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

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>Question:
How many changes do you make to the setting in your games?
>5th editons cliffnotes
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First for there is no supreme splat, everything is fun in its own right

Equality isn't fun

It's also entirely unrealistic, even for something that is inherently unrealistic in the first place.

Fun is a completely subjective term. I find Vampire
and Hunter most fun because I prefer street-level, investigate style games. My ideal game is basically a detective story fired through a supernatural lens. Someone else might prefer Mage because they want cosmic-level adventures with high stakes, with the fate of the cosmos hanging in the balance. Different strokes for different folks.

Hey CofD/ & /wodg/, I'm fresh from an eight year Mage game using the 1ed rules. I've only recently actually read through the whole rulebook and discovered that the GM was more or less winging a big shitload of the system and had created this weird bastardised hybrid that we ended up getting used to.

And now I've discovered there is a new edition of Mage, so I'm just wondering - what's the difference between the new edition and Awakening?

Better but much gayer art.

Sometimes all you need is a handful of strong powers and a long time to use them

>How many changes do you make to the setting in your games?

General: No aspiration or its equivalents mechanics in any game.

For mage:
1) Atlantis is a tinfoil conspiracy talk.

2)Reality isnt a prison it just is and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

3) There arent arcanums 6+.

4) The war of Seers vs Diamond is mostly for turf and resources, no reality shaping of any kind.

5) No wisdom.

6) You nimbus will get tainted the more you use your magic a certain way and it might aid, flavor or fuck with your magic.

7) Casting sympathetic looses you the exceptional success options. And there is no "Ignore withstand"

8) Successes on the aiming roll allows you to add potency to a spell. (Case per case basis, mostly for direct combat spells).

9) Using shifting sands automatically give you a permanent paradox condition.

For Werewolf:
1) Fetishes 5 are are now 4 or 3 because a sword that does 8s again for the high price of putting an city father in it just not worth it.

2) Flayed lunes can teach out-aupice gifts to bale hounds.

Firstly, every spell starts off with base, defualt, weak factors.
Must be thrown/touch vector, takes your ritual interval to cast, lasts for seconds, can target one person, etc.

You must "Reach" to increase those factors to their advanced value, you get one free reach for meeting the Arcanum requirement, and one more for each point you exceed it by. If you stay within your free reach, your spell does not cause Paradox without Sleeper witnesses.

So no more bullshit with all Forces spells being "vular", but Mind spells getting a free ride.
For every uncompensated reach, you get Paradox dice dependant upon your Gnosis.
You can either contain successes in your Soul and roll Wisdom to soak them as Bashing damage, suffering a "condition" if that isn't enough.
Or you can release them (but nobody ever does) and it corrupts your spell.

Another major change is you must fully define your spell before you cast. You can't just attribute successes to various elements after having cast. Either you succeed, or you fail, or you get an exceptional success (5 successes) and your spell goes off marvelously.

Also, your base dice pool is Gnosis + Arcanum, however you can enhance that with Yantras, symbolic keys you fit into your Imago to strengthen it with Supernal symbolism found in the Fallen world. Your tool is one such yantra, so is a suitable environment, sacraments, high speech, even spending merit dots to imbue your Shadow Name with mystic potency. You can use a number of those based on your Gnosis.

Also spell tolerance is gone, and spell control is just your Gnosis, and you have to spend increasing amounts of Reach to exceed it.

Also (importantly) most "speed bumps" are gone. You can use the Practice of Weaving to affect all life, all minds, and all matter, and there's no arbitrary restriction on stuff like "Gold" only being accessible at 5 dots. Also the necessity of conjunctive Arcana has been decreased, so you can guess a phone number with Fate 2 alone.

...

Also Rituals are gone. Well, not gone, but less bullshit.
No spending 2 whole days casting a turbo-charged spell.

Ritual speed just saves you a point of Reach, and if you repeat the interval you get a +1 die bonus, up to a maximum of +5
Which is really still quite helpful, but only at Gnosis 3 when you're spending 6 hours, rather than 18.

