/cofd/&/wodg/ Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness General

>Has anybody actually started playing Mage 2e yet?
I'm still piecing through the fluff. I just finished chapters one and two. The stuff on Consilia made my eyes cross. No idea how I'm going to represent that shit in my game. I'm the one who's been talking about Primordial Dream Silent Hill shenanigans, and I need to a) figure out how that'll work and how long it's been going on, and b) figure out how the city's residents are structured. It might also be worth it to think of a few problems that can come about from my main Mystery. Maybe some cultists or something.

Also, I'm probably going to have some Circle of the Crone Acolytes and a few Beasts show up, maybe some human Cultists and spooky monsters, but I'm going to be lazy and just use Dread Powers or treat everything mechanically like mages. Way easier to stat out that way.

That said, I'm a loser with low self esteem and high anxiety, so who knows if I'll run at all. Hopefully I'll get over the hump.

It's a fringe case in that even getting to do it is pretty difficult in the first place. A white room wouldn't solve this. And, hell, I'm someone who does believe that hypothetical situations can be useful.

>gamers not knowing what they were asking for and getting really mad when they get it

It's been like this since at least 1999.

>Has anybody actually started playing Mage 2e yet?
Having folks over to guide them through character creation soon. None of us have ever played Mage before, and only a few of us are familiar with WoD, so it's gonna be interesting. I'm excited, though. I'm playing the Time Mage.

>None of us have ever played Mage before, and only a few of us are familiar with WoD
Remember, senpai, rule #1:
Have fun, and tell a good story.

One of the problems is that some Arcana actually had their speed bumps removed (Time, Fate), and others, not so much (Forces, Life, Prime).

I believe it's more a problem of varioust authors writing each Arcana, all with different ideas concerning power levels, capabilities and limitations.

>I'm playing the Time Mage.
Make your Obsession "Kill baby Hitler"

Or tell a bad story, then tell us so we can laugh.

But Forces, Life, and Prime are still really good.

Let's get down to the brass tacks, then.

Mind 2 + Space 2 + Time 2 (starting Mastigos) =

Step 1. Think of a guy you really, really hate.
Step 2. Fire up MS Paint and draw a stick figure caricature of the bastard, labeled with their name.
Step 3. Spend 3 Mana and fire your Psychic Domination rote with Spatial Sympathy and Temporal Sympathy, aiming for "the earliest possible point in their life wherein they could have killed themselves within 3 seconds."
Step 4. Keep trying until you get an exceptional success (not hard with a rote), at which point you blow past all Withstand ratings.
Step 5. Dead.

Right?

My VtR game has been on haitus because of life stuff, but hopefully we'll play again on Monday!

Now I just need to remember what my players were doing and prepare...

Seems to me that any major time manipulation should draw the attention of the Exarchs and their Ochemata...

>touhou portrait

Oh, this is gonna be good. What's your take on the magic system besides the Arcana stuff?

Here's the list of the authors of the various sections of Mage 2e (note that Claire Redfield is N. Conte).

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/40524683/#40533359

I'm dumbfounded that Claire wrote Time, Forces and Life. The former has been given a serious power upgrade, while the latter 2 definitely not.

If Consilia stuff is more complicated than you want to deal with, just set it in an area without much Mage presence. That way all you need is a few Cabals and some contacts at the wider-area Order Caucuses your players might interact with.

>touhou portrait
>Let's
2hu never uses contractions.

You need his sympathetic name, otherwise your Weak connection becomes no connection.

>Symbolic sympathy includes indirect representations of the subject — a person’s sympathetic name, drawings, caricatures, or posed and costumed photographs.

>OR

MS Paint drawing works.

To be fair, Time needed it the most. Life was already really strong, and had its few roadblocks removed, and Forces gets a buff just by nature of Vulgar spells no longer being a thing.

Time was always kind of... weird. Now it functions more like you would expect Time magic to work.

Yes, it does. However it still follows the rules for sympathetic range, which states if you don't know their sympathetic name the quality of your connection is downgraded once.

So weak becomes nothing.

>which states if you don't know their sympathetic name the quality of your connection is downgraded once.

No, their Withstand rating goes up 1. Difference.

>but not knowing it makes affecting her at range more difficult, increasing the Withstand level against the Sympathetic Range Attainment by one.

Just increases Withstand by 1. You're blowing past all Withstand with an exceptional success anyway.

