magical things. Even explicitly drinking blood is far from universal though; a lot of vampires just spread illness and general badness throughout the area, and some return nightly to their former home and cause their spouse to gradually weaken as if he or she was losing blood, or not getting any rest. The unfortunate implications in that last part are probably intentional... and bear in mind that the typical description of vampires at the time involved signs of decay. :smallyuk:

WoD vampires also lack most vampiric weaknesses, but that's forgivable; there are so many local variants on what vampires are and can('t) do that the best way to deal with it without saying "it's all true" or "nothing is true" is to have the traditional weaknesses be bloodline/clan specific. Maybe I should bring back some variant on True Faith for my house rules, but I'm still considering how I'd implement that.


So. Uh. How about that there WoD release list?

You would not believe how excited I am for the God Machine book.

I greet this news as I greet all potentially interesting news from White Wolf: with great trepidation. This is either going to be the wonderful fulfillment of everything potentially good about the New World of Darkness, or the biggest anticlimax since the end of the Dark Tower series. It could go either way, although I hope they're at least kind enough to give a number of possible answers to the questions they've been dangling since the corebook, rather than enshrine the one true way into the Holy White Wolf Canon.

I feel exactly the same about New Demon. Part of me is daring to dream wonderful dreams, and part of me is wondering how they're going to reconcile PC demons with the Abrahamic cosmic horror thing from Hunter and Inferno.


So what's the God Machine?

Blasphemer! :smalltongue:


Read the intro fiction of the core book! Starting on page 26, Voice of the Angel. It's pretty cool. I believe there's also a couple of references to it scattered throughout various nWoD books, but I'm not positive about that.

Also probably a veiled shout-out to Autochthon.

Also:

Veiled? I'm halfway wondering if they'll have advice for crossovers with 3rd edition Exalted.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

From what I've heard, werewolves are the best at direct combat.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah. Pretty much nothing can go mano-a-mano with a combat-focused werewolf in Garou form, and a non-combat werewolf can still go war-form and kick the crap out of their non-combat opposite number from another splat (except Mages because they're hax). Werewolves are still one of the weakest splats specifically because combat in WoD is risky (even for a werewolf, enough dudes with shotguns could blow through its health boxes too fast to regen/kill them) and they have an incredibly small toolbox for dealing with non-combat situations outside persuading spirits to enact change for them.

[SiderealDreams]

Yeah. Pretty much nothing can go mano-a-mano with a combat-focused werewolf in Garou form, and a non-combat werewolf can still go war-form and kick the crap out of their non-combat opposite number from another splat (except Mages because they're hax). Werewolves are still one of the weakest splats specifically because combat in WoD is risky (even for a werewolf, enough dudes with shotguns could blow through its health boxes too fast to regen/kill them) and they have an incredibly small toolbox for dealing with non-combat situations outside persuading spirits to enact change for them.

Though take this with a grain of salt however as one of the major complaints about how weak Uratha are in NWoD is the relative weakness and limited combat viability of their war form especially against ranged specialists.

The other being things like that Gifts are generally crappy, and a crippling xp structure. Hopefully for the WtF fans they have even more hacks for them in the God Machine chronicles.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, pretty much anybody loses to a ranged-combat specialist with a big gun, that's just how the system is designed. Even a powerful Mage who doesn't have exactly the right rotes up can be taken down in one or two hits by a sniper, and Combat Marksmanship is just beastly...but I don't hold that against werewolves because it's universal.

[Morty]

I've seen a big thread with Gift hacks on the White Wolf boards. Didn't tell me much, since I don't have Werewolf, but it's there.
Speaking of hacks, does anyone have any experience with Danse Macabre? I don't really intend to use it just yet - it's not a good book to use for the first Vampire chronicle - but I'm curious about it.

[SiderealDreams]

Well, pretty much anybody loses to a ranged-combat specialist with a big gun, that's just how the system is designed. Even a powerful Mage who doesn't have exactly the right rotes up can be taken down in one or two hits by a sniper, and Combat Marksmanship is just beastly...but I don't hold that against werewolves because it's universal.

It's less about the specific example of a ranged specialist and more of that the warform often looks with an eyeball test as much more impressive than it actually plays out. And that as time has passed since the release of the Werewolf hardcover. A number of fans of the game have zero'd in on the form being rarely as advantageous in combat as the benefits of forms with less obvious raw bonuses.

[The Glyphstone]

There are forms better suited for melee combat that Garou warform?

[Selrahc]

There are forms better suited for melee combat that Garou warform?

Gauru lasts a very short amount of time, and removes control from the character. It's great if you're up close and personal, and you don't have much combat specialization. If you do have combat specialization, then control and stability of Urshul or Dalu might well outweigh the bonus attributes from Gauru.

To give a basic example, one of the best 1 dot werewolf gifts is crushing blow. It allows Lethal damage with bashing, and lasts for an entire scene for 1 willpower. In Dalu form a combat focussed wolf can be doing things like Kung-Fu or Chain Fighting or some other dangerous martial art. In Gauru they're just limited to clawing and biting at the foe.

Similarly on the defence. Gauru gives bonus stamina and size, but is so unsustainable that this is likely to prove a problem if the character actually needs to use it. It is also too big for mortal armour to fit it, which is a big disadvantage against Dalu for a kitted out pack.

Urshul on the other hand, is almost as good as Gauru in terms of raw stats added, but can also be used for wolf based fighting styles, and is ungodly fast.

[Fouredged Sword]

The thing that makes werewolves the best in combat for their power level is that they don't have to expend anything to heal very quickly. It just happens automatically. Vampires are of comparable power, but healing can get expensive. Werewolves just have to go sit down for a few hours to go from full unconscious from lethal damage to perfectly fine.

Even Agg damage is not as bad for a werewolf, because he will almost always start a fight with no lethal or bashing damage. This makes one or two Agg a penalty that hands around for 7 days, but not a crippling event. Mix in a little modern medical treatment you can downgrade that Agg to lethal and be fine in a day.

Werewolves can push harder in combat. They can risk taking on targets that will drop two or three members of the pack so long as the last one can kill it. Werewolves can afford to fight every fight like a desperate last stand and survive. This is dangerous, as you must be able to take a werewolf on with odds very in your favor to not come out crippled. A werewolf just needs an edge, and gifts and shape shifting provides that most of the time.

[The Glyphstone]

Gauru lasts a very short amount of time, and removes control from the character. It's great if you're up close and personal, and you don't have much combat specialization. If you do have combat specialization, then control and stability of Urshul or Dalu might well outweigh the bonus attributes from Gauru.

To give a basic example, one of the best 1 dot werewolf gifts is crushing blow. It allows Lethal damage with bashing, and lasts for an entire scene for 1 willpower. In Dalu form a combat focussed wolf can be doing things like Kung-Fu or Chain Fighting or some other dangerous martial art. In Gauru they're just limited to clawing and biting at the foe.

Similarly on the defence. Gauru gives bonus stamina and size, but is so unsustainable that this is likely to prove a problem if the character actually needs to use it. It is also too big for mortal armour to fit it, which is a big disadvantage against Dalu for a kitted out pack.

Urshul on the other hand, is almost as good as Gauru in terms of raw stats added, but can also be used for wolf based fighting styles, and is ungodly fast.

Hrm. Fair enough. I clearly don't play Werewolf enough.

[Cirrylius]

Would Mind 4 be sufficient to allow a Mage to enter (or drive another Mage into) his Oneiros outside of a Demense or Hallow?

[Yuki Akuma]

I'd conjunction it with some Spirit and/or Space to be on the safe side.

[SiderealDreams]

Hrm. Fair enough. I clearly don't play Werewolf enough.

Update!

With the release of the new schedule. RB and co. are really pushing people on the upsides of the Strix Chronicles. Which will include overhauls for various systems for Vampire:the Requiem. Including Disciplines and other systems. During his pitching on the forums of that he mentioned they are pitching something for Werewolf as well.

[Morty]

I have to say I'm really looking forward to the Strix Chronicles. Vampire: the Requiem could use something like that.

[The Glyphstone]

Indeed. I, as a LARPer, am particularly interested in if it'll end up being adopted as canon material for organized live play, since one of the biggest problems with New World organized play is the lack of a coherent setting.

[Cirrylius]

I'd conjunction it with some Spirit and/or Space to be on the safe side.

Really? Crud. I had a sweet idea for an Archmage's Threshold, but the mechanics are getting out of hand. Basically, a Moros descends into the Ocean of Fragments, de-identifies for several months, and just as his ego vanishes have a pair of contingent spells go off. The first pushes him into his own Oneiros, and the second basically reboots a copy of his own mind. His reasoning is that since the Oneiros is a combination of the Mage's own mindscape and the MtA cosmology as a whole, if he has no personal identity while inside his own Oneiros, he'll be able to see the pure, unaltered topography of the universe, and witness the Supernal World with nothing in between. The mental reboot then lets him DO something about it (and also prevents his complete dissolution in the Ocean of Fragments, so, y'know... important step). I was hoping the mechanics wouldn't be too involved beyond requiring contingency.

[Yuki Akuma]

It strikes me that leaving your body unprotected in the Underworld is a bad idea...

Then again, prospective Archmaster. Since when were they sane?

[Cirrylius]

It strikes me that leaving your body unprotected in the Underworld is a bad idea...

Huh. Could you enter your Oneiros while projecting yourself as a ghost?

In any case, the only thing down in the Ocean that could mess with you would be the Leviathan, and he just enforces the laws of the realm. Plus, one of the domain laws is "Leave other travelers in peace", so Leviathan would actually keep meddlers away. Hell, considering that another of the laws is "No obscuring vision", it miiiight be inclined to actually help a Mage attempting to see the Truth (no way in hell I'd count on that assistance, of course). The worst issue would be retaining your identifiers again when you re-arrived in the Ocean after crossing your Threshold and rocketing back to the surface. Assuming you came back at all, of course.

[CN the Logos]

Huh. Could you enter your Oneiros while projecting yourself as a ghost?

In any case, the only thing down in the Ocean that could mess with you would be the Leviathan, and he just enforces the laws of the realm. Hell, considering that one of the domain laws is "No obscuring vision", Leviathan miiiight be inclined to actually help a Mage attempting to see the Truth (no way in hell I'd count on that assistance, of course). The worst issue would be retaining your identifiers again when you re-arrived in the Ocean after crossing your Threshold and rocketing back to the surface. Assuming you came back at all, of course.

Well, you can, theoretically, just hold them, but good luck remembering why you're doing that (or even that you're doing that at all) when the mental concept of "I exist" keeps falling out of your brain.

Then there's the complication that, IIRC, one of the other laws of the Sea of Fragments is that you can't cheat the waters by possessing more identity than you should have for the depth you're at. Which doesn't cause you any problems right up to the point where you regain your identity at the "I am" level, and then you have the unstattable ghost of Great Cthulhu on your ass. While you're literally trying to hold on to your psyche.

Yeah, I don't see anything good coming of that plan.

[Cirrylius]

Well, you can, theoretically, just hold them, but good luck remembering why you're doing that (or even that you're doing that at all) when the mental concept of "I exist" keeps falling out of your brain.


That's the other reason I included a contingent Mind hard reboot; theoretically, it should replace all your identifiers without having to hold 'em in a net, or getting the Admiral to do it for you for, like, four months.


one of the other laws of the Sea of Fragments is that you can't cheat the waters by possessing more identity than you should have for the depth you're at.
Oh. I see. No, the law states that you have to lose all your identifiers in order; IOW, you're not allowed to dive deeper than your identifiers would allow. Which means that Leviathan would actually chuck you back to the surface himself :smallbiggrin:



...and then you have the unstattable ghost of Great Cthulhu on your ass.
Aw, he's not that bad. The only time he gets really rough is if you try to take Ocean water away with you. Which of course now has me dying to know what it does.

I of course realize that this plan would only occur to even a semi-sane Mage if he knew pretty much everything there is to know about the Ocean of Fragments. TO THE AETHENAEUM!!:smallcool:

[Morty]

An interesting tidbit: I don't know how many of you frequent the White Wolf boards, but in one of the threads (http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1446246#post1446246) there Russell Bailey said that one of the changes to the Vampire rules they're considering for Strix Chronicles is having vampires take only bashing damage from any mundane weapons. I think it's pretty interesting.

[Selrahc]

It's a fine house rule, depending on how deadly you want your vampire game.

In crossover play Vampires are definitely on the "meh" side, so I don't think it would hurt things there to give them a bit of a boost.

[Morty]

One thing that worries me slightly is that if I were to use such updated rules in a Hunter/Vampire crossover game, the Hunter would have a much harder time fighting vampires. But then, Hunters are supposed to face deadly odds.

[Yuki Akuma]

An interesting tidbit: I don't know how many of you frequent the White Wolf boards, but in one of the threads (http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1446246#post1446246) there Russell Bailey said that one of the changes to the Vampire rules they're considering for Strix Chronicles is having vampires take only bashing damage from any mundane weapons. I think it's pretty interesting.

Wasn't that an optional rule from Armory Reloaded?

[Morty]

Maybe. I don't have Armory Reloaded, so I wouldn't know.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

It is. Page 164 in the Combat Hacks chapter. It's called "No Blood to Spill," and to be perfectly honest, it's exactly how I had thought vampires worked before reading through the Requiem core rulebook.

[Cirrylius]

An interesting tidbit: I don't know how many of you frequent the White Wolf boards, but in one of the threads (http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1446246#post1446246) there Russell Bailey said that one of the changes to the Vampire rules they're considering for Strix Chronicles is having vampires take only bashing damage from any mundane weapons. I think it's pretty interesting.

I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that a switchblade was more dangerous to a vampire than a pistol. Maybe if it was treated as an area of surface function or something; a bullet just goes in one side and out the other, damaging useless organs, while an axe messes up a broad swath of muscles and load-bearing bones.

[The Glyphstone]

It might have a hope of making Gangrel more threatening as physical combat monsters, if they become the only clan natively capable of doing better than bashing damage in combat.

[masterjoda99]

Speaking of rules hacks and houserules, has anyone here ever encountered a better combat system for oWoD? I want to get one together for a game of Sorcerer's Crusade I'll be running for my group in the near future...

[Morty]

I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that a switchblade was more dangerous to a vampire than a pistol. Maybe if it was treated as an area of surface function or something; a bullet just goes in one side and out the other, damaging useless organs, while an axe messes up a broad swath of muscles and load-bearing bones.

