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

I only answer in genuine hope that you're not some faggot who knows this will spark the 20 billionth discussion. May God have mercy on my soul.

Yes it is.
Unless the Mage is very new and dumb, and you are very strong or lucky, the odds of you being able to significantly hamper him are low to moderate.

youtube.com/watch?v=lV8i-pSVMaQ

Appropriate

Never ever

Since this is on topic, again.
How would my Cotorie of six go about tackling these two twin Seers?

Mastigos
>Gnosis 4
>Mind 4 Fate 4 Space 3 Life 3 Time 2
Thyrsus
>Gnosis 3
>Life 3 Spirit 3 Matter 2 Forces 2 Death 2

The siblings are soon to be the forefront antagonists in my Chronicle, and I need ways for my players to have an advantage.

The setting is London, Britain 1881 during the season of Autumn.
Any suggestions?

Stake themselves before the mastigos makes them do it.

Sorry i just assumed your a vampfag..

Social factors. They're women, and thus restricted in social circles.
Also action economy, and judicious use of Ghouls.
Also find some allies in the Diamond, or some Nameless Orders.

Also, lots of Sleeper allies.

Nothing kills a Mage's boner faster than having to make constant Wisdom rolls from triggering Quiescence breaking points, and the rote quality on Paradox dice pools.

I hope you're not planning on confronting them directly.

Because you WILL die.

user, only one of the two has access to Unravelling, and the other doesn't even have access to Mind, Fate, or Space.

The Mastigos would be a pain in the ass, but the Thyrsus could potentially be fair game.

Throw in some Sleeper witnesses, a low-level Mage ally to do some Counterspelling, the element of surprise (tad difficult with Time 2, but not insurmountable, given it's not a Ruling), judicious use of blood, willpower, some excellent weapons, and a permissive GM, and it's doable.

That's a lot of work, friendo.

Direct combat is out of the question, honestly. Especially if you actually need non-vampires to even have an inkling of a chance.

>That's a lot of work, friendo.
These are the main antagonists of his chronicle.
Of course facing them should take a lot of work.

It would be easier to just let the Mage ally handle the two, or hire even stronger ones to do it.

The Cotorie on their won't be enough, not by a mile. But the sisters are villains, so they SHOULD be on the stronger side, I guess.

>suicide by mage
good goin'

>implying you need for dots to be terrifying

lol ok

>lol ok
Please explain to me how you'd use 3 dots in Spirit and Life to be "terrifying" to 6 angry Vampires.

What sort of characters are the vamps? That's going to matter just as much as what the Seers can do.

Forces 2 controlling fire will fuck up vampires...who needs unravelling sir..

Not that user, but Spirit 3 would be quite horrifying if implemented properly.

Life 3 not so much. Vampires aren't exactly alive, now are they?

Lets not also forget control gravity, gluck getting around that vampfags..

Forces 2 requires the presence of Fire, which in most cases should be limited to a small fireplace, and in this instance the character has a base dice pool of 5, and 2 factors in duration.

What's more, it's unlikely those 6 would enter such a room given their aversion to fire in the first place.

A properly motivated mortal can be terrifying to 6 angry vampires. And 3 dots in Spirit equals a pact with a Helion or some manor of fire spirit.

gluck killing em if your not going to enter the room numnuts.

>Because you can control gravity at Forces 2.

Control Gravity is two dots
Gravitic Supremacy is three dots

Mage has Spirit 3, she doesn't need a campfire. She has goddamn spirits of fire at her beck and call.

Listen dickbreath, in this specific case, these twins have been mentioned as the grand villains of his chronicle.

The final confrontation between them and the Vampires is NOT going to be in their favor. What's more, they are NPCs, not PCs, and not expected to have every single potential fucking resource in the universe at their disposal. Because the GM has infinite capacity, and doing so makes the game very fucking boring.

Jesus Christ the people in this thread are fucking morons.

