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Action economy is huge too. An unprepared mage can do some nasty poo poo but a full round of gunfire can potentially kill most combatants pre-God Machine. The fact that health doesn't scale with overall character power means as long as you can hit, 5 against 1 is always going to threaten the 1. That being said yeah as others have said it's going to come down to what the boss is specialized in and how much time he has to prepare. More so than anything else though a prepared mage is going to be very tough to kill even if they were not themselves deadly. Instant teleportation, mass mind control, limited time shifts, and escaping to inaccessible otherworlds are just a couple of ways a mage can avoid being killed. To say nothing of more clever options.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:20
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Prison Warden posted:This is basically what happened. Without getting too much into it, the players had more trouble with the single VASCU agent who showed up after the enemy Cabal's sleepwalker called the cops than they did the badass Adamantine Arrow grandpa they were fighting. I'm super glad I decided to throw in a couple of VASCU agents, since the players immediately assumed that the weird mental stuff that one of them is doing means he's a puppet under Seer control. I've had some funny moments like that. It's neat to see a truly potent Thyrsus (who had previously done things like metamorphosing into a T-Rex to fight a powerful tribal totem, or cunningly trick another powerful spirit into ordering its own destruction) be suddenly threatened by a collapsing river bank during a storm. Suddenly, she's just another drowning human caught up in nature's uncaring motions. Yes, magic let her survive in the end, but only after she had pulled herself up a half-submerged tree and bounced off a half-dozen rocks. Prior to that... Well, it's hard to cast spells when you're blind, suffocating, freezing, and being bounced off rocks. Mages so often carry this air of presumptive invulnerability; it's fun to see how they respond to it evaporating.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:47
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Axelgear posted:Mages so often carry this air of presumptive invulnerability; it's fun to see how they respond to it evaporating. hubris.txt
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Nov 16, 2015 01:17
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A gaggle of starting PC mages can take out an experienced mage for the same reason that a gaggle of anything can take out an anything of the same class that's just a bit or even a large amount stronger: the action economy. Taking five turns is just better than taking one, unless the difference in stats is so enormous that the actions of the group are literally useless or negligible. So for instance in 1E mage a single experienced Arrow could murder an entire cabal of starting PCs in a fight if he cast a bunch of rituals to stack his armor so high that anyone attempting to attack or otherwise affect him took a -20 penalty to their dicepool to do so. And, maybe he'd have access to some save-or-suck spell that he could cast with area or target factors that takes some or all of the PCs out of the fight immediately. Or, if he wasn't being played "competently" (e.g. extremely aggressively abusing the very generous ritual/duration/spell factor/bonus stacking rules), he would just lose because being able to throw fifteen dice 1/turn is worse than being able to throw 10 dice 5/turn. I expect he'd have an easier time in 2E than 1E because nWoD 2E is much, much friendlier to the general concept of a single supercombatant who can easily defeat platoons of weaker but still PC-class characters.
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Nov 16, 2015 03:13
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Mages can do so much wacky poo poo that it's easy to forget. StephenLS did a lot of heavy lifting in making RPGnet thread where it mostly succinctly goes into what any given Mage can do at three dots in Awakening1e. Almost any starting Mage is going to start with three dots in something. And it's just interesting to see what Mages can do just trivially, without even spending mana sometimes. quote:With risk, many Moros can kill themselves (Hollow Victory; Ban p. 54)
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Nov 16, 2015 03:29
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Ferrinus posted:A gaggle of starting PC mages can take out an experienced mage for the same reason that a gaggle of anything can take out an anything of the same class that's just a bit or even a large amount stronger: the action economy. Taking five turns is just better than taking one, unless the difference in stats is so enormous that the actions of the group are literally useless or negligible. This is incidentally one of the things I appreciate about 1e combat despite all the cool things 2e has given us. There are not BP 10 super elder vampires who can afford to crush everybody's skull and not give a gently caress about who they piss off. That kind of exponential, ignore everybody a tier lower than you philosophy was what drove me out of oWoD. Everybody has to play the game despite how much XP they have.
