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

Any spells in the core you think belong in the wrong practice?

>My character is you
What?

>Shes too old and sickly to get out of bed so she uses her granddaughter
But I'm still young user..and a male.

My character is, you numbnuts!

Oh. Well, at least now you see the importance of proper punctuation.

That sounds like some kind of lich talk, user. You wouldn't be a dirty lich, would you?

This is only temporary. Also can I use Space spell to allow casting from my host

I'm gonna be getting into Mage 2E soon and it'll be my first time playing the splat. I think I understand a good amount, but are there any tips I should know going in?

You should use a Mind spell to learn to proofread your posts goddamn,

Yes, if the spell can be cast reflexively. But few spells can.

No, you can use Adamant hand on any spell (or at least, any spell it makes sense to use Brawl, Weaponry, or Athletics as a Yantra on.)

Using multiple Yantras already takes more than one turn to cast the spell. Adamant Hand means that you can punch a guy one turn, then shock him with Forces the next, counting the punch the previous turn as a Yantra on that spell.

What spells can be reflexive with creative thaumaturgy?

I'm fairly certain that as a general rule, casting a spell is always a full action save for special instances.

youtube.com/watch?v=KQ5kRyzQkyw
youtube.com/watch?v=rZJa1gP_akA
youtube.com/watch?v=1x84_VboNCc
Which set of Arcanum would cover this sort of thing?

How many dots in life to I need for plant minions?

Why do you want plant minions?

What type?

2 (Ruling) lets you puppet them, but you need 3 (Perfecting) to make them more useful than actual plants, and 4 (PAtterning) to get cactus soldies

Shark/skate/ray egg pouches.

Thanks. Also, glad someone likes that I used Majesty. Any thoughts on a final ability? Creative Thaumaturgy seems the way to go, but maybe I should wait until the errata. Also any thoughts on the Session's mechanics?

I feel like the core session's "roll to not bitch out" roll is a bit lame, but I really like my idea for the Initiation.

This is true. Gonna have to cut myself down to make that 1000 word limit for submissions.

Mind 5, the spell Possession, actually.

Since it's a new thread:
tmblr.co/ZIFdmw27KSZGO

Remade the Whipping Boy Legacy for 2e. I'd love some feedback on whether you agree with my choices of Attainments, think the mechanics are interesting or could be done better, and what you think about using Social Maneuvering for resisting sexy torture.

Mages have a regular Virtue and Vice as described in the Chronicles of Darkness Core Rulebook. It's not in the Mage corebook, but they do. Hopefully that'll save you some time when you're making your character.

I still think this song fits them to a T
youtube.com/watch?v=puFKPPftM5g

Life for both healing and deliciousness. Maybe Prime for making the water the wateriest water to ever water.

The calling of Spirits/Ghosts/Goetia should probably be Ruling.

Earthquake

Unmaking my fucking ass

Reposting KotE martial arts rules scrubbed, edited and generalized from the core book and companion.

The next revision will have the Rules for Do added in.

Additionally, I'll be working on an expansion and modernisation of the weapons list in the V:tM Revised Storytellers Companion. It's one of the Best treatments of Firearms that I've ever seen in a game and it deserves to be updated and expanded for a post GWoT world.

I know. You've linked it like three times.

That's one of the things that's going to get the errata treatment.

>It's one of the Best treatments of Firearms that I've ever seen in a game
Fucking what? None of the mechanics in oWoD are remotely reasonable.
>post GWoT world
Also what?

In terms of scholarship and real world information on said firearms? It's one of the best and I've seen far worse. Additionally, the ranges are fairly accurate when you take into account that those numbers represent yards.

For example, the statline on a Glock 17 is:
Range 25 (about the limit for a production autopistol)
Damage: 4 (in keeping with other pistols of it's caliber, something a lot of games forget to do.)
Rate: 4 (Faster than other Glocks in a heavier caliber)
Capacity: 17+1 (Accurate and few games get that +1 capacity correct)
Concealability: J (took the time to determine that it is in fact a full sized service pistol.)

The ranged combat rules in oWoD are adequate but by no means exhaustive. They make up for it by doing their homework.

>GWoT

Global War on Terror

>t.range safety officer and infantry combat veteran

And how do you feel about CofD?

