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Aren't you always more rewarded for beelining to max out your most used dicepools, though? Specialists tend to do better than generalists pretty much all the time. Especially when they always work with 2-4 other people who can specialize in the things that they're not so good at. Scaling XP costs seems like a clumsy way of dealing with this. If the 5th dot of a skill is better than the 2nd dot of another skill, it seems like it would also be better than the 2nd dot in two other skills and the first dot in 1 other skill. Or even the first 2 dots in every other skill.
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Aug 29, 2013 00:50
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Specialists tend to be better than generalist in White Wolf's games in general, yeah, especially since said games never actually make good on the implicit assumption that all the skills are equally useful and receive equal game-mechanical support. Having to choose between going 4->5 OR going 2->3 and 3->4 acknowledges this but doesn't completely deal with it. I think you'd have to have a slimmer skill list and more robust rules for how each and every skill can accomplish things and interact with other skills before you could really hammer this stuff down. At the very least, it might work better if you had to buy your skills up in Fate-style pyramids or something.
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Aug 29, 2013 00:56
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The only not-clumsy solutions are "pretend the problem doesn't exist" and "play a different game". I'll take some imprecision over either of those any day.
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Aug 29, 2013 00:59
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Well plus the fact that the pools that tend to hoover up the most XP are going to be those with direct combat benefits or otherwise must-have-large-pool (special power activations, which also tend towards combat-ready or combat-obviating), and you further gently caress with the Promise Of Fair Specialization when someone's going to see a much bigger benefit not only from raising a 4 to a 5 versus a pair of 2->3 and 3->4, but also from raising Firearms 4->5 rather than Academics 2->3 and Politics 3->4.
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Aug 29, 2013 01:00
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Attorney at Funk posted:The only not-clumsy solutions are "pretend the problem doesn't exist" and "play a different game". I'll take some imprecision over either of those any day. The thing is, I'm not sure the scaling costs does anything to mitigate the problem. It just means that generalist characters can generalize in more things. Nothing changes the basic fact of life that a team of 4 people will be more effective if each person is really good at 1 thing than if each person is okay at 4 things. And I think pretty much any team based game with a point buy skill system will be affected by this issue. Also, with Disciplines in particular, the developers seem to be aware of this issue, and have generally tried to beef up the first dot of each Discipline. I could certainly, for instance, see someone picking the ability to remain unnoticed in any public place, for free, even if you're covered in blood and have a machine gun strapped to your back (Obfuscate 1) over astral projection at the cost of 2 Vitae (Auspex 5). INH5 fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 01:50
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INH5 posted:The thing is, I'm not sure the scaling costs does anything to mitigate the problem. It just means that generalist characters can generalize in more things. Nothing changes the basic fact of life that a team of 4 people will be more effective if each person is really good at 1 thing than if each person is okay at 4 things. And I think pretty much any team based game with a point buy skill system will be affected by this issue. That's the definition of mitigating the problem, though, given that the problem is "specialist dots are worth more than generalist dots". Fixing the problem would be "make that not true". Mitigating it is "give the generalists more dots". I can't speak to the Blood and Smoke rules because I'm not thinking about how they fit into games I run and play until the book comes out.
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Aug 29, 2013 01:56
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INH5 posted:Also, with Disciplines in particular, the developers seem to be aware of this issue, and have generally tried to beef up the first dot of each Discipline. I could certainly, for instance, see someone picking the ability to remain unnoticed in any public place, for free, even if you're covered in blood and have a machine gun strapped to your back (Obfuscate 1) over astral projection at the cost of 2 Vitae (Auspex 5). Yeah, B&S does seem better in this regard because its high tier discipline powers tend to be both more esoteric and more expensive than its low-tier discipline powers. On the other hand, increasing the rating of your discipline makes all the rolls related to that discipline better, and with Celerity/Resilience/Vigor there's if anything more of a call to just pick one and max it than to diversify.
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Aug 29, 2013 02:17
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Just to clarify my question, I'm fine with the new flat XP costs, in fact for the length of campaigns I tend to do, it makes more sense to me because it means we'll see those upper-end powers a lot more often. What I'm concerned about is the speed of advancement. If they're only getting an Experience every 2-3 sessions, that seems really slow to me. Maybe I could just adjust the number of beats in an Experience to be 3 instead of 5?