You can bitch about "misrepresenting Mages", but guess what. There is very little of a standard to represent. I say this, having GM'd fucking 3 Mage games.
They are not your infinite prep-time, everyone-likes-me, I-choose-my-rote-on-the-situation white room Mages.
They are NPCs.

Woah calm down, buddy.

If you want the twins of hell to be fucking retards, why not just say it?

So the only way for the Cotorie to win is to expect them to be complete idiots?
Nice one, user.

>having GM'd fucking 3 Mage games
Well excuse me, veteran.

Oh boy, you've angered the hive now. The idea that every Mage isn't God Batman with infinite time, resources and Mana is heresy of the highest order.

The issue here is that the Arcana are infinitely broad in function. The twins already have the majority of their resources on hand.

This isn't Ascension. You don't need to have infinite time, resources and Mana to whoop some leech ass.

Thanks for the feedback, generous anons.
Sorry for stirring such a stingy subject all the same.

From what I have read, I'm a little bit concerned about the two Seers demolishing my Cotorie wholesale.
Should I scale them down or do they legitimately have a chance here?

You know, maybe I've just had some really lucky Vamps and Spirits or really bad players, but Awakening Mages in my experience aren't all that much stronger then Ascension.

So here's my advice for taking down a pair of Mages, don't have your Vamps be retarded and attack them directly, and don't let them choose the time and place of the fight. I've seen Cabals get their shit kicked in just by having bloodbonded humans and ghouls thrown at them continuously.

>I've seen Cabals get their shit kicked in just by having bloodbonded humans and ghouls thrown at them continuously.

Why do I have a hard time believing this?

Mage bend reality. Vamps bendover.
What you could do is catch mage on its own hubris. Make that bitches believe they can shatter you, setup fight they totaly win and then prepare some twist that make them powerless.
Example. Make some ghouls. Attack directly, retreat to nearby adamantine arrow hiding location in the way bitches believe its yours hiding place. Sit back and watch how arrows cover surrounding walls with seers sisters.
You probably need arrows to move to a new location, since seers know main diamond hudeouts peobably. You can do that in a noncombat way like rat infestation/leaky pipes/noise. Wise mage will not fix small issues with magick

So the Kindred need Mages to save them from other Mages?

Doesn't sound very fun, user. Why not ask them to just solve all of their problems?

Man, dice are fickle and attrition warfare can wear you down even if you can break reality. Eventually the Paradox builds up too much and that one bloodbonded ganger rolls an obscene amount of 10s, and on the flip side the Mage has a bad string of not rolling anything over a 4

Fly ask you to kill neighbor you hate. @
You ignore buzzing.

Neighbor you hate trample your flowers while chasing the fly.
@
Unleash the dogs.

>Mastigos
Psychic Domination
Ban
Sympathy
Strings of Fate
Temporal shenanigans

>Thyrsus
Pyrokinesis
Fire spirits
Death divinations

You're screwed

Those mages sound incompetent.

Don't ghouls count as sleepwalkers?

>dumb mages

There's your problem

They do. You don't get the extra dox from a sleeper witness but you do still get Paradox from throwing around vulgar magic.

I don't see how the Cotorie is going to win out here.

So defeating mages whould be a good goal. If we turn away from dice and look at the story its a greate encounter. Two persons, godlike powers, but not over everything. Trick them, split them, make your players find a way. Create a way for them to win

Also mage on white paper is undefeatable. Real characters have human weaknesses. What is lifestory of those sisters? They different in arcane exp so i assume they awake in different time. What if one is jealous another?

Seers aldo have a tendency to be ruthless dicks towards one another. The idea that the Thyrsus sister is what's holding her back could work

no such thing as vulgar in 2e, paradox is only if you over reach, which these mages prob dont need to do.

Should ahave stuck to bad guys vampires usually deal with like Strix or other vamps.

Mages dont play well with others, or rather they do and pwn the fucking lot of them.

Now I don't know much about specific mage types so maybe Seers are somehow exempt from this BUT

My understanding of fighting a mage is, do it the way a Hunter would fight a Vampire - car bombs and sniper rifles.