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Nov 16, 2015 03:31
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Mendrian posted:This is incidentally one of the things I appreciate about 1e combat despite all the cool things 2e has given us. There are not BP 10 super elder vampires who can afford to crush everybody's skull and not give a gently caress about who they piss off. That kind of exponential, ignore everybody a tier lower than you philosophy was what drove me out of oWoD. Everybody has to play the game despite how much XP they have. Well, there sort of are, because if I'm a RAW BP 10 super elder vampire then without even trying I take up to 10 dice from your attacks and throw like 25 to make mine, and if I choose to spend 15 vitae in one turn and turn on vigor I'm treating you to a 50-die attack instead which will probably splatter you immediately............. but, I see exactly what you're saying and appreciate that nWoD more or less worked as you describe unless deliberately taken to absurd extremes. In general, "boss monster" type nWoD characters should A) have slightly higher attack pools, but the ability to apply those pools to multiple characters at once or require actions from multiple characters to somehow stop those pools from getting out of hand B) have really big health bars They shouldn't have "all your attacks fail, idiot" untouchable defense or impenetrable armor and they shouldn't instantly disintegrate anyone they look at. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 03:38
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Along those lines, I'm trickling in an antagonist that I need a little help with. He's a cyborg working as High Threat Response for a large research company. My players boosted a truck full of weapons and a freezer full of strange, oversized organs belonging to that company. This guy finds where the truck is being unloaded and attacks mid-way through. His gimmick is that his augmentations are a new breed, a bio-mechanical prototype that responds and adapts after near-death experiences. Basically robot Goku. Whatever attack or condition forced him to flee will have a specific adaptation. For example: The first time he fought the PCs, the last attack opened up the plating on his shoulder blade and exposed his meaty bits to a savage axe attack. The next time they meet him, his back will have lumps that cause small explosions when hit like ablative armor. My problem is that I don't want to make him harder to kill with these augmentations, the fights should be quick, I want them to make it easier for him to kill the players. Inzombiac fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 05:06
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Inzombiac posted:Along those lines, I'm trickling in an antagonist that I need a little help with. Give him more offensive options than defensive, then, though you may want to give him a bit more defensive ability after a particularly close call. Look to Hunter's Dread Powers or all the different compilations of Numina for some inspiration for powers.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:49
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Inzombiac posted:Whatever attack or condition forced him to flee will have a specific adaptation. Sounds like that's exactly what your idea does? Make him do reflexive, retaliatory damage without actually having more health or armor.
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Nov 16, 2015 05:59
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Ferrinus posted:Well, there sort of are, because if I'm a RAW BP 10 super elder vampire then without even trying I take up to 10 dice from your attacks and throw like 25 to make mine, and if I choose to spend 15 vitae in one turn and turn on vigor I'm treating you to a 50-die attack instead which will probably splatter you immediately............. but, I see exactly what you're saying and appreciate that nWoD more or less worked as you describe unless deliberately taken to absurd extremes. Oh man, that's great advicz! Gotta remember this.
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Nov 16, 2015 15:57
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Today's newsletter says OPP got the go-ahead to do a kickstarter for Changeling 20th, so it sounds like they'll still be working with Paradox to some extent.
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Nov 17, 2015 01:00
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Swagger Dagger posted:Today's newsletter says OPP got the go-ahead to do a kickstarter for Changeling 20th, so it sounds like they'll still be working with Paradox to some extent. Well, they've done their Kickstarters since Exalted when the book itself was mostly done, so it's more like they're given permission to Kickstart the thing they've got mostly finished under previous licensing agreements. When entirely new projects are licensed out and greenlit, that'll be a new development.
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Nov 17, 2015 01:02
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The latest round of Adventure Time, which is a show for children, is Requiem (not Masquerade!) as gently caress.
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Nov 18, 2015 05:16
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:The latest round of Adventure Time, which is a show for children, is Requiem (not Masquerade!) as gently caress. I know it had a dog, did they add a baby too?
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Nov 18, 2015 05:17
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Mage, Promethean, or Hunter, you could build a whole campaign around this MacGuffin: Red Mercury
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Nov 20, 2015 03:44
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Apparently some Paradox people recently played VtES and liked it, which is really getting my hopes up here.
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Nov 20, 2015 04:10
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Mage, Promethean, or Hunter, you could build a whole campaign around this MacGuffin: Red Mercury Holy poo poo that's awesome.
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Nov 20, 2015 04:36
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moths posted:Apparently some Paradox people recently played VtES and liked it, which is really getting my hopes up here. It would make a perfect LCG.
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Nov 20, 2015 05:40
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Mage, Promethean, or Hunter, you could build a whole campaign around this MacGuffin: Red Mercury Isn't there a Hunter compact/conspiracy that's basically a bunch of Alex Jones nutjobs who *think* they're in a conspiracy and unwittingly are being played by other, higher tier factions?
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Nov 20, 2015 05:53
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crime fighting hog posted:Isn't there a Hunter compact/conspiracy that's basically a bunch of Alex Jones nutjobs who *think* they're in a conspiracy and unwittingly are being played by other, higher tier factions? Network Zero?
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Nov 20, 2015 06:04
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Mage, Promethean, or Hunter, you could build a whole campaign around this MacGuffin: Red Mercury Charles Stross did a fun short story about red mercury that's basically a Zeka origin story. e: ^Division Six, from Witch Finders. They're a full-throated Ascension reference that think they're working for the Men in Black, but are really just being played by some Seers.
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Nov 20, 2015 06:05
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crime fighting hog posted:Isn't there a Hunter compact/conspiracy that's basically a bunch of Alex Jones nutjobs who *think* they're in a conspiracy and unwittingly are being played by other, higher tier factions? Division Six!
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Nov 20, 2015 07:32
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Mage, Promethean, or Hunter, you could build a whole campaign around this MacGuffin: Red Mercury 
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Nov 20, 2015 16:50
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There are definitely Tempters who can get you real red mercury if you just sign for it.