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Aug 29, 2013 20:15
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3 Beats per XP seems fine. But like I said, a lot depends your playstyle. Everyone gets 1 Beat just for showing up. If you expect that during an average session, each player will have about 2 instances of completing an Aspiration, resolving a Condition, turning a Failure into a Dramatic Failure, getting beaten into unconsciousness, and/or doing something impressive enough to earn a fiat Beat for roleplaying/tactics/whatever, then yes, they'll probably get 1 XP per session if you do 3B/XP. On the other hand, if you regularly host 5-6 hour sessions during which each player is likely to complete 2 or 3 of their Aspirations (or at least ping the long term ones), as well as have a bunch of the other stuff happen, then they could get 2 XP or more per session with 3B/XP. EDIT: Also, one thing that occurred to me while I was thinking about the relative value of low level Obfuscate. Would using Touch of Shadow or Touch of Shadow+Cloak of Night on a gun mask the sound of its shots? Same if it was used on, say, a boombox. How did this work with the equivalent powers in VtR? INH5 fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 21:48
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JDCorley posted:Just to clarify my question, I'm fine with the new flat XP costs, in fact for the length of campaigns I tend to do, it makes more sense to me because it means we'll see those upper-end powers a lot more often. What I'm concerned about is the speed of advancement. If they're only getting an Experience every 2-3 sessions, that seems really slow to me. That's what my group is doing. Felt like we were interacting with the system less than the rules expect us to, so we just adjusted it.
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Aug 29, 2013 23:17
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So I have a question and I'm hoping you guys can steer me in the right direction. My group is going give Mage a shot. However, I've never played or run a WoD game. The other catch is that I'll have to adjust the setting to be set in a more fantasy-ish setting. So my question is this: Is there a good primer for playing and running Mage? I have read the OP and the first couple of posts after that. There's 156 pages of this thread and while I will be reading through it, I might want to run this game before the beginning of the new year. =) I've downloaded the first demo PDF and will read that as well, just curious if anyone had any suggestions. *edit*: I posted early in this thread about porting nMage to D&D 4e but I gave up on that after my son was born. I've forgotten basically everything I read at that point, so I'm starting fresh. Xir fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 15:38
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Maybe the Mage Quickstart? IDK, it's free and ridiculously extensive, it couldn't hurt. I'm using the Atrocity dice add-on from Danse Macabre, and I'm wondering: since Atrocity Dice add to Predator's Taint stuff, how should I decide how many Atrocity dice (or, heaven forfend, permanent Atrocity dice), an NPC vampire might have? Editing in another question since nobody has posted since I did: What would you think of making Regnancy a Condition? Regnant (Persistent Condition) You have successfully addicted a mortal to Vitae. Congratulations, jerk. You may direct their actions even to the point of threatening their lives or families. Beats: You feed your ghoul. Your ghoul discovers they do not need your Vitae specifically. Your ghoul is grievously hurt because of you. Someone your ghoul cares about is grievously hurt or killed by or because of you. Your ghoul tears apart their life (quits their job, leaves their spouse, abandons their child, etc.) to serve you more faithfully or readily. Resolve: You kill your ghoul either directly or by knowingly putting them into a dangerous situation. Your ghoul forcibly drinks Vitae from you or another unwilling Kindred. Special: If your ghoul is killed through other means than at your behest, or breaks their Vitae addiction (with or without your help) the condition is removed but you do not gain the benefit of resolution. JDCorley fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Aug 31, 2013 03:39
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Oh lord. 1999 has Eternal Hearts - White Wolf's try at vampire erotica.
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Sep 2, 2013 10:21
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Loomer posted:Oh lord. 1999 has Eternal Hearts - White Wolf's try at vampire erotica. No. You're joking. This is a joke. I will laugh now, this... 
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Sep 2, 2013 15:51
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Loomer posted:Oh lord. 1999 has Eternal Hearts - White Wolf's try at vampire erotica. I'd start reading the FATAL and friends thread again if you do a breakdown on it.