Honestly, since literally everything in oWoD is bad, the actual numbers don't really mean anything, that game is swingier than any game besides CthulhuTech. Wouldn't Shadowrun be a much more /k/ friendly game with all it's nitty gritty details? I know it can skew towards tacticool with some of it's gun mods, but still.

Possession has no business being Mind 5, yes, and is Mind 5 because someone just translated it directly from 1e core, where it was Mind 5 (because it's basically just a copypasted version of Dominate 5 from Vampire, and they decided they should both be 5-dot powers.)

>What was the best game you ever played?

This game that totally happened where my character was the best ever and he beated everybody forever

>And how do you feel about CofD?
I don't. WoD: Armory gave me the warm and fuzzies but I don't know enough about it to say one way or the other.

I will say that having Ingram MAC-10's and HK MP-5's with the same availability as a Glock 17, LITERALLY the medium reference of handguns (exceptional only in how unexceptional it is) is dumb.

But other than that? Still a really good reference.

Now THIS is the most exhaustive reference ever produced for an RPG but it's fifteen years out of date.

I Wish I could find my copy.

Isn't that Jotaro?

I don't agree with Touhou about a lot of things, but I will say that Storyteller still has a lot of baggage in regards to equipment. They can never tell whether they want a LOT of detail or handwaving. Availability is almost universally ridiculous: a 10$ machete is availability 2, which means anyone with less than a comfortable middle class lifestyle loses a dot of Resources for a month if they buy a machete. There are a lot of little details that shouldn't need to be spelled out. The game isn't mechanically complex or rules hard, but it definitely has a lot of baggage from things that stuck around.

And I will definitely agree that I would have preferred more Conditions and rules for things that keep coming up instead of a page worth of telling me what flashlights do. Pregnancy Conditions have been reprinted in two supplements so far, and Swarm rules were in like five that I know of in 1e. Rules for children would have been nice, or rules for attacking something larger or smaller than you are. The Chase, Social Maneuvering, and Investigation mechanics really bring Chronicles into a better mechanical space than "here's some rules for combat and vague dice rolls for everything else", but they could still be expanded. I mean, Chases and Investigations are things that can definitely be expanded beyond what their names imply, but instead we just got a glossed over batch of rules and then a reprint of some GMC stuff instead of new content.

But you don't do CofD so you don't even care what I'm rambling about.

I feel like for most games your weapons honestly aren't going to have stat lines that are that diverse, because most games don't have enough gradation for weapons in the first place. I mean, in d20 a gun basically does d6, d8 or d12 damage with no real variation. At least from what I recall of Pathfinder's weapons.

Yes.

You're correct. D20 is good for one thing: Fantasy combat and nothing else. They failed to take the sheer lethality of modern combat into account.

Gain a few levels and suddenly it's like LOL ONLY 9MM FAGGIT?

The only reason I reccomend it is because it's the most exhaustive reference that I've ever seen.

As for how oWoD handles it? It's basically "you must have at least this many dots in resources to have a thing."

...because these are one time purchases. If someone asked me to pay rent on a machete, I'd look at him like he had a dick growing out of his forehead.

D20 has numbers bloat, yes.

>One dot is a little spending money here and there. Two is a comfortable, middle-class wage. Three is a nicer, upper-middle-class life. Four is moderately wealthy. Five is filthy rich.
>Every item has an Availability rating. Once per chapter, your character can procure an item at her Resources level or lower, without issue. Obtaining an item one Availability above her Resources reduces her effective Resources by one dot for a full month, since she has to rapidly liquidate funds. She can procure items two Availability below her Resources without limit (within reason). For example, a character with Resources •••• can procure as many Availability •• disposable cellphones as she needs.
This is above and beyond food and rent, but if I make a ten dollar purchase at Walmart, I should not suddenly become destitute for a month as I lose my only dot of Resources.

Meanwhile a Spear is available to anyone but the homeless at Availability 1.

Actual Martial Artist here having a look now

That could be a good system but it needs rebalancing like a junkie needs the h.

>Hard Style
>Shoalin Kung Fu and Wushu
ha ha...no
Also thats a rather small sampling size for martial arts but I am assuming you can pick whatever you want and those are just examples?

