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

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Does money have any actual value in Mage society? It's nearly trivial for an established mage to make as much money as he could want.

>Have you ever played in or ran a superhero game?
I converted a PL 8 M&M game to 1e. I went through and converted everyone's most iconic attributes into WoD powers, often just refluffing existing ones.
The game had already been on hiatus, and didn't really last long afterwards (and we never rolled often anyway), but it was still a thing. I'd probably do it far differently if I ever redid the idea. I wish I had the motivation to do more homebrew; or gaming in general.

Also, what is even up with that anatomy?

Sure.

All easy ways to make money are either Acts of Hubris, highly suspicious, attention drawing, high-effort, or require significant proficiency in an Arcanum.

Simply having and owning money like everyone else, rather than temporarily transmuting a few chunks of wood into gold every few months means you can devote less time to trying to keep your secret alchemy lab secret from the Govt. who are very interested in where this fucking hermit is getting all his Gold from.

Especially when somehow it seems to have turned into wood after being stored in the vault for a little while.

>heroes start waking up
what are heroes and why were they asleep?

who is shane?

How is the combat in the CofD compared to oWoD?

Quick, Fluid, effective, and a joy to run.

It's the same. All they did was remove the plot and call it a new system, lol

Do you have brain damage?

The same?
Defense works differently. Weapons work differently they do a set amount of damage + successes. Armor while it does a lot of the same things. The number of rolls is dramatically reduced. Armor removes a set amount of damage, no rolling for soak.

So the mechanics got tightened up a lot. Particularly in the second edition.

● Typical combat turns ("I attack the badguy") are only a single roll.
● Defense, damage, and "soak" are automatic.
● Health is no longer a weird set of health levels; instead you have health boxes equal to Size + Stamina that have three qualities of damage (Bashing, Lethal, Aggravated).
● Target numbers are always 8 and 10s explode, though you can give exploding quality to 9 or even 8, as well as "rote", which is essentially "failures explode [once]".
● The "Difficulty" is always 1. That is, you never need more than one 'success' to have a successful roll.
● All damage done with weapons defaults to Lethal.
● The attacker adds their [Attribute + Skill] and subtracts the opponent's Defense, rolls that many dice. If they get any successes, they add their successes to the weapon's damage. The target's armour is then subtracted from that number. If armour reduces an attack entirely, it deals 1B. Otherwise, it deals damage equal to the remainder.

>Alexis wants to attack Bailey.
Alexis has a knife (2 damage) and a Strength+Weaponry of 4.
Bailey has a Defense of 3.
Alexis subtracts 3 from 4, chooses to spend a point of Willpower for an additional 3 dice, and goes All Out for another two dice at the cost of their own Defense.
Alexis rolls 6 dice and gets two successes.
The knife's damage value of 2 is added as automatic successes.
Bailey's stylish leather jacket is useful for protecting against cuts and scrapes when falling off of a motorcycle, but not knives.
Bailey's 1 armour is subtracted from the 4.
Bailey then takes 3 lethal damage.
[X][X][X][ ][ ][ ][ ]
Ouch.

Heroes are the antagonists of Beast: the Primordial, the latest CofD line.

Shane is one of the leaders of By Night Studios, who own the LARPing rights to WoD. By Night and the revived White Wolf are pretty close knit.

>Does money have any actual value in Mage society? It's nearly trivial for an established mage to make as much money as he could want.
not realy
its only value is that it can get you in touch with other people with money

>Not really
How else are you going to acquire 3 dozen corpses for your Necromancy experiements without suffering egregious breaches of Wisdom?

What is this Shane's last name?

Shane DeFreest. He's been a writer for WW before back during the old Laws of LARP version days, he's one of the founders of By Night Studios, and he is now a full time employee for new White Wolf, as he just moved to Sweden.

Can vampires spread AIDS?

No monday meeting today?

I'm assuming your hinting at bribing a funeral home that has a crematorium, or a country morgue for John/Jane Does.

Anyone willing to share the final PDF of Mage 2e that incorporates the errata and index?

Thanks.

grave dig
rob a morgue
use magic to make people grave dig
use magic to make morgue attendants give you bodies

Theres been times when they get it out late and its on tuesday for whatever reason

----
Isn't it in the Past Bin?

Use magic to make people dig up a grave could be a wisdom 4-7 breach, same with using magic to make a morgue attendant do the same thing.

It's been out as of 9:53pm CST.

>Isn't it in the Past Bin?

