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citybeatnik posted:William Bloodsong in the WtA book The Book of Auspices, who narrates the Ahroun section of the book, is presented as one of the Get who DIDN'T do that and who proceeded to curbstomp most of the Get who did. Yeah, they also used that as the introductory comic for the Get of Fenris tribebook in second edition, which is one of the most  things in a line that ran on :
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Jul 7, 2014 20:50
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Didn't one of the old books have Jesus down as a Malkavian as some sort of weird prank on Humanity?
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Jul 7, 2014 23:49
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Ghostwoods posted:
Thank you for posting this. I had no idea you wrote sourcebooks, but then again I don't have a habit of researching my thread's contributors. Anyway, I'll add the new Hunter chat & such to the next update. I'm sorry there's been a delay, but I have a summer job unloading trucks 32 hours a week, which leaves me exhausted after work. The last thing I want to do after a shift is write an update. But now I have 3 days off in a row, so one is incoming.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:54
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Finally, a question I feel actually qualified to answer! (Disclaimer: it's been a long time since I wrote Hunter: Apocrypha, so I might get some minor details wrong)
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Stroop There It Is posted:Yep, 2nd edition Chicago by Night: Sorry, Al. You got retconned   
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Jul 8, 2014 00:56
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gatz posted:Thank you for posting this. De nada. Glad it was of some use. I had fun working with WW, but there's no reason anyone whatsoever should be aware of any of it  gatz posted:I have a summer job unloading trucks 32 hours a week, which leaves me exhausted after work. The last thing I want to do after a shift is write an update. o_O Sounds grueling. You owe us nothing, gatz. Fun first. Amusing random Goons second!
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Jul 8, 2014 01:54
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JackNapier posted:I think Malkav could be the one with the potential to be the biggest turbodick, because, from what I get of the Malkavians, he's in all of their head, so in theory, couldn't he just frenzy every single one of them at once? In the end of the world scenario for "The Antediluvians are awake, everyone's hosed." Everyone connected to the Malkavian Madness Network (That's: Malkavians, anyone who's been taught dementation and anyone who's diabolized a malkavian recently) has to make a will check every day or be permanently absorbed into a hivemind that he controls. Frenzying is nothing.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:05
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Stroth posted:In the end of the world scenario for "The Antediluvians are awake, everyone's hosed." Everyone connected to the Malkavian Madness Network (That's: Malkavians, anyone who's been taught dementation and anyone who's diabolized a malkavian recently) has to make a will check every day or be permanently absorbed into a hivemind that he controls. Frenzying is nothing. Yeah. To point it out, this is really the difference between Malkav and any other Antediluvian in terms of control of their descendants. The "frenzy everyone" example actually happened with the Ravnos as a result of the Week of Nightmares. This was the result of the Ravnos Antediluvian, Zapathustra, waking up and going ballistic. The luckiest Ravnos were just instantly devoured, but the rest of them slowly grew more insane as his battle with the Technocracy and several very powerful Kuei-Jin. Eventually Zapathustra lost this battle and died, and every surviving Ravnos across the world went full out crazy and started killing and diablerizing each other for the next 4 days. Very few survived. Nobody else can just use the bodies of their descendants as extensions of their own though, that's a Malkav specialty! e: Also, since one of the Ravnos clan powers is damage soaking, it took several magical nukes and giant mirrors focusing sunlight to actually kill Zapathustra. The 10th dot in a discipline is a hell of a thing you guys 
Shugojin fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 02:12
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Shugojin posted:Caine himself is on another level entirely, being that his control of the blood is so perfect that he can do basically anything he wants with it, including inventing new disciplines on the fly and slamming curses on bloodlines. There are official rules for fighting him. They are, and I quote, "you lose". So, you know, perfect control, inventing disciplines on the fly, curses, and he's rubber and you're glue anything you do to him bounces off him and sticks to you. You lose.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:16
