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blastron posted:I’ve got a bit of a conundrum that I could use some advice on. The players of my Mage: the Awakening game are part of an occult engineering firm, and as part of fulfilling client needs they’ll likely be wanting to cast long-duration spells on items or locations and then relinquish them so that they don’t have to keep concentrating on them forever. Safely relinquishing a spell, however, costs a dot of Willpower, which means that they’re going to be faced with the option of either stunting their character growth or releasing it unsafely, which is a magic crime with two members of the Guardians in the cabal. Both of these options feel like they’re kind of making GBS threads on the players’ concept, however, so I feel like I should come up with another solution. In Tome of Mysteries, the 1e book, there were some sample alternate costs for making spells permanent, mainly in the context of crafting, but could be a starting point.
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Apr 1, 2018 18:24
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There were alt-cost spells in 1e, stuff like sacrificing health or animals or cursing the thing. Could go with something like that.
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Apr 1, 2018 18:40
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Hi. I want to make you all aware of a movie whose plot may be the premise for the greatest Vampire campaign of all time. "ˇVampiros en La Habana!" is a 1985 Cuban animated film. Set in Havana in the 1930s, under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, the carefree rebel main character Pepito does not know that he is a vampire, spirited as an infant from Transylvania by his vampire uncle as a test subject for his work on a serum that renders vampires immune to the deadly effects of sunlight, which he wishes to give away to all the vampires of the world. A bunch of traditional aristocratic European vampires, learning of the formula's completion via Radio Vampire International, travel to Cuba to try to steal it and sell it. At the same time, a vampire crime syndicate from Chicago, led by one Johnny Terrori, make the trip in order to destroy the formula and protect their monopoly on underground artificial beaches, which of course can't compete with the real thing. Pepito ends up with the formula, and is pursued across town by two vampire gangs and the cops, leading to the sort of chaos that well suits a tabletop experience. Well, bye.
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Apr 1, 2018 20:31
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blastron posted:I’ve got a bit of a conundrum that I could use some advice on. The players of my Mage: the Awakening game are part of an occult engineering firm, and as part of fulfilling client needs they’ll likely be wanting to cast long-duration spells on items or locations and then relinquish them so that they don’t have to keep concentrating on them forever. Safely relinquishing a spell, however, costs a dot of Willpower, which means that they’re going to be faced with the option of either stunting their character growth or releasing it unsafely, which is a magic crime with two members of the Guardians in the cabal. Both of these options feel like they’re kind of making GBS threads on the players’ concept, however, so I feel like I should come up with another solution. Could give/have them quest for an artifact/entity/magical practice (a full Legacy even) that allows them to do it for free specifically in the context of providing commissioned solutions for clients. Or give each project a narrative reason, like they have to convince the client to relocate so they can tap into a leyline or they gotta do a favor for a supernal being or something. Iirc Signs of Sorcery will also have some alternate cost stuff, but dunno when that's coming out.
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Apr 1, 2018 20:32
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I haven't run spirit combat before, is a rank 3 spirit with a brood of rank 1s and a rank 2 lieutenant too much for a pack of four wolves? Let's assume they don't know it's bane or ban.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:19
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Soonmot posted:I haven't run spirit combat before, is a rank 3 spirit with a brood of rank 1s and a rank 2 lieutenant too much for a pack of four wolves? Let's assume they don't know it's bane or ban. That's probably about right, depending on exact pack makeup, circumstances, number of minion spirits etc. I've made the mistake of thinking a lone Rank 3 poses a threat to a party of PCs, but it gets pancaked pretty quick just due to the action economy. Those massive dice pools are deceptively ineffective, too. Especially against a gaggle of 10-health furtanks that heal to fill every round.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:29
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Spirits tend to be beasts in combat, but tactics matter more than anything. Werewolves are, when things really come down to it, invulnerable in Gauru form so long as whatever's hitting them doesn't do more than [full health levels] damage per turn. A decently fighty werewolf is going to potentially be able to weather the full fury of the Rank 3 spirit each round, but, if all the spirits focus their attention on a single werewolf, odds are good the wolf will go down. What matters most to winning the fight is the pack being able to divide and conquer; to keep the spirits off-balance and unable to coordinate their efforts. That's pretty tricky when everyone's in the middle of Kuruth. As such, deciding opening tactics and arriving prepared is pretty crucial. Mind you, a very lucky hit by the Rank 3 spirit could put one of them down but... That's the risk of all combat in CofD, y'know? What I'm getting at is, no, that's probably not too much, but that's all very dependent on how your players approach the situation. Other people, feel free to contradict me; I am not an expert on Werewolf. I just spend a lot of time mucking with spirits.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:34
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I've got one full on fight wolf, but he's also optimized for urhal form with favored form and natural weapon merits. My plan for the spirits was to tie up the rahu with the boss, while the other spirits focus on the less robust pack members. I'm sure they're going to be bringing their own spiritual allies with, so it won't be a slaughter. I just need to give the rahu both a moment to shine while keeping him from making the encounter trivial.
