|
Everyone wash your hands before you dice next time 🙏🙏🙏
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 04:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 20:27 |
|
|
Mmm Nameless and Accursed comes out on Wednesday. Cannot wait to see what the Left-Hand Pathers have been up to since last we saw them working their broken magics in 1E.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 05:18
|
|
|
Magic is so comprehensive in Mage it's hard to understand what the Left-Hand Paths have to offer. Like, yeah, immortality and soul-stealing is a little easier but that's both not an absolute silo, and also so blatantly evil on its face that it doesn't speak much to what makes these traditions seductive rather than the exclusive domain of sociopaths. Now, conversely, you don't necessarily need to answer this question with mechanical power -- but there needs to be SOMETHING.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 05:43
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Magic is so comprehensive in Mage it's hard to understand what the Left-Hand Paths have to offer. They have better hats and robes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 06:09
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Magic is so comprehensive in Mage it's hard to understand what the Left-Hand Paths have to offer. It works best when they have something like the Echo Walkers or the Tremere have: A claim to real, secret truth that the less awful wizards refuse to see. You can give them extremely cool powers as well, but I see the Left Hand Path more as a result of mages' desire to have some truth nobody else has, than purely a question of the perks. Tremere are immortal, but you become a Tremere because they claim to have secrets of the soul that non-Tremere lack (and also immortality and special powers too). The last Tremere for my players to hunt down (I'm on the very last session of a campaign that's lasted over 3.5 years) has the power to consume a captive soul to instantly swap Fates with the soul's owner and warp time, such that he was never present and instead the victim was. This attainment happens no matter what when he gets badly injured or 'killed' and also he can activate it on purpose; his defining quality is an absolute terror of death and a desire to quietly live forever and pursue his Obsessions (one of which is I Don't Want To Die) while avoiding detection. He's currently planning to [redacted for my players]. E: to be clear, Left-Hand mages may not actually have special truth! It could be horrible Abyssal anti-truth that they convince themselves is better than truth, or the kind of secret wisdom that just plain sucks, and so on.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 06:41
|
|
|
The Tremere genuinely have insights and powers other mages lack, at the cost of being soul-eating monsters. Abyssal magic is like Awakened drugs, with the various forms of Scelesti ranging from users to addicts to dealers. The Rapt and Harrowed are failure states. So... Kinda? Only the Tremere really do the “our robes are better” thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 07:33
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Magic is so comprehensive in Mage it's hard to understand what the Left-Hand Paths have to offer. Presumably you also get mages who are not as min-maxed as PCs might be, and who might thus want to close the gap. You could also flip it and say: "These ARE the exclusive domain of sociopaths, and have gotten a romantic shine on them due to the people those sociopaths have abused, and the communications of that abuse down through time."
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 08:10
|
|
|
Eric Griffin is a hack, that is all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 12:57
|
|
|
I am running V5 for people and after 8 sessions it is starting to show areas that it could be improved upon. I have a couple of questions, if there are any go to homebrew answers or if I'm just straight up missing poo poo: I'm running a game set in Scotland where firearm access is limited. The first level of Celerity - the one that lets you dodge bullets - is, therefore, extremely limited in its usefulness. We're also not using the Advanced Combat options, so the 'a manoeuvre up to two dice' thing doesn't really help either. What's a good way to change this discipline? I thought about 'if you can narratively justify a way in which rapid reactions in general helps you, gain 2 dice to your pool' but that feels like it'll just drift into players doing dice begging a lot. It also cuts off a lot of the usefulness of the second level of celerity, where celerity starts to add dots to your dex. I could go with the 'add your celerity to Dex + Athletics Dodge checks in combat' but that's about all I've come up with so far. My players miss the exploding dice from revised. The ability to roll multiple 10s in a row which would generate additional successes is something that they miss - I know, from a statistical standpoint, you're more likely to generate more successes with the current system, but the gamefeel has been knocked off for them. The thing is, they also like the Messy Critical/Beastial Failure thing. Any ideas on how to merge old-style exploding 10s with new style Messy/Beastial stuff? I've been thinking that 'if hunger dice rolls 10, count as a success but that success is now messy critical if you choose to explode that die,' with the revised style botch rules (no successes and a 1, only on hunger dice) as a Beastial Failure. Combat feels a lot less dangerous than it used to. When you started to lose health levels, you started to take negatives to dicerolls. They got very penalising after a while but they added a little bit of extra 'are you sure you wanna keep fighting?' edge to a fight. The way I'm seeing the current system is that the only health level you need to worry about is the last one. Is there a system in the corebook to help amp up the threat of combat with injuries? I'm considering using the system from Scion 2e where every level of aggravated you take is a condition where you lose a dice off a pool relating to that; you take a point of aggravated damage with a crowbar to the head and your wits go down until it's fixed because you have a vampire concussion or something. Any ideas?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 16:30
|
|
|
