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I never followed Masquerade closely enough to be able to say this for certain, but I never got the impression that all the thaumaturgy paths were presented with a big Only Like Five Guys Know This - It's Super Rare and Extraordinary! sidebar. I got the impression they were printed as more character options for PCs, meant to be considered for characters to have, because character options move books.
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Oct 10, 2018 05:22
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Ferrinus posted:Okay, you have the strongest superpower, but to balance it out it's so strong that the entire story has to warp around your possessing it.  I dunno; Is it though? It relies on you having full turns to fire something off, that typically won't one shot anything. City Gangrel for example, were way more scary, and 'on demand' in their Celerity / Obfuscate / Protean combo. As someone above said, Blood Potency paired with Dominate is scary, but even that means getting multiple turns to apply. (Note: I'm not trying to say City Gangrel for example are necessarily 'stronger', more that they become lethal with much less warning, Thaumaturgy is only stronger in a vacuum, and with preparation.) EE: I Am Just a Box posted:I never followed Masquerade closely enough to be able to say this for certain, but I never got the impression that all the thaumaturgy paths were presented with a big Only Like Five Guys Know This - It's Super Rare and Extraordinary! sidebar. I got the impression they were printed as more character options for PCs, meant to be considered for characters to have, because character options move books. Shockeh fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 05:26
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I Am Just a Box posted:I never followed Masquerade closely enough to be able to say this for certain, but I never got the impression that all the thaumaturgy paths were presented with a big Only Like Five Guys Know This - It's Super Rare and Extraordinary! sidebar. I got the impression they were printed as more character options for PCs, meant to be considered for characters to have, because character options move books. A bunch of the obscure poo poo, yes. For the most part I figure you don't need to add additional "using the power you bought will get you immediately super-hell-killed" because that poo poo is so loving BORING. "Oh no, will I use my power or not!!"
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Oct 10, 2018 05:49
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The Tremere: Sure, the Pyramid spends most of your XP, but they spend it on you learning to throw fireballs, so whatever. Really, outside of some paths that ought to be tightly controlled (Corruption springs to mind), the Tremere ought to be coordinating the teaching of Paths to ensure a decent geographical spread of everything they might need, both for the LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) principle and in order to be able to bring the precise power they need to bear in the place and time they need it in. Sure, there's corebook Paths that are just Useful and should be common knowledge, but before too awful long any individual Tremere should probably be learning something obscure or weird for the good of the clan.
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Oct 10, 2018 10:58
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I mean, if we want precise demographic numbers for the Tremere we just need to arrange some core books in a pentagram and say Loomer's name three times.
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Oct 10, 2018 14:02
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I think we can probably agree that giving every vampire clan except one a single clan discipline and then giving that one clan a D&D wizard's spellbook and strict instructions to play nice was, perhaps, not the best plan.
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Oct 10, 2018 14:18
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"Hey, you know how the wizard is designed in D&D? Isn't that great?"Shockeh posted:Counterpoint: Every problematic Thaumaturgy related issue could be solved by Storytellers, without even requiring intervention. I Am Just a Box posted:I never followed Masquerade closely enough to be able to say this for certain, but I never got the impression that all the thaumaturgy paths were presented with a big Only Like Five Guys Know This - It's Super Rare and Extraordinary! sidebar. I got the impression they were printed as more character options for PCs, meant to be considered for characters to have, because character options move books. Shockeh posted:I dunno; Is it though? It relies on you having full turns to fire something off, that typically won't one shot anything. City Gangrel for example, were way more scary, and 'on demand' in their Celerity / Obfuscate / Protean combo.