You only ever roll once.
Well, sometimes you can roll twice and choose one result (Choose the Thread), but only one roll is ever counted.

>I don't like your opinion therefore it must be bait

You're hilarious

>Or you can release them (but nobody ever does) and it corrupts your spell.

I still hate this, it used to be (fluffwise) only the Guardians would really do this on any real large scale because what fucking stupid mage wants to let paradox anywhere near their soul.

No no it's not that, it's how it's basically dead center what the latest shitstorms have been about. Perfectly set up to start fights about unimportant nonsense all over again

Thanks for the succinct answer, user.

Oh boy, where to begin

First off, 2nd edition Awakening has explanations of the practices in the core book, which greatly helps with creative thaumaturgy

Second, there is no Subtle and Vulgar Magic anymore, only whether Sleepers are degrading your potency and if you tried to put too many factors into your magic to properly control it.

Speaking of which, Reach. Reach is a new mechanic which has the ability to decide whether a spell will cause Paradox or not. You have 1 reach for meeting a spell's requirements, and this reach will often go into Instant Action Casting. Adding more Reach might narrow down useful information in a Knowing/Unveiling spell, cause a spell that is meant to magically grapple someone to also death Potency damage, cause a healing spell to also give all the benefits of a good night's sleep, that kinda thing. Things that would be adjacent to the spell's goal, but not the focus of the spell all together and not quite requiring another spell all together. Use more Reach than you have for "Free", aka more than 1+1 more for every dot you exceed the spell's requirement, and you risk Paradox. Its meant to be more of a "How much can you control" thing for magic, rather than "Do the gods hate you today".

cont

Mysteries are now a thing, by the way. Basically any sorta magic leaves an imprint on the world in the form of what Mages call a Mystery. Mysteries can be Solved for Arcane Insight (Arcane Beats, 1 fifth of an Arcane XP if you are that new to 2nd edition) and knowledge of what happens. Opacity is the difficulty of a Mystery, and is set to the level of the Arcana used, or whatever it would be in Mage terms times 1.5 if from another splat. So a Mage might find insight into Mind Arcana by studying the after effects of a Vampire's Dominate, or a Master's spell, and in the case of the Vampire would actually find it harder to learn about things. Opacity is the difficulty to make a roll to learn "Deep Information", things like "What was the purpose of this spell". Opacity is lowered by a Scrutiny Roll, Arcana+Gnosis in whats called Focused Mage Sight. You gotta get an amount of successes equal to Opacity to lower it by 1, so a Opacity 3 Mystery requires 3 successes to lower to 2. Once its at 0 Opacity though you learn everything about the spell/power used that can be learned through a Supernal lens: You might learn that a Vampire used Dominate on a victim they made eye contact with in order to disable them, but you would be left to your own devices to learn that they used it to feed. A spell however leaves its full Imago bare though.

cont

Attainments are now plentiful. Every Arcana has Counterspell as its 1 dot attainment, there is a useful tool for a second dot one as well as Mage Armor, and the tools they give keep getting more and more useful the more dots you have till you hit Master and can start making your own Rotes.

Rotes now have the benefit of being considered a Master for the purposes of Reach, so if there is a spell you like the Reach factors of, get it in Rote form. Rotes also give the option to add a Skill to your Arcana+Gnosis roll, instead of being Attribute+Skill+Level Arcana.

Legacies now have 5 attainments.

Really that is all the big stuff. Other things are minor fluff changes, merit changes, things like that. Personally I believe its a much more functional game now for just having better creative thaumaturgy rules in the book itself, but that's me.

Are mages still overpowered or have they been nerfed down to reasonable levels?

God fucking damn it I forgot about Yantras. How the fuck could I forget about Yantras

Mages are still overpowered. They shit on everything.

Is this a bad thing? Depends on how you look at it.