You get bonus points for Reactive Strike. Not many games have a rule for counter punching. Though its unfortunate that you cant make a build revolving around it entirely because of the penalty to hit.

Though Honestly the Armory books had a really good comprehensive list of martial arts and melee weapons

Do is tons of fun. You can have any hard or soft style maneuver as well as the Do Maneuvers which are basically reality breaking wire-fu.

No, I'm the martial artist of the thread

BJJ. You?

Lack of a grappling focus is a bit disappointing. But most games dont anyway

Armory is a fantastic book for /k/ommandos. Have you read Armory Reloaded. Its basically an expansion on it.

The main problem is that there's so little gradation and the Availabilities are all fucked.

I'm not a kommando, so Armoury was boring and nothing but meaningless numbers. Reloaded is great.

Ah, I missed that bit. That's copy-pasta'd directly from the entry in KotE. I don't have wushu in the list but I do have Shao Lin Kung Fu listed as a soft style.

I've also considered relisting Tiger Claw as just "Kung Fu, Animal Style."

And yes you can make your own styles, ST dependent. I enforce styles but that's at my discretion. You may choose to do something different.

>Stop spreading this lie.

"Stuff hurting your feelings" isn't a lie. I don't think the devs have ever argued it was anything but S, and more or less the only edition of D&D it comes off as being 'rules light' against is 3rd edition.

When you make a character in most WW/OP systems, you need to carefully consider the attribute + ability pairings of all powers you will start with and intend on obtaining relatively soon, or else you will have to waste a lot of XP, have crippled dice pools, or both.

Just about the only semi free form element in White Wolf I can think of at the moment would be oMage's hazily defined magic system.

>He's literally twisting the wording of rules to argue that they're not clear enough.

In some cases, I'm sure, a la the demon power to break the planet and get a new one, but most of his analysis is spot on. You have even the most tame, indisputable objections (like "when would someone ever raise an attribute when they could raise an arcana?") having people suffer temper tantrums.

Its fine to call him out when he makes egregious mistakes, but so too must I call people out for spreading outright lies like "WW/OP is a rules light, semi-freeform RPG" and people who fly into temper tantrums about "bad roleplaying" regarding the costs of raising an attribute.

But TOaIE literally lets you see/hear from all points in range so it IS extending your senses.

why hate one and not the other?

>I don't have wushu in the list but I do have Shao Lin Kung Fu listed as a soft style.
I must have misread

This.

I run games for a bunch of /k/ommandos and i am not one. so I get really annoyed at their attempts to 'fix guns' all the damn time.

It's not like setting down a camera 10km away, it's like bringing that distant point into line of sight.
The scene you see will still be tiny and indistinct due to your normal vision at such significant distances, but yes, you can still "see" there.

>They failed to take the sheer lethality of modern combat into account.
>Gain a few levels and suddenly it's like LOL ONLY 9MM FAGGIT?

Are you serious? d20 modern has 101 flaws, but a lack of lethality from gun violence isn't one of them. Almost everything has a chance to down you in one hit. Whenever a hit deals above your con score, that means a DC 15 fort save or else you're unconscious and dying. Stat and save boosters are very rare, and people multiclass so much into median or poor fort save classes, that saving throw scores are far lower than in 3e.

PF guns are decently effective, very different from d20 modern, not that I'd defend PF, but ranged touch attacks that can ignore concealment and more with high levels of damage are not bad at all.

Any kommandos out there that want to play WoD? I always wanted to play a militant mage game or something. Or a TFV Hunter game.

Then there's no damn difference between TIaOE and looking out across a city from a tall balcony.

Admit it, Dave screwed up when writing that spell.

V20, Caitiff random Sabbath embrace and other misfits doing shit work for the camies.

Ended fast, but felt deep as fuck.

*TOaIE

You might as well ask the water not to be wet and a crow not to be black.

I personally would work from within the system to build something organic to the system. For example, the M16 entry lists the range as 200 yards (which if we're going for models of a real life M-16's range is fairly accurate for a close range shot.) That's out of a 20 inch barrel. That gives us a hard and fast, if not wholly accurate, ratio of "one inch of barrel length translates to 10 yards of range."