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Nov 20, 2015 18:32
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:There are definitely Tempters who can get you real red mercury if you just sign for it. This is why nobody else can get the real poo poo.
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Nov 20, 2015 20:36
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:There are definitely Tempters who can get you real red mercury if you just sign for it. The primary cover of my Demon PC is a smuggler, primarily of supernatural goods, and I'd be lying if I said that article didn't give me a whole bunch of ideas.
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Nov 20, 2015 21:09
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This twitter bot is basically the God-Machine's error logs.
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Nov 21, 2015 04:07
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https://twitter.com/restartthevoid/status/667480246267047936 Okay, that's pretty apt.
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Nov 21, 2015 05:54
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:The latest round of Adventure Time, which is a show for children, is Requiem (not Masquerade!) as gently caress. Just getting round to this and I was thinking I could kinda see it. And then a vampire started playing a glass armonica 
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Nov 21, 2015 23:10
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What exactly does the one from the clanbooks actually do?
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Nov 21, 2015 23:16
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Pope Guilty posted:What exactly does the one from the clanbooks actually do? It's covered in the back of Mekhet. There are six compositions specially scored for vampires playing the armonium (with the possible option of more out there, maybe for non-vampires as well). Hearing a vampire play one of the six songs in the book has a disorienting effect. One of the songs also functions as an effective exorcism, while the other five each have additional effects if a member of a particular vampiric clan plays the piece. Mekhet have the most interesting composition: they experience visions of the past unlives of any other since-destroyed member of their clan, and if they're Hollow, are temporarily reunited with their reflection, but have to fight the reflection over who retains awareness and control for the duration. Nosferatu isn't too bad either; their Beast turns inward and they find themselves harrowed by their own force of terror. The other three clans have simpler effects that temporarily exaggerate the signature tendencies of the clan.
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Nov 22, 2015 00:24
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Finally had enough time to finish Vampire 2nd and guys... Protean is way better than before. Claws of The Wild was loving broken. I'd rather have Lethal claws and wings than Agg claws that solve all my problems. Animalism is really loving good as well.
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Nov 24, 2015 00:58
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Protean is way more broken now that it doubles your damage than before when it made your damage more long-term scary but not particularly better at actually filling someone's health bar.
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Nov 24, 2015 01:05
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I'm largely of the opinion that in 2E the Claws of the Unholy merit is relatively pointless. It's hard to use effectively unless you're good at riding the wave and TBH if you're going up against a combat character you're actually better off not having it, since 2L is better than 0A if the enemy have Resilience (hint, they're a combat character, they totally do) It is rather annoying that OPP went back on their promise to make Agg harder to get the moment they started writing things that weren't Vampire, though. Vampires can only get Agg with Protean 4 and a 4 dot merit and then there's no weapon bonus, or with a Cruac ritual that has a big downside. Beasts, Demons, Werewolves, Changelings and Mages can just shart out Agg all day erry day with as much weapon bonus as they want. The Supernatural Lethal category seems to have gone the way of the dodo almost immediately, apparently.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:57
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Doodmons posted:I'm largely of the opinion that in 2E the Claws of the Unholy merit is relatively pointless. It's hard to use effectively unless you're good at riding the wave and TBH if you're going up against a combat character you're actually better off not having it, since 2L is better than 0A if the enemy have Resilience (hint, they're a combat character, they totally do) In the one core book that has been released since Vampire, we've seen supernatural lethal used for Werewolf fangs.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:26
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So, how big of a sin against Wisdom is it to create from whole cloth an enormous lion demon - bound to be loyal to anyone who knows its secret name - to protect your family from wizards? On a scale from one to Guardians in your hedges.
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Nov 25, 2015 15:05
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I don't understand how the pure have stayed as any form of coherrent ideology, their ideology doesn't seem like it would work long term at all
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Nov 25, 2015 19:38
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The Pure revere spirits and werewolves and think humans suck. Being Pure means less hisil antipathy and, in many cases, less work to do.
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Nov 25, 2015 19:49
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The Pure have three ideologies, not one, which unite only on the points of 'gently caress the Forsaken' and 'spirits rock'. Each of the three is pretty cromulent, however. The Predator Kings say that humans are feeble sheep worthy only of being eaten by the strong, as in fact are all non-werewolves, and indeed even non-Predator King werewolves. 'You are the strongest, all else is food' is a simple and easy philosophy, especially when it is often true in regards to strength. The firey zealot guys whose name I forget have a really easy sell - spirits are gods and should be obeyed. Spirits demonstrably have immense power and will wield that power for you if you do what they want. The Claimed are easily taken as divine. All you need is to get approached by one of these guys and have them demonstratet the power of spirits and the benefits of the Church of Listening To The Animist World Around Us For Fun And Profit for them to convince you, if you haven't had other werewolves to tell you why this is a terrible idea. The Ivory Fangs are eugenicists with a somewhat credible track record - that is, they have werewolf genetics down to a family-tracable art, if not a science, and I imagine most of them are brought up in the family. That's a self-sustaining system, really.
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Nov 25, 2015 19:54
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