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Soonmot posted:I also missed the part where auspices weren't the moon you changed under? In Heart of the Forest it was the moon you were born under.
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Oct 25, 2022 16:46
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Kavak posted:In Heart of the Forest it was the moon you were born under. I am pretty sure this was always the case.
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Oct 25, 2022 16:47
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Fuzz commented that it was moved away from birth, maybe they were mistaken? Edit: it's been forever since I played wta, but I remember it being Default form: birth Auspices: first change Tribe: choice/ birth
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Oct 25, 2022 16:48
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Yeah I was going by HotF, I never actually ever played WtA or owned any books because frankly it always was weird homophobic furry poo poo that was way too obsessed with breeding and crap for me to ever be interested when I got into WoD in 1997.
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Oct 25, 2022 18:51
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I was recently mindlessly clicking around the White Wolf Wiki because I was at work. I always kind of assumed that the thread title was making fun of some terrible character someone had created for some third string splat. Finding out that it was from actual White Wolf material had me laughing.
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Oct 25, 2022 18:55
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Skios posted:I was recently mindlessly clicking around the White Wolf Wiki because I was at work. I always kind of assumed that the thread title was making fun of some terrible character someone had created for some third string splat. Finding out that it was from actual White Wolf material had me laughing. The greatest and only legacy of my ineffectual reign as IK.
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Oct 25, 2022 19:36
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Don’t have much interest in Werewolf anymore due to it having even more problematic stuff in its roots than even Vampire, but unlike Vampire is based around a core gameplay loop and setting that doesn’t interest me. I’m glad W5 is attempting to polish it up, though. I dislike W:tA (and M:tA) enough that, even when I use werewolves or mages as Vampire NPCs, I do my best to highlight that these are *not* the versions of those creatures from their eponymous games. They’re not Garou or Awakened, they’re Lupines and witches. EDIT: Also, what’s the point of having the Hispo form? I can understand the changes in utility between human/wolf-like human/human-like wolf/wolf, but with those other forms is there any effective advantage to “XL wolf” vs “medium wolf”? Gatto Grigio fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Oct 25, 2022 |
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Oct 25, 2022 20:09
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The advantage of the hispo form is that a wolf the size of a motorcycle is cool, and what form you choose to fight in is a potential avenue of self-expression for players. Some folks want to be Lon Chaney, and for them Glabro exists. Some folks just want to be a fuckoff giant wolf, and for them Crinos is an unsatisfying compromise.
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Oct 25, 2022 20:28
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If I recall correctly, Hispo used to have stats as good as (arguably better, thanks to the primacy of Dexterity, than those of) Crinos. Like Crinos was +4/+2 vs. Hispo's +3/+3 such that it really was a stylistic choice which to use. It sounds like W5 is gonna be a lot clearer about, no, Crinos is the WAR form, it's stronger than the others, Hispo is big but not that big. The best setup is of course Forsaken's where the stylistic choice is between Dalu and Urshul, and while Gauru is clearly superior to both it's also risk, resource or cooldown-limited in some way such that you can't just drop it on every trash mob you aggro. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Oct 25, 2022 |
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Oct 25, 2022 20:42
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Think of Lupus as stealth mode; 'oooh, lookit the doggie!' Think of Hispo as 'fast travel' mode. Also good for dramatically posing on a hill or building with the moon behind you. Think of Crinos as 'RRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH *terrible ripping and crunching sounds*' Think of Glabro as 'ok, gang of street punks, lets dance.' Think of Homid as 'indiana-jones-vs-swordsman.jpg'
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Oct 25, 2022 21:12
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I've just remembered another neat touch in Forsaken: being in Dalu form gave you +1 to cast rituals. As well as being a good way to shoot or stab people, the form was ceremonial.
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Oct 25, 2022 21:16
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Yeah in WTF the urshal form was pretty much the battle form unless you were using weapons, I don't really recall using it much in WTA since crinos didn't have the drawbacks that gauru dose in wtf
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Oct 25, 2022 23:21
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Hispo also didn't trigger Delirium so urban werewolfs preferred it. Coupled with having super strong jaws made it a favored form for my Rat-totem having Bone Gnawer. You just couldn't use a klaive. Unless you held it in your mouth like that Dark Souls boss. I continue to be irked that long-running is treated as a Lupus thing since it was humans that preferred the "going to just keep chasing after this thing like the monster from It Follows" method of hunting but I'm not sure how you square the circle with Lupus giving you buffs. Other than focusing more on Dexterity/Perception-analogue than pure stamina.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:22
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You can use melee weapons in Gauru, so unless your werewolf is specifically a gunner or archer, Gauru is your last resort in combat whether you go around armed or fight bare-handed. I think Urhan has a small bonus to tracking rolls above that of Urshul, so it's your go-to for finding prey if not actually running it down or engaging it.