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Oct 10, 2018 14:37
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Shockeh posted:E: Also, gently caress this hyperbolic sarcasm. You're the one using hyperbole, although I don't think you were doing it for sarcastic purposes. In fact the other thaumaturgy paths aren't insane epic secrets that everyone will kill you for instantly and which are next to impossible to learn in character. They're just... other thaumaturgy paths. And the end result is that while Ventrue get three clan disciplines and Nosferatu get three clan disciplines and Brujah get three clan disciplines, Tremere get 20 clan disciplines. To this day I don't know why everyone is so preoccupied with city Gangrel being combat powerhouses. Celerity + Potency + two dots of out-of-clan Protean (or just a big axe or sword) is going to give you more damage throughput than Celerity + in-clan Protean. It's not like Proteans 3 through 5 are going to increase your damage per round. Halloween Jack posted:See, that's the thing. Ultimately, beyond a certain level WoD combat is a matter of who wins initiative. Several Disciplines have a 4 or 5 dot power that will just crush you, and there's always Celerity+(Potence/Protean/big guns or magic weapons). Honestly, I'm pretty sure that nWoD 2E combat is more swingy and rocket taggy than oWoD combat was. Remember, in revised no one gets their first celerity bonus action until everyone else has acted once, and no one gets their second celerity bonus action until everyone else (who's entitled to do so) has acted twice, and so on. So winning initiative makes much less of a difference to two Brujah having a scrap than it does to two Daeva having a scrap.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:40
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Yeah, combat and xp are some of the reasons I'm really disappointed in nWoD 2E.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:56
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Thaumaturgy is definitely a kitchen sink sort of deal, they tried cramming the whole supernatural into the first edition of Vampire, so there's not a lot of thematic continuity across the system. The number of Dramatic Clan Backstories which boil down to "It's Harder To Diablerize Antedilluvians Than You Might Expect" is fairly redundant. On the other hand, it's Fun and I Like It, so There.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:23
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One of the ways I make Vampire NPCs is almost never giving them out of Clan disciplines. Makes everyone more unique while also helping the party stand out more.
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Oct 11, 2018 00:56
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Lord_Hambrose posted:One of the ways I make Vampire NPCs is almost never giving them out of Clan disciplines. Makes everyone more unique while also helping the party stand out more. And that fits in the fluff. Somebody not a Gangrel having Protean should be a Big Deal. They even called it such for Lodin who had Protean and some other stuff, but they didn't stick to that.
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Oct 11, 2018 01:11
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Have any writers or developers talked about how they feel about the games they write for being made open for third party stuff? On one hand, I imagine there's some relief because you don't have to deal with as many...strange...requests, as there's likely going to be dozens of third party things with dozens of niche but useless bloodlines. On the other, and it's the fanboy in me, I imagine it would be frustrating to see people publishing the exact kind of things you were trying to avoid. Transhuman Promethean, Demon without the God Machine, etc. Are freelancers who've published material for the vault allowed to write stuff for it?
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Oct 11, 2018 01:21
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I'd honestly be sort of interested in a book about possible fallout from getting rid of the God-Machine and maybe some stuff on how demons can make their own infrastructure. I imagine a lot of angels would be trying to rebuild it to have their purpose back and some might be trying to set themselves up as the new God Machine. It'd be an extremely different game in terms of themes though.
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Oct 11, 2018 04:58
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xanthan posted:I'd honestly be sort of interested in a book about possible fallout from getting rid of the God-Machine and maybe some stuff on how demons can make their own infrastructure. I imagine a lot of angels would be trying to rebuild it to have their purpose back and some might be trying to set themselves up as the new God Machine. Please, this. I would buy it. Demon is my absolute favorite CofD line.