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Sep 2, 2013 15:59
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JDCorley posted:What would you think of making Regnancy a Condition? I'd take out a Beat for "feed your ghoul," since that seems too common and easy. Everything else seems fine, though. Also, in terms of terminology, remember that in Requiem mortals can be blood-bound without being ghouled, which I suppose is helpful if you want to save on Willpower and/or don't want to worry about people noticing that your servant hasn't aged for 20 years. I believe non-ghoul blood-bound mortals are called thralls, so that term might be better.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:20
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crime fighting hog posted:I'd start reading the FATAL and friends thread again if you do a breakdown on it. Do it, we need something truly horrific to sustain us until Ettin produces the next Cthulhutech review
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Sep 2, 2013 19:00
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INH5 posted:I'd take out a Beat for "feed your ghoul," since that seems too common and easy. Everything else seems fine, though. Once a month? Well, I guess if I did this it would be likely they'd get fed way more than that. Hmm. Maybe "feed your ghoul the first time this month." Or maybe "spend your monthly Willpower on your ghoul's upkeep" since that's not likely to happen more than once a month since you don't have to. JDCorley fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 20:28
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JDCorley posted:Once a month? Well, I guess if I did this it would be likely they'd get fed way more than that. Hmm. Maybe "feed your ghoul the first time this month." Or maybe "spend your monthly Willpower on your ghoul's upkeep" since that's not likely to happen more than once a month since you don't have to. Even aside from deliberate gaming the system, I imagine that a ghoul that frequently got into fights and otherwise spent his Vitae on things would have to regularly come back to his master for refills. But yeah, I think that the monthly Willpower upkeep would work.
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Sep 2, 2013 20:51
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Loomer posted:Oh lord. 1999 has Eternal Hearts - White Wolf's try at vampire erotica. Is that the one with the headless body or Vykos cybering?
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Sep 2, 2013 22:01
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citybeatnik posted:[Sascha] Vykos cybering? 
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Sep 2, 2013 22:21
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citybeatnik posted:Is that the one with the headless body or Vykos cybering? Both, I believe. I'll see about doing a write up.
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Sep 3, 2013 03:05
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That was about my reaction when I stumbled across the drat previews for it on WW's website in high school.
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Sep 3, 2013 03:36
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Yeah, that's pretty much what I looked like when I read it last year at the beach. Trashy vampire novels while sitting in the sunny sand with a mojito is a nice way to pass a day. This was, uh. Not quite that.
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Sep 3, 2013 03:49
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I own a physical copy, it was too funny not too. After re-reading Grimoire of Grimoires a few times I can't help but feel that its not that useful as a book. Too many of the grimoires in it are too dangerous to really use, I kinda go back to it hoping there might be one I could point at and say "I'd quite like to own this" but far too many of them just kinda kill you or send you mad. for context this is for a larger scale larp rather than a small pnp game.
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Sep 3, 2013 04:01
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Loomer posted:Yeah, that's pretty much what I looked like when I read it last year at the beach. Trashy vampire novels while sitting in the sunny sand with a mojito is a nice way to pass a day. This was, uh. Not quite that. And yeah, you should totally do a write up for that. All I have to go off when it comes to that book was the preview I read as a teenager and whispered rumors of Vykos totes getting its cyberdong on.
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Sep 3, 2013 04:17
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Little_wh0re posted:I own a physical copy, it was too funny not too. Eh. To me G of G is more like a setting book. It's a book of McGuffins. I don't know that I'd ever use it for 'loot' or whatever. In the same way that the Abyssal book isn't really useful for actual Abyssal manifestations that players are likely to create via paradox because most of them are way too powerful or unlikely to occur.
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Sep 3, 2013 04:17
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The more I read about Demon, the more and more it sounds like best thing White Wolf ever wrote. Does anyone know how Soulpacts work? Could a demon use one on a vampire or mage?