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Oct 26, 2022 00:08
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Each of the forms was supposed to have a role in the siskur'dah for werewolf. I think it was like.. Human to gather information wolf to find Dire wolf to chase Big dude to wear down Werewolf to kill
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Oct 26, 2022 00:47
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I still don't get how y'all can whip those WtF nouns out so easily unless a spreadsheet/autoreplace is in use. Like say what you will about the goofy word choices but having each of the forms start with a different letter lets the hamster that powers my brain grokk the differences.
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Oct 26, 2022 02:14
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I get the feeling the forms will play into Rage generation and maintenance heavily, as Rage dice seem to be the primary currency you're gonna be working with. Homid and Lupine - for generating Rage more easily, despite being "weaker." Glabro and Hispo - possibly Rage neutral to maintain, offer advantages and you can easily use Gifts, but generating more Rage is harder. Crinos - actively uses Rage and will burn through it after a fashion, either directly or by increasing the risk to losing them via Rouse-like checks. This is based on some discussion with Achilli since he popped into the official WoD discord today and mentioned vaguely that forms would be key to managing your Rage wisely. If they do something along those lines, that'd actually be pretty cool, and I could see an interesting sort of ebb and flow to sessions by shifting forms to build up your Rage and get angry, then unleash it like a freakshow when needed.
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Oct 26, 2022 03:37
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I loving Love Conlangs In Sci-Fi And Fantasy I loving Love Learning Confusing Made Up Bullshit Vocabulary And Grammar For Versimilitude (No seriously I was raised on Star Trek and regularly did the Klingon salute with my mom this is nothing)
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Oct 26, 2022 03:42
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citybeatnik posted:I still don't get how y'all can whip those WtF nouns out so easily unless a spreadsheet/autoreplace is in use. I actually do have to check the PDFs sometimes even for stuff like what the form name is for regular human guy (it's Hishu). Might have a better handle on it if I got more actual play experience with the game. Though I appreciate that the two wolf forms Urshul and Urhan both clearly have a component to their names that means "wolf," and you can see that component in the conlang elsewhere too. I love the First Tongue as a conceit for worldbuilding. It's got a consistent flavor to it rather than everything being all over the place in sound and tone. I don't love how the 2e corebook goes in on using the conlang for a lot of different important setting and mechanical terms. It should be used to fluff up passages on how Little Road Tyrants can more properly be called sah-sik-nisik. You don't have to remember that in play but it gives you a feel that contributes to what you bullshit up. It shouldn't be used in passages where you're looking up what tribe learns this gift or even just writeups of what the tribes are up to in this area so you better remember which ones were the Farsil Luhal. It especially shouldn't be used in mechanical passages discussing kuruth because the non-conlang name for that is Death Rage and why wouldn't you want to say Death Rage all the time in your werewolf game.
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Oct 26, 2022 06:55
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So I've been replaying Bloodlines and I'm curious about if something in the game matches up with tabletop. I notice vampire hunters come with swords, and when I've fought Shovelheads, my Unarmed character is less effective than if I have aa Knife, even though I have no points in Melee. Of course there is Bashing vs. Lethal damage too and you can only improve Bashing soak with attributes. So do Kindred have a natural resistance to being punched in the face or even shot with bullets but bladed weapon will slice through them much more simply? Probably not as easily as if they were human but still more easily than hitting them really hard with a blunt object.
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Oct 26, 2022 06:58
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NikkolasKing posted:So I've been replaying Bloodlines and I'm curious about if something in the game matches up with tabletop. The tabletop is that there is bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage. If you fill up somebody's track of bashing further bashing turns into lethal, and again for lethal into agg. Max agg is what actually kills you. Very few things cause agg directly, and its usually supernatural weaknesses like fire for vampires. Nearly all forms of blunt objects are bashing. Anyway Guns usually cause lethal, but they cause bashing to vampires because vampires are just kind of anatomically not the same as humans: humans are basically a series of overlapping plastic bags filled with various types of water that if they leak or mingle into each other humans die. Vampires really just have vitae and most of their organs are kind of vestigial. So its not that blades are especially effective against vampires, they do lethal to humans and vampires just the same, but vampires have a special carve out resistance to bullets.