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Oct 11, 2018 05:07
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Ferrinus posted:You're the one using hyperbole, although I don't think you were doing it for sarcastic purposes. Anywho, in reference to whoever mentioned that Paths should be widely taught for redundancy - The issue is the Tremere externally are all 'Unity!' 'Fraternity!' 'THE PYRAMID!', etc. but internally they're paranoid backstabbing, politically machinating fucks who don't want to let slip the slightest advantage, even if it probably meant long term game. That, to me, is one of the funniest things about the whole Clan. Shockeh fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 05:16
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xanthan posted:I imagine a lot of angels would be trying to rebuild it to have their purpose back and some might be trying to set themselves up as the new God Machine. idea: angels were organized around the concepts they "create" for the God Machine, resulting in a natural hierarchy of order they try to remake those concepts in the GM script with simple but powerfull defining words... welcome to Chronicles in Nomine
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Oct 11, 2018 14:02
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Dawgstar posted:And that fits in the fluff. Somebody not a Gangrel having Protean should be a Big Deal. They even called it such for Lodin who had Protean and some other stuff, but they didn't stick to that. How on earth did they ever justify all of the named Princes out there knowing Path of Weather Control anyway?
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Oct 11, 2018 15:56
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citybeatnik posted:How on earth did they ever justify all of the named Princes out there knowing Path of Weather Control anyway? Apparently when you become Prince you immediately have a hookup to the Pyramid who just loves to give you their only edge in the Jyhad. The Prince of Vancouver came by it because his lover is a Tremere (and every other member of the clan is banned from his city). For my own games, I always instituted that almost all out-of-clan Disciplines absolutely needed a teacher. My players either just specialized in their clan Disciplines (which honestly worked fine) or had to trade boons and such to be taught Auspex or something, which is also as I feel the game intended. The only Disciplines everybody could take (still paying the out of clan costs, if they were) were the physical Disciplines. I figured that stuff was just like vampire Crossfit and it would be easy to make yourself stronger or whatnot if you put in the work. I also got my players not to call their Disciplines by name and instead go more poetic, like 'the Gangrel's shapechanging' or whatever. It helped with not thinking of them (well, at least as much) as just cool powers to pick.* *And if somebody likes them to just be cool powers or whatever, go with God. It's just what we did at my table and it worked for us.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:37
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Hell, I remember the 2e corebook where Modius, Toreador Prince of Gary, Indiana having a dot of Thaumaturgy was a big deal and a sign of something sinister. Then everybody and their cousin got some kind of Blood Magick.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:46
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this is cod, but I run it as: physical (vigor, celerity, resilience) Anyone can learn with XP. Special, but non clan-specific disciplines (animalism, obsfucate) you need a teacher. Clan specific, you need a teacher and to drink the blood of of a vampire with that discipline. Or diablerie.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:32
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Halloween Jack posted:Hell, I remember the 2e corebook where Modius, Toreador Prince of Gary, Indiana having a dot of Thaumaturgy was a big deal and a sign of something sinister. Then everybody and their cousin got some kind of Blood Magick. He kept it in Dust to Dust! Just this frumpy dandy fop in a dying town being able to summon lightning or some poo poo.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:55
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citybeatnik posted:He kept it in Dust to Dust! My feelings about that, and most of oWoD, is that it's really dumb and also kinda kicks rear end.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:03
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Gary, Indiana having its own Prince is one of the greatest parts of the oWoD that’s great on purpose.
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Oct 11, 2018 19:02
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If you aren't using blood magic forged to defeat an antediluvian to roll up at Elysium with a ridiculously opaque fog bank why EVEN be undead.
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Oct 11, 2018 19:21
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Mr. Maltose posted:Gary, Indiana having its own Prince is one of the greatest parts of the oWoD that’s great on purpose. How aware is Modius that his princedom is kind of a joke? It reminds me of asking Bertram in Bloodlines if he wanted to be Prince of Santa Monica instead of Therese and he's all, "There's like three Kindred here. Some Princedom."
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Oct 11, 2018 20:42
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Modius had his rear end kicked so bad and so long that he knows he's beat. He's tired of being Prince, but without him every scrub vampire in Chicago would be free to use Gary as their toilet. What's interesting is that he's a Faulknerian failed patriarch, but transplanted from the South to the Rust Belt. Lodin was the corporate Prince and he was the union Prince, so Lodin wore him down over decades. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 20:59
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He's also so intimately aware that he's a joke that it's driven him insane and given him delusions of granduer. And the good end of Dust to Dust is, i think, having Juggler run off to the Free States and calling him a tyrant - thereby making him actually seem important to people other than his frenemy. His situation made more sense when Gary was the place that all of the Kindred in Chicago would drag their childer to be so Lodin wouldn't kill them off. At least if i'm recalling correctly.