No, that's the old 'advanced PDF' without the errata or index.

not if you just animate the bodies and make them dig themselves out
besides you could just us e magic to up social skills to make your offer to good to refuse
or make fake gold or do a favor for them (let them win lottery)

Have you ever tried sticking to a certain theme and concept as a Mage like casting certain kinds of spells but not others but end up making improvised spells that is not in line to your character concept? Like if I made a Thyrsus who specializes in plants but I end up controlling animals and buffing physical attributes because the situation called for it. Or an Obrimos who specilizes on Lightning and Electricity but end up improvising an invisibility spell.

since in-arcana spells are free you might want to improvise those
and buy rotes for outside of usual use things
with arcana sticking to themes seems like a silly idea

Theme? Yes.
Handicapping myself by focusing almost excluisvely on a tiny subset of an existing Arcanum?
No thanks.

I like to make my Mages more based on their philosophy, worldview and desires, rather than whether they have an unhealthy fascination with plantlife.

What if Im more interested in concepts of entropy, endings and transition rather than summoning zombies and ghosts t do what I want?

ypou have ability to do both with death
just don't summon zombies/.ghosts

Yeah I know I can do that with Death. But what if the situation arises where a damn ghost or zombie will solve the problem? It really hard not to do since you can even if my character is not interested in that part of death

then its a good thing they're part of a group of mages who aren't pussies

you can just not solve the problem

its a toolbox. mom calls you up to go to her place and bring your tools to fix something. you get there and see you need your screwdriver to do it. but you don't like your screwdriver, you like your hammer. so you shrug at her and tell her to call someone else

>But what if the situation arises where a damn ghost or zombie will solve the problem?
Then you either use your powers in the obvious way that they're begging you to be used, or you don't.
It's not our fucking job to tell you how to play your character.
But your Cabal who would not unreasonably expect you to protect them from that kind of shit...
They might have a few choice things to say.

>Fcked Up Changeling Durance

>Fcked Up
Get that shit outta here

Should I be waiting for Changeling 2nd ed, or is that not coming for a year?

Also, same question for the Hunter books.

it will be out in les than a year
around a year

Mostly questioning if I should buy either, or keep ti the CofD books with second editions.

Hunter hasn't even started writing.
Unless I wasn't picked ;_;
Didn't Monica say they'd be giving feedback to people?

So entering Twight destroys physical objects? Does that mean if I dont use Reach I come out naked?

What spell are you referencing?
Because Twilight is a state of existence, a wavelength if you will.
If you and your clothing enter it, you both become Ephemera.
When you leave, you both revert to normal.

Ghost Gate

Im thinking what instructions should I give to my Sleepwalker Retainer while Im busy chasing Mysteries with my Cabal?

It's better but still nothing to brag about.

That makes more sense.
You're entering Death-Twilight.
The realm filled with the afterimages of destroyed items, and the Ghosts of the Dead.
You put something into that, you're going to break it...

I also just realised.
Nothing in that spell says that Gate is two-way.

>Nothing in that spell says that Gate is two-way.

>Gateway

It helps to tweak it a bit for your group and desired speed. Personally, I use the Fog of War hack from Armory Reloaded, everyone tells me their actions and I go down the initiative order and do them, you don't get to know what happens in a turn until the end of it. It helps combat go by much quicker

I should probably clear up, I don't take their actions for anyone except my NPCs, but when combat rolls up each turn everyone PMs me "I'm gonna try to do thing", and we go down the order based on initiative as normal, it also helps make Initiative a little less useless.

No. Not only Mages don't need money for most things they do, but they also can make money easily.
Just imagine going to casino. Acanthus is obvious. Mastigos could read other players' minds in poker or improve his own mind to make card counting absolutely trivial. Moros could unbalance dice or roulette, possibly change bad card into good one. Obrimos could nudge dice or ball in roulette to suit his needs, slot machines would probably work too. Thyrsus would be most complicated, but spirits can do pretty much anything and I could imagine some uses of Life too - for instance induce fear mechanisms in brains of other players to make them fold easily.
And it isn't necessary to invent any complicated schemes. Force or Fate adept could simply make their credit card never run out of money, you wouldn't need to think to hard to find similarly easy ways to make easy money for others.

Yes

Regularly water plants, take dog for a walk, feed fish, pick up your mail...

And if you are so mean you can't stand your retainer having any free time and basically consider him your slave, make him catalogue your library by any criteria you like and when he is finally done, make him do it again but this time by some other criteria. Use your imagination.

Am I crazy for thinking stats in Demon dont make sense?
They are androids with computer brains made by the most powerful machine in WoD. Their physical and mental stats should be atleast 3 as a baseline. As for social stats their whole thing is about cover identities and blending in and if they aren't good with talking to people in a passable manner they would get found out.

>They are androids
no
>with computer brains
no
> made by the most powerful machine in WoD.
no
theyr ephemera with ephemera brains made to fit in by hlf assed super ephem that uses machinery symbls because its too weak to just use magic
when hiding, they can't use full ephemera power

Has anyone tried making a physical tertiary gangrel and just relying on Protean animal forms juiced up with vigor/resilience for combat?