I don't think nWoD is detailed enough for such a distinction. Having all weapons deal Bashing damage might be for the best... after all, quite a lot of things that make edged weapons lethal to humans simply don't apply to vampires, since they're dead anyway. The reasoning behind bullets doing Bashing damage can be safely extended to blades as well.


It might have a hope of making Gangrel more threatening as physical combat monsters, if they become the only clan natively capable of doing better than bashing damage in combat.

It all depends on all the other changes they introduce, really. Disciplines are also going to be revamped, although we don't know to what extent.

[CET]

Speaking of rules hacks and houserules, has anyone here ever encountered a better combat system for oWoD? I want to get one together for a game of Sorcerer's Crusade I'll be running for my group in the near future...

I've got one for nWOD (http://strangepassages.blogspot.com/2012/05/nwod-storytelling-house-rules-combat.html) that's sort of WOD v1.5. It's a little bit firearms centric, but I'll put up my melee hack here in a few minutes.

That took a little longer than expected - the melee handout is here (http://strangepassages.blogspot.com/2012/08/nwod-house-rules-melee-combat.html).

[Cirrylius]

I don't think nWoD is detailed enough for such a distinction. Having all weapons deal Bashing damage might be for the best... after all, quite a lot of things that make edged weapons lethal to humans simply don't apply to vampires, since they're dead anyway.

Maybe just include a flat penalty which allows all melee weapons to do lethal by attempting to damage the brain or heart, or amputate a limb. Which is pretty much what the firearms damage does now, IIRC.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would make a weapon deal lethal damage to vampires if it was a lethal weapon over size 3. Axes would still break bones. Knives would tickle. I would include the ability to deal lethal damage with head shots, for guns and melee weapons.

[Eurus]

Aw. That makes my knife-throwing Carthian assassin no longer as viable.

[DUSUCK]

So i'm making a character for Hunter: the Vigil and in the midst of reading up on Ashwood Abbey and trying to learn more about the system, i've run into an error. A critical part of my character was going to be that his main weapon (ala the only thing he uses on the vigil) was a sword, but I can't find rules for using a sword. Let alone making him good enough to hang with the rest of the unnatural world.

Can someone help me/point me in the right direction?

[The Glyphstone]

A sword would add an Equipment bonus to your attacks depending on the size (+2 to +3, probably). Having that be his only weapon would be a very bad idea, though, because Mortal + Melee + Almost any supernatural = very high odds of Chunky Salsa. Smart hunters carry melee weapons as backup, and pack really big guns.

[DUSUCK]

A sword would add an Equipment bonus to your attacks depending on the size (+2 to +3, probably). Having that be his only weapon would be a very bad idea, though, because Mortal + Melee + Almost any supernatural = very high odds of Chunky Salsa. Smart hunters carry melee weapons as backup, and pack really big guns.

Well i'm not planning on my dork being as smart as he is crazy. The sword adds not only an interesting restriction to combat but also a challenge. The idea is to figure out how I can make melee combat a realistic plan A.

[The Glyphstone]

Well i'm not planning on my dork being as smart as he is crazy. The sword adds not only an interesting restriction to combat but also a challenge. The idea is to figure out how I can make melee combat a realistic plan A.

Unfortunately, the only way to make that a realistic Plan A is to only engage the mortal pawns/mooks of said supernaturals, while your friends fight the actual monsters with their guns. Minion sweeper can still be a useful role, but there really isn't a way to make a mortal melee monster who can stand up to many supernaturals. The ones you could take in melee are also the ones that will be the hardest to get into a fight with on your terms.

Not fighting smart is the quickest way to get killed on the Vigil.

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, melee for mortals 101 - Combat styles, combat styles, combat styles.

Swords have a few relevant combat styles. Pick up the armory and the armory reloaded.

Aggressive light sword (fencing) - Armory pg210
defensive Striking (Iaido) - Reloaded pg76
Sword and Shield - Reloaded pg 92
Two weapon Fighting -core pg 112
Heavy Sword - reloaded pg 83

Ok, you have three general ideas.

The caped matador - defensive fighter

The core of this build is a fencing foil and cape.

You need -
Sword and shield 000
Fencing 0000
Two weapon fighting 00

Spec your stats for good defense. A shield will give you +1 for -2 to attack rolls. Deflect and thrust will grant you an additional +2 for -2. Pick up some armor. You do not lose defense vs multiple attacks.

Now your attacks are painfully penalized. Fix this by feinting with a . Next round drop deflect and thrust, use moulinet, and shielded strike to deal your dex in auto damage and hit powerfully.


The sword dicing blender - aggressive fighter

This all out style uses a katana to cut things to pieces.

Needs
Kendo (sidebar for fencing) 0000
Heavy sword 0000
Iaido 00
Quick draw

You go first. You add your weaponry dots to initiative. Second you strike. If they still live use doubling cut to strike again. If they still live use Nidan Waza to strike again!


The heavy counter - balanced fighter

Heavy sword 000.
Strength as high as you can get it. 5 preferably.

Get a great sword (see the armory section on swords). Use half sword and swing it. Things die. You add 2 damage to all hits after your successes. When things swing at you use fools guard to block and deal damage back at them, adding two damage after your successes.


None of this will save you from a combat focused monster. The heavy sword and katana concept weather the best, as they can hope to deal massive damage quick enough to just drop foes. Anything with powers is likely going to overwhelm any defense you may muster. It needs to ether end up dead or you will.

[Hullu_Iivana]

And here Fouredged Sword demonstrates why the first thing to do is not to choose any Fighting Style, but ask your ST to ban vast majority of them. WoD battle is already ridiculous murder system without some house rules, and with Fighting Styles battles between skilled combatants are decided by Initiative rolls :smallyuk: So yeah, take them behind the woodshed, shoot them in the back of the head and dumb their corpses somewhere deep. But that's just my opinion.

[The Glyphstone]

Ok, melee for mortals 101 - Combat styles, combat styles, combat styles.

Swords have a few relevant combat styles. Pick up the armory and the armory reloaded.

Aggressive light sword (fencing) - Armory pg210
defensive Striking (Iaido) - Reloaded pg76
Sword and Shield - Reloaded pg 92
Two weapon Fighting -core pg 112
Heavy Sword - reloaded pg 83

Ok, you have three general ideas.

The caped matador - defensive fighter

The core of this build is a fencing foil and cape.

You need -
Sword and shield 000
Fencing 0000
Two weapon fighting 00

Spec your stats for good defense. A shield will give you +1 for -2 to attack rolls. Deflect and thrust will grant you an additional +2 for -2. Pick up some armor. You do not lose defense vs multiple attacks.

Now your attacks are painfully penalized. Fix this by feinting with a . Next round drop deflect and thrust, use moulinet, and shielded strike to deal your dex in auto damage and hit powerfully.


The sword dicing blender - aggressive fighter

This all out style uses a katana to cut things to pieces.

Needs
Kendo (sidebar for fencing) 0000
Heavy sword 0000
Iaido 00
Quick draw

You go first. You add your weaponry dots to initiative. Second you strike. If they still live use doubling cut to strike again. If they still live use Nidan Waza to strike again!


The heavy counter - balanced fighter

Heavy sword 000.
Strength as high as you can get it. 5 preferably.

Get a great sword (see the armory section on swords). Use half sword and swing it. Things die. You add 2 damage to all hits after your successes. When things swing at you use fools guard to block and deal damage back at them, adding two damage after your successes.



I stand corrected. A mortal who wins Initiative can kill stuff in melee quite well. The difference is that if you lose initiative, you still explode like a soggy paper bag, whereas being a ranged fighter means you only explode like a soggy paper bag from losing initiative if your opponent is also ranged.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

And here Fouredged Sword demonstrates why the first thing to do is not to choose any Fighting Style, but ask your ST to ban vast majority of them. WoD battle is already ridiculous murder system without some house rules, and with Fighting Styles battles between skilled combatants are decided by Initiative rolls :smallyuk: So yeah, take them behind the woodshed, shoot them in the back of the head and dumb their corpses somewhere deep. But that's just my opinion.
You realize that most combat with edged weapons in the real world basically comes down to who strikes first, right? WoD may not be fully realistic, but it's at least closer than most systems.

[comicshorse]

Our G.M. has always ruled that you can only use one combat style at a time. I'm presuming from previous posts this isn't so or is it ? Is there a hard and fast ruling on that and if so where ?

Though yes IMHO Heavy Seword is way over-powered

[ToySoldierCPlus]

You can have as many fighting styles as you're willing to purchase. You can only use one maneuver at a time, however.

[Fouredged Sword]

As far as I am aware you can do as much as you like with as many styles as you like, but you can't spend something twice. You can only lose your defense once and spend one willpower per round.

Many styles provide passive bonuses that all function simultaneously. Some abilities cost willpower, and others cost your defense for the round. Other still change the effect of your strikes to something other than damage. They are a very useful system that a player should become familiar with.

I like them a lot. Without them fighting becomes who has the most dice. Guns beat large melee weapons beat everything else. Now there is a reason to get close, and close in action is more dynamic. I especially like the ones that make defense options something that, well, functions.

Just make sure your ST seeds the world with NPCs who are also using combat styles, and what a mortal can do with them pales compared to what a super can do.

[comicshorse]

You can have as many fighting styles as you're willing to purchase. You can only use one maneuver at a time, however.


As far as I am aware you can do as much as you like with as many styles as you like,


Exactly my problem. Which is it ? Or is there no actual RAW on the subject

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Exactly my problem. Which is it ? Or is there no actual RAW on the subject

Your actions in a turn are limited. If you have multiple fighting styles that provide passive bonuses/benefits, they all apply as long as you meet whatever requirements (Spetsnaz Knife Fighting requires you to be using a knife, for instance). However, the active maneuvers (say, Spetsnaz's double-strike ability) are limited by the number of actions you can perform in a turn.

[Yuki Akuma]

Here, have a RAW quote.



Combined Maneuvers

Unless the text specifically notes otherwise, Fighting Style maneuvers don’t stack. If multiple maneuvers provide the same benefit within the game system (a Defense bonus or dice bonus, for instance), your character only benefits from the best of the lot.

When it comes to benefits that manipulate the dice mechanics, you may only pick one option out of those available to your character. These benefits include 8 again, 9 again, the rote quality and automatic successes. For instance, if your character could benefit from the 8 again or automatic successes using the same action, you must choose one of these perks. The other one doesn’t apply.

Outside of these provisions, you may combine the benefits of multiple Fighting Styles. However, if a maneuver imposes multiple drawbacks, mechanically distinct disadvantages all apply simultaneously, while instances of the same type of drawback impose the worst of any given disadvantage. For example, if your character can benefit from a maneuver that imposes a –2 to Defense and the inability to move, and one that makes it impossible for you to use your Defense score at all, she loses her Defense completely and can’t move, either.

[comicshorse]

Thanks :smallsmile:

[CN the Logos]

That's the other reason I included a contingent Mind hard reboot; theoretically, it should replace all your identifiers without having to hold 'em in a net, or getting the Admiral to do it for you for, like, four months.

[...]

Oh. I see. No, the law states that you have to lose all your identifiers in order; IOW, you're not allowed to dive deeper than your identifiers would allow. Which means that Leviathan would actually chuck you back to the surface himself :smallbiggrin:

Actually, it's suggested that if Leviathan finds you at the wrong depth, he takes you to the correct zone and holds you there, dragging you down through the ocean's zones in order until you're back at the depth you were at with the correct number and type of identifiers. There's a bit of ambiguity re: how fast a person who suddenly finds himself in possession of a higher level identifier would rise through the zones, but the Leviathan is stated to travel through the ocean in an instant. And speaking as a Storyteller, when plans depend on both the kindness of Great Cthulhu and a charitable interpretation of the mechanics for the black abyss at the deepest part of the Underworld, I'm probably not going to say "sure, that works." My response is more likely to skew towards "roll to see if you cry, and if so, how hard."



I always thought it was kind of ridiculous that a switchblade was more dangerous to a vampire than a pistol. Maybe if it was treated as an area of surface function or something; a bullet just goes in one side and out the other, damaging useless organs, while an axe messes up a broad swath of muscles and load-bearing bones.

I don't think nWoD is detailed enough for such a distinction. Having all weapons deal Bashing damage might be for the best... after all, quite a lot of things that make edged weapons lethal to humans simply don't apply to vampires, since they're dead anyway. The reasoning behind bullets doing Bashing damage can be safely extended to blades as well.

Believe or not, there's some real life justification for Requiem's RAW on slashing weapons versus firearms, although it's a bit of a simplification. Weapons that primarily work by piercing are more likely to hit a vital organ and thus result in a fatal injury. However, an attack that pierces straight through a person to hit vitals is less likely to do serious damage to the musculature/skeletal structure/nervous system around the wound, so until the victim collapses from blood loss/shock or the nervous system is directly damaged, he can still fight. Contrast that with attacks made by an edged weapon, which are more likely to hit limbs or penetrate less deeply into the target's body, but are also more likely to sever the muscles tendons, nerves, etc... required for the damaged body parts to keep functioning. It doesn't matter if the wound is actually going to kill you or not, if the tendons that allow you to clench your hand or the muscles that move your leg are severed, you're going to have a hard time continuing to fight.

As physical creatures who maintain their life through supernatural means, vampires don't care nearly as much about piercing injuries because hey, they weren't using that pancreas anyway. They still rely on muscles, bones and tendons to move though, so attacks that damage these will still put them down even if a coup de grâce is required to finish them off.

Personally, I think a better system might be to create a system in which injuries dealing more damage than (target's Stamina + N) have a chance to cause some sort of crippling injury (which would differ based on the type of damage and the weapon). Under this modification, vampires downgrade all damage to bashing, but can still be temporarily crippled by weapons that damage their bodies in appropriate ways. Whether the resulting increase in complexity is worth what I'd consider an increase in verisimilitude is debatable though. I think the current rules are fine as an abstraction.




And here Fouredged Sword demonstrates why the first thing to do is not to choose any Fighting Style, but ask your ST to ban vast majority of them. WoD battle is already ridiculous murder system without some house rules, and with Fighting Styles battles between skilled combatants are decided by Initiative rolls :smallyuk: So yeah, take them behind the woodshed, shoot them in the back of the head and dumb their corpses somewhere deep. But that's just my opinion.

You realize that most combat with edged weapons in the real world basically comes down to who strikes first, right? WoD may not be fully realistic, but it's at least closer than most systems.