I need some input: My Vampire 2e game is running really well and my Lygos has a True Friend. The ST is having the Nosferatu mutation creep in slowly with Lygos flavoring. As a human he was turned at 18 and was pretty drat ugly and short. Think Danny Devito and Patton Oswalt but with zero charm. His aura makes people feel really clammy like they just dipped into a swamp in winter. The mutations will white out his eyes, make his skin look like a cave lizard and eventually take his sight completely. I'm so excited. The question, however, is that I need to reveal my vampirehood to the friend soon but how would that work mechanically? I don't want to bond or ghoul him, my sire said that bringing him into the fold would be acceptable under STRICT conditions. Do you think the ST has the right/responsibility to make the friend abandon me?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 18:13
|
|
|
With that merit? I would have the friend remain loyal no matter what. You spent points on them specifically for that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 18:20
|
|
|
True Friend is the merit for revealing your monstrousness to someone and them being like, "dude, sick. Halloween's gonna whip rear end, I'll be a Frankenstein"
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 18:35
|
|
|
I always ran True Friend as utterly inviolable without explicit consent from the player. He would just shrug and say "Eh, you were ugly before, this ain't news." and then pat you on the back
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 18:43
|
|
|
Okay, that's what I was thinking but the refundable nature of merit points had me nervous. Thanks. I plan on having him be my man-in-the-chair back at our communal haven since I dumped so much of his points into Computers and Science.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 19:52
|
|
|
Refunding is a last-resort sort of thing, like if the character dies saving your life or you systematically go out of your way to burn every bridge with them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 19:56
|
|
|
The Daeva in our group keeps """joking""" that he's going to ghoul him and I have to keep reminding him that I could VERY easily get him into Torpor in one round. Professional training as an engineer with a focus on modding weapons and armor has made me... powerful.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
‘Albino sewer crocodile man with a gun and body armor’ feels like a TMNT villain.
Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 10, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 20:06
|
|
|
Inzombiac posted:The Daeva in our group keeps """joking""" that he's going to ghoul him and I have to keep reminding him that I could VERY easily get him into Torpor in one round. If your party doesn't end in a last man standing blood bath, something is wrong.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 20:11
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:‘Albino sweet crocodile man with a gun and body armor’ feels like a TMNT villain. He's more of a "Friendly pillbug with a sword cane cosplaying as Inspector Gadget", haha.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2020 20:34
|
|
|
I hear a lot about how dull it is to play a Mortals-only campaign, how you should immediately try to get them into another splat or something, but I had a session the other night where my players essentially did nothing but talk to two NPCs (a hedge mage barista and a pickpocket) and they said it was one of their favourite sessions in some time. Which is something to hear, coming from a group with roots in D&D and Pathfinder. Edit: Well they did have a scene where they chased down the pickpocket and a driver rolled so many successes that he pulled off some sicknasty stuntz, but I don't think that's what they were referring to.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 14:38
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:I hear a lot about how dull it is to play a Mortals-only campaign, how you should immediately try to get them into another splat or something, but I had a session the other night where my players essentially did nothing but talk to two NPCs (a hedge mage barista and a pickpocket) and they said it was one of their favourite sessions in some time. Which is something to hear, coming from a group with roots in D&D and Pathfinder. This is routinely how my awakening game nights go. They'll spend a bunch of time arguing about how magic works, a bunch of time talking to some Consilium NPCs, and about 1/4 of the time enacting whatever extremely convoluted plan they came up with to perfectly do whatever they're planning on doing. It's regularly fun and exciting, and it often brings up questions about how much influence they're using on the world, and what that means for their wisdom. It's a very unique roleplay experience for a lot of people, and I'm just happy to keep telling these stories.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 14:54
|
|
|
Sion posted:Celerity I'm not sure about what powers V5 grants, but could you rip off Requiem and have all levels of celerity grant a passive bonus to dex, speed, defense, and initiative? Spending blood (or hunger dice?) brings up the active bullet dodging or whatever. Morpheus posted:I hear a lot about how dull it is to play a Mortals-only campaign, how you should immediately try to get them into another splat or something Nah, mortals only is great, my regular players had a blast playing my killer snowman game. I made simplified character sheets based on teen horror movie cliches and gave each player a "power" like stealth bonus, making adults believe them, or katana.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 15:04
|
|
|
Had a blast this past weekend playing in a local V:tR LARP. Highlights include: - Sensible take on the system, supported by a web portal, minimising rules issues in-session. - Good player base whose response to a new character coming in with an obviously terrible plan for the world is to give them the thumbs up and let it happen, rather than engaging in the sort of play where everyone just ends up blocking each other. - Very effective inclusion of a Demon NPC without bringing in the whole God-Machine cosmology (because ultimately that's the Demon's own problem and needn't trouble the vampires, dude's just here to acquire some memories in return for reality-fuckery).