I'm trying to make an investigative character but I really do need mental primary for it, imo.

>but they also can make money easily
Your Casino example works once, maybe twice or three times if you're lucky or smart, then you get banned for life.

Your "infinite credit card" option is straight up theft. You might not think that that's so bad, it comes from a big bad corporation, but unless you do it in small amounts, and subtly, someone's going to lose his job.

Yes, Mages can make easy money.
But doing so usually comes at the cost of security, or morality.
And a Wise Mage will probably try and make their money (when they need it) the old fashioned way.
Probably using his Magic to make himself a bit better at that.

The book business is surprisingly lucrative. Plus you can write about the Mysteries you are chasing down, and your obsessions that allows you to kill two birds with 1 stone. A very profitable arrangement don't you agree?

It's almost all Scion stuff anyways, like it will be for the next couple of weeks.

It's easier than that. You've already covered Acanthus although I would just walk into a gas station and buy a scratch and win.

A Moros can go to the scrap yard and buy scrap steel (2 cents per pound where I live) purify it to a plate of mild steel and sell it to a stock yard for a large profit.

A Thrysus can grow the best quality produce with absolutely no overhead for fertilizer, pest control, seasonality, or water. Alternatively he could walk inna woods and get the forest creatures to bring him truffles to sell.

A Mastigos can convince people to just give him the best deals on anything he's buying or selling.

An Obrimos could electronic transfer himself any money he would need or run a profitable alternate energy business.

>vampire tries to drink me
>turn my blood into acid
Good idea or "let's turn this rape into a murder" idea?

>Acid
>Not liquid Silver

>Your Casino example works once, maybe twice or three times if you're lucky or smart, then you get banned for life.
Damn, you are right. If only there were more than just one casino...

>Your "infinite credit card" option is straight up theft.
Not necessarily, it can be also money from nothing which would be increasing inflation rather than theft. Nevertheless it isn't Act of Hubris, highly suspicious, attention drawing, high-effort, or require significant proficiency in an Arcanum which is what we were talking about.

>Your "infinite credit card" option is straight up theft. You might not think that that's so bad, it comes from a big bad corporation, but unless you do it in small amounts, and subtly, someone's going to lose his job.
not likely

>But doing so usually comes at the cost of security, or morality.
>implying morality matters in mage

No! Bring us more.

It sounds like Changeling is actually not very far away at all, Hunter most definitely come out this year, hell even Geist 2e appears to be coming out before Hunter, Geist is already practically out of the first draft stage according to Travis. Then again they did say they were surprised it wasn't already just confirmed last year and was already in brainstorming stages over 2 years ago.

>it can be also money from nothing which would be increasing inflation rather than theft.
You bet your ass that this would cause Dissonance, or, at the very least, a program or some poor accountant would notice it (and then get paid/pressured into ignoring it). It's like when people talk about the Fed raising interest rates. How does it actually do it? It doesn't, as you might imagine, say, "hey guys, interest rates are now 0.75% from 0.5%". No, they set the target at 0.75%, and then adds securities into their reserve and reduces credit, literally borrowing funds from itself to maintain that target interest rate.

So money, despite being a totally fictitious stand-in for trust in institutions, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It would invariably be suspicious and attention drawing.

I'd bet the IRS is run by Acanthus mages anyway.

Because it'd add another Arcanum to the mixture.
Also, the vampire would probably notice the heat radiating off of the mage.

Shadow name: Katch'um

Go around defeating wayward spirits and binding them to a fetish.

>probably notice the heat radiating off of the mage.
Since it's been brought up, let's just check...

Melting point for Ag is 1234 K (961 C or 1763 F). Yeah, he'd probably notice.

Bad idea - /vp/ had a collective meltdown recently when Ash, for the 6th time in a row, lost the major championship at the end of the series

You'll have the most powerful magic known to man, but will be destined to lose in the end every single time. Forever.

True, but the idea of summoning a flame spirit to dust some vampires is very appealing.

better getting sun spirit

Katch'um would never capture such a unique and important spirit, he'd let it go after an adventure where he learned about humility and fair play

>unique and important
>literally everywhere sunlight is
plus fire spirit to kill vampires must attack (involves missing and action economy)
sun spirit needs to stand (float?) there

capturing spirits is something any spirit mage can do
look at nemean, he designs his own spirits to kill mages

Any reason why I wouldn't want to spend my starting merit dots on Gnosis?

Matter allows for liquid silver in body temperature. Forces is not necessary either way.

It's mechanically suboptimal

If I was being 'that guy' how would I optimize?

Helios is unique. Helions are relatively common, like Lunes. The previous user didn't specify if they meant "a sun spirit" or "the sun spirit".

>It's mechanically suboptimal
its 5 xp either way
and you want gnosis 5 asap

Is this how it is in 1e, too?