Problem is with Time they might be able to see that coming, Matter makes explosives all but impossible to hide, and forces well that'll help alot with explosive force.

Sniper has 1 chance to kill them, otherwise they will just teleport/vanish and then the sniper is fucked..

Eh, we can do the same thing with a Tremere and a Hunter - "they might have cast ritual X," "a ghouls might be watching their car." If the vamps do some legwork, figure out what they're up against, they can pull some Mujahedin hit-and-run shit. And it's not like mages have got all their magic protections up at all times as well.

Spirit 3: If the vamps come after me I'll just go into the shadow and send spirits of fire to do the combat for me.

Was thinking of running a V20 game for my group.
They're not the best at role play yet, to many dungeon crawls.
Was thinking I'd make them a Sabbat pack trying to take down a Cammi city some time during the American civil war.
Any ideas/advice?

Mage was a mistake.

Dark Ages Companion when?

On the note of V5, here's a tidbit from someone who ran the alpha test.

Overview.

Ken Hite and the WW team showed a preAlpha build of the VtM5. It is by no means a final version. As such, I'll be recounting what I experienced as a ST and staying light on the details.

It was good. It's light and pretty straight forward and feels like a light version of CofD and CWoD. Easy to follow mechanics.
The system tracks hunger instead of blood points, which is a pretty neat mechanism, and the hunger is always present in your actions. You can control it, but there's a price, and it can be heavy.
Hunting is far more personal, with each victim being named and given a storybased boon along with the slaking of the thirst. These boons do not stack.
I had players thrilled as they understood how much more intense the hunt was intented to be.
Disciplines are still there.
Frenzy is still there.
Willpower is an important resource.

Humanity is still in the shop. But will be there.

All in all. A good game. Seems to be easily modifiable.

The blood die mentioned earlier (you roll a blood die, if it comes up a 1 you run the risk of a Compulsion like a frenzy, and you lose Composure to suppress that) seems a little less crazy now.

is Hunters Hunted about Hunters like in Hunter the Reckoning, or the basic rank n' file stake a vampire for jeesus hunters?

Hunters Hunted focuses on three mortal groups:
The Inquisition, or church hunters.
The Arcanum, which is a Watchers/Talamasca style 'know the supernatural' investigation group, which does more investigation than killing.
And Project Twilight, which is government-sponsored ABC organization hunters.

Generally I find these to be more evocative of 'hunters' in VtM, and use them to the exclusion of the Reckoning hunters.

cool.

I guess you could use them to have your vampires deal with hunters that are not fucking terrifying

But they can be. Inquisition gets True Faith and faith-based Numina. Arcanum has writeups for psychic powers. And Project Twilight has access to military-grade weapons. Not on the fictional scale of TFV, but still big by OWoD standards.

Arcanum dude gets caught, gets confronted and to get away sets a vampire on fire with his mind, or starts hucking bolts of lightning or throwing a man with his mind; or an Inquisitor raids a coterie gathering and holds up a cross and vampires that can see him BURN because of the power of his faith is fucking terrifying.

but not every single one get this powers

Otherwise whats the use of Hunters a-la Hunter the Reckoning?

Much like the Society of Leopold in bloodlines the only one having true faith was the guy leading the group, the others were just mooks

Right not everyone gets those powers usually, but it's your game, you could have an army of faithed-up guys as an antagonist if you wanted.

Hunter the Reckoning's focus is 'an ordinary dude gets empowered to see/fight monsters,' whereas these are societies built around doing things a certain way.

It's why you get a housewife turned hunter in Reckoning, versus a priest who was inducted because his faith was so strong, as an Inquisition member (Society of Leopold is the Inquisition).

I have a question. In Wraith, how many Arcanoi are you, on average, supposed to have?

I ask because the Arcanoi are fucking useless. Even the Level 5 ones aren't really that powerful. To do anything with your craft, you'd need at least THREE LEVELS in it. Three!