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Oct 11, 2018 21:33
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citybeatnik posted:He's also so intimately aware that he's a joke that it's driven him insane and given him delusions of granduer. And the good end of Dust to Dust is, i think, having Juggler run off to the Free States and calling him a tyrant - thereby making him actually seem important to people other than his frenemy. That part I remember. One of Lodin's big things was childer not being sired without his express written consent and a mountain of boons to be paid later which showed his hypocrisy because Lodin's solution to every problem ever was 'find somebody smart in the field and Embrace them' up to and including his fling. "Um, I need to take over organized crime? Uh... Al Capone!" I think he had over a half dozen childer. Capone, Drummond, the dumbass train guy, pet hacker Bobby "The Hurricane" Weatherbottom, aforementioned crush, Black Gangster From Cabrini Green when street gangs rose to prominence, more I'm forgetting.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:17
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In fairness, 'find someone who actually knows how to solve this problem that I barely understand, and give them the job of it' is not a bad strategy.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:44
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Valid, but Lodin's problem was Capone was one of his more stable lieutenants and he'd flip out and beat a man to death with a baseball bat before he was a vampire.
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Oct 12, 2018 03:46
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Dawgstar posted:Valid, but Lodin's problem was Capone was one of his more stable lieutenants and he'd flip out and beat a man to death with a baseball bat before he was a vampire. Surely I, a thing that was once a man but have been a slowly degenerating beast for thousands of years, am the best judge of character.
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Oct 12, 2018 04:04
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Said hypocrisy also makes the policy vital. Lodin's already imposing a big strain on Chicago's vampiric carrying capacity - his direct brood alone requires some 8-9 BP a night just to rise, and maintained anywhere from 30 to 50 ghouls IIRC, which bumps it up to another 10 a night. Daily, that doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. If they feed to the point of death to sustain that need (which they don't), we're talking an additional ~365 murders a year. If they feed to a safe threshold (20 - 30% total blood volume of a human, or 2-3BP, with 3 at the absolute edge of safety) then it translates instead into over a thousand people they need to feed on yearly, and while they maintain herds, those people are going to need time to recover between large feedings like that so even if we assume 75% of their blood comes from the herd it still translates into 250+ feeding incidents a year.
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Oct 12, 2018 11:50
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This is, presumably, assuming they never need to actually do anything vampiric at all ever.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:03
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Yup, there's that too. That's the bare minimum for not going into torpor.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:43
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It also kind of assumes that inflicting people with a serial murder curse of the night won't impact their stability in any way. A lot of these people you could have just, you know, hired, with money.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:45
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Oh, it's definitely bad policy to go around embracing anyone who might be useful - but if you're doing that, then restricting the ability of anyone else to sire quite sharply just makes sense from a conservation perspective. There's also a secondary consideration: Ventrue suck. They really do. The inability to feed on anything but select populations is a godsend to a tyrant-prince, because it becomes relatively easy to control access to those groups provided they aren't some of the broader examples we've seen in the canon. It also means that your networks of influence among coroners, pathologists, the CDC, academics, and the news become the kind of vital leverage that you can use to coerce even more control. Meanwhile, any other vampire can feed on whatever it drat likes, whether it's a homeless dude on a corner or part of your herd of carefully curated Italian-Americans with Type O blood. So if all your potential upstarts, a, are Ventrue, and b, have feeding habits known to you, you have far more leverage over them than any other kind of vampire without reliance on blood bonds. Guy can only feed on heroin addicts and getting too big for his britches? Time to sponsor drug rehabilitation programs and reduce his potential vitae pool if you have to go to the mattresses. Needs to eat Italians? Time to start efforts to reduce Italian tourism and reduce the industries the local Italian expat population is strongly associated with. Etc, etc.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:56
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Dawgstar posted:Valid, but Lodin's problem was Capone was one of his more stable lieutenants and he'd flip out and beat a man to death with a baseball bat before he was a vampire. By the end of his life he was doing things like fishing in a swimming pool because syphilis had destroyed his brain.
