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Would the mind arcana work on sentient ghosts or spirits?
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Jul 4, 2020 22:16
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Soonmot posted:Would the mind arcana work on sentient ghosts or spirits? No. That's Death and Spirit. Mind works on Goetia.
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Jul 4, 2020 22:46
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If you want to edit the mind of a ghost, you need both Mind and Death, is how I interpret the RAW. Generally, if you want to influence ephemera, you need their core arcanum as well as whatever else you're trying to do. So you could cast Prime 4 'Revelation' on a spirit or ghost, but only with Spirit or Death (probably 4 as well). Otherwise you're running up against a conceptual barrier. Death alone won't edit a ghost's mind, but can command ghosts, bind them, and mess with their Fetters (which can probably also mess with their minds indirectly). Death can interact with everything that is ghostly about them. The same is true with Spirit; you can't edit a spirit's memories just with Spirit, but you can with Spirit and Mind together. This generally means that ephemera are significantly harder to mess with in elaborate magical ways outside of their core arcanum, because it takes a very specific combination of skills. There's a number of spells for making special Grimoires in the Signs of Sorcery book that require Prime And Also Another One, so a Prime mage needs to dip into other arcana in order to make a living grimoire or a grimoire spirit or whatever. (Honestly, I'd house rule that to be easier, because those special grimoires are really cool and I want players to make them).
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Jul 5, 2020 00:00
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When in doubt, answering "you need both" is usually good because it helps differentiate characters (a Mind + Spirit specialist can do things that neither of the others can on their own) and creates a strong incentive to work together as a cabal for the combinations you can't float by yourself.
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Jul 5, 2020 00:20
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I'd have to check to be sure, but I'd swear that Mind is perfectly fine on its own to wipe a ghost's memory or inflame a spirit's emotions or whatever. They're minded beings, and it's not like you need Mind/Life to use telepathy on a human being. The 2E book makes clear that it's fine for different Arcana to be able to spoof the same effect through different means, but this was true back in 1E - Awakening isn't like Ascension where you'd need to combine every possibly-relevant sphere to affect anything weird. In fact I assume that necromantic rather than psychic control works and feels completely differently to a ghost that's victim of one rather than the other - they get shackled and puppeteered in the first case, while in the second case they might not remember what happened or even think it was their idea. Of course, no amount of Mind magic will allow you to trap a ghost in a bottle, uproot or replace its anchor, force it to manifest even if it doesn't natively have the power to do so, etc. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Jul 5, 2020 00:43
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Joe Slowboat posted:(Honestly, I'd house rule that to be easier, because those special grimoires are really cool and I want players to make them). I did that with imbued items this week. I'm sick of people going, "I don't want to spend all that xp just for prime 4", and made up a houserule to open it up to actually getting used more than twice in 3 years. I get the reason it's prime 4 attainment, but it really means I so rarely see then in games. It's one of those things where we've run into issues at the higher end of gnosis and cool ability where the game balance for no/low xp games doesn't really balance well all the way up the chart.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:00
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You don't need Death as long as the ghost is in a state you can perceive - e.g. being Materialized. If he's in sensory range, you can target him. He has a mind, so Mind works.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:17
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Jhet posted:I did that with imbued items this week. I'm sick of people going, "I don't want to spend all that xp just for prime 4", and made up a houserule to open it up to actually getting used more than twice in 3 years. I get the reason it's prime 4 attainment, but it really means I so rarely see then in games. It's one of those things where we've run into issues at the higher end of gnosis and cool ability where the game balance for no/low xp games doesn't really balance well all the way up the chart. I mean it is just Vim, isn't it. That's why it is there.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:30
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To this day i stand by my Silver Ladder Mastigos' strategy of embodying the "little old lady who swallowed a fly" tactic of just summoning larger and larger demon-god kings of goetic thought to take down the one he summoned originally to solve the problem he was facing.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:38