This, pretty much. I like that nWoD combat is lethal and favors ambush, superior numbers, trickery, and fervent prayer to the God Machine. It's a horror game, and even the powerful supernaturals still fall down when they're shot enough times; that's why they don't walk around openly eating people. If I wanted a focus on tactically exciting combat that lasted for a significant length of time without the death of at least one combatant, I would play a tabletop war/skirmish game or a video game.

That said, I'm thinking about possibly implementing some form of damage soak in my games because Defense in nWoD is so useless it's sad, and giving the defender something to roll might make things more interesting. I have some ideas, but has anyone else tried doing anything like that?

[Cirrylius]

Actually, it's suggested that if Leviathan finds you at the wrong depth, he takes you to the correct zone and holds you there, dragging you down through the ocean's zones in order until you're back at the depth you were at with the correct number and type of identifiers.
"The Law of Depth- The progression of erosion must be followed.
It is a violation of the laws to attempt to dive down to a deeper zone in an attempt to lose a particular identifier. That is, in order to lose a truth (and stay faithful to the laws), a character must first lose all motes and formatives. A character that attempts to break this law attracts the notice of the Leviathan,
who usually holds him at his “proper” depth until he either escapes or loses the right kinds of identifiers to return to the depth he was attempting to reach."
The law governs downward motion only; otherwise, no one could ever come back past the second zone, since that's where you lose access to the beach.

In any case, the mage physically disappears when his threshold begins, and reappears at a Demense or Hallow afterwards. The Mind reboot was a redoubt in case it was different in the Underworld.



And speaking as a Storyteller, when plans depend on both the kindness of Great Cthulhu and a charitable interpretation of the mechanics for the black abyss at the deepest part of the Underworld, I'm probably not going to say "sure, that works." My response is more likely to skew towards "roll to see if you cry, and if so, how hard."

Speaking as a player, if I suggested this Threshold to my ST and he answered "Huh. Let's see", and then let my character die because of the fluff I chose for the character's transition process, that ST would lose some extremities. Maybe I should just stick with the sample in IM of "Mage ruminates for an extended period. Mage reconciles with failed student. Mage casts Imperial Spell". Forgive me for wanting a Moros' Mystery Play to be a little more metal than that.

[Spamotron]

Thematically though you're character is rules lawyering existence trying to comprehend infinity and Mage is still part of the WOD horror line. If there wasn't a real risk of something going tremendously and horrifically wrong it would break narrative verisimilitude. I would give you bonus successes for creative outside the box thinking and a cool concept but I would still require a die roll with a high chance of failure. Nobody said attaining phenomenal cosmic power was safe.

[Cirrylius]

Thematically though you're character is rules lawyering existence trying to comprehend infinity
:smallconfused: Well? How does that make it a less valid road to Supernal understanding? Is the Moros who believes that ego-death (and subsequent resurrection) will let him see the universe clearly somehow inferior to the Moros who communes with the mystical Mother Rock to purify his base substance into a platonic ideal? Or the Acanthus who maps out every fate-thread in his whole timeline physically in his Hallow to see the whole pattern he's woven into the cosmos? Or the Obrimos who uses... uses... Forces mastery to...

...okay, I'm kind of drawing a blank on that particular Threshold.


My point is that the fact that I the player found an interesting way to divide consciousness by zero doesn't make the method any less meaningful; as long as the character has to undergo the same process of soul searching (hur), research, prep and Arcana mastery, he shouldn't be subjected to a greater probability of disastrous failure if he's covered his bases (well, any more than the usual risk of ceasing to exist if he loses himself in the Supernal).


If there wasn't a real risk of something going tremendously and horrifically wrong it would break narrative verisimilitude.
I'm just kind of exasperated because even though the Ocean of Fragments is written as a pretty safe place, as long as you obey the rules and want to forget who you are, and Leviathan is written as no different from any other Kerberos (and significantly less assholish and capricious than some), everybody seems to assume that Underworld plus Water plus Tentacles equals Eternal Cthulhu Soul Rape. In fact, I suspect that the reason Leviathan is written that way is because the writers are attempting to distance the NWoD existential-sinner Underworld from the OWod Labrynth-with-giant-ambulatory-yeast-infection-Neverborn Underworld. It may not be safe getting to the Ocean, but the dangers, once there, are pretty cut-and-dried.

[The Glyphstone]

The last Obrimos archmage who Ascended is why we have an asteroid belt instead of a 5th inner planet.:smallbiggrin:

[CN the Logos]

"The Law of Depth- The progression of erosion must be followed.
It is a violation of the laws to attempt to dive down to a deeper zone in an attempt to lose a particular identifier. That is, in order to lose a truth (and stay faithful to the laws), a character must first lose all motes and formatives. A character that attempts to break this law attracts the notice of the Leviathan,
who usually holds him at his “proper” depth until he either escapes or loses the right kinds of identifiers to return to the depth he was attempting to reach."
The law governs downward motion only; otherwise, no one could ever come back past the second zone, since that's where you lose access to the beach.

Ah, you're right about that. My apologies.


In any case, the mage physically disappears when his threshold begins, and reappears at a Demense or Hallow afterwards. The Mind reboot was a redoubt in case it was different in the Underworld.

Without some sort of soul backup, you'd still be a drooling vegetable when you reappeared anyway. Not that the plan is foolproof even so; there's a serious question as to what, if anything, is left of the person who loses both natals. Not sure what would happen if the mind reboot spell went off and there was nothing left to reboot. :smallconfused:


Speaking as a player, if I suggested this Threshold to my ST and he answered "Huh. Let's see", and then let my character die because of the fluff I chose for the character's transition process, that ST would lose some extremities. Maybe I should just stick with the sample in IM of "Mage ruminates for an extended period. Mage reconciles with failed student. Mage casts Imperial Spell". Forgive me for wanting a Moros' Mystery Play to be a little more metal than that.

Well, I wouldn't tell a player "Huh. Let's see," and then point and laugh when they tried it. That would be unethical. I would however mention in advance that from a thematic perspective, trips to the Underworld are extremely dangerous and cost the traveler almost as much as s/he gains, and that while I won't say "absolutely not," your success is only assured if you can somehow convince me that you are more awesome than Osiris, Orpheus, Izanagi et al. Otherwise, here are some dice, suitable modifiers will be imposed based on your actions throughout the chronicle up to this point, you may now start praying to the God Machine for an exceptional success.

While I personally don't consider the adventures of Batman McGodwizard scary at all, the fact remains that the World of Darkness is at least nominally a horror game, and while lying out of character about what I'll allow is just not cool, I'm also under no obligation to allow the players to automatically succeed at whatever they want to try doing.


Thematically though you're character is rules lawyering existence trying to comprehend infinity and Mage is still part of the WOD horror line. If there wasn't a real risk of something going tremendously and horrifically wrong it would break narrative verisimilitude. I would give you bonus successes for creative outside the box thinking and a cool concept but I would still require a die roll with a high chance of failure. Nobody said attaining phenomenal cosmic power was safe.

This, pretty much. No guts, no glory.


:smallconfused: Well? How does that make it a less valid road to Supernal understanding? Is the Moros who believes that ego-death (and subsequent resurrection) will let him see the universe clearly somehow inferior to the Moros who communes with the mystical Mother Rock to purify his base substance into a platonic ideal? Or the Acanthus who maps out every fate-thread in his whole timeline physically in his Hallow to see the whole pattern he's woven into the cosmos? Or the Obrimos who uses... uses... Forces mastery to...

...okay, I'm kind of drawing a blank on that particular Threshold.

You know, if there was one path to godhood I'd set to the sound of AC/DC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKhTk0IynHM), it would be the one followed by the guy who makes things explode with his brain.


I'm just kind of exasperated because even though the Ocean of Fragments is written as a pretty safe place, as long as you obey the rules and want to forget who you are, and Leviathan is written as no different from any other Kerberos (and significantly less assholish and capricious than some), everybody seems to assume that Underworld plus Water plus Tentacles equals Eternal Cthulhu Soul Rape. In fact, I suspect that the reason Leviathan is written that way is because the writers are attempting to distance the NWoD existential-sinner Underworld from the OWod Labrynth-with-giant-ambulatory-yeast-infection-Neverborn Underworld. It may not be safe getting to the Ocean, but the dangers, once there, are pretty cut-and-dried.

And this is the bit that that rubs me the wrong way. The Kerberoi are implied to be the ghosts of some of the first entities to have ever died, and it is very probable that Leviathan is the ghost of the primordial deity of chaos (typically represented by the ocean) slain by the Father of the Gods. If I were running a horror game and one of my players said, "Yeah, it's just the restless ghost of Tiamat, no big deal," I'd take that as a sign I'd done something horribly wrong.

[Yuki Akuma]

I was under the impression that Kerberoi were beings that had always been dead and had never been alive?

[CN the Logos]

I was under the impression that Kerberoi were beings that had always been dead and had never been alive?

I'm not aware of any fluff to that effect. The three major possibilities for their origin given on page 250 of Geist are:


Location spirits who just happen to be tied to a part of the Underworld rather than a place on Earth and thus have entirely different rules compared to regular spirits.


The ghosts of the first things to ever die, who may or may not have existed in the Underworld prior to dying.


Sin-eaters who decided to live in the Underworld full time, and rather than dying just... changed.

Any or all of these explanations could be true; none of the three are confirmed as absolute canon and there's no reason that different Kerberoi couldn't have have been created in different ways. I admit some bias against number one, if only because the Kerberoi act nothing like spirits aside from being connected to a concept and place. Still, the idea that the Kerberoi are both very old and originate from things that were once alive gets a bit of support from Yama, who is more or less identical to his mythical counterpart, and Plenty, who hasn't turned into a Kerberos yet but is already in charge of a domain with Old Laws that fit his personality. And there's the one that the Book of the Dead all but states is the ghost of a True Fae, which sets a precedent for other godlike beings becoming Kerberoi after their destruction. Leviathan being THE Leviathan isn't stated outright, but it's not a giant leap of logic to assume that's the case.

[Spamotron]

Look Cirrylius basically your character is seeking Enlightenment. In my book enlightenment is internal. You've come up with a cool way to potentially perceive the truth of existence but the key is then comprehending that truth. Is your character wise and experienced (in the worldly sense not the game mechanical one) enough to get what he's seeing and Ascend or will it be beyond him and he loses everything to information overload possibly leading to insanity.

There are two ways to figure that out. One: tell a cooperative story with your fellow players and Storyteller over the course of a campaign and then after that story is told collectively decide whether Ascension or Insanity or Something Else is the appropriate and fitting ending for your character. Two: the storyteller comes up with an appropriate difficulty target for Ascension and rolls some dice.

The second sounds really unsatisfying to me. But since it seems that you are trying to pull this straight out of character creation I don't see any other choice.

[comicshorse]

This is kinda a strange question but it does relate to my Changeling game so I'll ask it here. Is it possible to tell the difference between the gun shot residue left by two seperate pistols ?
( P.C.'s Motley run a gang and my character has started doing some dodgy stuff. He belongs to a gun club where he uses a licensed pistol. So I wonder if I use a unlicensed gun in a crime can the police prove the residue didn't come from me firing my perfectly legitimate pistol at the perfectly legitimate gun club)

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Easy answer? No. More complex answer: sort of. The amount of residue left behind by a gunshot is based on a number of factors, particularly the calibre of the weapon fired. However, gunshot residue isn't left at the crime scene per se, but rather on the hand and sleeve of the person who did the firing, or on other surfaces very near the gun when it is fired. There is, however, no way to link gunshot residue to a specific gun, and it's very difficult to use it for anything more specific than broad generalizations, such as, "This much residue had to have come from a large-caliber weapon."

[The Glyphstone]

If you're leaving gunshot residue at the scene of the crime, you might want to stop using siege artillery to shoot people. :smallbiggrin:

[ToySoldierCPlus]

If you're leaving gunshot residue at the scene of the crime, you might want to stop using siege artillery to shoot people. :smallbiggrin:

But why? If you hit the people just right, it makes the room look like a vat of beef stroganof exploded. Before a bomb went off.

[comicshorse]

Easy answer? No. More complex answer: sort of. The amount of residue left behind by a gunshot is based on a number of factors, particularly the calibre of the weapon fired. However, gunshot residue isn't left at the crime scene per se, but rather on the hand and sleeve of the person who did the firing, or on other surfaces very near the gun when it is fired. There is, however, no way to link gunshot residue to a specific gun, and it's very difficult to use it for anything more specific than broad generalizations, such as, "This much residue had to have come from a large-caliber weapon."

Ah thanks. It was the residue left behind on my clothes and hands I was worried about. Still that means my P.C. had better renew his membership of the gun club

[Fouredged Sword]

Yes, you should have a excuse to have fired a gun. In the united states and many other countries gun poweder has an additive than leaves a distinctive trace. It is used to easily tell who fired a gun recently. Firing any gun will give you traces, as will working with gunpowder. Consider getting a bullet packing kit to have an excuse for days you didn't go to the range (ranges keep logs, best be truthful).

[comicshorse]

Yes, you should have a excuse to have fired a gun. In the united states and many other countries gun poweder has an additive than leaves a distinctive trace. It is used to easily tell who fired a gun recently. Firing any gun will give you traces, as will working with gunpowder. Consider getting a bullet packing kit to have an excuse for days you didn't go to the range (ranges keep logs, best be truthful).

Good tip, I'll defintely get a bullet packing kit. And yes my P.C. also believes you should always tell the police the truth,......about anything they can find out anyway

[Ganurath]

So, I've recently acquired Mage: The Awakening as an impulse buy. Is it my imagination, or do Mastigos have a decisive advantage over the other Paths? It seems to me that Space is the best Arcanum by far, and the Mind is upper-end as well.

[Cirrylius]

Without some sort of soul backup, you'd still be a drooling vegetable when you reappeared anyway. Not that the plan is foolproof even so; there's a serious question as to what, if anything, is left of the person who loses both natals. Not sure what would happen if the mind reboot spell went off and there was nothing left to reboot.
Ah. I misspoke. It's not a mental reboot, it's a mental reinstall. A Contingent Mind 4 or 5 copy of his own mind, designed to restore "I Am" in the oneirus, to give him a glimpse of the Supernal before restoring everything else. Of course, if the Ocean affects the soul as well as the mind, the whole thing is moot, but that'd be one of the first experiments he'd perform, using a mote or two. The whole thing is supposed to be a kind of piecemeal approximation or dry-run of a Death 6 effect based on Suppress Own Life, but affecting the mind instead of the body.