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Apr 1, 2018 22:42
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Soonmot posted:I haven't run spirit combat before, is a rank 3 spirit with a brood of rank 1s and a rank 2 lieutenant too much for a pack of four wolves? Let's assume they don't know it's bane or ban. An Ithaeur would be able to find out, but not every pack has them. This seems like a hunt, too, so they might bring their totem. It really depends on the wolves and how well they work together. If they pile on, say, one or the other using Urshul Tilts while the others go for straight damage, you can ice the Rank 3 pretty fast. But if they are a bit disorganized, trying to deal with the Rank 1s while the Rank 3 blasts them, things can go bad fast. On the other hand one can go Gauru and wipe out the Rank 1s.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:44
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We have not 1, but 2 ithaeurs and both are Bone Shadows! Forwhatever reason, they really seem averse to shifting to garou. In this fight, at least one won't have a choice because they have the kuruth trigger of having a supernatural power being used on them. On the other hand, they also have chain rage so, maybe not.
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Apr 2, 2018 02:11
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Soonmot posted:We have not 1, but 2 ithaeurs and both are Bone Shadows! Their first Crescent Moon Gift would be useful for finding out banes, then. quote:Forwhatever reason, they really seem averse to shifting to garou. In this fight, at least one won't have a choice because they have the kuruth trigger of having a supernatural power being used on them. On the other hand, they also have chain rage so, maybe not. It's easy to get a wrong impression of gauru but obviously it's incredibly useful and I'd expect that would bear out at some point. No reason to push them of course, naturally finding out 'Whoa this is awesome,' is likely something a lot of werewolves go through well after their First Change. I'd suggest looking at the stats for the spirits and the capabilities of the PCs to see how things are likely to play out. If no one has a combat pool that can overcome the spirit's defense, for instance, they might want to have some planning time before the confrontation to get a bane or ban or something.
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Apr 2, 2018 02:34
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From a non-werewolf game, my Hunter party never figured out my spirit final boss' bane. They managed to come at it extremely sideways and overcome it without actually killing it. I dropped so many hints for what it's bane was but nobody ever figured it out and I was so sure they were going to die during the confrontation, but they got real creative and it worked out for them.
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Apr 2, 2018 03:15
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what was the bane
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Apr 2, 2018 05:41
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Tollymain posted:what was the bane dog teeth. i mentioned stuff about dog bites when they did research on it, and there was even a dog nearby during the final confrontation. they just never put two and two together.
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Apr 2, 2018 13:08
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was the idea that theyd get the dog to bite it or did they have to knock the teeth out the dog's face :v
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Apr 2, 2018 17:08
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Xinder posted:dog teeth. i mentioned stuff about dog bites when they did research on it, and there was even a dog nearby during the final confrontation. they just never put two and two together. I hate it when that happens but it often makes for good reveals after the fact.
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Apr 2, 2018 18:33
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If someone had to make The Count in a V:tR game, which clan would be best for this?
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Apr 2, 2018 18:55
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Liquid Dinosaur posted:If someone had to make The Count in a V:tR game, which clan would be best for this? Part of the Mekhet aesthetic is that they get more and more obsessed with patterns and mysteries and all that as they get older, which kind of ties into them getting more banes faster in 2e. Make an old Romanian noble that's obsessed with numerology and everyone might not even notice.