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Shugojin posted:There are official rules for fighting him. They are, and I quote, "you lose". Back in my LARP days (where instead of throwing dice, you played rock-paper-scissors), we used to joke that Caine had a unique Discipline called Caineitude. The first dot power being "You throw rock." More seriously, I think the Biblical sevenfold retribution for harming Caine is the reason everybody in WOD had seven health levels - do one health level to Caine and you take seven, thank you and goodnight.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:30
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JT Jag posted:Also the whole deal about how Caine was cursed by God to wander the Earth for all time, and anyone who interfered with his torment or tried to end it would be inflicted with harm twicefold. Sevenfold curse. Lilith was the one who taught him how to do neat things with blood, and I believe Lucifer taught Lilith back when those two were lovers. One of the Gehenna scenarios is based around Lilith getting revenge for when Caine dumped her, and I believe she gets around the sevenfold problem by overwhelming him with her murderous offspring. I believe she also tries to trick the PC's, but since it's ultimately in their best interest to make sure Caine lives (otherwise every vampire dies with him), they get a chance to switch sides.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:34
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Shugojin posted:e: Also, since one of the Ravnos clan powers is damage soaking, it took several magical nukes and giant mirrors focusing sunlight to actually kill Zapathustra. The 10th dot in a discipline is a hell of a thing you guys And he's quite possibly the easiest of the Antediluvians to kill. Ennoia, the mother of the Gangrel has mastered Protean to the point that she's basically the Earth's crust and fights by throwing earthquakes and sinkholes big enough to swallow city blocks at people.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:43
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Stroth posted:And he's quite possibly the easiest of the Antediluvians to kill. Ennoia, the mother of the Gangrel has mastered Protean to the point that she's basically the Earth's crust and fights by throwing earthquakes and sinkholes big enough to swallow city blocks at people.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:14
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More that they really hope that she didn't.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:51
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JT Jag posted:So in-universe when a vampire would hear about, say, the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia which was caused by an underwater quake, they'd think "gently caress, Ennoia must have really wanted to kill someone there."? Well, they would if they knew. The camarilla establishment officially denies their existence--let alone their transcendence into near-godhood. The Sabbat sees them as super powerful elders. That is, a vampire with just A Lot of power. No one really knows just how off the scale their abilities go--maybe the 4th gen, but they're all either asleep or know enough to either believe their old sire wouldn't off them or that they'd be the first unlucky fucker against the wall. When the Ravnos ante flipped out and then died, a Ravnos vampire's ability to resist the madness was inversely proportional to their generation--that is, the lower their generation the less likely they were to resist it. So the Ravnos survivors are not only few in number but almost all weak in the blood. Side note: the 2nd edition storyteller's handbook actually gave sample "level 10" powers. The one for Protean was "Body of the Sun" where they became a walking mini-sun, with attendant radiation, heat, and ashing abilities. This has obviously been retconned with Revised no longer having formal "level 10" powers (they being now explicitly labeled "plot devices." Ennoia's abilities aren't so much a protean power as it is a protean-enabled metamorphosis of being--the same being true of all the antediluvians. They all basically transcend into something else, flavored by their bloodline curse and signature discipline. OAquinas fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 04:59
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gatz posted:Thank you for posting this. I had no idea you wrote sourcebooks, but then again I don't have a habit of researching my thread's contributors. Anyway, I'll add the new Hunter chat & such to the next update. I'm sorry there's been a delay, but I have a summer job unloading trucks 32 hours a week, which leaves me exhausted after work. The last thing I want to do after a shift is write an update. But now I have 3 days off in a row, so one is incoming. I used to be an unloader at Walmart, you have my condolences. This thread and reading through all the insane OWOD canon I used to have nearly memorized as a terrible goony teenager has made me start running a Sabbat game with my real-life group. Though I will say that I don't know all of it... citybeatnik posted:I think about the only one that wasn't a turbodick was [Ventrue], and that's because Set chopped its head off when it tried to leave Nod so it didn't really get a chance to. Even then it now randomly body surf its descendants. This, for instance. Can you elaborate?
