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I guess I just kinda want to know like, what's the type of threat we're worried about? Like is the question "which one has the best ability to take 1 round of lethal damage" or are broader spectrum threats like Dominate and Mesmerism on the list? Are we taking for granted that somebody's getting hit or is something like Obfuscate a valid defensive layer?
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May 14, 2022 04:18
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If you expand it to all the books, the bar for survivability is either werewolf regen or slasher-level armor (take max 1 damage from each non-environmental damage source). Deviants can also get slasher-level armor, in addition to agg damage that heals them for damage dealt, and regen that goes in a progression of "useless, arguable, okay, 1b/1l/turn and all agg at end of scene, 'you can't die permanently except from Instability.' " Which kind of moves you in the Mage direction of "we are now measuring things in purely narrative terms."
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May 14, 2022 04:25
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Demons can become virtually immune to damage even before you consider Going Loud, just off stacking damage reduction Demonic Form traits + appropriate powers. If something actually manages to hurt them through that they don't bounce back quite as easily as woofs do, though. I still fondly remember my effectively immortal demon (and you can pick up a regen ability for demonic form that actually makes recovery pretty trivial, or the one ability to disintegrate objects for healing. I had both) whose psychology was entirely shaped by being impossible to kill short of being dogpiled by like 20 high tier angels. The most flippant demon about operational security or standard demon survival instincts around that was still living. Tended to gently caress around a lot in fights. That said, they specified main splats, which excludes demons. Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 05:03 on May 14, 2022 |
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May 14, 2022 04:59
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Ferrinus posted:If we ignore context-shaping "nyah nyah I'm floating out of reach or perhaps across the Gauntlet" tricks, Maximized Mage 2E combat durability is going to come out of, in no particular order: Unless I've been playing Mage wrong for three years, (I could be; these things have happened before) most Shielding spells aren't limited by Potency. Buffs usually are, but Shielding spells tend to work for however long the Duration is, as many times as it's tested. I do like the idea of DDoSing wards, though.
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May 14, 2022 05:28
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Spector29 posted:Unless I've been playing Mage wrong for three years, (I could be; these things have happened before) most Shielding spells aren't limited by Potency. Buffs usually are, but Shielding spells tend to work for however long the Duration is, as many times as it's tested. I do like the idea of DDoSing wards, though. Page 126-127 under Creative Thaumaturgy subsection Protection. Spells can provide blanket immunity to mundane stuff, but only invoke Clashes against supernatural threats up to (Potency) times. It's one of those things that's pretty easy to miss since it's sort of just tucked away there and hardly if ever mentioned again, like mages getting rote quality on Clashes to see through obscuring magic. It makes sense within the schema of how spells work, but that's true of a half-million different things.
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May 14, 2022 05:46
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Spector29 posted:Unless I've been playing Mage wrong for three years, (I could be; these things have happened before) most Shielding spells aren't limited by Potency. Buffs usually are, but Shielding spells tend to work for however long the Duration is, as many times as it's tested. I do like the idea of DDoSing wards, though. This is from the Creative Thaumaturgy section; that's the basic way "protection" effects function. Something like half or less of the actual published Shielding spells do this (some create an additional Withstand, some do the clash thing but with no supernatural attrition), but that's Awakening for you; as ever, its weakest part is its spell list. I've sometimes considered whether, for consistency's sake, Wards and Signs as written shouldn't exist (since it doesn't fit this schema) and instead Mage Armor should give its wearer a W&S effect pertaining to its Arcanum only (or maybe more...?) but we've left it as-is in our game for now.
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May 14, 2022 05:47
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Ferrinus posted:This is from the Creative Thaumaturgy section; that's the basic way "protection" effects function. Something like half or less of the actual published Shielding spells do this (some create an additional Withstand, some do the clash thing but with no supernatural attrition), but that's Awakening for you; as ever, its weakest part is its spell list. Do those Clash Shielding spells not ablate, or do they just not mention it? I would presume the latter.
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May 14, 2022 05:49
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That Old Tree posted:Do those Clash Shielding spells not ablate, or do they just not mention it? I would presume the latter. They don't mention it, but, like... shouldn't they? Should we also assume Wards and Signs falls off after triggering [Potency] times? I go a little back and forth on this because on the other hand we could read the spell list as an indication that every spell should be expected to vary from the Creative Thaumaturgy standards a bit in various directions, because magic is weird and endlessly varied, but in general I still wish that the spell list was cut down or outright replaced with in-depth discussion of what each Practice does for each Arcanum because having to reverse-engineer it sucks and I don't really think it's been done properly a large fraction of the time. Possibly I'll have such a list to share after playing a mage in the game I'm in for longer, as we're sort of building it bit by bit as we need it.