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Nessus posted:It seems like Prime in general just... is kind of the "cool thing" tax, it's not that it's got bad effects but across Awakening and Ascension it seems to be more "Do you want to do a surprisingly large number of common ideas for a magician? Welp, hope you bought When Awakening 1e was being designed, Prime was very nearly not an Arcanum at all, and instead just metamagic powers you got with Gnosis.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:43
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I like all the stuff Prime does that's more closely connected to truth and revelation, and also the dispel/warding magic. The imbued item thing does seem like a tax, but I would be pretty ok with the idea that a Prime 4 mage can act as the person funneling their friends' spells into objects? In general I think the system doesn't get too upset by mages being able to build on each others' magic, via ritual construction of compatible imagos that then intersect; in particular, all the cool Prime+Other Arcanum spells would be much more fun if the cabal could collaboratively bring in different elements of the magic.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:46
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i could have sworn there were already rules for that but a ctrl+f in the core rulebook for "ritual", collaborative or cooperative casting, or multiple casters turned up nothing  e: wait! found it  it's really restrictive though, i don't think i've ever played this RAW Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Jul 5, 2020 01:51
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i could have sworn there were already rules for that but a ctrl+f in the core rulebook for "ritual", collaborative or cooperative casting, or multiple casters turned up nothing Yeah, it goes: If more than one person has the Arcana needed for the spell, they can use the proper CofD teamwork rules (effectively, one leads, the others roll their dice pools and provide a bonus to the leader). If a mage has a little bit of the Arcana but not enough to cast it, they can add a smaller bonus. Everyone else is a ritual cheerleader, and can be used as a yantra. What Mage doesn't allow under any circumstances (I was rather strict on this as line developer and nuked at least three attempts by freelancers to sneak it in as a Merit or generic crossover power that even looked like it might work) is allow, for example, a Mage with Death 3 and Fate 1 and a mage with Fate 3 and Death 1 to collaborate to cast a Death 3 Fate 3 spell. someone has to be able to cast the spell on their own. For the game design reason that allowing it makes mages as omni-competent as certain corners of the internet think they are. And the setting justification that collaborating like that makes no sense whatsoever with the fiction of what a mage does when casting a spell. You could do it with a Merit in Tome of Mysteries in 1e. It was called out by name in what not to do when designing 2e. EDIT: Should note that two of the Orders have benefits when group-casting as long as the mages involved all have their Order Merit: Free Councillors using the same focus of Techne get 8-again for the main roll, and can treat Sleepers who happen to be acting appropriately nearby as "ritualists" (say, a cabal who all have Techne: Programming in a hackerthon). Mystagogues add more dice bonus than other mages when they have a bit of the Arcana needed, and if they're a full participant they add an auto successes to the bonus they provide the leader. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Jul 5, 2020 02:06
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Joe Slowboat posted:I like all the stuff Prime does that's more closely connected to truth and revelation, and also the dispel/warding magic. 2e's truth and revelation spells are a really cool addition to Prime, fit with the Awakening cosmology, and honestly make me wish for a further break from Ascension and 1e to rename Prime, whose name was always out of place, to fit with the other Arcana and name the actual phenomenon it rules, becoming the Truth Arcanum or more likely the Sign Arcanum.
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Jul 5, 2020 02:40
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Yeah, the teamwork stuff is good, and it's limits work fine. We've run into the problem though of the mages being gnosis 6-8 and having multiple masteries. So I needed a solution for imbued items because I don't want everyone feeling like they need to buy 4 dots in prime to do 1-2 cool things that make a ton of sense for their characters. This clearly wouldn't work for early game items and wouldn't balance right. So I just made a merit that they had to discover that was expensive enough to make them think about it, but required mastery of the arcana in use along with a prime master to be able to team up on making imbued items. I get why the rules work like they do, but the mages in my game have out grown a few things and I don't expect play testing of what happens when everyone has a ton of power. We're clearly into the territory where we're starting to bump up against possible archmastery. We still use the teamwork rules as written though. I know in 1e I'd run into the issue of people cross-casting in teams like DaveB's example with merits and it cheapened things considerably in a way that didn't make sense.
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Jul 5, 2020 03:34
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My Prime-focused player really enjoyed having it. As an Adamantine Arrow with a view towards becoming a Sentinel, having anti-magic capabilities and the ability to dispel things or ward against magic was interesting for him.