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Oct 12, 2018 14:12
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Apparently he Embraced Capone in 1941, which was well after his brain turned to mush. I'm not sure if there's a canon regarding what chronic diseases can and can't be cured by Embracing someone.Dawgstar posted:I think he had over a half dozen childer. Capone, Drummond, the dumbass train guy, pet hacker Bobby "The Hurricane" Weatherbottom, aforementioned crush, Black Gangster From Cabrini Green when street gangs rose to prominence, more I'm forgetting.
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Oct 12, 2018 14:25
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Pope Guilty posted:Surely I, a thing that was once a man but have been a slowly degenerating beast for thousands of years, am the best judge of character. I know what you're getting at, but the interesting thing is Lodin wasn't that old, relatively speaking. When Chicago by Night was originally written, he'd been a vampire "only" for about a century and a half. Now, I think his sire was super old and that's why he knows a lot of Disciplines he technically shouldn't but he'd be considered an ancilla if he wasn't Prince. Certainly he's nowhere near his Primogen. Critias is Actually Critias. Khalid was in the Crusades. I forget how old Tyler is but she's got a few centuries on him and is also a Diablerie freak. Even the head of the Gangrel MC fought in the Revolutionary War and is older. Loomer posted:Said hypocrisy also makes the policy vital. Lodin's already imposing a big strain on Chicago's vampiric carrying capacity - his direct brood alone requires some 8-9 BP a night just to rise, and maintained anywhere from 30 to 50 ghouls IIRC, which bumps it up to another 10 a night. Daily, that doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. If they feed to the point of death to sustain that need (which they don't), we're talking an additional ~365 murders a year. If they feed to a safe threshold (20 - 30% total blood volume of a human, or 2-3BP, with 3 at the absolute edge of safety) then it translates instead into over a thousand people they need to feed on yearly, and while they maintain herds, those people are going to need time to recover between large feedings like that so even if we assume 75% of their blood comes from the herd it still translates into 250+ feeding incidents a year. Man, that makes aforementioned Weatherbottom really untenable from a gamist perspective. The only person he can feed on is the girl he loves and if that's not a severely crippling feeding restriction I don't know what is. She'd be dead within a week. Loomer posted:They really do. The inability to feed on anything but select populations is a godsend to a tyrant-prince, because it becomes relatively easy to control access to those groups provided they aren't some of the broader examples we've seen in the canon. It also means that your networks of influence among coroners, pathologists, the CDC, academics, and the news become the kind of vital leverage that you can use to coerce even more control. Meanwhile, any other vampire can feed on whatever it drat likes, whether it's a homeless dude on a corner or part of your herd of carefully curated Italian-Americans with Type O blood. So if all your potential upstarts, a, are Ventrue, and b, have feeding habits known to you, you have far more leverage over them than any other kind of vampire without reliance on blood bonds. Guy can only feed on heroin addicts and getting too big for his britches? Time to sponsor drug rehabilitation programs and reduce his potential vitae pool if you have to go to the mattresses. Needs to eat Italians? Time to start efforts to reduce Italian tourism and reduce the industries the local Italian expat population is strongly associated with. Etc, etc. That's explicitly called out in the second CbN as an example of all the jockeying for power to make somebody new Prince after Lodin got <your chronicle results here> during Under a Blood Red moon. Some anarchs hit a truck and find out that it's full of Italian women which is Capone's feeding thing. (Surprise! The undead crime lord is also a white slaver.)
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Oct 12, 2018 15:46
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