The Kerberoi are implied to be the ghosts of some of the first entities to have ever died, and it is very probable that Leviathan is the ghost of the primordial deity of chaos slain by the Father of the Gods.
Misspoke again. Let me clarify. Whatever else Leviathan is, dead god, cosmic principle, Deathlord, Neverborn (Primordial? UGH), in the book it is treated solely as a Kerberos. Whatever else he does in the deeps, the only time he ever interacts with characters is if they break the Laws, and it does so in a predictable fashion. Whether its behavior is just personal preference, some kind of cosmic geas, or just complete indifference to anything outside the Laws of the Dominion, as long as you mind your p's and q's, Leviathan don't intervene. I'm sorry if you'd prefer something else, but the cold fact is that Leviathan is (or at least acts like) the Ocean's schoolmarm. The only thing I can suggest is writing an angry letter to WWP. If I had to guess, I'd say it's written like that because having it exhibit more complicated behavior in that Dominion... well, a spirit that deep in the Underworld, that powerful, might smack too much of direct, arbitrary, ham-fisted ST intervention, because a spirit that powerful will succeed at virtually whatever it does, with no chance of failure, unless the ST decides so, and if it does fail, by ST fiat, that violates verisimilitude for the spirit. No-win situation. That's entirely conjecture, of course, and I'm not really interested in discussing the why of Leviathan.



If I were running a horror game and one of my players said, "Yeah, it's just the restless ghost of Tiamat, no big deal," I'd take that as a sign I'd done something horribly wrong.
Don't mistake my reaction for the character's. The character is a student of forbidden and horrifying lore; even after determining that the Leviathan won't do anything to polite swimmers, you couldn't pull a pin out of this Moros' a** with a tractor if he thought Leviathan were around. If I seem dismissive of Leviathan, it's only because I'm here addressing it as a potential threat for the purpose of communicating why it's (contextually) safe to go swimming with a primordial god-fish the size of a large city block. I wouldn't go out of my way to taunt the damn thing, or even draw its attention so my character could get a look at it; finding a reason to interact with Leviathan outside the bailiwick of the Laws would be bats**t. I'm not trying to smirk over the fact that I've found a way to rules-lawyer safety in the depths of the underworld; it's just something that has to be addressed if I actually want this character coming back.




Well, I wouldn't tell a player "Huh. Let's see," and then point and laugh when they tried it. That would be unethical. I would however mention in advance that from a thematic perspective, trips to the Underworld are extremely dangerous and cost the traveler almost as much as s/he gains, and that while I won't say "absolutely not," your success is only assured if you can somehow convince me that you are more awesome than Osiris, Orpheus, Izanagi et al. Otherwise, here are some dice, suitable modifiers will be imposed based on your actions throughout the chronicle up to this point, you may now start praying to the God Machine for an exceptional success.


That is still staggeringly arbitrary. Just the preparations for this attempt would be harrowing in the extreme. He'd be looking at months and months of research, bargaining for favors, consulting with other Mages, summoning dozens and dozens of ghosts, building up traveling supplies, artifacts, and Mana, just to prepare for the real work Down Below. While a Master of Death is more at home in the Underworld more than anyone except a Geist, the fact remains that the vast majority of his research and prep would be taking place on a plane of existence which is inherently inimical to human life, and swarming with creatures dangerous, untrustworthy, and outright insane. It would require multiple trips, across multiple Underworld rivers, interviewing and wrangling with other Kerberoi, months of research in the Aethaenium (which would be particularly dangerous to a scholar whose Vice is Lust for unhealthy forgotten lore), and then in the Ocean itself, experimentation on his own sense of identity in the waters, interviewing and Unveiling that beachcomber guy, the sailors, and the Admiral. At the end of all that, a Mage whose will and sense of self have always been an unassailable fortress will dive into the Ocean, and over the course of months of meditative sensory deprivation will have his ego stripped to the core, and for a brief moment functionally cease to exist. So forgive me if, after the character finds a winding and torturous path to enlightenment (and the player found that, after herculean effort, the endgame was actually pretty plausible) the thought of a ST taking all this into account and saying, "... on the other hand, the Mysteries and perils of the Underworld are never-ending, so... *rolls dice* ...OM NOM NOM" makes me see red. Especially considering that all this stuff is, strictly speaking, a thematic consideration in a world where any potential Archmage can do all the research and prepwork in a much safer place and manner, and just develop a single spell to do the job.


You've come up with a cool way to potentially perceive the truth of existence but the key is then comprehending that truth. Is your character wise and experienced (in the worldly sense not the game mechanical one) enough to get what he's seeing and Ascend or will it be beyond him and he loses everything to information overload possibly leading to insanity.

:smallconfused:I'm... not really addressing that. IM didn't give me the impression that Mages losing their mind during Threshold was much of a problem.

[CN the Logos]

I rate spoilers now? Awesomesauce.


Ah. I misspoke. It's not a mental reboot, it's a mental reinstall. A Contingent Mind 4 or 5 copy of his own mind, designed to restore "I Am" in the oneirus, to give him a glimpse of the Supernal before restoring everything else. Of course, if the Ocean affects the soul as well as the mind, the whole thing is moot, but that'd be one of the first experiments he'd perform, using a mote or two. The whole thing is supposed to be a kind of piecemeal approximation or dry-run of a Death 6 effect based on Suppress Own Life, but affecting the mind instead of the body.

I'm not stating that I don't think it'd work based on your choice of magery. I'm just saying I don't know what the final fate of people who go swimming in the ocean actually is, because it's left deliberately ambiguous. Do souls who go to the bottom of the ocean merge with the World Soul? Do they cease to exist? Do they just float, totally devoid of any thought or will right above the ocean floor? It seems like what happens there could affect whether or not you've got something to reinstall to, or whether the reinstall retains the experience.


Misspoke again. Let me clarify. Whatever else Leviathan is, dead god, cosmic principle, Deathlord, Neverborn (Primordial? UGH), in the book it is treated solely as a Kerberos. Whatever else he does in the deeps, the only time he ever interacts with characters is if they break the Laws, and it does so in a predictable fashion. Whether its behavior is just personal preference, some kind of cosmic geas, or just complete indifference to anything outside the Laws of the Dominion, as long as you mind your p's and q's, Leviathan don't intervene. I'm sorry if you'd prefer something else, but the cold fact is that Leviathan is (or at least acts like) the Ocean's schoolmarm. The only thing I can suggest is writing an angry letter to WWP. If I had to guess, I'd say it's written like that because having it exhibit more complicated behavior in that Dominion... well, a spirit that deep in the Underworld, that powerful, might smack too much of direct, arbitrary, ham-fisted ST intervention, because a spirit that powerful will succeed at virtually whatever it does, with no chance of failure, unless the ST decides so, and if it does fail, by ST fiat, that violates verisimilitude for the spirit. No-win situation. That's entirely conjecture, of course, and I'm not really interested in discussing the why of Leviathan.

The problem is that other Kerberoi do, in fact, do things aside from enforcing the laws. Orcus makes soulsteel, Yama judges souls (and even sends emissaries to the living world to hunt people down), Clockwork and Dominus battle each ther for some esoteric reason, the inhabitants of the Junkyard compete in ghostly Battlebots tourneys to see who gets to be the Kerberos, and Enoch... is a librarian (they can't all be awesome, I guess). Leviathan isn't described as doing much, but that could possibly be attributed to the fact that there isn't much to do in the Ocean of Fragments. Aside from the Boat to Nowhere, the floating memories you have to risk your own memories to get access to, and the sweet release of annihilation, there is nothing there. Leviathan's probably gone through all the really interesting memories by now, it has a truce with the Freighter for whatever reason, and it's obligated not to bother people trying to destroy themselves. The lack of action on Leviathan's part could be lack of interest, yes, but it could just as easily be lack of opportunity.

For that matter, there's at least some evidence that Leviathan considers annihilation a good thing in the form of Xolotl, the "guide" that sacrifices its victims to Leviathan by throwing them in a river leading to the ocean. Xolotl could just be crazy, but if it's even slightly sane, that implies that Leviathan isn't just passively guarding its domain; it has agents actively seeking beings to destroy.


Don't mistake my reaction for the character's. The character is a student of forbidden and horrifying lore; even after determining that the Leviathan won't do anything to polite swimmers, you couldn't pull a pin out of this Moros' a** with a tractor if he thought Leviathan were around. If I seem dismissive of Leviathan, it's only because I'm here addressing it as a potential threat for the purpose of communicating why it's (contextually) safe to go swimming with a primordial god-fish the size of a large city block. I wouldn't go out of my way to taunt the damn thing, or even draw its attention so my character could get a look at it; finding a reason to interact with Leviathan outside the bailiwick of the Laws would be bats**t. I'm not trying to smirk over the fact that I've found a way to rules-lawyer safety in the depths of the underworld; it's just something that has to be addressed if I actually want this character coming back.

And I respect that. My argumentative nature aside, you actually seem like the kind of guy I'd enjoy having as a player in one of my games. It's just that when I'm running a horror game, I like there to be some actual trepidation at the part of the players. Doesn't have to be full fledged terror (and it would be difficult to get that reaction from dice anyway), but I at least want to inspire uncertainty and nervousness. In my experience, it's led to better horror-based RP, more immersion. You may be awesome at RPing someone scared out of his wit while having the metagame knowledge their your victory is assured, but I haven't met many people like that.


That is still staggeringly arbitrary. Just the preparations for this attempt would be harrowing in the extreme. He'd be looking at months and months of research, bargaining for favors, consulting with other Mages, summoning dozens and dozens of ghosts, building up traveling supplies, artifacts, and Mana, just to prepare for the real work Down Below. While a Master of Death is more at home in the Underworld more than anyone except a Geist, the fact remains that the vast majority of his research and prep would be taking place on a plane of existence which is inherently inimical to human life, and swarming with creatures dangerous, untrustworthy, and outright insane. It would require multiple trips, across multiple Underworld rivers, interviewing and wrangling with other Kerberoi, months of research in the Aethaenium (which would be particularly dangerous to a scholar whose Vice is Lust for unhealthy forgotten lore), and then in the Ocean itself, experimentation on his own sense of identity in the waters, interviewing and Unveiling that beachcomber guy, the sailors, and the Admiral. At the end of all that, a Mage whose will and sense of self have always been an unassailable fortress will dive into the Ocean, and over the course of months of meditative sensory deprivation will have his ego stripped to the core, and for a brief moment functionally cease to exist. So forgive me if the thought of a ST taking all this into account and saying, "... on the other hand, the Mysteries and perils of the Underworld are never-ending, so... *rolls dice* ...OM NOM NOM" makes me see red. Especially considering that all this stuff is, strictly speaking, a thematic consideration in a world where any potential Archmage can do all the research and prepwork in a much safer place and manner, and just develop a single spell to do the job.

It's that arbitrary. You'd be hard-pressed to find a katabasis in actual myth that didn't suck in some way for the protagonist, with the exception of a couple of really simple ones like "and then they went to the upper part of the Underworld, spilled enough blood to give a ghost the ability to talk to them for a few minutes, and found out that they should have taken a left turn instead of a right at that last uninhabited island." Even Geist basically says "Yeah... you probably should have a good reason for this, because it's gonna suck."

I wouldn't just say "OM NOM NOM" on a less than exceptional success either. It would be more interesting to let you succeed, but inadvertently cause something I could spin into another storyline. Maybe you ascend to godhood, but your momentary merging with the nothingness at the bottom of the Ocean of Fragments connects you to Leviathan in a way you hadn't anticipated, and the Kerberos is able to use you as a sort of anchor to return to the living world ("All oceans are one ocean"). Now you have to search the supernatural world for lore that would possibly lead to the King of the Children of Pride passing on for good, maybe even need to hunt down the AWOL Sky Father to figure out what Leviathan really is and how it can be stopped for good. Meanwhile, a seagoing Gozer the Gozerian is reenacting some of Final Fantasy X's more outlandish cutscenes using the US Eastern Seaboard as its stand-in for Spira.

If you're still seeing red... well, I don't really care. It's a horror game, or at least it's supposed to be, and the Storyteller is under no obligation to let you triumph over all adversity. The game where s/he is does in fact exist, and it's even made by White Wolf, but it's called either Exalted or Scion depending on the setting you use for it. Also, the mere fact that reality-warping Batman wizards exist in what is otherwise consistently described as a bleak, low-key magic setting makes me gnash my teeth in rage. I generally make it clear that mages as described in Mage don't exist. I hate it so hard that I am homebrewing my own splat for when I need powerful-but-not-omnipotent magicians that vaguely fit the wizard archetype. Actually describing the journey to nigh-omnipotence as simple and/or safe makes my eyeballs bleed. :smallfurious:

And with that said... I have spent way too much time typing this. I'm not sure what it is about White Wolf discussions that inspires me to create text walls. :smallsigh:

[Fouredged Sword]

All magic is awesome broken if used right. Forces can stop hearts, mater can make any item and make tools super tools, fate can give all rolls the 8 again ability, time has the ask the dm a question spell, prime can mess with other spells, life can throw a tree at you, spirit can ignore disbelief, death can kill you (and ignore disbelief).

Yes, space is good, and many mage builds pick up space 2. Mind is also good, and many mages builds pick up mind 2 (for the anti-mind control armor). But remember that a srcy works both ways and another mage can cast back at you, and attempting mind control of another mage will lead to being lit on fire as soon as he see's you wave mind magic in his direction.

[Cirrylius]

I rate spoilers now? Awesomesauce.

:smallredface:I imagine people are getting tired of reading my text walls on their way down to New News.



Do souls who go to the bottom of the ocean merge with the World Soul? Do they cease to exist? Do they just float, totally devoid of any thought or will right above the ocean floor? It seems like what happens there could affect whether or not you've got something to reinstall to, or whether the reinstall retains the experience.
I admit, I'm assuming there's at least a moment of stillness as I Am falls out of the back of your head (shaped like a giant pearl), for the purposes of making a cool visual if nothing else.


You may be awesome at RPing someone scared out of his wit while having the metagame knowledge their your victory is assured, but I haven't met many people like that.

Heh. Playing this character would make RP'ing that a little easier and subtler. He's never been emotional, and possesses iron self-control. He'd still be freaking fairly bad, but a lifetime of hardassery and terrors experienced would keep him functional and keep the horror in hand. A good metaphor would be a distant onlooker hearing a single dying prisoner screaming his lungs out in terror in the middle of an empty Alcatraz.