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Jul 5, 2020 04:21
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I poured a bunch of truth, symbols, resonance, and language powers onto Prime when houseruling 1E. Among other things it could translate or scramble texts, alter or weaponize vibes (like taking the resonance of a cross or some salt and imbuing it into a sword or spell to strike a demon), dematerialize things so they could surf leylines, and screw around with ritual/symbolic magic of any sort, including that of other supernatural creatures. We had to add a bunch of “evoke or manipulate emergent behavior” stuff to Spirit for basically the same reason - it was boring to have an “exclusively interact with one particular category of thing that might not meaningfully appear in any scene and isn’t even real IRL” Arcanum.
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Jul 5, 2020 12:17
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Vtes things: About-diversity-and-inclusivity-including-vekn-rules-team-rulings-05-07-2020quote:1. Black Lives Matter I get what they are trying to do, especially after Wizards recently did something similar with Magic: The Gathering, however if they want to remove racist stereotypes the entire Ravnos clan may be in peril.
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Jul 5, 2020 20:35
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Angry Lobster posted:Vtes things: About-diversity-and-inclusivity-including-vekn-rules-team-rulings-05-07-2020 I mean, Achilli already basically wiped them out in Revised, wouldn't take much now to finish the deal.
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Jul 5, 2020 20:47
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EimiYoshikawa posted:I mean, Achilli already basically wiped them out in Revised, wouldn't take much now to finish the deal.
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Jul 5, 2020 20:56
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I figure the choice is either 1) Focus on poo poo like brahmin performing ascetic torment on themselves to use thaumaturgy, warrior caste and the path of paradox being transformed in to "assamites, only hindu", and any western ravnos being presented as dead-eyed survivalists and hedonists a la the lost boys; or 2) Nuke them all a second time when Zapathasura realizes that the little slice of hell it made in the deadlands needs vassals and so just unmakes them all by rewriting reality. I lean towards 2 as the cleanest solution.
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Jul 5, 2020 20:59
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It's tricky, especially for a card game. While Ravnos are not the most popular clan by a long shot, they are not infrequently played either, retconning them out of existence would be huge. Probably the safest way would be to not reprint them in the future and leave them to rot.
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Jul 5, 2020 21:34
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citybeatnik posted:I figure the choice is either e: if it's for a card game couldn't you create new cards with the same gameplay function? I haven't played VTAS since it was Jyhad
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Jul 5, 2020 22:12
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Nessus posted:e: if it's for a card game couldn't you create new cards with the same gameplay function? I haven't played VTAS since it was Jyhad Yeah, I guess they could redo those cards with a different name and artwork and then release them as tournament promos or as freebies in other products, that's how they have handled recent changes in existing cards.
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Jul 5, 2020 22:29
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Yeah, the Ravnos alreayd got a pretty big rework of their entire history to make them less racist and also actually interesting. They're still problematic but I love them now. At least keep the Kinyoni (African Ravnos with completely different culture).
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Jul 5, 2020 22:37
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At their core I think the Ravnos' problem is, similar to the Malkavians, their shtick is just problematic. It feels like no matter how you pull back on the clan, you wind up with an ethnicity who are predisposed to having a sin which is yikes. There was a lot of work went into rehabbing them (and thank God Ericsson didn't get his paws on them) from the admittedly low bar of 'Roma tricksters' but they still feel like not quite okay. To really put the work in I think you'd need an expert to do 'what would parasitic undead blood drinkers look like if their culture originated in the sub-continent of India' and I don't blame anybody for not wanting to do that work and instead just ignoring them because that would be a lot of work, not unlike the Kuei-Jin.
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Jul 5, 2020 22:43
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Could someone educate me on why "Tsigane" is banned, if they feel up to it? I'm not arguing against the ban or anything, I'm just literally ignorant. All the other cards are obvious to me.
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Jul 5, 2020 22:48
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Free Gratis posted:Could someone educate me on why "Tsigane" is banned, if they feel up to it? I'm not arguing against the ban or anything, I'm just literally ignorant. All the other cards are obvious to me.