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Jul 8, 2014 05:33
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Vicissitude posted:By acting better than everyone and not using Obtenebration. I guess nobody ever had a mirror nearby when they met with him. Which is theoretically doable. Inner rooms of a building for no windows. Office space makes little sense for mirrors to be present. In his private haven, nobody is likely to have ever been invited. Even so, you can pass it off as a quirk of "I know I'm old. I don't need to see a young face staring back at me. It's depressing." The Lasombra your talking about actually had a magic item that gave him a reflection (they had his stats up in DC By Night). Which made his deception work pretty well. You see a obviously low gen Vampire who has a major mastery of Dominate who has a reflection, your gonna think Ventrue or Tremere. If he never busts out the Obtenebration you would never think anything. But even if he did, he's an elder vampire that's fought Sabbat and probably eaten some of their powerful members, so that wouldnt be exactly amiss either. Especially sense that guy had more weird poo poo like Thaumaturgy, so if you think he's just pretending to be Ventrue for whatever reason, then your likely to focus in on Tremere before Lasombra. Kavingi posted:This, for instance. Can you elaborate? The big trick that powerful Ventrue like to do is using their Dominate ability to Possess people. Elder Ventrue will have specially trained Ghouls who have been trained all their life to reach physical perfection (and can boost higher with blood powers) and then possess the poo poo out of them and ride them around to conduct business at minimum risk to themselves. The Antidelivian does the same thing. But with Vampires. Very powerful 4th generation Vampires. anglachel fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 21:49
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anglachel posted:The big trick that powerful Ventrue like to do is using their Dominate ability to Possess people. Elder Ventrue will have specially trained Ghouls who have been trained all their life to reach physical perfection (and can boost higher with blood powers) and then possess the poo poo out of them and ride them around to conduct business at minimum risk to themselves.  That's awesome! I'm going to have to keep that ghoul trick in mind.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:09
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anglachel posted:The big trick that powerful Ventrue like to do is using their Dominate ability to Possess people. Elder Ventrue will have specially trained Ghouls who have been trained all their life to reach physical perfection (and can boost higher with blood powers) and then possess the poo poo out of them and ride them around to conduct business at minimum risk to themselves. 4th gen Malkavians have enough control of the Madness Network that they can actually do this to other Malkavians too. Malkav himself could do it to anyone connected to the network at any time he chose, if he weren't very mildly doing it to all of them all the time.
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Jul 9, 2014 17:25
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Shugojin posted:4th gen Malkavians have enough control of the Madness Network that they can actually do this to other Malkavians too. Though for them it's just an excuse not to bother leaving their lairs, rather than to keep away from assassins. Mostly because a Malkavian that powerful can reduce someone to a drooling catatonic imbecile just by wanting to.
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Jul 9, 2014 18:37
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Does the official material ever expound on what the antediluvians would do after their ultimate form? Take on God, go kill all the ghosts, ...?
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Jul 9, 2014 18:43
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double nine posted:Does the official material ever expound on what the antediluvians would do after their ultimate form? Take on God, go kill all the ghosts, ...? Try to kill one another so that they can lord it over creation. And jump at every shadow in fear of Caine. Pretty much the same thing they did before.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:00
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double nine posted:Does the official material ever expound on what the antediluvians would do after their ultimate form? Take on God, go kill all the ghosts, ...? Yeah, most of them are on this whole ascension kick of some sort. Like Giovanni wanted to diablerize God, Lasombra wanted to consume everything in the Abyss (that he was merged with), Ennoia (gangrel anti) basically merged with the earth, Tzimisce wanted to take control over all people at once via the spread of vissisitue (spelled that hella wrong). The Camarilla ones tended to have the most "normal" end goals with basically being god rulers of everything. The Antidelivians were always kind of a stupid plot though. In the larger World of Darkness, they'd get lolstomped by Demons, Archmages, and Greater Spirits so there goals would never work. And even in pure Vampire, Caine could always step in be all "lolno". The elder powers also wrecked the setting. 4th and 5th gen were so powerful there was no real reason for them to have supported the Masquerade.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:02
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anglachel posted:The Antidelivians were always kind of a stupid plot though. In the larger World of Darkness, they'd get lolstomped by Demons, Archmages, and Greater Spirits Kinda contradicting yourself here. Surely being a large fish in an ocean full of sharks would be a drat good reason to support the Masquerade, even though the grunts of the various clans regard most of said sharks as myths.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:42