Mages still are gonna be powerful, but not as stupidly powerful without risking dangerous things. While a Mage still has access to lots of tools to use, they have to be careful about overloading them. Yes a mage could In Theory use 10 Reach to make a REALLY FUCKING AMAZING spell but that is also lots of fucking paradox that is gonna be rolled, and lots of potential for their AMAZING AWESOME SPELL to go haywire and do anything from helping enemies to ripping open rifts into the Abyss which will want to eat the Mage in question

That stops being as much of a problem for them though as they gain dots in Spheres though, so if you wanna do crossover a good way to limit the mages is saying they can only raise Gnosis/Arcana when you approve of it or with Arcane XP

And by "As much of a problem" I should specify: A Mage can only ever get 6 free reach, and that is on a Arcana 1 spell in an Arcana they have mastered while using a dedicated tool. And even then they are still rolling a Chance Die for paradox, its just effectively never gonna come up 10 and fuck them over in that situation.

Unmaking and Making are still borked as fuck though, so once again please be careful when you allow someone to gun for Mastery

Which is why a Demesne is now a must-have for any powerful Mage.
Infinite free reach so long as the soul doesn't leave the Demesne when cast?
Fuck yes.

>Rotes now have the benefit of being considered a Master for the purposes of Reach, so if there is a spell you like the Reach factors of, get it in Rote form.
Wait, what? What page?

And as long as the spell doesn't target something outside it either. You can boost your stats in a demesne but you can't raise someone's outside it with unlimited reach

Yeah, I'm not big into the lore of Mage but isn't that like their whole deal?

So if you are casting a Forces 2 spell on rote you are considered to have 4 reach

That's what I meant.
You can turbocharge your stats in a Demesne, then wander out to kick that Seer's ass.

But not Sympathetically Unmake someone outside of the Demesne, unless they too are in a suitable Demesne.

page 112 by the way

It's not like you need a Demesne to Unmake someone into oblivion though.

You could cast the massive nuke spell in your Demesne and hang it for a later time.

Unmaking does require a lot of Potency to take effect though, otherwise Withstand plinks it

This is of course why I would make it so you can't drop dice for Potency, you gotta use Reach

It isn't.
But subjects you might want to be that heavy handed with probably have the ability to bite back.

And I'd much prefer to annihilate someone from Sympathetic Range, rather than have the chance of losing the Initiative roll and getting Unmade myself because he knew I was coming.

Can we also just take a moment to stop, breath, and remember that Masters are rare and often weird individuals so Making and Unmaking are usually off the table?

What, your games don't routinely get to Master and Archmage-level play? You must not be playing right.

To speak at a Convocation, you need to be a Master.
They're not that rare.

So if a i am understanding the rules right. You gain free reach equal to the highest arcanum you are using.

How much would change the game if instead you get free reach for every yantra you use? I am aiming for more ceremonies and more flavor on the casting.

Potency won't matter much after a certain point.

:^)

you are reading this wrong. You get 1 reach for being able to cast the spell, and 1 more for every dot above the spell's requirement you have. If you cast a level 2 spell while at 5 dots you have 4 reach. If you cast a level 2 spell at 2 you have 1 reach

Reminder that Masters will eventually gather Exceptional Successes with major ease.
The chances become ludicrously high. Withstood just isn't a factor to them after a certain point.

anydice.com/articles/new-world-of-darkness/

Masters are a bit -too- strong.

Not if you get five successes on the roll - or three, with a praxis. Your base dicepool is at least ten at that point, too.

>But subjects you might want to be that heavy handed with probably have the ability to bite back.

Have fun pissing off a minimally powerful Cabal.

Yes, Masters can waste lesser Mages.
Which is why the Orders and the Consilium exist.

>Masters are a bit -too- strong.

By what definition? Mage at Master/Arch-Master level isn't a street level game anymore.

One of the options for an exceptional success on a spellcasting role is: "The spell ignores any Withstand levels and takes effect at full Potency."
For 1 experience, you can learn a spell as a "praxis," which lowers the requirements for an exceptional success to 3 successes.
You can probably tell where this is going once you get the Practice of Unmaking, or even Patterning.
To make it even more fun, you don't need to have one dot higher in your Arcana for casting a spell at Sympathetic range.

In comparison to other playables. Masters just win at everything. Exceptional Successes make Potency/Withstand pointless against them.