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Sep 3, 2013 07:14
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Little_wh0re posted:After re-reading Grimoire of Grimoires a few times I can't help but feel that its not that useful as a book. Too many of the grimoires in it are too dangerous to really use, I kinda go back to it hoping there might be one I could point at and say "I'd quite like to own this" but far too many of them just kinda kill you or send you mad. The Hildebrand Recording is awesome scary, in part because of the kickin rad illustration that goes along with it. But also because it really was perfect for the WoD, with insane Scandanavian drug lords and eccentric billionaires scheming to get their hands on this thing. It was the best one, and one of my favorite writeups in the whole game, because it was the most alien and mysterious object, something that was genuinely impossible to truly understand and likely not from this world at all. Although I don't know how we're supposed to know what the sound of rending flesh or torn skin or whatever it describes at the end actually is. In hindsight that part was a little... idk, conclusory? But basically why wouldn't you want to own that? Turn in your Pentacle card right now if you don't want to grab a piece of that power and wrestle it to the ground. Doesn't a different grimoire in there also have that rote to make someone's skeleton jump out of their body, turn into steel, and jam with you.
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Sep 3, 2013 11:53
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:Doesn't a different grimoire in there also have that rote to make someone's skeleton jump out of their body, turn into steel, and jam with you. Yup, that's Dark Revolution, the Prog Metal EP created by revolutionary Free Councillors that literally makes people who listen to it more likely to smash the state. Includes some of the best rotes in GoG: there's The Metal Dead, previously mentioned; Hone the Pack Spirit, which greatly increases the power of a pack of animals and makes them serve you; Disinhibiting Sympathy, which forces a target to indulge in their vice and spread their vice to the people they're sympathetically linked to; and Alternate Scenario, to coolest one, where you get to try the next turn [Potency] times and choose the result you prefer. One of the least dangerous, if you load up with Mind Armour, and gives pretty unique abilities.
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Sep 3, 2013 12:07
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Undead Unicorn posted:The more I read about Demon, the more and more it sounds like best thing White Wolf ever wrote. Does anyone know how Soulpacts work? Could a demon use one on a vampire or mage? One can, but the devs say that it's not worth it. Probably makes Flagged impossible to resolve.
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Sep 3, 2013 21:04
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I believe the general rule is that if you try to give a supernatural template to a character that already has another template, it either doesn't work or everything from the old template is lost. So werewolves can't be Embraced, sin-eaters can't Awaken, and using the corpse of a changeling to make a promethean will only get you a "normal" promethean. I assume that soul pacts would work the same way. Either it just wouldn't take or the person who made the pact would lose their original supernatural qualities.
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Sep 4, 2013 00:08
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I got my new game group interested in having me run something. I asked what they wanted, they said they didn't care what rule system, but they want to do some post-apoc zombie survival stuff. I'm thinking core WoD with maybe some Hunter stuff thrown in for good measure could go a long way and let me crack my knuckles at some homebrew setting/rules. Any suggestions?
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Sep 4, 2013 01:59
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Antagonists has some really good zombie rules. They give you guidelines and a bunch of different options to create any kind of shambling undead you want. Or even multiple kinds of zombies, if you want to keep things fresh that way.
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Sep 4, 2013 02:33
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I made up a set of Merit/Discipline cards with (my understanding of) the Reap the Whirlwind mechanics. You can also see at the top a sample card for a campaign-specific Staff Merit I'm giving to the players to manage. Most of them are one-sided, but that one shows what you could do with a Merit that you flip once you use it. Here's the link, enjoy and give feedback on other mechanics that you think would be good on cards. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66885310/meritcards1.pdf Also, any thoughts on how many Atrocity dice/permanent Atrocity that NPCs should have?
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Sep 4, 2013 06:17
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This is coming from a guy who hasn't actually used Atrocity rules (I'm not a Vampire player), but honestly? Keep it as a PC-only mechanic. NPCs should be minimally statted in 99% of cases, and even if you're doing up your big baddie with a full sheet, they don't need to use the Atrocity system. If you absolutely feel you must, maybe 1D for every 2 BP.