Leviathan isn't described as doing much, but that could possibly be attributed to the fact that there isn't much to do in the Ocean of Fragments. The lack of action on Leviathan's part could be lack of interest, yes, but it could just as easily be lack of opportunity.
That's a good suggestion, but the fact that the Domain is listed in the book at all assumes there are STs who are going to be putting characters through their paces down there. IOW, Leviathan may not have many opportunities, but the implication of running a game in the Ocean means that whenever he's used in game, he will still have them, especially since he seems to know what's going on anywhere and can get there instantly. Leaving that out of the book, even if in a "NO REALLY. STs ONLY!!" sidebar, would be ludicrous.



Xolotl could just be crazy, but if it's even slightly sane, that implies that Leviathan isn't just passively guarding its domain; it has agents actively seeking beings to destroy.

That would make a great story arc, and Leviathan's Ferrymen would make a really frightening enemy conspiracy for Geists. But 1) unless the ST expands on that via fiat, there's just the one assh*le doing Leviathan's bidding, and it strikes me that over the course of millennia, Leviathan could catch more drowned rats than that. 2) Even if the guy's not crazy, all that means is that the victims will lose their identities in the water (barring Admirial, divine, or ST intervention). If all Leviathan wants is identities... it's got the character's identity. Even if it actively wants identifiers, there are fewer reasons to want two identical sets of them.



I wouldn't just say "OM NOM NOM" on a less than exceptional success either. It would be more interesting to let you succeed, but inadvertently cause something I could spin into another storyline. Maybe you ascend to godhood, but your momentary merging with the nothingness at the bottom of the Ocean of Fragments connects you to Leviathan in a way you hadn't anticipated, and the Kerberos is able to use you as a sort of anchor to return to the living world ("All oceans are one ocean"). Now you have to search the supernatural world for lore that would possibly lead to the King of the Children of Pride passing on for good, maybe even need to hunt down the AWOL Sky Father to figure out what Leviathan really is and how it can be stopped for good. Meanwhile, a seagoing Gozer the Gozerian is reenacting some of Final Fantasy X's more outlandish cutscenes using the US Eastern Seaboard as its stand-in for Spira.

Heh. I think the worst consequence for the character personally would be his inability to archive the process by which he achieved

godhood
...Archmage. Unless he tries to continually update his Mind re-install on the way Down (which strikes even me as a terrible idea) then he'll have no memory of the time between his last Mind update and his Oneiros. And that little worm of curiosity does gnaw so.

...oh. No. There are worse consequences. Somewhere in the Ocean are floating all of the character's identifiers. He's up and walking around the fallen world, but there's still a fragmented, soulless copy of him in the Ocean. What's really ironic is that this character is based on an older, non-WoD one, and he had a very similar catastrophe in his life.



Also, the mere fact that reality-warping Batman wizards exist in what is otherwise consistently described as a bleak, low-key magic setting makes me gnash my teeth in rage. I generally make it clear that mages as described in Mage don't exist. I hate it so hard that I am homebrewing my own splat for when I need powerful-but-not-omnipotent magicians that vaguely fit the wizard archetype.
*shrugs* Angry letter, or Rule Zero. Sorry.



...but I at least want to inspire uncertainty and nervousness.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a katabasis in actual myth that didn't suck in some way for the protagonist.

...and the Storyteller is under no obligation to let you triumph over all adversity.

Actually describing the journey to nigh-omnipotence as simple and/or safe makes my eyeballs bleed. :smallfurious:

:smallmad:How... how is what I am suggesting simple or safe? I'm not suggesting that all that prep should be blue-booked or treated as down-time. This is in-game stuff. A whole goddamn mini-campaign. My character would have to cross a half-dozen rivers at least once, make overtures to initiate contact with Geists, make a staggering expense of all possible kinds of resources, successfully interact with other Kerberoi (including Hades, and he's just a jerk) without violating their Laws, and beat up the False Ferryman if I want to follow all leads. On top of that, there's still the risk of being swept away into oblivion if the character can't build an interface with the Supernal in time, and that's an actual unavoidable mechanical risk. Does all that not somewhat make up for the fact that the actual process of the moment of Threshold is the one moment when the player isn't sweating bullets for his characters life, soul, and identity?

[TheCountAlucard]

life can throw a tree at youBetter still, Life can turn an existing tree into said tree's mass in bullet ants.

:eek:

[Fouredged Sword]

My love of life magic comes from a character of mine who pulled a lice off his head (he cultivated them for such use). He would flick the lice at you and turn it into a oak tree in mid flight. After the oak tree hit he would turn it into a swarm of army ants to swarm you.

That an he would imitate a bullet shrimp to punch like a shotgun with no physical stats under 6. Fun times.

[Selrahc]

He would flick the lice at you and turn it into a oak tree in mid flight


Doesn't work, unless you're getting tricksy with time or fate. Transformation spells, like almost all other spells, are instant actions. Transforming something in mid-flight, after you have thrown it no less, is something that would only be possible for a reflexive spell. For this to work you're going to need to throw on conditional triggers and work with oak trees that have been pre-transformed into lice, then give them a trigger that ends the spell duration upon them being thrown. (That does of course raise the problem of any time you are hit with a supernal dispellation from Prime, dozens of oak trees suddenly form in your head...)

I'd also say... lice aren't aerodynamic. You can't throw them like a dart or flick them like a pellet. You would need to attach them to something that flies true, even if you did have some reflexive transformation spell.

[Fouredged Sword]

We always played that physical actions could be used as needed to achieve a spell effect. This speed up play and encouraged creative use of magic. One could create a sword of fire and swing it at someone, ect.

[Selrahc]

We always played that physical actions could be used as needed to achieve a spell effect. This speed up play and encouraged creative use of magic. One could create a sword of fire and swing it at someone, ect.

Okay.
It drastically buffs mages though. Essentially making all magic reflexive? Wow.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Okay.
It drastically buffs mages though. Essentially making all magic reflexive? Wow.

It's not like they weren't broken already. If it's a Mage chronicle, all the players are still on even footing. If it's a crossover, I can see some issues, but Mage already has crossover issues.

[Fouredged Sword]

It applied only when a physical action was involved as part of a spell effect. We played it that way to keep the action moving in the game and to keep the pressure up.

One could create fire AND throw it. One could pull a gun out of the wall AND fire it. It made the game much more fast action. Very fun in an action packed mage game. Made magic and creative solutions more important in the moment rather than the heavy focus on buff and shoot.

[Morty]

Believe or not, there's some real life justification for Requiem's RAW on slashing weapons versus firearms, although it's a bit of a simplification. Weapons that primarily work by piercing are more likely to hit a vital organ and thus result in a fatal injury. However, an attack that pierces straight through a person to hit vitals is less likely to do serious damage to the musculature/skeletal structure/nervous system around the wound, so until the victim collapses from blood loss/shock or the nervous system is directly damaged, he can still fight. Contrast that with attacks made by an edged weapon, which are more likely to hit limbs or penetrate less deeply into the target's body, but are also more likely to sever the muscles tendons, nerves, etc... required for the damaged body parts to keep functioning. It doesn't matter if the wound is actually going to kill you or not, if the tendons that allow you to clench your hand or the muscles that move your leg are severed, you're going to have a hard time continuing to fight.

As physical creatures who maintain their life through supernatural means, vampires don't care nearly as much about piercing injuries because hey, they weren't using that pancreas anyway. They still rely on muscles, bones and tendons to move though, so attacks that damage these will still put them down even if a coup de grâce is required to finish them off.

Personally, I think a better system might be to create a system in which injuries dealing more damage than (target's Stamina + N) have a chance to cause some sort of crippling injury (which would differ based on the type of damage and the weapon). Under this modification, vampires downgrade all damage to bashing, but can still be temporarily crippled by weapons that damage their bodies in appropriate ways. Whether the resulting increase in complexity is worth what I'd consider an increase in verisimilitude is debatable though. I think the current rules are fine as an abstraction.


I'm not saying that the current explanation for the way Vampires treat damage doesn't make sense. It does, for the reasons you just listed. But having them recieve Bashing damage from all mundane weapons would make sense too, and might be more thematically and mechanically appropriate. We'll have to see what else comes out of it. Between this and Blood Sorcery, Vampire's going to look a lot different in a year's time.

[CN the Logos]

I'm not saying that the current explanation for the way Vampires treat damage doesn't make sense. It does, for the reasons you just listed. But having them recieve Bashing damage from all mundane weapons would make sense too, and might be more thematically and mechanically appropriate. We'll have to see what else comes out of it. Between this and Blood Sorcery, Vampire's going to look a lot different in a year's time.

Yeah, you're right there. One of nWoD's strengths and weaknesses is that it's so mechanically simple. On the one hand I don't even need to write mook stats, regardless of what they do specifically, and that's great. On the other, its simplicity means that it's not going to be perfectly realistic, and any rules that increase verisimilitude are probably going to raise the system's complexity too. It's not a matter of "can we create rules that perfectly model what happens when a vampire gets hit by a knife as opposed to a bullet;" we can totally do that. It's a matter of "is this worth the trouble?" So I wouldn't be that perturbed by whichever way the ST wanted to run it myself (although auto-torpor at full lethal sucks, and anything that alleviates that problem and makes vampires less fragile is okay with me as long as it makes sense).

I'm also looking forward to Blood Sorcery tremendously, even if I do have to refluff at least a third of it. :smalltongue:

[Eurus]

I have mixed feelings on Vampire fragility. On the one hand, it sucks because seriously, Dracula getting potentially gibbed by a machete is kind of lame. On the other hand, Vampire culture kind of acknowledges the fact that they wouldn't do well in a full-on conflict with humanity, so being vulnerable is perhaps appropriate.

[The Glyphstone]

I have mixed feelings on Vampire fragility. On the one hand, it sucks because seriously, Dracula getting potentially gibbed by a machete is kind of lame. On the other hand, Vampire culture kind of acknowledges the fact that they wouldn't do well in a full-on conflict with humanity, so being vulnerable is perhaps appropriate.

That cultural skittishness is more because of their vulnerability during the day (ghouls are only so reliable) - most vampires aren't scared of going hand-to-hand with mortals if they're awake at full power.

[Fouredged Sword]

All the physical resistance in the world won't help you when your weakness is as common as fire. It has been a weapon in the arsenal of man from the start of civilization and we are very good at using it. Even if vampires completely ignored all bashing and lethal damage from mundane weapons they would be right to fear an all out confrontation with all humans everywhere. Large numbers of humans are just that dangerous.

[Morty]

Yeah, in the long run being resistant to normal weapons would not help vampires much in a confrontation with the entirety of humanity in the event of the Masquerade being broken worldwide. As was said, there's fire, which is probably the most crippling weakness among nWoD gamelines. And besides, Bashing damage will bring you down eventually. A vampire will endure under a hail of gunfire far longer than any mortal, but he'll eventually go torpid.
It would, though, help them in confrontation with individual mortals, like hunters, law enforcement, criminals or other vampires' thralls. Of course, going into close quarters with a vampire is very risky for a mortal anyway, so those who know they're up against a vampire are likely to use fire and otherwise fight smart regardless.

[SiderealDreams]

If you haven't been following the development blog of Mummy:the Curse well...good time to start :) More info was spoiled at GenCon and the audio of that session is available for download @ http://theonyxpath.com

In addition some new art was spoiled and you can watch it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekgoBtbqY84

Additional audio and other information is available on what White Wolf has been up to and what Onyx Path Publishing is and what it's doing.

[ocel]

Thank you for updating us on Mummy: The Curse's progress, SiderealDreams.

[masterjoda99]

So, I've recently gained an interest in Changeling, and as such I would like some advice on character creation. I was thinking something like Wizened Seeming, but no clue what kith. Essentially, what I'm going for is a character who specializes in Oneiromancy and Hedgespinning, and basically making magic wonders and influencing people's minds through dreams. Any suggestions for this character, I would greatly appreciate.

[Kesnit]

So, I've recently gained an interest in Changeling, and as such I would like some advice on character creation. I was thinking something like Wizened Seeming, but no clue what kith. Essentially, what I'm going for is a character who specializes in Oneiromancy and Hedgespinning, and basically making magic wonders and influencing people's minds through dreams. Any suggestions for this character, I would greatly appreciate.

This is just the way I build characters, so it may not work for you.

Who were you before you were taken? Why were you taken? What was your durance like?

Once you answer those questions, you may have a better idea of what Court, kith, etc you want.

[Kesnit]

Is there a way to do Agg damage with Prime Arcana? Maybe the answer is in one of the Mage spat books, but I could not find anything that works in the core book.

Background
I recently joined a Mage: the Awakening game run by one of my good friends. The game has been going for a while, but last night was only my second time with them. I'm playing an Obermos, who was originally built with Forces 3, Mind 3, Prime 1. Then the ST said that I should have a Mastery (or at least be close to one) and that there was already a Forces Master. So I remade my character with Prime 5, Mind 3, Forces 1.

The ST refluffed the history of Atlantis and had the party discover that during the time of Atlantis, there was a giant war between Mages and Werewolves. The party - before I joined the game - accidentally awoke a werewolf from that time who is more powerful than any werewolf alive. (He can transform into a dragon.) That werewolf does not know that the war has ended and is rallying all the werewolves to restart the war.

The next game (in 2 weeks) will start with combat. When the ST was giving out silvered weapons last game, I realized that I had given my PC no dots in Brawl, Firearms, or Weaponry. He is a Master of Prime, but when looking in the book, found no Prime spells that do agg damage, which is useful when fighting werewolves. (Also, everyone else is armed with silver weapons, meaning they will be doing agg.)

There are a lot of things I know I can do. (My plan now is to create a bear with Marionette, create armor for the bear, and send the bear in to fight.) But I'm looking for a way to make myself more combat effective against werewolves using just Arcana.

[masterjoda99]

Well, the Prime 3 spell Celestial Fire can do aggravated damage at Prime 5. In theory, any arcanum can do aggravated at mastery, but it always costs a point of mana to do so. Ultimately, in my opinion, you've picked a good arcanum to master, since prime has direct damage, magic item creation, illusions, and a master of prime basically never needs to worry about mana acquisition.

[Morty]

I was talking about the planned rules revisions for Vampire and the discussion about them on the White Wolf boards a while ago. This (http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66276) is another thread about them and predictably enough, the discussion is heated.

Now, changes to Disciplines aside, what caught my attention is that the playtesters are working with the assumption that weapons' damage bonuses add successes to successful attack rolls instead of adding dice to the attack pool. It's a common houserule from what I've heard, but I do wonder if it means it'll be a rules revision for the whole nWoD.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Certainly an interesting idea, though it does make combat more dangerous than it already is. Not necessarily a bad thing, but still.