I still acknowledge the thematic principles behind it though.

Arch-Master is entirely divorced. Masters are supposed to have a finger or two in the pie, even if it's only in a cursory way.

...and then there are Rotes

Exceptional Successes come so easily to Masters.

So the issue is Mages can get faster stronger than other playables? Does that really make them 'too strong'?

play game for 8 years, dont bother to read the rules. You deserve what you get. Though if it lasted 8 years couldnt have all been shit right?

>Played game for 8 years
>GM specifically asked us not to read rules
>Wanted us to go through the Mage experience with no preconceived notions
>GM taught us the rules we needed to know as they came up, as our characters gained a deeper understanding of magic and the setting.
>Gameless anons forget the first rule of Veeky Forums

>Unmaking does require a lot of Potency to take effect though, otherwise Withstand plinks it

Why even fish for Potency when Exceptional Successes score it full and flat-out ignore Withstood ratings?

Hell, Masters are going to score such rolls constantly. The chances to get ES rolls can be higher than 90% even without cheesing things.

Don't play D&D?

Every time masters are brought up my blood boils.

It's literally an example of unashamed Mage supremacy.

Writers basically went "my fav splat legit beats your fav splat 1v1 ALL TEH TIEM without any way to defend against meh!!!"

Horrible

1. BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER.
2. PARTY ON, DUDES. (AND DUDETTES)

That seems like an odd thing to be angry about. Do you expect every playable creation in the World of Darkness to be perfectly balanced against each other? That seems like a weird way to look at a setting.

I mean, if they brought in Gods as a playable splat and they shat all over Mages would you get just as pissy with them?

>if they brought in Gods as a playable splat and they shat all over Mages would you get just as pissy with them?

Pick something else. Mages- Errr, Archmages already challenge the mightiest of gods as per their theme.

Paradox in nWoD is a bit toothless compared to oWOD. Theoretically. In practice, it tends to be a little more unpleasant unless you're rolling mind. Power level in nWoD takes a dip from oWoD, and mages get a lot more fucky and delicate. A few ways to get paradox-less abilities. Thematic differences.

Can't help you on 2e, haven't bought or pirated the book yet.

I think the beef with Mage as a splat is the fact that they can eventually confront the strongest of beings in the setting once Archmastery has been achieved.

This includes gods and other horrors.

>I think the beef with Mage as a splat is the fact that they can eventually confront the strongest of beings in the setting once Archmastery has been achieved.

Yeah, that's my gripe. I'm fine with the average Mage being more powerful than a Vampire -- I expect that, it makes sense, it's thematic. But I do get a bit cheesed about the fact that Archmages -- PLAYABLE CHARACTERS -- can 1v1 Luna and shit.

I'll admit my experience with Mage is a little fluid because of a GM that love homebrewing shit, but is that really that much of a problem?

My understanding of Archmastery was that it literally broke the rules - it was outside of the system. On top of the sheer XP cost of getting to Archmastery, it was also an in-game quest to find another Archmaster to teach you how to get to those lofty heights.

And then there's the sheer mind-fuckery of Abyssals.

An Archmage is like an Epic Level Character in D&D. Its not something you normally play.

>I expect that, it makes sense, it's thematic. But I do get a bit cheesed about the fact that Archmages -- PLAYABLE CHARACTERS -- can 1v1 Luna and shit.

I don't think I can really understand this sort of gripe. Is your issue that players can have a lot of power in a setting where other splats focus on low level abilities?

For context, do you disagree with the Deathwatch and Rogue Trader splats in the 40k range because they are so OP compared to things like Only War or Dark Heresy?

Or is it a general disagreement with the idea of playing powerful characters, like in Exalted or Nobilis?

Now all I can imagine is some muscular zangief-knockoff RKOing Luna in the middle of a conversation with a few Elder Werewolves.

You don't *need* to find another Archmage. Can't, in some cases, for some Seekings.

Archmastery isn't *that* hard. You'll never get there if the GM doesn't allow it, sure, but that's everything in game and you CAN do it. It's far from impossible.