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Sep 4, 2013 20:57
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JDCorley posted:I made up a set of Merit/Discipline cards with (my understanding of) the Reap the Whirlwind mechanics. You can also see at the top a sample card for a campaign-specific Staff Merit I'm giving to the players to manage. Most of them are one-sided, but that one shows what you could do with a Merit that you flip once you use it. I believe that when Charmed, you also subtract the Charmer's Majesty dots from rolls to detect his lies or uncover his true motives. Apart from that, everything looks good. ---- Speaking of the new vampire rules, I've been thinking about B&S's implementation of the Clan Banes recently. If you missed the previews, here's a draft of them from July: David A Hill posted:Clan weaknesses are a lot different. Here's the current draft: I like the Nosferatu one a lot. The dramatic failure mechanic seems like it would work better and be easier to use than 1s-subtract-successes. The only concern I have is that the penalties and dramatic failure rule shouldn't apply to Intimidate rolls. Also, I think these penalties should apply to slightly different things than the Humanity social penalties, as a Nosferatu shouldn't have special trouble relating to humans, just interacting with them. The Gangrel one is good too. It fits their aesthetic a lot better than penalties to mental rolls. I do, however, have an issue with the fact that, despite being described as "the ones you can't kill" and having a physical Discipline that allows them to resist fire damage, a low-Humanity Gangrel is more likely to panic when she is attacked with a hairspray flamethrower than a vampire from a different Clan. I'm iffy about the Mekhet weakness. It's certainly better than "take an extra point of agg damage whenever you take a bunch of agg damage," but why should Mekhet players choose from a big list of weaknesses when players of other Clans don't? If every Clan had a list of 5 or so possible Banes, that could work, but only doing it with Mekhet seems odd. I'm not particularly fond of Touchstones, so I'm not particularly fond of the Ventrue weakness either. And I'm really unsure about the Daeva weakness. It's much better than the Vice thing, but it seems like the kind of thing that would have a big impact on the lives of the characters in-universe, while its impact on actual gameplay would be pretty much limited to "can't buy Herd." It also raises questions about the setting. Vampires are supposed to have existed for thousands of years, but Daeva would have had great difficulty in pre-modern times when population densities were lower and people didn't travel as often. Also, would the Wanton Curse apply if the Daeva drank from a blood pack, or otherwise didn't know or even see the person that the blood came from? ---- Previously, I've talked about house rules to move Humanity's non-social mechanical effects over to Blood Potency. With Gangrel and Nosferatu, it seems like it would be easy enough to have a penalty or dice pool cap that scales with Blood Potency. Maybe Gangrel could have the penalty apply only to anger and hunger frenzies, while Mekhet would have it apply to "red fear" frenzies in addition to taking sunlight damage as if their BP was 1 point higher. And I really don't have any idea what to do with Daeva and Ventrue at this point. INH5 fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 21:15
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This seems like the kind of thing that would be ironed out in editing, but the additional dramatic failures the Nosferatu proc are going to get them tons of beats, while the Mekhet weakness actually decreases your beat opportunities. The Daeva weakness reminds me of my houseruled Toreador curse, but it seems less appropriate on them. I'd be tempted to actually keep them on their original weakness, either with their new Vice or having to choose from the Seven Deadly Sins.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:02
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The Nosferatu one not affecting Intimidate would not only be thematic, it would also push Nosferatu toward using Intimidate whenever possible. I dig it.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:08
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pospysyl posted:This seems like the kind of thing that would be ironed out in editing, but the additional dramatic failures the Nosferatu proc are going to get them tons of beats, while the Mekhet weakness actually decreases your beat opportunities. The Daeva weakness reminds me of my houseruled Toreador curse, but it seems less appropriate on them. I'd be tempted to actually keep them on their original weakness, either with their new Vice or having to choose from the Seven Deadly Sins. I believe that you can't get more than 1 Beat from a single source, or maybe just in general, in a scene. But yeah, there probably are issues that will be changed in editing, so I'm reserving final judgement on these until I actually get a chance to read the book. With regards to the Daeva weakness, I've heard that the original implementation had the problem that it required the Storyteller to police the player by pointing out opportunities to use the Vice. But I think something related to their Vice could work (leaving aside the fact that B&S Vampires don't have Vices and Virtues), especially with GMC's freeform Virtue/Vice system. Maybe (totally stealing this from Ferrinus) you have to regularly indulge your Vice to regain Willpower through rest, with it getting more frequent as your Blood Potency increases? Pope Guilty posted:The Nosferatu one not affecting Intimidate would not only be thematic, it would also push Nosferatu toward using Intimidate whenever possible. I dig it. IT would also make Nightmare 1's Intimidate bonus actually useful.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:11
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