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Tehan posted:Kinda contradicting yourself here. Surely being a large fish in an ocean full of sharks would be a drat good reason to support the Masquerade, even though the grunts of the various clans regard most of said sharks as myths. They're high-gen vamps. They do not act rationally. Not a single loving bit.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:45
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anglachel posted:The elder powers also wrecked the setting. 4th and 5th gen were so powerful there was no real reason for them to have supported the Masquerade. Aaaand that's why torpor is a thing
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Jul 9, 2014 19:56
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Humans killed more than a few Methuselahs during the Inquisition, and even more died during the Anarch Revolt. It was most definitely in their best interest to organize a system that protected them from the humans and kept the number of younger vampires down to a manageable level.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:24
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Zeroisanumber posted:Humans killed more than a few Methuselahs during the Inquisition, and even more died during the Anarch Revolt. It was most definitely in their best interest to organize a system that protected them from the humans and kept the number of younger vampires down to a manageable level. Yeah this too. That whole "plops unconscious during daylight hours unless you spend exorbitant blood points and even then you can't let the sunlight touch you" thing is a pretty hard weakness to overcome.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:27
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So, demons, huh? What's the White Wolf interpretation of them? Apparently extraordinarily powerful if high gen vamps are a joke to them.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:31
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Vagon posted:So, demons, huh? What's the White Wolf interpretation of them? Apparently extraordinarily powerful if high gen vamps are a joke to them. Depends on the system. We've talked a little about it before, but supernatural creatures vary in power depending on what game you're playing. In Mage: The Ascension, Elder Vampires are grubby little leeches that you can kill with a little effort and some mid-level powers. In V:TM, Mages are hedge wizards cackling over their cauldrons and arguing over mystical minutiae and not affecting very much.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:36
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The various critter categories usually only cross over at the lowest levels, if at all. A werewolf tribe encounters and subsequently murders a few caitiff, a petty hedge mage gets ganked by the Tremere, whatever. This gives pretty much everyone an impression of everyone else that ranges from  to  . A lot of vampires don't believe in mages, most werewolves think vampires are just some minor evil spirit, and so on. And these are the narrators for the splatbooks, who you'd assume are moderately clued in.When you've got all the books available to peruse at your leisure it can be very easy to forget that the average vampire or werewolf or whatever would know the stuff in the sourcebook and maybe half the stuff in his clan/tribe/tradition/whatever's splatbook, and the rest would be a mystery to them. If the entire run of oWoD books appeared in-universe, wars would be fought over it. As for Demons, they're fallen angels. Way back during Eden one of them prophesied that poo poo was gonna get whack and God was gonna let it happen, and a bunch of 'em, lead by Lucifer, decided they were staunchly anti-whack and decided to rebel. They did the whole apple-of-knowledge thing as the opening shots in the war. They ended up getting their poo poo wrecked and locked away in Hell, except for Lucifer, who managed to stay on Earth and had his own poo poo going on all throughout history. Then the events of the lead-up to the end times happen (specifically the Sixth Maelstrom, which is a Wraith/Mage thing that I'm not so well versed on) and a bunch of them break out of Hell and start possessing human bodies and split into Houses based on their pre-fall jobs and Factions based on what they want to do now - continue the fight against God, try to find Lucifer, destroy humanity, help humanity, whatever.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:06
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Well, a little effort, a couple orbital mirrors, and a couple if magical nukes, anyway. The semi-canonical rote to turn a vamp into a lawn chair bears out your point, though.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:06
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Yeah, again: while the systems occupy the same world in theory, in practice only Bad Things happen when you try to combine them. The power levels just don't stack up properly. As for demons, there are a number of beings that claim the name. Mostly they're eldritch spirits from some "other" place that crave your destruction and that of the world, for various reasons (or none at all that you'd understand). Extra-dimensional entities that vary in power from "can barely get you $20 and a six pack" to "awesome near-godlike reality-warping ability." Be a bit careful when summoning the latter. At the tail end of the old World of Darkness, WW released "Demon: the Fallen" which codifies most demons as part of the Angelic Host that helped create and maintain the world in its infancy before God decided to drop it on its head. They sided with Man and derived power from man's faith in them (and this was back when basically everyone had capital-T True Faith). The other angels that stuck with the G-man warred with them (deriving their own power straight from god) and it was close for a while, but ultimately Lucifer and his compatriots lost. God created a prison in the deep umbra/shadowlands for them (aka Hell), and they were stuck there for all eternity...except in a dick move he kept Lucifer free. So now all his buddies hate him since they feel he backstabbed them somehow to avoid Hell. Lucifer tried to free his top lieutenants, the most powerful demons, by a loophole that allowed mortals to summon