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Still have fond memories of the hours-long werewolf combat scenes on the various digichats I played on. Wait, no, not fond. Boiling hatred.
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Dec 1, 2021 13:35
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That's a reason to love V5 by default - they nuked Celerity from orbit while still making it cool and good and actually totally worth taking, and the combat is fast and furious and over in a handful of rolls.
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Dec 2, 2021 03:36
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My impression is that V5 Fortitude has some surprisingly good early powers, while V5 Potence and Celerity actually kind of suck - until, like, the fifth dot, they aren't actually going to help your vampire win a fight against another vampire (and I suspect there's still not official word on how Celerity's fifth dot is actually supposed to work). I really do like how there are distinct powers for each Discipline rather than each one just being a single scaling stat like in V20/Requiem, but I think the developers succumbed to classic White Wolf anti-gamer paranoia and crushed the combat powers as far down as they possibly could.
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Dec 2, 2021 03:57
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I like how simple the combat is in V5, but it's also a frustrating aspect of the game since it is a blunted tool. I like how it cuts down on turns by having defense use up the defending player's turn (whether dodging or attacking back). But it really doesn't work with a group of three and grappling is near useless.
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Dec 2, 2021 10:16
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It's been years, but I'll always maintain that the oWoD should have stayed dead. Either continue with Requiem or make a third World of Darkness. V5 will never be great because it's trying to thread the needle between a 90s nostalgia-fest and a modern game without bad baggage. And that's impossible to pull off.
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Dec 3, 2021 02:17
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's been years, but I'll always maintain that the oWoD should have stayed dead. Either continue with Requiem or make a third World of Darkness. I like having the 20th Anniversary editions, but they should have very much been 20th Anniversary editions, set 20 years ago, and also some of the games are so bad and have such bad baggage that perhaps they should stay dead even then. (Vampire is redeemable because the very nature of the vampiric condition means that even though some of the clans have racist writeups, the clans actually can't be all-pure ethnostates, you're always going to get a certain number of vampires with the clan heritage outside particular cultures, so it's not too hard to do stuff like take the antiziganism out of the depiction of the Ravnos. Werewolf, on the othe rhand...) I live in fear that we'll wake up one day and find that Paradox has told Onyx Path to wrap up Chronicles of Darkness because they're fed up of the two lines competing with each other.
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Dec 3, 2021 03:13
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I didn't really like the VTR Aesthetic compared to the VTM one, but if they wanna take another shot at it I wouldn't be opposed. and before goons scramble over themselves to tell me I'm wrong, convince me otherwise, or try to label me something, stop right there, because I am also a goon and therefor wrong anyway.
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Dec 3, 2021 03:29
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Warthur posted:I live in fear that we'll wake up one day and find that Paradox has told Onyx Path to wrap up Chronicles of Darkness because they're fed up of the two lines competing with each other. They came drat close during the early days, but someone talked Swededracula out of it. RPGs make so little goddamn money anyway it wouldn't have made a real difference.
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Dec 3, 2021 03:40
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And given how little they seem to care about some lines (Tome of the Pentacle has been in Redlines for how long now?) I still wouldn't be surprised if they killed it before long anyway. Bitterly disappointed, but not surprised.
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Dec 3, 2021 04:47
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Defenestrategy posted:I didn't really like the VTR Aesthetic compared to the VTM one, but if they wanna take another shot at it I wouldn't be opposed. Requiem and Masquerade do have different aesthetics, and it's okay to like one more than the other. It's just that you could totally do something with Masquerade-like aesthetic in Requiem but not the reverse. But I'm also way more into the weirder and more horror nWoD than the more anime oWoD (though I like and have played both).
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Dec 3, 2021 05:20
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Kavak posted:They came drat close during the early days, but someone talked Swededracula out of it. RPGs make so little goddamn money anyway it wouldn't have made a real difference.
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Dec 3, 2021 10:41
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Warthur posted:This doesn't fill me with as much confidence as it should because a) precisely because the RPGs make little money, Paradox might decide it's no longer worth the time spent on licence admin to keep them alive and b) it's not like Paradox has stuck to their guns and sailed a steady course since Swedracula's initial tenure running paraWW, so who's to say they won't flip-flop on that decision again? Yeah I'm not looking to impart confidence either. They don't seem to have authorized new CoD products in a long time. There may never be an official announcement but they've basically shafted it.
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Dec 3, 2021 11:16
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cptn_dr posted:And given how little they seem to care about some lines (Tome of the Pentacle has been in Redlines for how long now?) I still wouldn't be surprised if they killed it before long anyway. Bitterly disappointed, but not surprised. There's a Lost book that I think has finally made editing after what felt like an eternity.
