An unusual matchup

[Heliomance]

Who would win in a fight, a WoD character or a D&D character, assuming equal amounts of XP?

[Decoy Lockbox]

Depends on the D&D character. I've never played any of the WoD games, but I assume that a properly built high level D&D wizard (3.5 edition) could clean anything's clock.

How would the difference in rules system work though?

[Fishy]

nWoD or oWoD? Mages used to get powers that would make a 3.5 wizard weep with envy, and a Promethean could turn a country into an uninhabitable hellish wasteland by sitting still for a few weeks.

On the other hand, your average Druid probably beats the stuffing out of your average Werewolf.

[valadil]

D&D has a wider range of power levels. Any low level WoD character would wipe the floor with a level 1 D&D character. But any high level D&D character would own a high level WoD character. I think WoD characters range from level 5-10 or 10-15 (depending on system) in D&D terms.

[Heliomance]

Depends on the D&D character. I've never played any of the WoD games, but I assume that a properly built high level D&D wizard (3.5 edition) could clean anything's clock.

How would the difference in rules system work though?

WoD is a significantly lower powered system. Even a powerful character will have <10 HP in general, and you're lucky if you manage to do three damage to something.

On the other hand, the average XP gained per session is 3-5. So with equal XP...

[Lapak]

D&D has a wider range of power levels. Any low level WoD character would wipe the floor with a level 1 D&D character. But any high level D&D character would own a high level WoD character. I think WoD characters range from level 5-10 or 10-15 (depending on system) in D&D terms.

High-level - high experience, anyway - Old-WoD Mages are stupidly overpowered as well. Depending on their Tradition, what effects they kept running, and how paranoid they were, they still might be vulnerable to a Celerity/Time Stop style alpha strike, but they might not. They have epic-style casting but at lower power levels early on, and that only scales up over time. Worst of all, from a D&D wizard's perspective, much of their arsenal will walk clean around standard antimagic defenses, including cheesy defenses like always astral-projecting from a hidden Genesis demiplane. It wouldn't be hard for a mage with the right Spheres to burn out the wizard at the other end of that link. The battleground would also make a difference; the most important limiter on old Mages was Paradox, and if the setting was a standard D&D plane they could get awfully darn Vulgar before getting smacked down.

[shadzar]

depends on edition of both games.

Could anything in either WoD beat Pun-pun?

[OverdrivePrime]

We'll have to port everything over to GURPS and find out!


No... not really.


I assume that the OP means similar levels of experience rather than equal experience points, as even a Changeling with 1,000 XP would mop the floor with a D&D wizard with 10,000 XP.

I guess the easiest comparison is notoriety - a Werewolf who is known everyone in the supernatural community for 100 miles in any direction is going to be roughly as experienced as a Druid who is known to everyone in the sylvan community or 100 miles in any direction. That's about what, a level 7 druid and a werewolf with maybe 50 experience points?

I'd definitely agree with the other posters that at early levels the WoD characters are much stronger, but once the D&D magic users hit their stride, around 9th level or so, then all bets are off. Add magical equipment to the mix - plentiful in D&D, super-rare in WoD, and the scale gets tipped even harder in the direction of the D&D characters.

Unless, as mentioned earlier, some jerk brings in a Mage character. In that case, the rout begins and doesn't end until even the mightiest of D&D arch mages are weeping and begging for mercy.

[Heliomance]

Actually, I did mean equal experience points. I realise that boosts a WoD character significantly more than it boosts the D&D character, but how much XP would a WoD character have to have to be able to take the 50-100 damage a mid-level D&D character can pump out every round? Meanwhile the D&D character laughs at the 10 damage the ridiculously gnarly WoD character was able to throw.

[Comet]

WoD wins, because WoD players are more intelligent.
No, I am not serious.

[Quietus]

Actually, I did mean equal experience points. I realise that boosts a WoD character significantly more than it boosts the D&D character, but how much XP would a WoD character have to have to be able to take the 50-100 damage a mid-level D&D character can pump out every round? Meanwhile the D&D character laughs at the 10 damage the ridiculously gnarly WoD character was able to throw.

Considering you could very easily end up with 10 Gnosis, 10 in the relevant Arcana (or hell, ALL the Arcana), maxed out stats, and the Wizard would be level .. 3? Maybe 4? Plus saving throws get replaced by Resistance rolls, and with 10 Gnosis and 10 in your Resistance stats... Odds are pretty good you're going to prevent a pretty good deal of whatever the Wizard throws at you. Of course, Scorching Ray will still suck, but I'm sure there's *something* a Mage of that level of power could do to prevent that..