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Apr 2, 2018 18:59
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I get another week to figure out how I’m going to orchestrate relinquishing long-term spells, because yesterday my players, instead of building the luck detector the clients wanted, straight up killed the Matter mage that was cheating at the casinos! Now instead I get to figure out how to justify them not getting murdered back by the rest of that mage’s cabal.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:14
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Tollymain posted:was the idea that theyd get the dog to bite it or did they have to knock the teeth out the dog's face :v I mean, it'd work either way but I was hoping they'd get the dog to bite it. That would just make me feel better as a person. e: I can't count the number of times I slipped in a "The dog continues to bark at the spirit and stand defensively between it and his master." whenever they were trying to decide what move to make next. nothing. i guess they just thought i was doing flavor for the hell of it.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:34
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Part of the Mekhet aesthetic is that they get more and more obsessed with patterns and mysteries and all that as they get older, which kind of ties into them getting more banes faster in 2e. Make an old Romanian noble that's obsessed with numerology and everyone might not even notice. Requiem also has the crazy Ventrue bloodline Malkovian, a reference to the zany Malkavians from Masquerade. http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Malkovian
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Apr 2, 2018 19:47
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Requiem also has the crazy Ventrue bloodline Malkovian, a reference to the zany Malkavians from Masquerade. http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Malkovian And the Malkavians in one of the splatbooks, who get a whole "psychic disease that gives vampires Dementation because everyone was sad when the Malkovians didn't have that", but the Malkovians are a better way to go if you want your weird obsessive noble vampire to not have everyone immediately think they're a fishmalk.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:34
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So there's Malkovians, the bloodline, and individuals who are afflicted by Malkavia, whom can be any clan or bloodline since it's a communicable disease. Does Requiem draw from any of the Viccissitude-as-infernal-parasite the V20 Black Hand touches on? I'm using an Asakku as a big bad in my current game, and this seems like kind of a flip on that.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:52
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Spirit question for werewolf again: do spiritsneed a power to manifest, or will any place with the right resonance and the open condition allow them to manifest?
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Apr 2, 2018 21:03
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Soonmot posted:Spirit question for werewolf again: do spiritsneed a power to manifest, or will any place with the right resonance and the open condition allow them to manifest? They need Manifestations but they get one for every Rank and can buy more. Each has prerequisite Conditions to pull off, as well.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:24
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Soonmot posted:Spirit question for werewolf again: do spiritsneed a power to manifest, or will any place with the right resonance and the open condition allow them to manifest? Spirits get Twilight Form for free, plus an additional number of Manifestation Influence effects equal to their Rank. They can reduce the number of Numina they get to get more Manifestation effects on a one-for-one basis. In WtF this is explained under the Influence heading on page 186.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:25
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nofather posted:They need Manifestations but they get one for every Rank and can buy more. Each has prerequisite Conditions to pull off, as well. Note that this means not every spirit is capable of manifesting physically - many will only have access to stuff like Image.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:29
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Xinder posted:e: I can't count the number of times I slipped in a "The dog continues to bark at the spirit and stand defensively between it and his master." whenever they were trying to decide what move to make next. nothing. i guess they just thought i was doing flavor for the hell of it. I mean, this reminds me of the advice to always assume that clues you're hinting at are less obvious than you think they are. If a dog was there with its master, of course it's gonna bark and be defensive, and if you keep conspicuously repeating a self-evident behavior, you're being kind of passive aggressive without actually being upfront about what it is you're pressing. It's clear the dog bites in the background didn't click to them as having occult relevance, and might have washed over them with a different assumption, like "maybe this has to do with somebody who keeps a lot of dogs, and that's why the bites." The takeaway, I think, is that if you're dropping clues that you really want your players to pick up on, don't be coy. Be more direct, because it won't come across as direct to players who don't know what it is you're thinking.
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Apr 2, 2018 23:22
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I Am Just a Box posted:I mean, this reminds me of the advice to always assume that clues you're hinting at are less obvious than you think they are. If a dog was there with its master, of course it's gonna bark and be defensive, and if you keep conspicuously repeating a self-evident behavior, you're being kind of passive aggressive without actually being upfront about what it is you're pressing. It's clear the dog bites in the background didn't click to them as having occult relevance, and might have washed over them with a different assumption, like "maybe this has to do with somebody who keeps a lot of dogs, and that's why the bites." Yeah, it's hard to find the right balance in how direct you want to be without just telling the party what to do. I'm not upset with the players because I've been on the other side and sometimes you focus on the wrong thing and don't focus on what the gm wants you to see. It's why I make one of my players do a recap at the start of every session, so that I have a clear idea of what they think is important. They managed to drop a dangerous spirit into Arcadia and cause a much larger problem later down the line instead of killing it though.  I can't wait to have it return 10 times as dangerous in a future game
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Apr 2, 2018 23:35
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Lurks With Wolves posted:And the Malkavians in one of the splatbooks, who get a whole "psychic disease that gives vampires Dementation because everyone was sad when the Malkovians didn't have that", but the Malkovians are a better way to go if you want your weird obsessive noble vampire to not have everyone immediately think they're a fishmalk.