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Oct 26, 2022 07:25
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Yeah, the conlang as spice is fine but I shouldn't have to deal with "no-Mesopotamian as run backwards through the Great Vowel Shift" when i go through the appendix.NikkolasKing posted:So I've been replaying Bloodlines and I'm curious about if something in the game matches up with tabletop. Kindred halve bashing, and gunshots are considered bashing unless they target the head. Now, personally I'd have had them halve lethal because why the gently caress would a vampire give much of a poo poo about being pierced with a rapier but a broken bone would /smart/ and slow them down. But Blade was a thing so there you go.
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Oct 26, 2022 07:28
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They killed Dracula with a bowie knife, is why.
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Oct 26, 2022 11:46
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thatbastardken posted:They killed Dracula with a bowie knife, is why. ... you know what I can respect that. Kind of like how old school D&D rules for killing off a rakhasha were inspired by Koljack the nighstalker.
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Oct 26, 2022 12:18
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Tulip posted:The tabletop is that there is bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage. If you fill up somebody's track of bashing further bashing turns into lethal, and again for lethal into agg. Max agg is what actually kills you. Very few things cause agg directly, and its usually supernatural weaknesses like fire for vampires. Nearly all forms of blunt objects are bashing. Vampires can also naturally soak (defend against) Lethal damage in the old editions. Old edition breakdown of damage: Mortals: Bashing does full damage and can be soaked and mitigated by armor Lethal does full damage unless you have armor Aggravated does full damage unless you have armor Kindred: Bashing does half damage, can be soaked and mitigated by armor Lethal does full damage but can be soaked and mitigated by armor Aggravated does full damage and can only be soaked by powers like Fortitude or mitigated with armor Bashing is basically blunt weapons and your fists, Lethal is anything with a blade or bullets for mortals (bullets are Bashing for Kindred), Agg is fire, sunlight, electricity and some types of acid, claws and fangs of supernatural stuff. Confused yet? The old combat system was rear end. In V5, which is post Bloodlines but relevant for all the recent games, there's only two damage types, Superficial and Aggravated. Everyone halves Superficial damage, even mortals. Aggravated damage just translates directly to health lost. There's no such thing as "soak," what you roll in combat directly translates to damage somehow because it's all streamlined into one roll for each attack rather than 3. Where the gradation comes is in who takes which type of damage from what. For Mortals, almost everything is Aggravated damage other than fists or bludgeoning weapons. Armor lets them mitigate Aggravated damage, but as specified, almost everything does Agg so it's basically their only defensive option. For kindred, basically everything other than sunlight, fire, fangs and claws of other supes, and really high voltage electricity is Superficial... those things are the only sources of Aggravated. Armor does gently caress all with the exception of stuff that specifically protects against the various types of aggravated damage, but that's okay because the vast majority of things ultimately do Superficial damage because they're just walking corpses. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Oct 26, 2022 |
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Oct 26, 2022 12:58
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Pre-V5 Agg damage was also really loving hard for mortals to recover from, and if they did they tended to be maimed. Yeah, Kindred had to spend both Willpower and a bunch of blood to heal one level a night but mortals were fuuuucked. In part because Agg also included massive physical trauma. Like being attacked with a chainsaw and losing a limb. Something out of the norm. What it mostly translated to was chainsaw duels straight out of Mandy.
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Oct 26, 2022 14:04
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thatbastardken posted:They killed Dracula with a bowie knife, is why.
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Oct 26, 2022 16:13
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Kavak posted:I loving Love Conlangs In Sci-Fi And Fantasy is WtF jargon a conlang? i vaguely recall reading that it was just real-life Akkadian or something, with minor grammatical/spelling changes for the convenience of modern English speakers
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Oct 26, 2022 16:15
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:is WtF jargon a conlang? i vaguely recall reading that it was just real-life Akkadian or something, with minor grammatical/spelling changes for the convenience of modern English speakers
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Oct 26, 2022 16:16
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Yeah, they ran some rule of language evolution in reverse on ancient Sumerian or something. The auspice names were exceptions, though; each of them is a First Tongue-ified version of a WrA auspice. Ragabash -> Irraka, Ahroun -> Rahu, etc. The funniest thing about WoD-style damage types is when some games decide that baseball bats, sledgehammers, etc deal bashing damage because they aren't pointy.
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Oct 26, 2022 16:52
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Ferrinus posted:The funniest thing about WoD-style damage types is when some games decide that baseball bats, sledgehammers, etc deal bashing damage because they aren't pointy. Crossed wires with DnD bashing/piercing/slashing damage types, I suppose.