A viable strategy, except against anyone with inherent spell resistance, such as any mage with Prime 2.

An exceptional success might cancel the withstand defense, but does not protect against Universal Counterspell or reflexive Prime Armor.

Mind 2 Mind Shield would also provide a defense.

>almost a year ago we were still arguing about Beast and Aspel was posting their Geist houserules

The ride truly does never end.

I want off this wild ride

>To be fair, Time needed it the most. Life was already really strong, and had its few roadblocks removed, and Forces gets a buff just by nature of Vulgar spells no longer being a thing.

>Prime Armor.

Does nothing against Psychic Domination.

Adslahnit also labels his files obsessively. After he was permabanned, he also moved on from Touhou to catboys.

I want there to be some mage presence, if for no other reason than for social problems. I just don't really understand the intricate web that seems to woven.

So is a dot a representative drawing? Because I know if one of my players tells me this stick figure is representative of their nemesis, I'm going to tell them that it's representative of a stick figure. I'm not saying that it necessarily needs to be super detailed and a hyperrealistic oil painting. But there's got to be at least a barest level of substance there. The entire point is that the representation helps you form the imago, and imagining a symbolic representation composed of five lines and a circle is not enough.

I don't even think you can keep trying the same spell over and over again in the first place.

Is everyone else just fucked?

>I don't even think you can keep trying the same spell over and over again in the first place.
I seem to remember Dave saying something like this, but I can't find the part in the book which says that.

I'm pretty sure it's considered part of the normal WoD rules. Or implied to be.

Damnit, I love it when that guy breaks systems over his knee. Oh well.

I guess that's true since Psychic Domination does no direct damage.

However, Universal Counterspell, also at Prime 2, will still be effective.

>But there's got to be at least a barest level of substance there. The entire point is that the representation helps you form the imago, and imagining a symbolic representation composed of five lines and a circle is not enough.

Create a representation of your target in one of those online animu paper doll makers or some such shit.

>I don't even think you can keep trying the same spell over and over again in the first place.

Nope, you can.

>And Tristan Tarwater (she wrote the story "The Intruder" in the anthology) did the fiction.
Glad I finally know who wrote that. It's pretty good.

>Lauren Roy did Tucson, London, the Time Before, and Ascension
She also did a good job, in my opinion.

>John Snead did Los Angeles and Salamanca
Fuck this guy, though. The settings are neat, overall, but they both leave you with a steaming pile of nothing to actually make a Consilium with.

Show me where you can. Dave said otherwise in these threads And a picture needs to be a picture of them. I'd allow a picture made in an online police sketch program, but not that.

Given the space limitations, you shouldn't consider the short sample settings as anything more than story hooks.

However, Dave did mention that Signs of Sorcery will include more substantive sample settings, including a detailed write-up of New York.

Now I know why you spend all this time arguing here - if you try to argue for things like this nobody must EVER want to actually game with you. You aren't even trying to work within the spirit of the game, you're just trying to rules-lawyer to be a cunt.

Base CofD rules - re-attempting the same action after failure subtracts a dice each time.

>Show me where you can. Dave said otherwise in these threads
[citation needed] or it's fucking nothing.

Are aimed spells inherently obvious?

I'm not too worried myself—I've run Geist before pretty successfully, so I know what's up. I'm just hoping the other folks who've never played a WoD game can get into it. Thanks, though.

>Make your Obsession "Kill baby Hitler"
In all seriousness, this is one of the things I'm having the most trouble with. I wish there were some example Obsessions in the books, 'cause so far I haven't had much luck coming up with one of my own.

>Are aimed spells inherently obvious?

P. 115,

"Aimed spells appear as bolts of energy or projections coming from the casting mage, as opposed to spells cast at sensory range which materialize at the point of the subject. "

2e mages confirmed for Touhou characters.

The Mind-Control assassination trick only works if they don't have friends, and they're not a part of an Order.

If they do, odds are they can get one of their own friends to use temporal sympathy to cast a protection spell in between when you controlled him and when he killed himself. Possibly even destroying the gun. What's more, they can do this in the past before your casting, meaning you would have no knowledge of what's coming for you, when having sryed to find where you are, you're facing down 4-5 Consilium/Seer Mages sent to bring you in to stand trial/summar execution for attempted murder.

Why exactly is it that mages are the only splat that gets to ignore Supernatural Tolerance?