So taking an M4 Carbine (cutdown m16 with a folding stock and shorter barrel and gas system) with a 14.5 inch barrel would give us a range increment of 145 yards, thus reflecting the correlation between barrel length and effective range.

Would it be wholly accurate? No. Different rounds perform differently out of short barrels. But it does give us a hard-and-fast conversion factor.

As a /k/ommando, I cannot deny my autism. But I'm LESS autistic than my fellows.

For we are /k/. You cannot even conceive of what we truly are...

Except looking out across a city doesn't let you see around corners.

Exactly. You're sending out your viewpoint. If you're sending out your viewpoint to a distant spot, you're basically scrying from there. If that's not supposed to give you better vision from there...

Because Armoury is a bunch of gun stats and vehicle stats and they're all just meaningless numbers, while Armoury Reloaded is all about fighting styles and beating the shit out of people. Tables and stats don't interest me.

It bends space to allow you to see around corners and turn any distance between you and a target into a straight line. It does not, however, allow you to see forever and have perfect visual clarity. It alters with is IN your range of vision, but it doesn't EXTEND that range.

I don't know how D20 Modern works, but honestly d20 as a system would benefit from not being level based or class based. I'd honestly like a simpler version of Mutants & Mastermind's system without the Toughness Saves (which I like, but aren't appropriate to all games).
Playing Pathfinder whenever I have, I'm always struck with how it would be better without stat bloat or feat taxes. Make everything cost Experience and give players a handful of Experience to create a starting character.

>That gives us a hard and fast, if not wholly accurate, ratio of "one inch of barrel length translates to 10 yards of range."
But you're assuming those two things are hard and fast connected, when more often they aren't.

Those Pyro gloves would make a great hunter weapon if you dont want to carry around a flamethrower. More like a PDW to just spray a vamp if he gets too close.

It's like bending light. You're still seeing the location 50km away around a corner, but you're still seeing it as if it were 50km away.

>Because Armoury is a bunch of gun stats and vehicle stats and they're all just meaningless numbers, while Armoury Reloaded is all about fighting styles and beating the shit out of people. Tables and stats don't interest me.
but muh /k/ autism

If you want to Scry those guys with your normal vision, then learn Apprentice Space and LoS Scry once you've found your target with TOaIE.

There's only so much that Initiate proficiency in an Arcanum can do.

Oh yeah. Grappling is covered in the Main rules but it's pretty bare bones.

Now if you want to get super crazy into it, there's pic related.

Little known fact: WW made the licensed street fighter RPG. When that predictably flopped, they took the system, rewrote it for their main game line and packaged it as a complete, alternate set of rules.

It's literally just a half inch of personal combat and martial arts styles. I personally went with the KotE rules because it gives me more crunch than what's found in the core but nothing nearly as autistic as WoD: Combat. It also has a very novel approach and method to design your own maneuvers if they're not included in the book through a point buy system.

WoD: Combat + Aberrant + Aberrant Player's Guide = WW's Dragonball Z RPG.

Reading these arguments play out is really weird because it's almost note for note a replay of the old arguments that led to the formation of The Forge. "The Storytelling system is way too crunchy and not too interested in storytelling," while less true now than in 2002, is still an argument someone could make.

Because they are. A longer barrel translates to more velocity. The more velocity that a round has leaving the muzzle, the longer it spends in the supersonic range. Once the bullet hits the trans-sonic and then subsonic range of velocities (~1125 fps) it begins to destabilize and gains variance in its point of impact.. after the round slows down to below the speed of sound, basically, the groups that you shoot will begin to open up. This is a common property of all bullets, it just varies with the exact caliber and loading.

I haven't been following this from the beginning, but this is the conclusion I'm coming to
If you use The Outward and Inward Eye(it took me a few minutes to figure out what TOaIE was supposed to be) to look through an Iris, with the +2 Reach effect, I'd rule it as though you're seeing from directly where that Iris leads. If that's on the other side of the world, fine, you still see what's around it as though you had just stepped through it with the spell active.
Same goes for any other sort of spatial warp/shortcut/whatever the +2 Reach effect lets you look through. It changes where you're seeing from, so you see things from that point of view instead of where your eyes are located.