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Apr 2, 2018 23:48
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Okay, that is not even close to what I thought it said. I was under the impression there was just a straight up manifestation power, where the spirit crosses over physically and could then choose to exist in Twilight. Rip my reading comprehension. So I'm at work and can't read the book yet, am I close to understanding: a spirit can cross to twilight if the area is Open and has the correct resonance. It can only manifest if the power it's using has the manifest property? How do loci play into this, just allows them to cross grin shadow to hisil without needing resonance or the open condition? Edit: basically, I really should have sat down and hashed this spirit stuff before running the game, but I seriously thought I'd have mostly iron masters Soonmot fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 23:59
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a locus should also function as a bonus to the dicepool for using numina such as manifestation at least unless i've been misunderstanding twilight
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Apr 3, 2018 00:01
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Hey, who was it that said that Onyx Path moved away from bloodline-specific disciplines? Y'all lied, some of this stuff is fascinating. EDIT: okay so i checked this one out but i don't understand what it has to do with socialist professors? PHIZ KALIFA fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 00:43
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Hey, who was it that said that Onyx Path moved away from bloodline-specific disciplines? Y'all lied, some of this stuff is fascinating. They have in 2e. That's from a 1e book.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:54
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Lurks With Wolves posted:They have in 2e. That's from a 1e book. The same 1e book that had the Smell Vampires whose bloodline weakness was that they were obsessed with kidnapping people with certain smells so they could smell them all night. And yet also had the Players, who remain one of my favorite bloodlines, unironically.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:21
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I Am Just a Box posted:And yet also had the Players, who remain one of my favorite bloodlines, unironically. I will love the Players until the day I die, and I'm glad they're in theory really easy to convert because they don't have a unique discipline.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:14
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Soonmot posted:So I'm at work and can't read the book yet, am I close to understanding: a spirit can cross to twilight if the area is Open and has the correct resonance. It can only manifest if the power it's using has the manifest property? Normally, you need the Reaching Manifestation to do anything across the Gauntlet (like use Numina and Influences). And even then, these dicepools are going to be penalized by the Gauntlet's Strength. So you can slowly create an opportune environment, using Influences to make things Open, and then attempt to get across. There are some abilities, like Gauntlet Breach, that seem to just make a big old noticeable hole that anyone can see and cross into. quote:How do loci play into this, just allows them to cross grin shadow to hisil without needing resonance or the open condition? Well, everything in the zone of effect of a locus is considered Open to its Resonance, so you do need them, you just don't need to manufacture them. But also spirits don't have to use the Reaching Manifestation, they can just use their abilities across it and gain a +2 towards attempts to actually cross it. Plus it offers some chance to heal or conceal yourself if you are of matching resonance to the locus. Loci would be prime focal points of spiritual activity.
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Apr 3, 2018 02:59
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The Mantra Yantra in Awakening 2E is a little unclear to me. Perhaps you fine folks can help me out? Which of the following is true: • You can use it when fast-casting, but it extends your casting time by one extra turn even if it's the only Yantra you use. • You cannot use it when fast-casting at all, only when casting spells ritually. • Something else that I didn't even begin to grasp from the text.
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Apr 3, 2018 06:48
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That Old Tree posted:• You can use it when fast-casting, but it extends your casting time by one extra turn even if it's the only Yantra you use. I always took it to mean this one, but I've established a precedent of deciding how I read things and working from there regarding the ambiguous parts that does not always match RAI.
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Apr 3, 2018 07:19
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Looks to me like A): it's just specifying that using the High Speech as a mantra takes up an action, as described under Casting Time earlier:Mage: the Awakening Second Edition, p. 114 posted:By using a Reach, a caster may instead cast immediately, in a single turn. Immediate spells cannot gain extra dice from taking extra time, but may take several turns of preparation to use all the Yantras the caster wishes to include. Probably specified to preempt the assumption that "talking is a free action." Not so for magically efficacious chanting.
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Apr 3, 2018 07:22
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