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May 14, 2022 05:52
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Ferrinus posted:They don't mention it, but, like... shouldn't they? Well yes, it would be helpful to better signpost that stuff, but I don't think it'd be unusual for this to be the case. I think the spell list was built this way mostly on purpose, because even the best WW-adjacent books are lovely as reference texts, and then of course there's all the "not a real second edition until the last minute", generally poor template for all CoD core books and usual deadlines shenanigans. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 14, 2022 |
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May 14, 2022 06:00
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That Old Tree posted:Well yes, it would be helpful to better signpost that stuff, but I don't think it'd be unusual for this to be the case. I think the spell list was built this way mostly on purpose, because even the best WW-adjacent books are lovely as reference texts, and then of course there's all the "not a real second edition until the last minute", generally poor template for all CoD core books and usual deadlines shenanigans. I don't actually believe the Potency limitation was intended or held in mind for those listed spells, because in the first place there are a few Shieldings which don't cleave to the Creative Thaumaturgy standards at all (I've mentioned Wards & Signs, but the one in Matter is also pretty weird) and other spells which do follow the CT rules to the letter mention every clause, like Fate spells that give you dice tricks say right there in the spell text that you only get [Potency] rote actions before the well runs dry rather than simply assuming you'll be referring to Creative Thaumaturgy to figure out why Potency would be useful to the spell at all. I don't super blame them for all the reasons you mention, but I blame them a little.
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May 14, 2022 06:10
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Ferrinus posted:I don't actually believe the Potency limitation was intended or held in mind for those listed spells, because in the first place there are a few Shieldings which don't cleave to the Creative Thaumaturgy standards at all (I've mentioned Wards & Signs, but the one in Matter is also pretty weird) and other spells which do follow the CT rules to the letter mention every clause, like Fate spells that give you dice tricks say right there in the spell text that you only get [Potency] rote actions before the well runs dry rather than simply assuming you'll be referring to Creative Thaumaturgy to figure out why Potency would be useful to the spell at all. Despite the sometimes formulaic nature of spells, they obviously feature plenty of deviations for the sake of being fun and interesting, or just not being written clearly or well. Wards and Signs in particular I'm pretty confident in saying works the way it does to avoid being an omnishield that's obviously better than every other Arcanum's Shielding spell. It's dodging that but also showcasing that the CT guidelines are not totally absolute. The Protection section itself talks about things "usually" being such-and-such. I'm not super hardcore convinced I'm right or anything, I just think the book is unclear but probably means what I think it means, maybe. It's been a while since I've read it, but I'm sure there are plenty of other spots where stuff didn't get restated but is clearly assumed to (blindly) refer back to some general rule.
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May 14, 2022 06:53
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I had the exact opposite read on Wards and Signs: it IS an omnishield that works vastly better than any other Arcanum's defensive measures precisely to exist as damper against magical rocket tag. If Prime had to play by the CT rules, then my ability to turn you into a pair of smoking shoes comes down to a clash of wills coinflip pretty much no matter what, but the published W&S creates a straightforward and fairly-easily-accessed game mechanic that means it's not enough to simply buy up to Potency 6 if you want to auto-win any conflict (whether "win" here means physical incapacitation, stealing a secret telepathically, etc) (as long as you win the clash, but you only have to get lucky once). EDIT: The funny thing here is that ain't nothin' in the rules sez I can't cast Wards & Signs AND, separately, cast Globe of Invulnerability, Lesser (a Shielding Prime spell I just made up which blocks enchantment according to the standard CT rules) so that any hostile magic thrown at me has to beat a Clash and THEN get its Potency massively defrayed. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 07:31 on May 14, 2022 |
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May 14, 2022 07:26
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So the wards printed in the book do ablate and it's just not referenced due to poor editing, or they don't ablate and only off-book wards do? I'm confused.Ferrinus posted:I had the exact opposite read on Wards and Signs: it IS an omnishield that works vastly better than any other Arcanum's defensive measures precisely to exist as damper against magical rocket tag. If Prime had to play by the CT rules, then my ability to turn you into a pair of smoking shoes comes down to a clash of wills coinflip pretty much no matter what, but the published W&S creates a straightforward and fairly-easily-accessed game mechanic that means it's not enough to simply buy up to Potency 6 if you want to auto-win any conflict (whether "win" here means physical incapacitation, stealing a secret telepathically, etc) (as long as you win the clash, but you only have to get lucky once). Wards and Signs has a pretty big gap in the armor, namely that any attack spell made into a praxis nullifies it with 3+ successes. As long as I'm not relying on Potency for damage and just need the spell to take effect (or even if I do, if I buffed up dicepools with Fate and WP) that's not terribly difficult.