[Morty]

What worries me a bit is that it'll make combat too binary - either you miss or you seriously harm your opponent. Thus no grazing, near-misses, scratches... it's a bit limiting, narratively speaking. Hopefully they'll manage to do something about it. They said they'll probably reduce the damage bonuses on weapons (I hope a new weapons table doesn't make Armory obsolete, though).

[Fouredged Sword]

One rule I have been considering is a miss/graze/hit/crit system.

With an attack you do not add your weapons damage to the attack roll, and you count only odd numbers of successes as damage on attack rolls. If you get no successes you miss. If you get one success you graze your target and they take a single wound. If get 2 or more successes you deal 1/2 your weapons damage rating (rounding up) in damage in addition to all successes. If you roll 4 successes the damage auto dealt by your weapon is upgraded to the next damage type. After that you simply deal more damage.

Grazes cannot fill the last box of any damage category (and thus you must score a solid hit to disable a target)

Combat would be much less lethal and characters who can keep foes unable to strike a solid hit can stay in fights much longer, so defense should become more viable.

[Eurus]

Wondering if anyone has opinions on this particular example of a six-dot Majesty power for an NPC.

Dies Irae
Cost: 1 willpower per scene
Dice pool: --
Action: Instant
The user's Majesty inspires and bolsters the masses, whipping them into a frenzy of violence. This power does not itself grant influence over the subjects; they must already respect the user's commands through normal or supernatural means, and the user must verbally address them to activate this power. The lord directs his subjects toward a goal, and they begin to pursue it with all of their might. Only mortals may be affected by this power.

The affected are inspired to fight with utter disregard for their own safety, ignoring all wound penalties and gaining bonus dice on all resistance rolls against mental influence equal to the user's Majesty. They may also use the Kindred's Majesty dots in place of any dice pool used to attack if it exceeds their normal dice pool.

This power lasts for one scene, or approximately one hour, and may affect a total number of mortals equal to the user's Majesty dots squared.

[Cerlis]

i was wondering if there was a good place to find information or discussion threads for werewolf:the apocalypse. We just started a game.

a paranormal investigator uktena, hacker glasswalker, security guard Gaia (me), all Homid. Apparently gaining the aid of a combat heavy Lupus (I noticed we all lacked physical ability, and most of us players are Skill heavy)

Other than looking for some information, i was also hoping for some good knews. the 3 of us are lost cubs and though we where acquainted with each other before we just got found by a Garou. The issue is i think i've formulated the personality of my character pretty well. And I think its going to be hard for him to get used to the idea of dealing with problems as a Were.

I was wondering how much i'll have to rely on supernatural combat ability. Should i put away my gun, or are there enough monsters out there that can be taken out by it?

[The Random NPC]

One rule I have been considering is a miss/graze/hit/crit system.

With an attack you do not add your weapons damage to the attack roll, and you count only odd numbers of successes as damage on attack rolls. If you get no successes you miss. If you get one success you graze your target and they take a single wound. If get 2 or more successes you deal 1/2 your weapons damage rating (rounding up) in damage in addition to all successes. If you roll 4 successes the damage auto dealt by your weapon is upgraded to the next damage type. After that you simply deal more damage.

Grazes cannot fill the last box of any damage category (and thus you must score a solid hit to disable a target)

Combat would be much less lethal and characters who can keep foes unable to strike a solid hit can stay in fights much longer, so defense should become more viable.

So if I understand the system correctly, let's say I use a 2 damage brass knuckles to deal bashing damage, and my pool is 7.
I roll all 7 dice to attack, let's say I get 5 successes, so I would succeed in hitting and deal 4 (3 from odd successes and 1/2 weapon of 2) damage but because I got 4+ successes, the damage from the weapon is lethal, so I deal 3 bashing and 1 lethal?
If I had gotten exactly one success I would deal 1 bashing, and if I got 2 I would deal 3 bashing.

[OACSNY97]

I have a rules question for Changeling: the Lost. We're coming to the end of a year long story arc and one of my players is very interested in the dual kith stuff from Winter Masques. I'm tempted to let her have it as suitable reward for what's going on in the plot, but...
How would you rule the use of the dual kith merit when the kiths of interest are from different seemings?

The character in question is currently a Darkling Gravewright who works as a bartender and the player would like to use the dual kith merit to pick up the Wizened kith of Brewer.

Would it make sense for the second kith to only give the kith blessing or would it make sense to open up all of the Wizened stuff including the reduced cost for Artifice contracts with the second kith? Winter Masques is somewhat unclear- all examples they give are of two kiths from the same seeming. Opinions?

Thank you

[ToySoldierCPlus]

That's because the Winter Masques rules aren't the only rules for dual-kith changelings. Rites of Spring has a section on the subject, proposing different prices for the merit: 2 dots for a same-seeming kith, and 3 dots for a different-seeming kith. The different-seeming option specifically explains that while the character gets the benefits of both kiths, they only get the blessing (and curse) of their own seeming. ...It also says that the merit is available at character creation only, in contradiction to Winter Masques, but you're the ST, so when it's available is your call in the end.

Information on the Dual Kith merit can be found on page 88 of Rites of Spring.

[Lord_Gareth]

i was wondering if there was a good place to find information or discussion threads for werewolf:the apocalypse. We just started a game.

a paranormal investigator uktena, hacker glasswalker, security guard Gaia (me), all Homid. Apparently gaining the aid of a combat heavy Lupus (I noticed we all lacked physical ability, and most of us players are Skill heavy)

Other than looking for some information, i was also hoping for some good knews. the 3 of us are lost cubs and though we where acquainted with each other before we just got found by a Garou. The issue is i think i've formulated the personality of my character pretty well. And I think its going to be hard for him to get used to the idea of dealing with problems as a Were.

I was wondering how much i'll have to rely on supernatural combat ability. Should i put away my gun, or are there enough monsters out there that can be taken out by it?

I would suggest you check White Wolf's own forums. However, a word of warning - W:tA is a terrible, awful wreck of a game that is essentially one gigantic car wreck, starting at the inconsistent, heavy-handed and ill-conceived fluff and moving on to mechanics that are not so much a gaming system as they are the written equivalent of an open-handed smack to the face. There is no 'good' advice for how to run it. There are only ways to lessen the pain.

[Yawgmoth]

I would suggest you check White Wolf's own forums. However, a word of warning - W:tA is a terrible, awful wreck of a game that is essentially one gigantic car wreck, starting at the inconsistent, heavy-handed and ill-conceived fluff and moving on to mechanics that are not so much a gaming system as they are the written equivalent of an open-handed smack to the face. There is no 'good' advice for how to run it. There are only ways to lessen the pain. To expand on this, oWoD systems in general was written with the assumption that having well-written systems lessens roleplaying, and thus many of the writers (who had no prior game design experience to begin with) just made the systems "whatever sounded good at the time". As such, combat in particular is an untenable mess that takes literally hours just to adjudicate a single person's turn (between 4 different rolls for a single attack and being able to take multiple actions per combatant) and most other parts of the game just do not work together well, if at all.

My honest suggestion to Cerlis: Since you just started, you should swap over to nWoD and play WtF if you really wanna play werewolf. The systems flow with each other much smoother and move much faster, although gifts still have an issue with being overly situational or just outright useless, by and large. If you're not super attached to werewolves but like the whole "wilderness dudes and spirits" motif, you could easily do that with vampire: the requiem (gangrel with possibly a bloodline to play nice with spirits), mage: the awakening (the thyrsus path are actually better werewolves than werewolves), or changeling: the lost (the beast kith is basically this anyways, elementals could get into it easily, other kiths could be shimmied in too).

[OACSNY97]

Thanks for getting back to me so soon on my Changeling question. As this would be a plot reward, I'm going to go with Winter Masques rules as far as when it can be taken, but the information in Rites of Spring was very helpful.

I still have one question- since Rites of Spring says that the character only gets blessing and curse from primary seeming, I assume that means that they only get the contract discount for primary seeming as well? I.E. the Gravewright character who's looking to pick up Brewer would get the Darkness contracts at discount, but not the Artifice ones- correct?

More generally- what about the small handful of contracts in Rites of Spring that are affinity for two seemings- how would you have this work if one of the seemings on the affinity list was the seeming providing the "secondary" kith?

Thanks

[Yawgmoth]

To put it really simply: The character has one Seeming, and two Kiths. They only get what that one Seeming and what those two kiths say they give. No more, no less.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

As Yawgmoth said, it wouldn't matter. The exact text is:
Your character can belong to only a single seeming, but she also possesses the kith blessings of both kiths. No other benefit of the other seeming is transferred; your character is still a member of only one seeming, with all that entails.

So, in list form, the character with the dual kith merit and kiths from two different seemings has:

Seeming blessing from initial seeming
Kith blessing from seeming-related kith
kith blessing from non-seeming-related kith
Affinity with universal contracts
Affinity with seeming contracts
Curse from initial seeming

The character does not have affinity with any contracts that are not universal or on their seeming's list, even if the contracts are affinity for the seeming providing the character's second kith.

An Antiquarian Author Darkling, for instance, doesn't gain affinity with any wizened contracts, like artifice. He would only have affinity for the standard Darkling contracts.

[Daemonhawk]

Hey, I recently ordered nWoD(it was on sale, so I took a risk.), and I wanted to know some more about the system, preferably what a new Storyteller should know about the system. Thank you!

[Lord_Gareth]

Hey, I recently ordered nWoD(it was on sale, so I took a risk.), and I wanted to know some more about the system, preferably what a new Storyteller should know about the system. Thank you!

Well - and this is speaking as someone who loves and adores nWoD - I have to say that the answers to these questions greatly depends on what it is you like in a gaming system. My group and I tend towards a low optimization, so the gaping flaws in the system's mechanics (such as wild imbalance between various Merits, exploits, that sort of thing) slip us by and we remain blissfully unaware of the practicalities of these problems. If your folks like to fiddle with the knobs and dials, then you should be warned that the actual mechanics are held together mostly by Scotch tape and hatred, and little else.

These other fine folks can tell you more.

[Morty]

I wouldn't go as far as Lord Gareth (although I do feel tempted to use "held together mostly by Scotch tape and hatred" for something now). nWoD generally holds together as a system, unless you deliberately try to break it, which as a new player you probably won't do anyway. Now, other advice would depend on what systems you've played before and what style you're used to. And, most importantly: which books do you have?

[Jeivar]

Hey, I'm running an OWoD Vampire: Dark Ages game and I have a rules question. One of my players is a Tremere and so far I haven't found any rules on how long it takes for him to learn new rituals. It just says that they must be learned as part of a story, and there must be a teacher. Any advice?

[Daemonhawk]

Well, seeing as how the core rule book was the only one on sale, just that one.:smallbiggrin: I'm used to running/ playing in a game with a lt of combat, but I do enjoy the RP just as much. Aside from that, I know nothing about nWoD.

[The Glyphstone]

That'll be fine. NWoD Mortals is a perfectly serviceable game, and probably the best choice for a total new group - get used to the rules, then you can consider choosing a supernatural splat.

If you're used to combat-heavy games, NWoD will definitely be a change. It can be combat-heavy, but compared to games like D&D, it'll be a bit of a culture shock because fighting is incredibly lethal. Humans are squishy, and stay that way - a total newbie can be unconscious and bleeding to death in two or three solid hits (or less), and the most badass hardcore fighter on the planet will be able to take four hits, tops. Guns are vastly better than melee weapons, as expected for a realistic modern horror game - subtract one from the previous values if it's a gunfight.

What is means is that the system discourages using violence to solve your problems, unless you like making new characters a lot. Social skills and stats help you avoid violent situations, mental stats and skills are good for arranging so you're never in a violent situation to begin with. And if you have to fight, fight dirty - use cover, set up ambushes, outnumber your opponents, and still expect to be patching up wounded or sewing up body bags when the dust settles.

It's a game of gothic horror - there are things that go bump in the fight, and you might not know they exist. A Mortals game might involve a haunted house, or a deranged serial killer, or an evil cult leader with mind-control powers. Watch some good horror movies for ideas, then think of how it'd be better if the cast weren't total morons like they always are, and work up a scenario from there.

[Daemonhawk]

That'll be fine. NWoD Mortals is a perfectly serviceable game, and probably the best choice for a total new group - get used to the rules, then you can consider choosing a supernatural splat.

If you're used to combat-heavy games, NWoD will definitely be a change. It can be combat-heavy, but compared to games like D&D, it'll be a bit of a culture shock because fighting is incredibly lethal. Humans are squishy, and stay that way - a total newbie can be unconscious and bleeding to death in two or three solid hits (or less), and the most badass hardcore fighter on the planet will be able to take four hits, tops. Guns are vastly better than melee weapons, as expected for a realistic modern horror game - subtract one from the previous values if it's a gunfight.

What is means is that the system discourages using violence to solve your problems, unless you like making new characters a lot. Social skills and stats help you avoid violent situations, mental stats and skills are good for arranging so you're never in a violent situation to begin with. And if you have to fight, fight dirty - use cover, set up ambushes, outnumber your opponents, and still expect to be patching up wounded or sewing up body bags when the dust settles.

It's a game of gothic horror - there are things that go bump in the fight, and you might not know they exist. A Mortals game might involve a haunted house, or a deranged serial killer, or an evil cult leader with mind-control powers. Watch some good horror movies for ideas, then think of how it'd be better if the cast weren't total morons like they always are, and work up a scenario from there.

Thanks, Glyphstone! I had heard something from my friend about how fighting in WoD is sorta like giving two eggshells large caliber rifles.
Well, I do appreciate the information. I had been under the impression that supernaturals were included in the book, but I wasn't planning on having players use them anyways.

As far as pacing goes, and just being the Storyteller in general, differ from D&D? Is it much more difficult, or on the same level? And should it actually be "scary", or simply just very...creepy?

EDIT: I forgot to say that if this is poorly worded, I apologize. I've been slammed with work lately...

[The Glyphstone]

Nope - the book you have, assuming it is black/grey/dark blue, is the New World of Darkness core book, providing the rules for ordinary mortals. Supernatural creatures like Vampires, Werewolves, and other strange beasties -at least, the playable ones - have their own books, because the way NWoD rules work is closer to D&D templates - you create a mortal, then apply the appropriate supernatural template that then gives you new abilities, weaknesses, etc.