I think it's the fact that Mage devalues the rest of the setting with this stuff, and the prime defense is "oh well it's not really a crossover totes".

So what are the rules for actually hitting archmastery? When we played part of leveling up an Arcanum was studying it and actually having access to a some kind of either tutor or grimoire that you can learn from.

Paradox in 2e basically is asking for the GM to fuck with your spells

Every success on a Paradox roll means there is an extra factor in the spell that you did not put there. This can be anything from your Forces mute zone spell making somewhere else louder to your your Spirit spell summoning angry spirits

Exceptionals on the paradox roll end up with you having to deal with even nastier things like incursions or just a really, really nasty GM

Archmastery, lorewise, is ridiculously hard to achieve.

Most who attempt it fail. The successful Archmages are a minority.

Now all I can imagine is a Archmaster who challenges Gods and shit to normal, power free wrestling matches

How do you feel Mage devalues the rest of the setting, when they've been part of the setting for a while?

Again for context, would you feel the same if Spirits were a playable splat and you could reach Luna levels that way?

Pick up Imperial Mysteries. It should be in the pasteebin.

Short version: Gnosis 6, 5 dots in one arcanum, 4 in three others. Do whatever ingame work your GM deems necessary (Including finding a quintessence), and have the XP to buy a 6th dotd of the arcanum in question.

You need to be Gnosis 6 or higher, be a Master of at least one Arcanum, have enough experience to purchase the sixth dot of the Arcanum, get your hands on a Quintessence (a plot device), have enough Arcane Experience to cross the Abyss and form a Lustrum in the Supernal, and defeat some powerful Supernal entity in an activity that the ST decides on.

I've seen a fansplat for Purified that turned their version of 'ascension' into Shadow Gods using the IM rules and I still thought that was a bit dodgy. There are powerful characters, and then there's having a secondary pantheon for a splat that is capable of drop-kicking the primary pantheon of other splats.

If they ever got into 'the sponsors in the ascension war' throwaway line they might put it to rest. Assuming it wasn't yet more mages.

So I have a question about imperial mysteries
Am I supposed to just accept that every single non archmage mage in the game is an irrelevant unimportant two bit extra with no purpose? I mean it seems a little weird for the book to basically be saying 'Hey remember all those cool things you did in your mage game? Yeah non of those matter in the slightest.' since the next time any archmage does an imperium rite the changes to reality are going to be so sweeping your characters will never have been born.

The theme of Imperial Mysteries is that you are in a cold war, with all the big god-like things pointing their nukes at each other. The moment some Archmage beats Luna, he'll get blasted by literally everyone else, and then the timeline gets rebooted so that Luna is still alive, and he is not.

Exactly.
Which is why every non-Archmastery game operates under the assumption that this is the "final" reality.
Because you will never have known another one.

From an Archmastery point of view, the fall might have happened 5 billion iterations of the world ago, or it might have just been 500.

Or even 5.

...

First off a mage has to find some method of getting to the Supernal

Once they find such a method, they have to cross the Abyss and successfully face every potential method of temptation possible, and several impossible. If they fail they become abyssal creatures I forget the name of that cause massive amounts of paradox by existing near other mages.

If they manage to succeed in doing that they gotta create a Lustrum, if I'm remembering the name right, which is a thingy that lets them survive being in the Supernal and actually parse the information that is around them. By doing this, they affirm themselves as a Supernal Truth, and thus achieve Archmastery. This fails if anyone decides to show up and fuck with them, if they don't have a strong enough will (read: don't have a dot of willpower left over after facing the abyss), or if they are just plain unlucky.

Obviously, all of this is INCREDIBLY hard to do. One of the easiest possible methods is gaining Gnosis 10 and creating the 6th attainment for your legacy, but even that is not guaranteed to be possible.

Cosmic horror is cosmic. It becomes even more horrifying when you realize that the horrors aren't as alien as you thought.

One way to remedy this in your games is to go with the "many worlds" interpretation that the book offers. The Archmaster isn't changing reality, he's being shunted into an alternate timeline where the stuff he described occurs.