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Jul 5, 2020 22:56
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Do away with the whole concept of splats being tied to ethnic groups in the first place, anything that's now too thin to sustain an actual developed splat gets rewritten or memory holed, gently caress 'em.
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Jul 5, 2020 23:07
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Yeah, after Deadlands Reboot I'm extra over trying to fix bad poo poo with metaplot. I don't expect anyone making WoD to  over slaver statues or whatever (but who loving really knows in 2020), but it was already a dumb idea before that shitshow.
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Jul 5, 2020 23:15
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That Old Tree posted:Yeah, after Deadlands Reboot I'm extra over trying to fix bad poo poo with metaplot. I don't expect anyone making WoD to wait what happened with the deadlands reboot
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Jul 5, 2020 23:24
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Pope Guilty posted:Do away with the whole concept of splats being tied to ethnic groups in the first place, anything that's now too thin to sustain an actual developed splat gets rewritten or memory holed, gently caress 'em.
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Jul 5, 2020 23:26
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Blockhouse posted:wait what happened with the deadlands reboot They're finally getting rid of the Confederacy, but had to do some metaplot bullshit to explain it instead of just saying "so long losers." Then when the recent protests started taking down statues, Shane Hensley the owner started "tsking" about how sure maybe the statues should come down but we need to do this the Right and Lawful Way.
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Jul 5, 2020 23:30
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Dawgstar posted:At their core I think the Ravnos' problem is, similar to the Malkavians, their shtick is just problematic. This. I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around ways to play a Malkavian or Ravnos and just decided not to. I love the general idea and disciplines but I'm just not equipped on a personal level to tackle those issues.
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Jul 6, 2020 02:07
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They should just dispense entirely with the 'malkavians have mental illness' schtick and lean in hard on the 'malkavians have prophetic/reality-overperceiving abilities, which tend to hinder their ability to deal with the world like a person without that 'gift', to the point where most other vampires discount the actual value of their abilities due to the sheer amount of trouble they cause'. Of course, expecting players or STs to be able to portray that sort of thing well is asking a lot, and if it's not portrayed well...
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Jul 6, 2020 02:26
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At least with Dark Ages the Malkavians have to deal with poo poo like imbalances of the four humors.
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Jul 6, 2020 02:47
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Free Gratis posted:Could someone educate me on why "Tsigane" is banned, if they feel up to it? I'm not arguing against the ban or anything, I'm just literally ignorant. All the other cards are obvious to me. In french it's one of the words used for Gypsie, along with Romanichel and Gitan.
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Jul 6, 2020 03:20
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That Old Tree posted:They're finally getting rid of the Confederacy, but had to do some metaplot bullshit to explain it instead of just saying "so long losers." Imagine. In the Year of Our Lord 2020 Deadlands finally said 'the Civil War was fought over slavery and it was horrible and anybody pro-slavery is also a horrible and a villain' which is like the bare minimum and then all he had to do was keep his mouth shut, but the white centrist gonna white centrist.
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Jul 6, 2020 03:24
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Nessus posted:I believe it would be equivalent to having a Jewish character named Judah ben Moses, i.e. "C'mon, guys." I am not sure if tsigane is a term of abuse but it seems like a clear alternate spelling of szgany/zigany/etc. MonsieurChoc posted:In french it's one of the words used for Gypsie, along with Romanichel and Gitan. Appreciate it. Thank you.
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Jul 6, 2020 05:07
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When I first started to run V20 I came very close to saying "no Ravnos" but one of my players talked me round on it and her Indian-English Ravnos PC ended up being an incredibly engaging part of the story - for one thing, the PC ended up being made a Primogen of a Camarilla city due to political intrigue and the opportunities for Storytelling in that in-group out-group tension, not to mention in-universe anti-Ravnos prejudice, really did make them feel like a strong part of the setting which nothing else could fully replicate. That said, she did explicitly say "playing an Indian Ravnos not a Roma one because yikes", so...
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Jul 7, 2020 15:17
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