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May 14, 2022 08:23
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MonsieurChoc posted:Only reason Prometheans aren't everyone's answer is cause you didn't include them. Pretty sure that's the point, yeah.
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May 14, 2022 09:15
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Spector29 posted:Wards and Signs has a pretty big gap in the armor, namely that any attack spell made into a praxis nullifies it with 3+ successes. As long as I'm not relying on Potency for damage and just need the spell to take effect (or even if I do, if I buffed up dicepools with Fate and WP) that's not terribly difficult. Yeah, Mage sort of features as many ways around nominally strong defenses as doe M: tG (oh, you're indestructible and can't be targeted and have double-digit Toughness? sure would be a shame if your controller were forced to sacrifice a creature) but I still assume Wards and Signs is there to tamp down on Mages' ability to torch each other in aggregate.
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May 14, 2022 15:22
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it's been a minute since i looked at promethean, what makes them the tankiest?
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May 15, 2022 00:13
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Soonmot posted:it's been a minute since i looked at promethean, what makes them the tankiest? In short, they: -Can spend Pyros to heal, at reasonably efficient rates -Continue to act normally until their health track is completely filled with aggravated damage -Can die completely and come back after a week, at least once. -Can both heal and recover Pyros by just grabbing a live wire that's strong enough to damage a normal person for a round, with the amount recovered equivalent to how much damage it'd cause. And that's just their base kit, without anything you'd get from Refinements. Sure, they automatically take aggravated damage from fire, but they have a great combination of never stopping and relatively easy access to healing.
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May 15, 2022 13:49
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Yeah, your healing method being 'stick a fork in a power socket' is a really easy one to pull off.
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May 15, 2022 18:18
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Does that work on all prometheans or just the wretched? I feel like it'd make more sense if it were just the wretched.
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May 15, 2022 18:23
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FirstAidKite posted:Does that work on all prometheans or just the wretched? I feel like it'd make more sense if it were just the wretched. It works on all prometheans except Zeky, who use radiation instead of electricity. Prometheans at character creation are just absurdly powerful, largely down to the structure of how their abilities work where they functionally have access to their equivalent of 5 dot disciplines at character creation. Like you can just start with Divine Lightning, which gives you an aggravated (3) ranged weapon that rolls on Dex+Ath+Azoth. I'm not even sure that's the best thing to do with a Promethean to be clear, it's just a straightforward way to explain the kind of bullshit those guys can get away with.
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May 15, 2022 19:13
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that's wild, i think the only time i made a promethean character it was still 1st edition.
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May 16, 2022 01:59
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Tulip posted:It works on all prometheans except Zeky, who use radiation instead of electricity. Ok that definitely feels like something I'd houserule to make their source of healing at least match their element to some degree, even if that means galateids need a stiff breeze to refresh them.
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May 16, 2022 03:33
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I think that's how gaining pyros works?
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May 16, 2022 04:06
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Life is meant to suck for Zeky even moreso than the rest. Note that Prometheans start out ridiculously difficult to kill because their presence makes most beings slowly come to want to kill them.
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May 16, 2022 05:27
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If a Zek accomplished the Great Work of all Prometheans, transmuting themselves into a human being, they would die in agony from ARS within days.
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May 16, 2022 05:39
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FirstAidKite posted:Ok that definitely feels like something I'd houserule to make their source of healing at least match their element to some degree, even if that means galateids need a stiff breeze to refresh them. the worst part of promethean is that there's way way too many moving parts that require constantly flipping hundreds of pages around at a time Ghost Leviathan posted:Life is meant to suck for Zeky even moreso than the rest. Note that Prometheans start out ridiculously difficult to kill because their presence makes most beings slowly come to want to kill them. The rules for Zeky cascade failures is very funny It was also an object lesson in "I need to tell my players explicitly which books I'm allowing instead of just saying which line" because I had never even heard of Zeky before Session 1 and they're a pain in the rear end.