Qliphoth. They're basically p-zombies. You have to suffer paradox, and the paradox means you start seeing the world the way the Qliphoth does - with abyssal overlay. Absorb sleepers and lesser mages into their own hideous hellscape. Have to be infected by them to kill them. Can move around as though they had their own Road.

OH, so that is the exacts on what they are.

I was wondering what the equivalent of Marauders was in New World

So, what's the most powerful version of Hunter? Reckoning? 1e? 2e? My players tend to like having humans that can at least have a sporting chance in combat against the otherworldly and, since I don't know a ton about the setting, I thought I'd ask.

>The Archmaster isn't changing reality, he's being shunted into an alternate timeline where the stuff he described occurs.

There's something so weirdly Mage in being cost-effective with magic like that.

>Fuck, re-writing reality is going to take a shitload of power.
>Fuck that noise, I'll just jump on three dimensions over where it's already in place.

Reckoning. Fucking mini-solars.

Nah, those are super-duper Marauders, and they're probably closer to Aswadim than anything, and even that's wrong.

Marauders are Banishers in the New World.

It's not, or at least it really shouldn't be treated that way. It's less one setting and more like nine individual settings with a lot of overlap, like an anthology series. The only game in the line that actually treats the Chronicles of Darkness as a full on setting as opposed to hints and optional ideas is Beast. Deviant, depending on how things go, might be the second line to treat it like a full setting.

Yes, the rules make crossover possible, but that doesn't mean it should be the default, especially when speculating about the settings of the individual games, unless we're explicitly talking about Beast.

.... and to actually give you advice, I'd recommend Mage, since its the only full template where you are still explicitly a human (at least till you change that), or letting your players play as Compacts or Conspiracy hunters, as they get tools to deal with supernaturals.

Reckoning though you may be human, but you aren't mortal... plus Reckoning sucks, both in its weird tonal whiplash and mechanics

>Obviously, all of this is INCREDIBLY hard to do

And people complain about this?

I'm liking more and more the idea of a God themed splat.

A Hunter in a Conspiracy that gives either gives him fancy tech, or supernatural powers, or something like that.

Taskforce VALKYRIE, for example, is the government's anti-supernatural hit agents armed with plasma guns.
The Cheiron Group is a corporation that studies the supernatural to find ways to profit on it. They give their agents various implants and monster body parts.

See, I have talked to people about this, but I've never really thought of even the Banishers who can't troll their magic being Marauders. The thing that made Marauders so scary is that they force EVERYTHING into conforming to their own fucked up reality, not just always having cockroaches crawling over them because they have a fear of bugs and are a severely fucked up Mastigos/Thyrsus

No, see, Qliphoth and Marauders/Banishers are nothing alike. The only similarity is that they warp your reality to theirs. And even that isn't quite right.

I keep seeing the same shit thrown around that ES Unmaking is essentially unbeatable in combat encounters.

Is there absolutely no way to counter this? Not even a dozen max level vampires/werewolves ?
What about anti-magic?

Not to mention that Marauders as they were can't exist quite the same way as they did in oWoD because reality isn't consensual anymore.

Look man, the only way to counter it is to require the Mage to spend so many spell factors increasing the number of targets to get every single Vampire at the same time, that he'd have to be incredibly lucky to get an Exceptional Success.

I could roll with a God themed splat. Could be neat as hell.

Also, yes, people complain about this. Archmastery is all but explicitly impossible to get unless your GM says yes, you can be an Archmaster


Now, as an aside, I just had a really dumb idea: What if Archmasters were stupidly common since there are essentially infinite realities which can make them

>troll their magic
I meant control, but yes, their magic is in fact trolling them

>I could roll with a God themed splat. Could be neat as hell.

Go play Scion. A god splat isn't thematically appropriate given current standing lore.

google 'fiction.live scholomance quest' and read from there, puzzling out the setting as you go.

This is for Vigil. Can't comment on Reckoning.

From what I remember the Voormas curse was absolute, it works on whoever on whatever is/are associated with directly killing him, considering he's a top level archmage, I think it works on anyone, even the Unnamed.