Like, if you call yourself a Harbringer, let's see what you can do with three Levels of Argos. You can conceal yourself from people who aren't actively looking for you, you can open tiny portals to the Tempest, you can fly (at jogging speed) and you have a weak-ass teleport.

Exactly what are you supposed to do with that fucking shit? If you're a Spook with three levels of Outrage, your only real way of hurting a mortal (for example) is to repeatedly Stonehand Punch him until he dies, which is an exercise in futility.

Nearly NONE of these powers are useful in combat. Let's not forget Moliate, where 'Martialry' lets you create subpar weapons and armor at the cost of losing mobility. Hey, you know what's more useful than Moliate? HAVING A WEAPON AND ARMOR.

I'd run it as the turning point of the Sabbat - when the Sabbat went from a group of vamps actively attempting, on all fronts, to throw off the shackles of the elders, and became more of a fucked up group of killers and sadists. Could have some old-guard ideologue types who, while off-put by what they might see as hedonistic indulgence in slaughter by some of their peers, tolerate it for the greater good, and some up-and-comers who're just the sociopath types you saw in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Watching footage of the V5 presentation in Berlin, one of the guys from WW said how when it (WoD) arrived, nothing else looked quite like it back then. Even though I'm not all that much experienced in RPGs, generally speaking, that sounds a bit untrue.

>We will be using a lot of photography throughout the book
>The photos are going to be about storytelling

Oh boy

>mentions she'll talk about all the clans
>brings up only the Camarilla 7
>no Independents/Sabbat mentioned or shown

Wonder what they'll use, narrative-wise, to dispose of the Independents.

I think those images are fine. What's wrong with them?
Also, they'll probably use the inquisition to get rid of them or bring them back into the loose anarch/camarilla alliance.

...

I want proper, decent artwork, not photographs.

Surely there's decent artists out there who would fit the job description without charging too much.

...

ah, Masquerade LARP

"can't stay out past dark"

"but maaaaaam gotta be vampires"

...

Trinity got Holdened, Scion is apparently on track for somewhere between now and next year.

>Hunting is far more personal, with each victim being named and given a storybased boon along with the slaking of the thirst. These boons do not stack.

You find
*rolls dice*
Bob, an agender poet with dreams of grandeur.
*rolls dice*
+1 to Celerity for 24 hours.

...

The best part is them looking at their own presentation.

Rule 1: never look at your own presentation unless someone asks a question.

Why is that?

>Hunting is far more personal, with each victim being named and given a storybased boon along with the slaking of the thirst. These boons do not stack.

...that seems kinda fiddly. I mean, there are plenty of vampires that just grab people and nom away and plenty of victims who will only matter once.

>an agender poet with dreams of grandeur
>+5 to your Dementia stat

Because it's your presentation. You should know what's on it already, and if you don't, you should have cue cards in front of you showing the slides.

You turn toward the presentation when asked a question because it conveys a message of contemplation and interest to the questioner, but really you should be prepared to answer the question without looking.

Presenting -- or briefing -- is really an elaborate act whereby you convince the audience you find their questions relevant or interesting while having answers for them ahead of time.

That looks like someone failing miserably at making a campfire. To the point of the attempted fire outright bullying him.

>You find an intersectional feminist, genderqueer fat activist.
>*All benefits from celerity and presence are negated for 24 hours

>literally talking about wanting to appeal to a wider audience

It's like post-2007 video games.

You might get bonus to Vicissitude though for being more gender-confused than Sasha Vykos

>might get a bonus to Vicissitude
Because of all the extra material left behind maybe

Nah, he's correct, it and 40k were the primary factors behind darkening the RPG scene.

They stated the initial 'focus' is going to be Camarilla/Anarch, so they probably haven't gotten as far as listing the Independents. It's got a 1e feel when you ONLY had 7 clans to work with and didn't have morons screaming MUH SHADOWS or MUH FLESHCRAFTING!