It's unclear whether the actual bouncing-vision effect of TIaOE would work when you look through an Iris, though. I'd go with a yes.

forgot pic

thats a pretty good book but I still think armory is better. I think its the only game out there with rules for zeroing your rifle

Irises are a special case, and kinda unrelated to what was discussed. The +2 reach option to me really just seems like it's opening the Iris like a window to look through. However given the way the spell works, once you're drawing vision through that iris, it can also stretch out on the other side for the rest of your vision.

Say you can see well within 3km, and the Iris is 2km away. Using +2 reach option, you could see fairly well on the other side of the Iris in any direction and past any obstacles as normal for about 1km.

I agree, I'd love to see a level less d20 supplement. I don't think d20 modern is very good system, but lethality is spot on.

I don't view it as a bad thing that its crunchy, its just a thing.

Also, in GNS theory for what its worth (nearly nothing), simulationism is apparently for genre and storytelling too. Narrativism is probably better viewed as "personality based drama."

You're right, the better phrasing is "it's crunchy in a lot of ways that it shouldn't be, and handwaves things where crunch should matter, given what it is trying to simulate". Torchbearer's a good example of a crunchy as fuck game that knows exactly what it does with its crunchy at all times.

V:tM Storytellers companion has it as well.

How the fuck Time Travel works? It's just your mind that goes back or it's all of you and now there are two of you going around? I cannot find It anywhere. Also isn't shifting sands fucking bullshit? If you take a rote you can rewrite two scenes without any cost any time you want. Basically unless they ambush you and kill you before you before you get to act you can just recon everything away. Please tell me I have missed something.

Yeah, fair enough.
I wasn't thinking about stuff like Zoom In that lets you see further away, just the potentiality of using the spell to peak through an Iris before cross through it.

Then the spell shouldn't say "from all directions and from all points" or something like that. It should say something else.

We have no authority on the Temporal Clone/Brainswap effect.

Also yes, most time replacing spells are bullshit powerful, and must be tempered with respect for the GM and plot.

Help! My first-time Mage group is up against an abyssal intruder. What are our options?

Yeah, 2hu talked about Shifting Sands last thread

Time Travel is explained at the start of the section on time magic. You travel back entirely, unless you do a conjunctive spell with Mind, but the "present" you return to might not be the "present" you left.

Shiftings Sands is a strong spell, sure, but it's hardly bullshit. It's just Time magic.
The balancing factor is that, until you return to the "present", the spell takes up a spell control slot, and anybody with a dot of Time can attempt to counterspell it, or add at least a dot of Prime and attempt to dispel it, which brings you back to the "present" and erases anything you did.

Why? All it says is "all directions and all points within her sensory range", which if it didn't say "she cannot perceive things farther away than her normal perceptions might allow" would entirely support your position.

But it does.
So it doesn't.

Kill it. Hard. Don't make deals, don't believe its lies.
Don't let it escape, and call for backup if you need it.

Okay, the way I'm thinking the spell works is, it doesn't bend light towards you necessarily. It bends space(as, y'know, a Space spell does), and effectively gives you radar vision--you can bounce your vision around a single corner, but after that, you're fucked.

Listen to him for he speaks the truth.

>Contact with the real world information that these systems attempt to model.

This kills the 2hufag

Shit's dangerous, though. I had to talk my cabal-mates out of intentionally provoking it after it casually hit one of them for 5 lethal damage even when it rolled poorly. Not really sure how to go about killing it.

What magic would be meaningfully useful against an Abyssal entity? Spirit?

Also, we a question came up in our game that we weren't totally sure about: does Mage sight allow you to perceive Abyssal influence, or is there a spell for something like that?

Scelesti plz go.

But your normal perceptions are basically just limited by whatever obstructions there are/the horizon.

If you're seeing from all points and all directions without obstructions, you're basically seeing everything.

You're on the right track, but this is spatial bending, not radar. Space doesn't care about the intervening matter, so it can transpose your vision regardless of what's in the way.

It's a powerful spell, there's no doubt about that.
But the fact is, using the spell unfocussed would be a mental overload on a scale we can hardly comprehend. So you've got to search location by location, which at a distance is hard due to the fact you're basically trying to scrutinise locations from a great distance.

Where It does say you go back entirely? Also from reading shifting sands I didn't understand you go back only for the duration of the spell.