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May 16, 2022 05:49
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Kavak posted:If a Zek accomplished the Great Work of all Prometheans, transmuting themselves into a human being, they would die in agony from ARS within days. And they'll be the best days they've ever had 
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May 16, 2022 05:57
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Zeky awaken to Mage powers immediately after great working it. Or, that'd be a pretty good backstory for your nosferatu character -- you completed the great work and then immediately got bit.
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May 16, 2022 07:49
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A zeky completes the pilgrimage and is then immediately nabbed by a fae looking to complete their fiestaware diner set
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May 16, 2022 08:10
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"I did it, I did it, I'm a real boy!" (Luna)"Here's one weird trick to cure your cancer, Magath hate it."
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May 16, 2022 14:06
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Soonmot posted:that's wild, i think the only time i made a promethean character it was still 1st edition. The thing Tulip mentions is because of a change to how their Transmutations work in 2nd edition. In 2e Promethean, each Transmutation is a set of several Alembics, and each Alembic can output three escalating powers. Each Refinement is attuned to a particular pair of Transmutations, and you get access to a number of Alembics corresponding to how deep in that Refinement you've gone. This costs no experience, but when you leave a Refinement to pursue another, your new set of Alembics replaces your old set. You spend vitriol to lock in particular Alembics so you can keep them permanently. So as a result, 2e Prometheans don't have to buy up escalating dot ladders. Alembics come with their full set of three powers, and gaining more Alembics means expanding horizontally, in versatility and choices, instead of vertically to greater heights of output.
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May 16, 2022 14:18
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I Am Just a Box posted:The thing Tulip mentions is because of a change to how their Transmutations work in 2nd edition. In 2e Promethean, each Transmutation is a set of several Alembics, and each Alembic can output three escalating powers. Each Refinement is attuned to a particular pair of Transmutations, and you get access to a number of Alembics corresponding to how deep in that Refinement you've gone. This costs no experience, but when you leave a Refinement to pursue another, your new set of Alembics replaces your old set. You spend vitriol to lock in particular Alembics so you can keep them permanently. yeah if it'd been asked, i would have pointed out that part of this is also that prometheans don't get a ton more powerful. If you want to build around using a specific alembic the way some people build around a specific discipline, you can start with it at near-peak* performance. Fog is insanely powerful and you can just have it. But you also don't really progress "up" much further. Which is all to say that if you are for whatever reason concerned with max performance at character creation for a narrow objective, Prometheans are going to be tough to beat, but at 100 xp or whatever it should be a lot more even. *there are 4 alembics you can't start with but they're not like, a different tier of power they're just accessed in ways that only work post-creation
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May 16, 2022 17:26
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Anybody looking for copies of Orpheus books three through six for goon rates before they go on ebay?
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May 30, 2022 17:26
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I was bored and made some Mythic Clan Flaws for V5, for those of you looking for more weird houserules or whatever:    Done as a favor for a couple of tables in the official Discord, threw them together over a couple days so still a little rough. If people wanna playtest them or have some good edit suggestions that are more than the obligatory Ferrinus one of, "lol play a less poo poo game instead," I'm all ears. I'm trying to think up a way to tweak the Gangrel one since I don't like the fact that it can identify both Kindred and clan status, but at the same time thematically it would be silly and *super* niche if you had to know both of those things before it triggers. And there's no Salubri one because gently caress Salubri. (I mean, I have one in mind, just didn't feel like wasting the effort to write it because none of the campaigns using these have any Salubri in them)
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May 31, 2022 06:12
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Fuzz posted:If people wanna playtest them or have some good edit suggestions that are more than the obligatory Ferrinus one of, "lol play a less poo poo game instead," I'm all ears. Well, since you asked for me by name, here's my advice. Even though this is the oWoD and therefore unavoidable to a degree, I recommend that you make the game less racist, not more so. Here I am not accusing you of making the Brujah weakness specifically anti-Asian or whatever but rather doubling down on and generally deepening the metaphysical, race-essentialist (or other category-essentialist) assumptions of basically all the old games that people can and should be sorted into types with ineluctable characteristics that make stereotypes—even high-level and highly contingent stereotypes about social preferences and class position—reliably true. It can't be enough that Ventrue have