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 16:37
|
|
|
Seriously, mortals is vastly underrated. They got a ton of books for them in first edition and there's so much you can do while basically guaranteeing there's no magic the players can pull off that would make it a snap.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 18:06
|
|
|
I think the issue is more there are a ton of systems for playing mortals investigating spooky stuff to choose from, but not many options for being a group of vampires or werewolves.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 21:24
|
|
|
nofather posted:Seriously, mortals is vastly underrated. They got a ton of books for them in first edition and there's so much you can do while basically guaranteeing there's no magic the players can pull off that would make it a snap. My Hunter game was no-magic cyberpunk and it was a goddamn riot. Hell, even as vamps, the best sessions tend to be when we go for a quick feeding at a bar but end up partying and solving some poor sap's relationship issues.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2020 23:33
|
|
|
Nameless and Accursed is out and it's really good! I wish it had the page count to completely fill out the legacies, but at least there are a ton of legacies from 1e and a few I don't recognize that are probably original. The new Scelesti rules are great and really manage to tie the different kinds of Scelestus together using the new Joining stat that Nasnasi get. Speaking of which, man I want to play a Nasnasi even though they're not really player friendly. Their descent and redemptive options are great for my kind of Poor Life Choices wizard. The new Tremere are much like the old ones, with the Seventh Watchtower changing from something possibly Abyssal to something fully Mysterious. The Banishers have great mechanics now and their Greater Tulpae are hosed up Supernal Beings. Anyway, that's my initial review. I still need to read through the various character profiles.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 15:40
|
|
|
I really, really like the fact that Banishers boil down to "you've got Integrity instead of Wisdom; consequences." Just oops, your brain didn't break the right way and now you're stuck in a screaming perma-hell of unwanted stimulus wherever weird poo poo's afoot. Cheers!
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 16:00
|
|
|
Been awhile since I read Banishers but what I remember liking about it was the sense that they're not necessarily evil, they're just receiving different information and acting accordingly. They're only really wrong because the setting says so.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 16:11
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Been awhile since I read Banishers but what I remember liking about it was the sense that they're not necessarily evil, they're just receiving different information and acting accordingly. They're only really wrong because the setting says so. I mean... ‘they’re only wrong because they are factually incorrect’ seems tautological. The Tremere also have evidence supporting their position, after all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 16:17
|
|
|
Being a Banisher in 2e sounds like being someone with a severe nut allergy, and periodically you encounter people eating big handfuls of pistachios and dropping their shells everywhere for you to step around. And if you say hey, this sucks for me, they say, yeah, but it's delicious for me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 16:35
|
|
|
It’s probably more like being one of those people with Wi-Fi sensitivity.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 16:55
|
|
|
I'm also a fan of how Mage 2e books always take care to say that the common way things happen are not the only way things happen. You could end up being a Banisher because an Abyssal Intrusion deleted your sophia or because there are things that steal names during awakenings...
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 17:05
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:It’s probably more like being one of those people with Wi-Fi sensitivity. If WiFi sensitivity was real.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 17:25
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:If WiFi sensitivity was real. I knew a dude that was insistent that he could feel when passing through "wifi fields" but failed even the most basic tests. We had him leave the house and would randomly turn the WiFi on and off and he'd tell us when it was on when coming back in. His conclusion was about 50/50 but in reality we never turned it off. Edit: He'd also claim to get headaches at certain businesses because "they have the wrong bandwidth."
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2020 18:57
|
|
|
i love people whose problems are basically "Anxiety, but like I'm ordering in Starbucks" edit- uncomfortable in large noisy establishments? hhhhmmmm, no, this person just hasn't updated their Linksys firmware in (licks finger, sticks it into air) three years and seven days. i'm very special.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2020 00:05
|
|
|
I'm afraid to admit that after just two weeks I'm far more dubious of Mage's Mystery mechanics than I thought I would be. Tackling Scrutiny as a per-turn extended action seems, uh, real boring to engage with in-play, and all the sprucing up expansions in Signs of Sorcery seem like they'd be even better suited to a system that was more fun to begin with. (To be fair I already didn't much like the way extended actions work, but putting them in a framework where they're per-turn makes them worse.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2020 00:08
|
|
|
I’m kind of with you on Scrutiny. It seems a little clunky, but I like the concept. At low dice pools, you can be really limited in how much you can figure out. Once you start gaining gnosis it becomes a lot easier to crack mysteries. It’s pretty trivial at the stage my game is in, but so are most magical problems. I had one that was 15 levels and they got all the way through it. It was absurd. Before we got to absurd levels, it still was only occasionally useful for us. Mysteries are great, but they’re very much better as a quick way to figure out “what”, but the “why” turns out to be the important part of it, and that’s not something that they roll dice to figure out. That’s really the bulk of the story.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2020 01:14
|
|
|
WoD 2E is replete with game systems which are individually cool and evocative but collectively really big loads on player memory and ST attention that probably add less to the game than they cost in time. I'm thinking here of stuff like Vampire's predatory aura clash systems and like 65% of Werewolf's rules text.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2020 01:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 20:27 |
|
|
Edit: of course it's the last post of the page. 
Fuzz fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Mar 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2020 01:29
|
|