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Dec 3, 2021 13:49
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Ferrinus posted:My impression is that V5 Fortitude has some surprisingly good early powers, while V5 Potence and Celerity actually kind of suck - until, like, the fifth dot, they aren't actually going to help your vampire win a fight against another vampire (and I suspect there's still not official word on how Celerity's fifth dot is actually supposed to work). Erm, is this just theorycraft again? Soaring Leap is excellent and up there for top level 1 powers. Prowess is really drat good. Brutal Feed is loving brokenly good if you're a grappler. Rapid Reflexes, depending on your ST, can be really goddamn good. Fleetness is drat good. Blink is ridiculously good, though so is Traversal. 
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Dec 3, 2021 14:19
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Fuzz posted:Erm, is this just theorycraft again? Give it up friend, you'll never convince the folks who don't like V5 that it's worthy of attention beyond saying it's bad and how XYZ about it is trash compared to Requiem. Play whatever version of the games you like, do what makes you happy  I for one will be running my third (technically 4th total game) session of V5 tomorrow afternoon that I'm super excited for. My player has decided to take on the random named victim from the previous session as her "Intern" so she'll be getting a proper introduction scene as a character in the story tomorrow, along with some other fun shenanigans I've got planned because tomorrow's story takes place on Halloween in game time and what a better night to introduce that ghosts exist? Plus it gives me an excuse to have a couple of main NPC's show up in fun costumes that hint a bit more at who they were in life.
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Dec 3, 2021 16:55
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joylessdivision posted:Give it up friend, you'll never convince the folks who don't like V5 that it's worthy of attention beyond saying it's bad and how XYZ about it is trash compared to Requiem.
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Dec 3, 2021 17:03
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joylessdivision posted:Give it up friend, you'll never convince the folks who don't like V5 that it's worthy of attention beyond saying it's bad and how XYZ about it is trash compared to Requiem. V5 is probably better than the mess that is Requiem 2e, if it makes you feel better. Edit: And V5 does have some legit interesting ideas, like the Loresheets or predator type. A lot of these dieas seems haphazardly implemented though. Merging disciplines is a good idea too, since there were way too many, but they also did that in a really kludgy way. And then you get into the rework of the Clans and the Lore and theyr eally should have just made something entirely new if they didn't wanna use Requiem. MonsieurChoc fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 20:01
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Fuzz posted:Erm, is this just theorycraft again? I don't understand why people try this poo poo in text-based media. Let's take another look at my post, bolding mine: Ferrinus posted:until, like, the fifth dot, they aren't actually going to help your vampire win a fight against another vampire Literally, if your vampire has Potence 4/Celerity 4, and my vampire has Potence 0/Celerity 0, and the two of them get into a fight, yours is no more likely to win than mine is. Now, can yours run and super-jump away from mine if they start losing? Indubitably. But that's not what I was talking about. Funnily enough, this is not true of Fortitude, which at least gives you extra health and stuff like that, which means that the Gangrel, my favorite clan, can finally stunt all over Brujah, Nosferatu, etc in a way they couldn't before. As usual, V5 takes a good idea (in this case, making Potence/Celerity/Fortitude "real" Disciplines with powers instead of functionally extra stats (an idea I had years before)), but fucks it up with weird backwards design instincts, in this case classic paranoia about combat characters/powers being too appealing and somehow ruining the intended vibe. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 20:38
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What I'm saying is that V5.5 or V6 will be amazing and win me back. Maybe.