I've never run a tabletop game of it, but I would suggest reading the Storyteller section of the book in-depth, it's full of tips for exactly the questions you're asking. But 'eggshells with high caliber rifles' is a good way to put it, particularly if the eggshells have the Sniper or Combat Marksmanship merits (neither of which are in the core book, so you're fine there).

[Fouredged Sword]

If you want to have a supernatural creature in a nWoD game, feel free just to make something up. Give it a few strange powers and let it ride. It keeps your players on their toes. Had my players fight a chupacabra once. Great fun was had when it caught them unprepared in the woods during daylight because they thought they where hunting a vampire.

[The Glyphstone]

If you want to have a supernatural creature in a nWoD game, feel free just to make something up. Give it a few strange powers and let it ride. It keeps your players on their toes. Had my players fight a chupacabra once. Great fun was had when it caught them unprepared in the woods during daylight because they thought they where hunting a vampire.

This is good. I'd personally start with a ghost-related plot to emphasize the investigative/stealth/horror aspect of the game to your group - rules for ghosts are included in the main book - but the book also has an Antagonists section with various enemies to use, and the very modular system (no levels or classes, just stats and XP) means you can squash together an enemy stat block very easily.

[comicshorse]

Quick Changeling question: Can the Contract of Artifice be used to enhance Tokens ?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Provided that the Token is a thing which can be enhanced, I don't see why not. A knife that is also a Token, for instance, should be able to be enhanced with the Contract of Artifice.

[Morty]

Blood Sorcery is now out. I'm internally debating as to whether or not I want to buy it.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Do we have any more info about when Mummy's coming out? Everything I can find just says September, and it's the one thing I'm really excited for.

[SiderealDreams]

Do we have any more info about when Mummy's coming out? Everything I can find just says September, and it's the one thing I'm really excited for.


Still some time in September. Assuming this week is the final week of layout and we get very lucky on proofs. MAYYYYYBE last week of September but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 1st week of October. Nothing is set mind you so I'm not trying to make a panic. Only concrete info is that at the latest monday meeting blog post it was in layout and Colin was looking to maybe give out another spoiler goodie or two before the release.

[Sith_Happens]

So I just noticed that the thread subtitle is missing an apostrophe. Figured I'd point it out.:smalltongue:

[18th Avenger]

This is an nWoD question; but has anyone else rolled up a Mage who didn't belong to an Order?

[Xallace]

This is an nWoD question; but has anyone else rolled up a Mage who didn't belong to an Order?

There were three in the last one I was in, myself included.

[masterjoda99]

Speaking of mage, I was hoping to perhaps solicit input on the third arcanum for an acanthus character I was working on. See, he's something of a planner and strategist, who likes to use his fate and time mojo to figure out what's likely to come and plan accordingly, and also to nudge things in his favor. He also has a goal to find and collect as many grimoires and owner-less soulstones as he can, eventually being able to make a mage's library for the grimoires.

I was thinking either Prime or Mind for his third arcanum, with the former leading to some Prime focused legacy, and the latter leading to that chessmaster like one with mind.

Which one would be a better pick for his third arcanum?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

From what I understand, Mind tends to be the most powerful arcanum at all levels, though thematically I prefer Prime. Mind also fits your concept better overall, especially with that chessmaster legacy you're eying.

[18th Avenger]

There were three in the last one I was in, myself included.
What was that like? What did you run?

[Xallace]

What was that like? What did you run?

I didn't feel like being an apostate detracted from the game any. None of the three of us were inherently on anyone's nerves by virtue of Order politics (like how our Arrows and Guardians tolerated each other, at best), but it didn't give us any sort of leg up in social interactions either. We also needed driving personal motivations to go on adventures, since there weren't any higher-ups telling us what to do or organizational goals to take advantage of.

I had a Mind-focused Mastigos / Bearer of the Eternal Voice, an ex-soldier having a crisis of faith while trying to escape his past yada yada. He was there at personal request of the cabal's patron, but ended up sticking around because of a burgeoning relationship with the party Time mage. There was a Fate-focused Acanthus, a Texan gambler who was loudly opinionated (to the point of party conflict), but probably one of the more compassionate mages we had. I felt like she was driven mostly by care for the cabal. The last was a Spirit-focused Thyrsus who actually acted something like a Guardian, but was mostly an uncomfortable stereotype, so I don't think I can really go into him.

[ocel]

Yeah, sorry about the typo.

[Morty]

The Strix Chronicles book is shaping up to be quite the game-changer for Vampire. There were extensive playtests of the new Physical Disciplines, we got an idea for the new four-dot Majesty power and now the White Wolf development blog (http://whitewolfblogs.com/blog/2012/09/26/seeing-in-the-dark/) contains the preliminary version for the new rules for innate vampiric sense and new Auspex powers.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

So, I'm reading through various bits of Changeling, and a question has occurred to me. When a group of changelings are sharing a Hollow, how do they pay for the merit? If each wants to contribute 2 dots, does it cost each of them 6 XP for the two dots, or does it cost more depending on how they split the dots up? Also, if one of them wants to add a third dot to the shared merit, do they pay an additional 6 XP, or would it cost them 14 XP, as that would be the 7th dot? And if I missed where it clarified this in the core book, please tell me. I looked over the merit, but all I could find was the explanation of cost for a single changeling, where the total dots between aspects are added for determining the cost of another dot.

[masterjoda99]

Also on the subject of changeling, how would one best describe the seemings to people unfamiliar with them in a concise, summarized manner?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Seemings? Easy:

Beasts: People who were taken and changed into beasts of various kinds.

Darklings: People who were taken and infused with aspects of darkness and the night. Things like forbidden knowledge, dealing with the dead, surviving in tight, dark, claustrophobic tunnels, draining people of their life force, and impersonating others.

Elementals: People who were taken and infused with various elements. Where the beasts spent time as some kind of animal, these ones spent time as ice sculptures, snow drifts, river currents, breezes, living flames, living rocks, and the occasional tree.

Fairest: Of Them All. That's really all they are. Humans infused with aspects of some form of beauty, be it art, physical perfection, the majesty of mythical creatures like dragons, dancing or similar things.

Ogres: They'll grind your bones to make their bread. Or just smash you into pulp. They're big, they're ugly, they're occasionally cannibalistic.

Wizened: Think tinkering gnomes and dwarves. Twisted little things that were forced to craft, tinker, experiment, and heal.

[Selrahc]

Also on the subject of changeling, how would one best describe the seemings to people unfamiliar with them in a concise, summarized manner?

A seeming is the role you were forced to play in Faerie. Playing the role warped you. They fall into 6 basic categories. Those used for brutish physical work, the "ogres". Those used for menial or complicated work, the "wizened". Those who worked with or were turned into animals and hybrids known as "beasts". Those turned into natural phenomena or the servants of those phenomena, the "elementals". Those who were treated as a treasure or bauble, known as "fairest". Those who were used in labours where light was a stranger, the "darklings".

[SiderealDreams]

Mummy has been pushed back to October.

[Kesnit]

So, I'm reading through various bits of Changeling, and a question has occurred to me. When a group of changelings are sharing a Hollow, how do they pay for the merit? If each wants to contribute 2 dots, does it cost each of them 6 XP for the two dots, or does it cost more depending on how they split the dots up?

You pay for the dots you bought. So if 4 people put in 1 dot, it is 2 XP each and the Hollow is a 4-dot Merit. If one decides to later put in a second, that player will pay another 4 XP (since this is their second dot in that Merit). However, everyone would have access to a 5-dot Hollow.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

You pay for the dots you bought. So if 4 people put in 1 dot, it is 2 XP each and the Hollow is a 4-dot Merit. If one decides to later put in a second, that player will pay another 4 XP (since this is their second dot in that Merit). However, everyone would have access to a 5-dot Hollow.

Cool, that's what I figured. Otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile.

And Mummy's been delayed til October? Man, I've been looking for to that since it was announced.

[Lord_Gareth]

So...I am once again looking for help deciding on one of several character concepts. The ST in question is running a Changeling: the Lost game and says she wants to explore the things that separate the Lost from the humans they protect. I was aiming to focus on the madness and compulsions so exemplary of fae of all varieties, and had several ideas:

Silent Sally spent sixty years guarding the library of a rakshasa-like Keeper that she knew only as The Tiger, fed only on the scraps of life and living that she could steal from intruders. She remembers decades that stretched through the endless, dusty silence until that silence became a part of her, though she still doesn't know how it is that she emerged from those years of neglect and death younger than when she left. She still hungers for shards of life; when she hasn't fed, her lithe frame is pale and her hair and eyes are dark, but when she's full up on stolen life she becomes tanned, vibrant, and alive. Addiction beckons.

The Corpsegrinder known as Marcus Vain doesn't think there's anything wrong with him. Okay, so he has more than one escape tunnel out of his basement apartment. And alright, one of those tunnels (more than one, actually, if you can puzzle out the maze of digging and traps and dead-ends) ends in the local graveyard and he keeps a hatchet around so he can get some Original Recipe whenever he wants it, but he's an okay guy. It's not like he's some Gristlegrinder, right? The only thing he can't figure out is why it is that he keeps waking up in lonely places with a mouth full of ash, covered in blood - or who these pale-faced bastards are that keep following him at night.

Amelia Express doesn't know what she is. No, really - she has no idea. Her memories of Arcadia aren't fragments, they're a gigantic blank spot (except, of course, when she dreams - dreams she cannot remember but dreads with soul-shredding terror). She appears as a woman made all of dots, like some pointillist painting - except when she's line art, or a mass of text, or watercolor, or any of a dozen other printed or painted or drawn forms. Sometimes she thinks she's Fairest - and there's no arguing that she is pretty as a picture, poetic as a song, as enrapturing as a maestro performance when she wants to be - but sometimes she thinks she's an Elemental, or a Wizened. She spends her time literally talking to books (no one, even Amelia, is sure how she learned that Communion contract) and trying to piece together the muddled-up shards of a life she isn't entirely certain is her own. Not all of her memories match, you see.

[masterjoda99]

Another question about changeling, specifically hedgespinning: when hedgespinning weapons, do they start with the stats of the mundane equivalent of that weapon, with the hedgespinning adding on to that, or does it just start with a +1 equipment bonus and nothing else before spending dots?

[SiderealDreams]

Cool, that's what I figured. Otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile.

And Mummy's been delayed til October? Man, I've been looking for to that since it was announced.

Hopefully not too long as Colin was cool and dropped this on the blog recently.


...And apologies for the relative dip in communication of late, but hey, at least it means we’re all plugging away, still trying to make our schedule projections, still trying to make sure quality never suffers. I’m not an official source for such things, but I think the Kickstarter is closing in on a finished form, and the Mummy core set isn’t far behind. We’ll miss September for full release on these things, but not by much, it looks like.

[ocel]

The Forum's back online so there's no need to hesitate in posting more.

[TheCountAlucard]

(hesitates) :smalltongue:

About how synched-up are nMage and nWerewolf's rules for Spirits?

[Fouredged Sword]

In theory completely, but I have not read all of the mages books. You run into some book creep, but the nWoD books made a much greater effort to be consistent than the old system. Not a good idea to mix werewolves and mages in the same party though, as a spirit/life mage makes a better werewolf than a werewolf, and can generate enough essence to make the real werewolves salivate.

[The Glyphstone]

They're compatible enough that you could take spirits from one and drop them in the other without issue. You really need Book of Spirits to flesh them out for either venue, though.

[Selrahc]

They're compatible enough that you could take spirits from one and drop them in the other without issue. You really need Book of Spirits to flesh them out for either venue, though.

They're pretty fleshed out for Werewolf, getting probably a good fifth of the core book with lots of time in most of the Werewolf supplements. In Mage, you get 2 or so pages about the spirits in core, which necessarily leaves a pretty basic picture and basically need to look elsewhere to really understand them.

Systemically they're identical, although the Mage core just lays out the barebones of their mechanical capabilities.

[Mephisto]

So I've been playing (or reading, or viewing, or whatever the verb is for a visual novel) Fate/Stay Night, and have realized that

a) almost all of the things Caster does could be duplicated by a pre-archmastery Mage, albeit one with mastery of four or five Arcana.
b) the setting of FSN integrates pretty well with the World of Darkness.

Naturally I ended up thinking about how to run a Holy Grail War in the WoD. Servant summoning would use the rules from Summoners with some modifications to allow other supernaturals to summon. Servants would be equivalent to rank 4 or 5 spirits, significantly more powerful than average characters but not completely overpowered. After all, Rin manages to blow Berserker's head off once, nulls Caster's magic and nearly beats her to death, and a buffed-up Kuzuki nearly kills Saber barehanded.

Current ideas for the Servant line-up:
Archer: ???
Assassin: Hassan-i-Sabbah as an Ascending One (Hunter)
Berserker: The Beast of Gevaudan (Werewolf) or Frankenstein's monster (Promethean)
Caster: generic mage of Atlantis
Lancer: Dracula or Longinus (Vampire)
Rider: Orpheus or Inanna (Sin-Eater)
Saber: Saint George (gender-flipped, of course) (Hunter)

Any suggestions or comments?

[Yuki Akuma]

I think Archer would work well as an Obrimos Adamantine Arrow. His schtick is creating stuff from nothing, right?

Edit: Wait, you mean OC Servants. Well I have no clue either, then.

[Sucrose]

So I've been playing (or reading, or viewing, or whatever the verb is for a visual novel) Fate/Stay Night, and have realized that

a) almost all of the things Caster does could be duplicated by a pre-archmastery Mage, albeit one with mastery of four or five Arcana.
b) the setting of FSN integrates pretty well with the World of Darkness.

Naturally I ended up thinking about how to run a Holy Grail War in the WoD. Servant summoning would use the rules from Summoners with some modifications to allow other supernaturals to summon. Servants would be equivalent to rank 4 or 5 spirits, significantly more powerful than average characters but not completely overpowered. After all, Rin manages to blow Berserker's head off once, nulls Caster's magic and nearly beats her to death, and a buffed-up Kuzuki nearly kills Saber barehanded.

Current ideas for the Servant line-up:
Archer: ???
Assassin: Hassan-i-Sabbah as an Ascending One (Hunter)
Berserker: The Beast of Gevaudan (Werewolf) or Frankenstein's monster (Promethean)
Caster: generic mage of Atlantis
Lancer: Dracula or Longinus (Vampire)
Rider: Orpheus or Inanna (Sin-Eater)
Saber: Saint George (gender-flipped, of course) (Hunter)

Any suggestions or comments?