I figure it's stuff like "I'm going to find the Chubacabra" or "I'll figure out why the abandoned Woolworth on 5th Street eats people". It's essentially telling the ST "Here's a free story arc, please put this weird shit in the game".

You'd need Fast Spells for that.

>example Obsessions

>Find someone/thing that went missing.
>Solve a murder.
>Discover an artifact.
>Figure out how a thing works.
>Do a thing in the past without greatly altering the present.
>Research the plot hook.

>Has anybody actually started playing Mage 2e yet?
Yep. With the long weekend going on now, have done two sessions. Double with the regular group.
Introduced them all to each other. Started them on the path to the weirdness of the first Mystery of one of the players.
Somewhat concerned about how good Fate is when it comes to generating Beat-rewarding conditions.
One of the players managed to get 5 xp (3 regular, 2 arcane, I think it was) by the end of session 2.

Because withstanding is a significantly more powerful form of defense than most other splats deal with.

"Oh no a -4 penalty out of my pool of 10, I sure hope my Dominate goes off still!"

It really seems like every mage needs to have both anti-Space spells AND anti-Time spells up at all times now.

Isn't that just shitty Chung-style paranoia?

Because the way their powers work doesn't really work with Supernatural Tolerance. They actually have more to get through, since Withstand is essentially a "you must have X+1 successes" in a system that generally relies on only having one to three successes.

They aren't. Demon has a few no roll powers, as do vampires.

Its to emphasize that Mage Magic Is Different, I think.

Withstand as a system seems like it's still strong enough to stop it from being overpowered as a result, though.

>every mage
Nah, just access to friends who do.
I would imagine many Consiliums have time-manipulation anti-aggression pacts.
I mean, it's easy as dirt for a Consilium to send a powerful mage to scrutinise your shitty fucking spell, find out what you did, from where, and sort out countermeasures appropriately.

Court of Arbitration looks poorly on seeming chronologically unprovoked assassination attempts.

>I don't even think you can keep trying the same spell over and over again in the first place.

If it follows the same rules as everything else, you can, with cumulative -1 penalties for each failure before.
Also, considering the Mana costs, a starting mage can only try three times.

Yeah! Everyone else always adds Supernatural Tolerance to Resisted powers!
...Wait...

All the paths have methods of generating conditions on themselves.
>Acanthus
Fate
>Mastigos
Mind(Psychologically impose the conditions.)
>Thyrsus
Life(Physiologically impose the conditions.)
>Obrimos
Prime or Forces(Fuck with your own magic, use illusions, create environmental conditions that give you actual Conditions)
>Moros
Matter(Mostly environmental condition stuff)

No. Withstand is "You must have a Potency of X+1", which is entirely unrelated to successes in 2e. Potency is determined before you cast, and each increase beyond what you get for free if it's the Primary Spell Factor imposes a -2 on the roll.

Yea, this whole debate is just the entire reason why the Pentacle exists - Mages create complex social groups so that they can all keep an eye on each other for shit like this. Dave even wrote a fucking blog-post called "A Well-Armed Society" during development.

Technically, Unchained can do it too. I mean, sure, they need Gadgets to do it, but with the Overwhelming mod they can ignore not just Supernatural Tolerance, but Resistance as a whole.

>All the paths have methods of generating conditions on themselves.

Ah! Had no Mind or Life mages, so didn't know, and the Prime mage only buffed his withstand and magical tools, nothing there.

But the Acanthus threw out like four conditions, for each member of the cabal, and they get XP for them.
(Exceptional Luck on self to get Inspired at magic, then get 3+ successes on a new Exceptional Luck, to grant Potency Conditions, that can be resolved for Beats.)

Does that also work with Contested powers, or is Resisted only?

The book does address that this can happen, and is a perfectly viable thing to do, even in-setting.
Just remember, you can only gain 1 Condition beat per scene.

Except that reasoning kinda breaks down when it comes to Pentacle-Seer relations.

Wait. ANY Condition?
I thought it just was that if you got Inspired, then got a new Exceptional later, and got Inspired again, you couldn't get a Beat off of it the second time.
But is it meant to be just 1 beat from ANY condition?

I thought Fate boons didn't grant Beats.

Speaking of DtD, does Spoofing trump Mage Sight and Unveilings?