[Lapak]

Considering you could very easily end up with 10 Gnosis, 10 in the relevant Arcana (or hell, ALL the Arcana), maxed out stats, and the Wizard would be level .. 3? Maybe 4? Plus saving throws get replaced by Resistance rolls, and with 10 Gnosis and 10 in your Resistance stats... Odds are pretty good you're going to prevent a pretty good deal of whatever the Wizard throws at you. Of course, Scorching Ray will still suck, but I'm sure there's *something* a Mage of that level of power could do to prevent that..

5 dots in the Time Sphere alone is enough to travel through time. 5 dots in Time and 5 in Mind would let you do things like altering someone's mind while they were still a small child - not revising their memories and outlook, like Mindrape, but literally altering them decades ago before they had any magical defenses. 5 dots in Matter, by itself, is enough to create a supercritical mass of radioactives and have yourself an insta-nuclear-weapon. 10 dots in anything would be miles beyond ridiculous for an oWoD Mage. A Mage with enough experience-in-points to be a 20th level wizard would be a God in every relevant sense.

EDIT: Which is to say that you should compare apples to apples - a Mage at the upper levels of where you'd put a player against a level 20 mage, not a raw-XP-conversion.

[Heliomance]

And with anything other than a Mage? I still think that even with that huge amount of XP, he fact that the numbers are just bigger in D&D would win out.

[Lapak]

And with anything other than a Mage? I still think that even with that huge amount of XP, he fact that the numbers are just bigger in D&D would win out.

With anything other than Mage, you're still not going to want to go with straight-XP conversion. It's not the same scale. Truly ancient vampires get crazy reality-bending stuff too, just much later, but I'm not sure about werewolves. Comparing characters that you'd actually play makes more sense, especially considering how many attacks don't involve numbers. Uncreating you by killing your grandparents before your parents are born and sucking up the relevant Paradox doesn't deal numbered hit point damage, but it certainly would do the job; but only a 'max-level' Mage (that is, a mage as powerful as you'd actually have player characters be) could accomplish such a thing, and max-playable Werewolves and Vampires would go down when thrown up against a max-level D&D spellcaster.
EDIT: Aside from all that, if you throw a million XP at a WoD character, they could theoretically pump their physical stats up to the point where yeah, you just might suck down a straight-converted-in-raw-numbers Meteor Swarm and keep ticking.

[Nohwl]

i haven't really played wod, but why are you using a level 20 character for this comparison? if we are allowed to pick the level of the wizard(and the experience of both characters), you would either need a character that can completely counter what the wod mage can do, or you would need a character with 0. the first option would be an epic level wizard, the second, one who uses direct damage, because they have so little hp.

now, how about 0 experience, and the fell drain feat? drain a level from the other guy. if you win initiative, is the wod guy dead?

heliomance said less than 10 hp for the powerful ones, so a level 1 wizard with a sudden maximized, sudden empowered, whatever does d8 damage. you just have to win initiative and hit.

[kamikasei]

Actually, I did mean equal experience points.

Why on earth would you want to make such a comparison? What would it tell you? Bear in mind that the same task in both systems requires different scores/damages - things like object hardness, kicking down a door, etc. make it abundantly clear that one point of damage in WoD is not the same thing as one point of HP damage in D&D.

This is like arguing that Americans drive more slowly than Europeans, because European speedometers are in km/h and so show higher numbers.

[Heliomance]

Amusement, mainly. I was idly wondering if the higher value of XP in WoD would overcome the higher numbers in D&D.

[Quietus]

5 dots in the Time Sphere alone is enough to travel through time. 5 dots in Time and 5 in Mind would let you do things like altering someone's mind while they were still a small child - not revising their memories and outlook, like Mindrape, but literally altering them decades ago before they had any magical defenses. 5 dots in Matter, by itself, is enough to create a supercritical mass of radioactives and have yourself an insta-nuclear-weapon. 10 dots in anything would be miles beyond ridiculous for an oWoD Mage. A Mage with enough experience-in-points to be a 20th level wizard would be a God in every relevant sense.

EDIT: Which is to say that you should compare apples to apples - a Mage at the upper levels of where you'd put a player against a level 20 mage, not a raw-XP-conversion.

I suspect we're looking at different Mage books; I have Mage : The Ascension. I'm no expert, but I don't think 5/5 time/mind would let you rewrite a person's childhood mindset. Besides, you'd also need 2 Space to cast sympathetically, unless you could physically be there with this person as a child.