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Oct 26, 2022 16:55
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Then again, novel Dracula could walk around in daylight without exploding, so… I think the thing with bladed weapons is that decapitation is a sure fire way to kill vamps in almost all media, so they try to reflect that (successfully or no).
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Oct 26, 2022 17:07
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There are some weird knock-on effects from the way nWoD 2E does damage types, too. Like instead of vampires taking bashing from guns, vampires (and ephemeral beings and some other stuff iirc) take bashing from basically everything on the human scale, fine. But that actually means that innately-bashing attacks are often more attractive against vampires, because if you'll be putting /s into their health bar regardless you might as well maximize your volume. For instance, if you're a vampire hunter, you want the security systems of your 5-dot Safe Place to deal 10B, not 5L. I do like that the knock-on effects of this damage downgrade reduce the incentive for supernatural creatures to go around in armor, though.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:12
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I think of all the variations thus far, 5th Ed has gotten to a good spot. Superficial vs Agg, everyone halves Superficial. Then you just define what is Agg vs Superficial per creature type and you call it a day. A sledgehammer is totally Agg to mortals in 5E, for example. Same for a baseball bat. So many people complain about the lack of armor helping vampires, though, when honestly they're as hardy, if not hardier, than they've ever been with the current system. Sure, realistically it makes little sense that hardened body armor would do nothing to help you not take damage from bullets as a vampire, but also you're a vampire, realism is a nonsense metric anyway. The focus on gameplay and attempts to keep it balanced over being "realistic" is fine by me.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:32
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Ferrinus posted:The funniest thing about WoD-style damage types is when some games decide that baseball bats, sledgehammers, etc deal bashing damage because they aren't pointy. "I wrapped my baseball bat with barbed wire so now it deals lethal, right?" That's not even touching on how, depending on the gameline, different weapons have different base difficulties. So you might be better off having your big beefy dude attack with a pocketknife v a battleaxe.
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Oct 26, 2022 18:46
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There’s technically a third category of damage for vampires in V5: non-halved Superficial damage. This usually applies to supernatural attacks that don’t use fire or sunlight but are still dangerous, such as Feral Weapon or werewolf claws.
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Oct 26, 2022 20:22
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Ferrinus posted:Yeah, they ran some rule of language evolution in reverse on ancient Sumerian or something. Grimm's Law, specifically, which makes absolutely no sense from a linguistic perspective (it describes sound shifts in Germanic languages, which Sumerian uhjh very much was not), but eh, at least it produced something with a relatively consistent sound.
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Oct 26, 2022 20:58
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Gatto Grigio posted:There’s technically a third category of damage for vampires in V5: non-halved Superficial damage. This usually applies to supernatural attacks that don’t use fire or sunlight but are still dangerous, such as Feral Weapon or werewolf claws. Let's not forget the additional damage types of mental superficial and mental aggravated, which have their own healing rules. And one roll per character? Only if both sides have the exact same numbers of combatants who politely line up and pair off (and no one has Celerity 5, assuming it works one way and not another, about which there is still no official confirmation or indeed playerbase agreement). Only the nWoD has actually been able to offer one-roll-per-participant combat in a vampires-and-werewolves setting. I feel like V5 could've managed by trying a little harder, but, well,
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Oct 26, 2022 20:59
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Nessus posted:Yes, stab the man in the throat just at sunset when he becomes able to shapeshift again, watch him turn into mist, and give everyone a big high five. Indeed, they sure did get that guy and didn't just manage to kill a bunch of Roma who were giving him a ride along the way. Harker slashed his throat. Quincey nailed him straight in the heart. American hero right there, none of this "A branch from a rowan fashioned into a stake, and to fill his mouth holy water and wolfsbane" occult poo poo, just "I have a big loving knife and I'm going for that guy's heart".
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Oct 26, 2022 23:09
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I was reading about this old Toreador Bloodline called the Nephilim. They had Chimerstry and, looking it up, this is said to be the "trademark Discipline of the Ravnos." So why does a Toreador Bloodline have it? Looking up the page on their founder Michael, he had it, so maybe it's as simple as that? I guess I've just read more about the Tremere and how they developed their own Discipline of blood magic. I thought Tzimisce did the same with Vicissitude. But maybe other Disciplines were there since the start or near the start and specific ones got filtered down into various clans? Also, this is more meta, but the only other TTRPG I've read about in depth is Pathfinder and reading their books makes me yearn for the Suggested Reading and Refrences included in pretty much every WoD book I've seen. It's just really helpful to lay out "this is the source of our inspiration. Go check it out yourself and learn like we did" Helps some of the books they cite are real works of history or philosophy which is always good to have.
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Oct 27, 2022 00:12
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