them out of Hell temporarily. Unfortunately, they had already been twisted into hateful ragemonsters at this point. Due to their divine sentence, all demons are constantly being pulled back to Hell. To remain on earth they need an anchor--to possess a body and displace its soul. The most powerful demons will burn out a mortal body within hours or minutes. They were able to figure out a way to ritually inhabit inanimate objects (locations, really) and so remain on earth. These are called the Earthbound, and they are staggeringly powerful demons that can shred reality on a local scale--and ultimately desire to gather a large enough following to do so on a worldwide scale. They desire oblivion and and end to all things. When the technocracy set off their spirit nukes (and a few more things went on at the same time) it literally cracked the gates of hell open. This allowed less powerful demons to escape and seek hosts on Earth. These are the PCs of D:tF--Joe Average demon trying to make sense of what's going on and to either atone for their actions eons ago or build their own fiefdoms and cults. They still wield the raw powers of Creation though, and an experienced demon can be a scary sight. They can also grant abilities and some favors in exchange for faith in them from mortals. Which is the coda to this: after his failed experiments trying to bring back his friends (creating the Earthbound by accident), Lucifer realized that the demons must never be allowed to come back. They're too twisted and made insane with rage and hatred from their experience in Hell; rehabilitation is not likely. For demons to function, they need men to believe in them--they need faith. So Lucifer started to drain the pool and push mankind towards Reason. As the years went on, the ability to truly believe diminished. Now people with True Faith are utterly rare, and most are barely worth the faith to grant them a demonic investment (the abilities mentioned earlier). Lucifer really is a humanist. Maybe the last one.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:08
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Incidentally, it is possible within game mechanics for an earthbound to affect an area the size of new mexico with their powers. Such as the one that sets everything on fire. Or the one that tears reality wide open.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:14
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Tehan posted:A lot of vampires don't believe in mages, most werewolves think vampires are just some minor evil spirit, and so on. And these are the narrators for the splatbooks, who you'd assume are moderately clued in. A lot depends on the individual splat, though. The Silent Striders have been fighting vampires since ancient Egypt, but for one thing, it's mostly been the Setites, and for another, they haven't bothered to learn much about vampires aside from how best to kill them. Likewise, the magical tradition that the Tremere came from is still around in the modern WoD and is notoriously averse to change, so the Tremere still know chapter and verse about them.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:39
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As I recall, something else the Sixth Maelstrom did was force a bunch of Wraiths back into their bodies, creating zombies that can pass for human. This was so that Hunters would have a monster type low in power and high in quantity for them to kill and/or reconcile.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:48
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:As I recall, something else the Sixth Maelstrom did was force a bunch of Wraiths back into their bodies, creating zombies that can pass for human. The Risen. They're usually pretty powerful and well-connected wraiths because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge to be able to push yourself across the shroud and hold onto your own dead body for the duration of your stay. They're usually rotting grotesques, so fitting in is difficult, and while they don't feel pain their bodies don't heal so the damage really starts to stack up after a while.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:55
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So what's the statistics on Vampires going nuts because they've been active too long, somebody mentioned the Prince in New Orleans as an example, what all can it do to a vampire?
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Jul 10, 2014 22:04
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JackNapier posted:So what's the statistics on Vampires going nuts because they've been active too long, somebody mentioned the Prince in New Orleans as an example, what all can it do to a vampire?
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Jul 10, 2014 22:37
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Stroop There It Is posted:There's no particular cost to staying active as an elder vampire in Vampire: the Masquerade, other than having to spend a blood point every evening to wake up. So it can pretty much end up like one of those situations in real life, where you fall asleep at somepoint during the day, and wake up what feels like days later and just look around and think "What day is it?". If they don't use their blood point to wake up, they go into Torpor and gently caress knows when they wake up again?
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Jul 11, 2014 00:21
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JackNapier posted:So it can pretty much end up like one of those situations in real life, where you fall asleep at somepoint during the day, and wake up what feels like days later and just look around and think "What day is it?". If they don't use their blood point to wake up, they go into Torpor and gently caress knows when they wake up again? No, it's automatic. You fall asleep at sunrise, or if stop making your rolls to force yourself to stay awake, and if there's blood in your pool then you spend one point and wake up at sunset. If there isn't you go into torpor.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:35
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