mind control powers—they're inherently bossy! It can't be enough that Tremere are mystically bound to each other—they're inherently nerdy! Blood will out, after all. In VtM Revised or V20 or whatever, the Nosferatu clan weakness is that they're grotesquely ugly, and the Nosferatu also happen to have invisibility and animal control powers, and the historical result of this has been that the Nosferatu tend to hide out of sight and act as information brokers. Okay, cool. In V5, Nosferatu are still grotesquely ugly, and Nosferatu can still vanish from sight or send out verminous spies... but they also have a clan compulsion that makes them nosy and secretive. Fail the wrong roll and your Nosferatu will just start pointlessly withholding information or spying on their friends or something. Why? Well, that's just how they are, deep down. You know their type! Their behavior doesn't just evolve from their material circumstances... they're all like that, inherently, a priori. Ironically, this means that your Nosferatu flaw is actually your best one, since it's a logical, supernatural extension of their existing clan weakness instead of "Uhhh the Brujah are supposed to be really political, right? Let's make them roll saving throws vs. speechifying." Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:33 on May 31, 2022 |
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May 31, 2022 06:30
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And casually Malkavians are always the mad ones... I think with Clan Complusions, the very concept is stuck in Clan Essentialism - by RAW, the Gangrel is always animalistic and so on. Anyways, as an alternative to Complusions, I am reminded of the Unmaskings in Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition. There was push back against the notion that your samurai has a font of emotions they are keeping back to keep face, but I'm a fan. For one, the player always has control over when or how their character Unmasks, and ot has been pointed out again and again that such can be laughing as well as challenging smug samurai to duels, or as a catalyst for player samurai to push themselves beyond their normal behaviour (to very Player Character Behaviour). It's a tool to bring things into the story, rather than slapping the players in the face. Which V5 is too much a fan of.
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May 31, 2022 08:55
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In oWoD (or to be more specific if it matters, Revised Edition of V:tM) what exactly count as "mystical barriers"? I recently joined my first game of VtM and one of the players is a Lasombra with the six dot Obtenebration ability Shadowstep, which reads: "The vampire has such fine control over the darkness that he may become it briefly and reform himself from other darkness close by. The vampire may Shadowstep through walls, floors and even mystical barriers." To make a long story short, last session (third total) while we (a party of 4) were exploring Vlad the Impaler's castle we came down to the dungeons to find a large vat of blood in one of the cells. The Lasombra, being a cocky bastard, went forward to investigate the blood, when suddenly a magical barrier was errected in front of the cell. I got staked through the heart by some obfuscated vampire, and another player (Assamite) got hit by some spell that made him think he's in some hell dimension. Initiative was rolled, the Lasombra tries to Shadowstep through the barrier, but is told he explicitly cannot, and that's his turn. The rude lady vampire that staked me attempts to dominate the fourth player, who is given a Wits (I think?) difficulty 9 roll to try and resist her. He had four dice, and he rolled four 10's. Because of that, on his turn he was able to get the stake out of me, and I was able to murder her because I have claws, celerity, and got lucky because despite her having 14 dodge dice she rolled very poorly twice. The session just kinda went on from there, but I could tell the Lasombra was pretty miffed by what happened. A week's passed since the session, earlier today the ST sent me a message asking me where we read about Shadowstep, and when I showed him the raw he said it's "mystical barriers, not magical ones." When I asked for what makes the distinction, he told me that mystical means "things that are obscured, like hidden objects and practical traps". As someone that hasn't played the system I don't really know enough to really contest that, but I feel that sounds kinda bullshit.
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May 31, 2022 09:26
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In no universe does mystical mean nonmagical and hidden. If it was me I would shadowstep into a different game.
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May 31, 2022 11:26
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Yeah, that's an ST unwilling to admit they hosed up and trying to split the most meaningless of hairs (and doing it incorrectly on top of that).
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May 31, 2022 11:47
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GimpInBlack posted:Yeah, that's an ST unwilling to admit they hosed up and trying to split the most meaningless of hairs (and doing it incorrectly on top of that). Yeah your ST is covering their rear end for not reading a rule and making an arbitrary call. I'm sure somewhere in some old WoD book there is a rule about the difference between Magical and Mystical but your ST was splitting really dumb hairs over nothing. Did they at least flavor why the Lasombra couldn't walk through the barrier beyond "It's magic so no"? Because giving players a flavor texted reason for why they can't do a thing is better than just telling them no.
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May 31, 2022 15:05
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