I'm rather new to the WoD mythos (my first character hasn't even become any sort of supernatural yet), and don't know all that much about Fate/Stay Night, but Archer is defined by reliance upon weapons, right? Preferably long-ranged (though I know that the original Archer focuses on swords, he can at least throw them...)? I'd like to suggest the legendary Marine sniper Carlos Norman Hathcock II, having been recruited after Vietnam to serve in Task Force: VALKYRIE, and thus, even in the afterlife toting some pretty impressive armaments. Hunter, naturally.

(I'd suggest Simo Häyhä, but his date of birth would indicate that there probably wouldn't be as much high tech to draw upon with him.)

[Lord Raziere]

Hello everyone.

I got pretty much every single NWoD splatbook- Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Promethean, Hunter and Geist.

so I'm thinking, I might as well round it out and get Vampire.

but here is where the classic problem comes in:

Masquerade or Requiem? I've searched the net, but I haven't found anything that gives me a clear answer as to which would be better for me.

as you can tell, I'm a newer player so…yeah, which would be better for me, a newer player to get? Masquerade or Requiem?

[masterjoda99]

Well, since it seems that you're of very much an nWoD bent, I would say Requiem, as that is the nWoD version of Vampire.

[Lord Raziere]

Waaaaiiit a minute.

I just saw the Vampire Translation Toolkit Bundle. not only is it cheaper than Requiem, it has Requiem AND Masquerade AND the translation guide in it!

screw choosing, I'm gonna get both books for less than half the price! with a savings of six bucks if I had just gotten Requiem-

Edit: wait no, it lied. Reqiuem it is.

[Lord_Gareth]

Hello everyone.

I got pretty much every single NWoD splatbook- Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Promethean, Hunter and Geist.

so I'm thinking, I might as well round it out and get Vampire.

but here is where the classic problem comes in:

Masquerade or Requiem? I've searched the net, but I haven't found anything that gives me a clear answer as to which would be better for me.

as you can tell, I'm a newer player so…yeah, which would be better for me, a newer player to get? Masquerade or Requiem?

Definitely Requiem. The Translation Guide helped clean up (some) of Masquerade's mechanics, but the fluff and setting and powers are still sloppier than a potato launcher loaded with Jell-O.

[Mephisto]

I think Archer would work well as an Obrimos Adamantine Arrow. His schtick is creating stuff from nothing, right?

Edit: Wait, you mean OC Servants. Well I have no clue either, then.

Actually, the Phantasmal Weapon spell can't create items with their own magic properties. Unlimited Blade Works would have to be an Imperial spell.

[Dr. J]

So long story short, I got myself in over my head, by agreeing to ST a nWOD game. It seems like this system is a bit more complicated than expected. I can't seem to figure out which books are necessary. Right now, my group is deciding between Werewolf, Vampire, and Mage. Which of these is easiest for group play? Also, where can I buy these books? The WW website returns errors. What supplements are important to each main book? Help?

[The Glyphstone]

...if you're running NWoD, the first book you need is the New World of Darkness core book. If your group insists on playing a type of supernatural right off the bat rather than base mortals (recommended for a new group), then you need that type's core splatbook - Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, or Mage The Awakening. Any other books are purely optional bonus content.

Of those three, I'd suggest Werewolf personally - that is, if you're not willing to play base mortals. It has the highest level of expected group-cooperation and is probably the lowest power level for the three, though spirits can be complicated and confusing.

[Dr. J]

So people have changed their minds, and we have narrowed the supernatural down to Changeling or Werewolf. As the ST, I'm interesting in telling a combat light story, with a big overarching plot. Thoughts?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

As Glyphstone said, running simple mortals is by far your best bet as a new ST. But if your players are insisting on either Changeling or Werewolf, and you want a combat-light game, Changeling probably works better for that. Werewolves do lots of combat, and that's really all they're good at. You can do combat-light, sure, but combat is their main means of interacting with everyone around them.

That said, while Changeling lends itself better to combat-light games, it's noticeably more complex then Werewolf. So be warned: before you go into the game, you really want to know how the game works. Read through the core books, both World of Darkness and Changeling: the Lost, first, and don't let players pull from other books for you first game.

[Dr. J]

So I found a Changeling scenario online, and if everyone agrees, we'll probably start with that. I do have some experience DMing for DnD, so I'll spend some time in the books, and see what I can see.

[Dr. J]

Okay, so I'm reading this scenario, and I've got a few questions.

Actually, I have a scenario myself.

Okay, so.

I have a PC with a 5 in Strength, and a 3 in Weaponry. His opponent has a 3 in Defense. The PC has a +1 weapon. So, the PC would roll 6 dice. (8+1)-3. 8's count as successes, and below eights are failed. If the PC so chose, they could expend one point of Willpower, to add three extra dice to the pool, for a total of 9. (8+1+3)-9). Any results of ten are rerolled further, adding to the success pool if they succeed. Rolling stops once no tens are rolled.

I'm fairly sure I have that right, but my question is this. If the PC is attacked that turn, can he further expend one will to increase his defense, or is he limited, similarly to Glamour?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

He's limited. Page 133 of the World of Darkness rulebook states that only 1 willpower point can be spent per turn, regardless of how it's used. So, if your hypothetical strongman spent willpower to attack his opponent, he cannot then spend more willpower to bolster his defense against an incoming attack.

The reason for this, from a narrative perspective, is that, by spending a willpower point, you are throwing all of your effort into that action. Once you have done that, you cannot then throw the same level of effort into other actions.

[comicshorse]

Would wooden bullets work ? I have a feeling that they'd be too fragile and would disintegrate in the barrel but that is just a guess really. Anybody have nay better knowledge

[The Random NPC]

Would wooden bullets work ? I have a feeling that they'd be too fragile and would disintegrate in the barrel but that is just a guess really. Anybody have nay better knowledge

Wooden bullets can work, but as a lot of a bullet's power comes from it's weight, they wouldn't travel as far or hit as hard. Mind, this is from reading stories off of the Internet and other fantasy books.

[Lord_Gareth]

Would wooden bullets work ? I have a feeling that they'd be too fragile and would disintegrate in the barrel but that is just a guess really. Anybody have nay better knowledge

Wooden bullets tend to shake themselves apart and/or burn up and in any event won't penetrate far. A wood-core bullet likewise won't work, and slivers in a hollow-point are right out. Now, you could always use a hand crossbow, and the Hunter book has stats for a zip-stake, but my favorite method of "surprise, stake!" has always been to powder up some wood in a blender and offer it mixed into a drink to a vampire (especially effective if you have any Mandrakes).

[ToySoldierCPlus]

but my favorite method of "surprise, stake!" has always been to powder up some wood in a blender and offer it mixed into a drink to a vampire (especially effective if you have any Mandrakes).

How does that even work? The stake needs to go through the vampire's heart, not just be in their body.

[Lord Raziere]

nah, the real way, would be to powder up some wood and put in a steak for a vampire to eat.

and therefore kill the vampire with a wooden steak.

[The Glyphstone]

Wooden bullets tend to shake themselves apart and/or burn up and in any event won't penetrate far. A wood-core bullet likewise won't work, and slivers in a hollow-point are right out. Now, you could always use a hand crossbow, and the Hunter book has stats for a zip-stake, but my favorite method of "surprise, stake!" has always been to powder up some wood in a blender and offer it mixed into a drink to a vampire (especially effective if you have any Mandrakes).

Yeah, I have no idea how this is supposed to do anything to the vampire.

[Sith_Happens]

nah, the real way, would be to powder up some wood and put in a steak for a vampire to eat.

and therefore kill the vampire with a wooden steak.

:elan: "See, I told you it would work! It's common knowledge that vampires are cipplingly vulnerable to puns."

:roy: "And here I thought I was the only one."

[Lord Raziere]

and now I've got an idea for a texan Hunter who got confused over the spelling of "stake" and has carved some wood into the shape of a steak so he tries to go around and slay vampires by shoving a wooden steak through their heart. :smallcool:

[Lord_Gareth]

Yeah, I have no idea how this is supposed to do anything to the vampire.

Well, ideally you mix it in with actual Vitae (hence the Mandrake thing) before a setting in which the blush of life is expected (a rave party, Elysium, whatever). They gain a heartbeat and then the powdered wood lodges in their heart tissue.

Stealth staking. Your storyteller may or may not approve.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, ideally you mix it in with actual Vitae (hence the Mandrake thing) before a setting in which the blush of life is expected (a rave party, Elysium, whatever). They gain a heartbeat and then the powdered wood lodges in their heart tissue.

Stealth staking. Your storyteller may or may not approve.

I don't think I've ever met a storyteller that would let that slide -not for the least because that's not a 'stealth staking' so much as an automatic instant kill, since the 'stake' can't be removed once it's in.

[Lord_Gareth]

I don't think I've ever met a storyteller that would let that slide -not for the least because that's not a 'stealth staking' so much as an automatic instant kill, since the 'stake' can't be removed once it's in.

It worked great for me until I tried it on a closet Crone sorceress. When her ritual to destroy the stake went off she tracked me down and killed my character painfully.

[Eurus]

Does it ever explain why staking a vampire puts them to sleep? I know the sunlight thing is explained as a mystical weakness rather than a physiological one; VALKYRIE's gadget to emit light and radiation that's almost identical to sunlight might make a vamp go into fear frenzy, but won't actually ash it. But the stake thing, I'm not sure about. Is there some symbolic reason why a sharp piece of wood to the chest is significant, or is it a biological thing that "plant cells + vampire heart tissue = bad"?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

The winning answer is... No. The core book says that "Kindred offer a number of religious and occult theories for why wood has this power. Most Kindred simply accept it as a fact of life." It seems to be another case of, "Choose your own explanation that best fits your chronicle."

As for the powdered stake trick, I can think of another good reason it wouldn't work: the heart must be pierced by the stake. Tricking a vampire into drinking Vitae mixed with powdered wood and then invoking the Blush of Life wouldn't actually do anything unless your ST was being really generous.

[TheCountAlucard]

Even assuming the Kindred could keep it down in the first place; after all, just because he orders a so-rare-it's-bloody T-bone doesn't mean he's going to be able to avoid the part where he brings it up.

[Morty]

Task Force: Valkyrie actually has access to wooden bullets. They're made of soft splinters around a mistletoe core. They deal a limited amount of lethal damage to vampires and called shots can stake them from a distance.

[Hel65]

Well, ideally you mix it in with actual Vitae (hence the Mandrake thing) before a setting in which the blush of life is expected (a rave party, Elysium, whatever). They gain a heartbeat and then the powdered wood lodges in their heart tissue.

Stealth staking. Your storyteller may or may not approve.

Wouldn't that just have the powdered wood lodging in the vampire's stomach? I was under impression that they actually drink blood and vitae in most cases and then mystically add it to their Vitae pools, not inject it intravenously (and with blush of life that surely would work via stomach and as probably a lot of people can attest, eating powdered wood or something similar - e.g. sand or flour or cinnamon - doesn't result in it lodging itself in your heart ;) ), and even then, why would it lodge itself in the heart and not veins? It would be a really generous Storytelling interpretation to let that fly.

[The Glyphstone]

That's an even better point - the circulatory system and the digestive system don't have any connections, so how would the powder in the Lacrima get from one to the other?

[TheCountAlucard]

Humorous note, cinnamon is made by harvesting the bark of a specific tree - if secreting powdered wood into a vampire's meal counts as staking them, then ordinary cinnamon should be able to do the job.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

That's an even better point - the circulatory system and the digestive system don't have any connections, so how would the powder in the Lacrima get from one to the other?

Well, nutrients and the like are absorbed through the small intestine, but only digestible(ish) stuff gets absorbed that way. And certain things (alcohol) can be absorbed directly into blood vessels in the mouth and esophagus. Of course, indigestible things, like wood, don't get absorbed. This is a gross oversimplification, but the fact that wood wouldn't enter the circulatory system through any part of the digestive tract remains.

All of that is moot, however, as it's true that vampires don't work that way. They drink blood, and then move it to wherever it needs to be. Considering that they don't bleed when wounded, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that Vitae just sort of sits in their stomachs until they move it elsewhere, though I suppose it is possible that they automatically move it into their heart and circulatory systems once they've consumed it.

[The Glyphstone]

I figure it's just 'there', not in any specific portion of their decayed and withered anatomy even if they are spending Vitae to animate those organs. If you stab a vampire or slash an artery open, they don't lose Vitae in addition to the health levels of damage taken, so while drinking blood increases their Vitae store, the physical medium of the blood itself isn't tied to the Vitae - for cross-reference, Ghouls retain their Vitae even after they've digested the blood they drink, and they're still alive.

[The Random NPC]

I figure it's just 'there', not in any specific portion of their decayed and withered anatomy even if they are spending Vitae to animate those organs. If you stab a vampire or slash an artery open, they don't lose Vitae in addition to the health levels of damage taken, so while drinking blood increases their Vitae store, the physical medium of the blood itself isn't tied to the Vitae - for cross-reference, Ghouls retain their Vitae even after they've digested the blood they drink, and they're still alive.

Blood destroying toxins do bashing lethal damage and cause a roughly equal amount of Vitae loss. I don't recall the page number Page 174, but it's in the section about snake bites.

[The Glyphstone]

Blood destroying toxins do bashing damage and cause an equal amount of Vitae loss. I don't recall the page number, but it's in the section about snake bites.

Ah, White Wolf and your total lack of consistency.:smallconfused:
Okay, that's not fair. I forgot the rule that Vampires don't bleed unless they will themselves to, so slashing open an artery wouldn't cause any blood loss (and thus Vitae loss). I stand corrected.

[Eurus]

Yeah. I think Chiron actually knows how to stick a vamp and vacuum blood out while it's still alive, even. :smallamused:

[SiderealDreams]

CAS provides one last spoiler before we inch towards the release of Mummy:the Curse!

http://whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/2012/10/20/pre-launch-post/

[JAnderson789]

Has anyone read Wraith: The Arising (http://wraithproject.cattail.nu/archives/wraiththearising.html)? I'm looking for reviews and opinions on it.

EDIT: Also, does anyone have any devotions that would let an Elder vampire embrace a childe with one or two additional dots of blood potency? Specifically, several devotions with different prerequisites that accomplish the same thing (so that no clan is at a particular experience cost disadvantage), but without the elder having to sacrifice his own BP (since this would allow him to get out of feeding restrictions, and there's already a Cruac ritual for that).