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Dec 3, 2021 20:40
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I would definitely borrow liberally from V5 if I was writing Requiem 2.5 or 3.0, that's for sure, and I'd still rather play V5 than V20 if only for novelty's sake. But come on, now. Edit: Seriously, though, how does Lightning Strike work? If I attack you, and you attack me, and you activate Lightning Strike, does your attack defend against mine but also strike me as though I rolled nothing, or do you roll a separate reflexive defense against me, or what? What if you Lightning Strike me but my friend and I are both attacking you? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 20:42
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Still mad my boys got renamed to The Ministry, but at least it is pretty reasonable.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:08
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Still mad my boys got renamed to The Ministry, but at least it is pretty reasonable. Iirc that's just the collective name and all the various sub-groups still exist? Like the Children of Damballah or the Daityas or the Serpents of the Light? I can live with The Ministry as a name. It's the Hecate I find weird since they're all descendants of the Cappadocians.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:32
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I mean, given that your average 'large' American city would have 10 or 20 vampires in it, vampire-vampire combat should actually be vanishingly rare.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:33
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Ferrinus posted:I don't understand why people try this poo poo in text-based media. Let's take another look at my post, bolding mine: Are you in brawl/melee? Do you have Prowess and/or Brutal Feed? Have you actually read the rulebook? (Prowess adds damage to unarmed attacks equal to Potence, and to attacks with weapons equal to one half Potence, rounded up. Brutal Feed straight up let's you completely drain an enemy vampire in a single round if you succeed in grappling them, thereby drastically hindering their ability to use any powers). Fuzz fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 21:35
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Fuzz posted:(Prowess adds damage to unarmed attacks equal to Potence, and to attacks with weapons equal to one half Potence, rounded up. Brutal Feed straight up let's you completely drain an enemy vampire in a single round of you succeed in grappling them, thereby drastically hindering their ability to use any powers). Ah, the good old immortal grapple -> disarm -> amaranth -> blood hunt combo from the card game. Always a pain when fighting against a Theo Bell deck.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:41
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TheCenturion posted:I mean, given that your average 'large' American city would have 10 or 20 vampires in it, vampire-vampire combat should actually be vanishingly rare. That seems really really small. From my own perspective, that means Atlanta Metro[population ~6 million] has a vampire population of only .00001% Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 21:44
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Defenestrategy posted:That seems really really small. The ratio given is usually 1 vampire per 100k humans. So ~60 vampires in Atlanta. Still enough that everybody knows everybody by name and probably by sight, and that losing a single vampire is a significant chunk of the local population.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:51
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Towns that see a lot of population movements, like say New York, can go as high as 1 per 50K.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:53
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Fuzz posted:Are you in brawl/melee? Oh, man, this is hilarious. Here's the problem: I have read the rulebook, which lists the effect of Prowess as just making your fists deal aggravated to mortals and, I believe, Brutal Feed as some weird fiddly thing that's also mostly lethal to normies. I see that Prowess got errataed to actually increasing your combat damage, which means that at some point after release a dev actually read their own book and reached the same conclusion I did: "oh, poo poo, we forgot to make vampires with Potence any better at fighting!" I don't really agree with you about Brutal Feed, because the funny thing there is that while it means you can effectively inflict more problems after landing a grapple, Potence does not actually make you any better at establishing or controlling a grapple than somebody without any Potence, and mana steal is useful long-term but will not necessarily make a difference in only three short rounds (especially since it requires you to use fangs rather than a real weapon). Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 22:00
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Yep! I found that regular attacks were better than grapples because grapples take a turn to do anything. A turn in which you can y'know, just deal damage?
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Dec 3, 2021 22:17
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And that's one of the three turns you usually get, period!
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Dec 3, 2021 22:20
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Ferrinus posted:I don't really agree with you about Brutal Feed, because the funny thing there is that while it means you can effectively inflict more problems after landing a grapple, Potence does not actually make you any better at establishing or controlling a grapple than somebody without any Potence, and mana steal is useful long-term but will not necessarily make a difference in only three short rounds (especially since it requires you to use fangs rather than a real weapon). This is objectively wrong, as grappling is often an opposed strength check and something like Prowess specifically would apply. It's even used that way in multiple Paradox supported game streams. You can also just do a bite and feed as a called attack in a single round with -2 difficulty, which if you can land it and have brutal feed, whoever is on the other end is gonna have a bad time.
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Dec 3, 2021 22:24
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Fuzz posted:This is objectively wrong, as grappling is often an opposed strength check and something like Prowess specifically would apply. It's even used that way in multiple Paradox supported game streams. No, I'm pretty sure you're the objectively wrong one here. Prowess adds damage to melee attacks and to "feats of strength". The exact phrase "feats of strength" comes up later in the book describing the usual bend bars/lift gates poo poo you'd roll Athletics for in D&D. I understand why streamers would do that, because they mistakenly believe that Potence is supposed to be good, but they're sadly mistaken. I would be very cagey about called shots costing me any amount of dice in a system like V5, because your attack roll is also your defense roll. If we go from my 8 dice vs your 8 dice to my 8 dice vs your 6 dice you're at a much greater risk of just eating poo poo entirely because I roll higher than you do.
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Dec 3, 2021 22:30
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Ferrinus posted:No, I'm pretty sure you're the objectively wrong one here. Prowess adds damage to melee attacks and to "feats of strength". The exact phrase "feats of strength" comes up later in the book describing the usual bend bars/lift gates poo poo you'd roll Athletics for in D&D. I understand why streamers would do that, because they mistakenly believe that Potence is supposed to be good, but they're sadly mistaken. I dunno, Jason Carl works for White Wolf and helped write the book, and he applies it that way although LAbN did have a lot of homebrew in the form of carrying a lot of Thaumaturgy forward which want explicitly statted or in any books (yet). I totally agree on the 2 die penalty, but hey, the option is there if you want to take it.