If you get an Exceptional during the casting they do. And that's easy if you have Inspired.

>The only limits are the rule that a character may only earn one Beat per scene from resolving Conditions, and the limits of her own Wisdom (see p. 87).
ANY condition.

That's right, yeah. You can't get more than one Beat from the same source per scene.

Remember, also, that the Conditions granted by Exceptional Luck break the normal rules and only grant beasts if you got an Exceptional Success on your casting roll.

I was meaning it's interchangeable.

The Pentacle will want to keep its members alive because they have an obligation to try and protect them.

The Seers will want to keep their servants alive because they're their slaves.

Oh great.
Now I have to break this to my players, and they are going to whine like babies that I brake their insane XP gain.

Right, but that's why the war between the Seers and Pentacle is usually fairly cold - because both take great pains to protect themselves from the other knowing who they are.

Ha! Well, good luck. If they're reasonable, they'll hopefully understand that the game is better off for all of them when their characters aren't skyrocketing in power.

Note that the problem isn't necessarily gone completely. Theoretically, the same character could cast Exceptional Luck to give himself multiple Conditions, and then just Reach for Advanced Duration so that he has multiple scenes in which to resolve each one individually. But if your players really want to do that, you might want to have a talk with them.

>Ha! Well, good luck. If they're reasonable, they'll hopefully understand that the game is better off for all of them when their characters aren't skyrocketing in power.
All but one are reasonable. He's a good guy, but he doesn't like getting shut down in his power fantasies.

>Note that the problem isn't necessarily gone completely. Theoretically, the same character could cast Exceptional Luck to give himself multiple Conditions, and then just Reach for Advanced Duration so that he has multiple scenes in which to resolve each one individually. But if your players really want to do that, you might want to have a talk with them.
Yeah. He did. Started with Fate 3, and Exceptional Luck as Rote.
He had enough dice to still end up with a months duration. And while I admit he was lucky in getting 3 successes there.
Still. 16 beats in total from a single spell cast. 4 players, 4 Conditions each. (Inspired, Informed [Local Mages], Stalwart, Charmed)

Difference being, Vampire Disciplines and Werewolf Gift dicepools are capped at Attribute+Ability+Discipline/Renown rating, with few, if any, means of boosting that. Mages get a fucking truckload of options for boosting their casting rolls, while *also* being able to ignore Witstand on an exceptional success.

Time has always had the potential to be the most broken magic type, they should have kept a close eye on it.

Yeah, but exceptional success isn't something you can rely on getting, and every time you fail, your next attempt to do so has 1 less die.

Well actually the highest the Dice pool can be is 10 gnosis + 5 arcane + 5 yantra + 5 ritual. At be 25 dice at best. Same as every other supernatural.
My how game breaking.

>Has anybody actually started playing Mage 2e yet?
>implying anybody actually plays games

So anything not a mage can be insta killed?

...

Why is being a mage so best?

Mages also have to take a LOT of casting penalties for everything, including instant casting, sensory range, target size, duration, potency, etc. They are also limited to the number of Yantras available by Gnosis, and most only provide a +1, while every step on a factor chart is a -2 penalty.

Vampires and Werewolves can't apply the Rote quality to any of their power rolls though.

This isn't /v/. Right?

A lot of werewolf and vampires powers or abilities just work, no roll required, and reality itself doesn't punish them if they fail or screw up. Not with mages, nothing is free or easy.

All the different splats' powers operate under a different paradigm and thematic purposes, and trying to compare them if often a fool's errand.

Basically yeah. There are people who will swear up and down that 2e mages are not unbalanced. This is only true with regards to other mages. When it comes to the other splats mages are indeed still supreme lords of the cosmos.

Daily reminder that mages basically get 5 free merit dots at character creation.

>Mystery Cult Influence (•••, ••••, or •••••)
>Effect: Your character has influence over a Mystery Cult (see p. 106) without actually being a subordinate member. Perhaps your character is a “power behind the throne” or even worshiped as a deity. Your character benefits from the same level of Mystery Cult Initiation, without having to be tied to the cult. This means fewer responsibilities to the cult, plausible deniability if they’re revealed, and the ability to step away at any time.

All you need to fuck the other major templates is Time. That Arcana is balanced solely around there being other opposed mages around to shut down its most flagrant bullshit.

it's amazing how perfectly that cat nails the diabetes guy look

I have bad news for you, user.