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Dec 3, 2021 22:51
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I was bored and thinking about Carthian law and then daydreaming an Ordo Dracul social scientist character and came up with a fun hypothetical unified theory of CoD Kindred: The Hecate Hypothesis. Named after the Gaia Hypothesis, the Hecate Hypothesis views Kindred as an important but subsidiary part of a larger ecosystem which makes up a superorganism (let's call it Hecate) that is the proper level of analysis for vampires. This view sees the essence of that superorganism as being various phenomena that interact between a lack of life-force and the world. From a Mage cosmology, this view essentially sees Hecate as the interrelated and interdependent interactions in the phenomenological world of a lower-depth characterized by lacking life-force. The Kindred are the center of this ecology and superorganism. A Kindred in this sense is a semi-bound being created from the interaction of a dead mortal and the lack of life-force. Other supernatural creatures feed off mortal energies and/or are made from dead mortals, but only Kindred are both and feed off this specific kind of life-force. Any being meeting these two categories will eventually converge into standard Kindred physiology. Within the Hecate superorganism, Kindred play a central role: they serve as its primary consumer, the herbivores of its food chain. Uniquely able to consume autotrophs (blood from the living) and turn it into the energy for other beings in the food chain (vitae) they are the most common and important part of the superorganism. A Kindred is, essentially, the will and ability to turn life-force into vitae combined with features of the human they were created from. This is usually but not always synonymous with "a bunch of Vitae piloting a specific dead body around," but exceptions exist that remain clearly Kindred. The psychological structures that result from the dual-origin of Kindred is exactly the same as the Man / Beast dichotomy, with the Man representing the factors originating from the specific dead human and the Beast representing factors originating from the lower-depths. Kindred are importantly only semi-bound beings. While the overwhelming majority cannot survive total destruction of the human body they were created from, some can. Furthermore, many Kindred phenomena involve a displacement of self. Auspex 5 is the obvious one but this includes things like creating ghouls and forming blood bonds. This semi-disembodiment is usually achieved through the physical medium of vitae, but not always. Importantly, things like predator's auras, the kiss' euphoria, or the magic social contracts of the Carthians or the Invictus does not involve Vitae directly. Strix are directly embodied lack-of-life-force. When they sometimes claim to be Kindred's Beasts they aren't entirely wrong-- the Beast is essentially the manifestation in Kindred psychology and physiology of the stuff the Strix purely embodies. They are the most important secondary consumers of the Hecate ecology, although many other creatures exist including importantly powerful and/or elder Kindred themselves. So there you go. A unified theory of "what are the Kindred?" and "what are the Syrix?" and "why does Kindred carcinization occur?" and "who's backing the Kindred in the ascension war?" and "what's up with the beast?" and "how does Carthian law work?" and "where does Cruac come from?" and such.
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Dec 3, 2021 23:22
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I don't actually trust people who helped write the book to know all the rules in the book (or, indeed, the rules they helped write). Maybe his running it that way means there's going to be explicit errata at some point in the future, but at the moment punches and headlocks aren't feats of strength. Now, technically it's better to have the ability to make a called shot than not, just because there's some hypothetical scenario in which that option could be useful. I really don't like it for a fight against an equal, though, unless you're already losing and may as well risk it all on a hail Mary (but if you're already losing, making a crappy bite attack in exchange for shifting some Hunger points over isn't going to do anything about the fact that you've taken way more damage than the other guy).
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Dec 3, 2021 23:23
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Defenestrategy posted:From my own perspective, that means Atlanta Metro[population ~6 million] has a vampire population of only .00001% The "Atlanta Metro" is literally "the northern half of the state of Georgia", so even 60 vampires there is kinda meh. If you look at "Fulton + DeKalb counties", you're down to like 18.
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Dec 4, 2021 07:52
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Attempts at population numbers were a mistake and thrown out the window by the first Chicago by Night.
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Dec 4, 2021 15:23
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Dawgstar posted:Attempts at population numbers were a mistake and thrown out the window by the first Chicago by Night. They should have known that wouldn't stop most nerds.
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Dec 4, 2021 15:38
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The only rule that actually matters is that the mortal population can support just slightly fewer vampires than are in your chronicle, to stoke resource tensions. The rest is mere puff.
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Dec 4, 2021 15:43
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