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

Previous thread: >Pastebin:
pastebin.com/7HiVphFm
>News
kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/changeling-the-lost-2nd-edition
theonyxpath.com/one-of-a-kind-deviant-the-renegades/
>This week's Monday Meeting Notes:
theonyxpath.com/its-the-week-before-christmas-and/
>Question:
How do the various splats celebrate Christmas?
>New Geist preview
theonyxpath.com/all-souls-day-preview-geist-the-sin-eaters/
>New Deviant preview
theonyxpath.com/variations-on-a-theme

Other urls found in this thread:

drive.google.com/open?id=1hk2kFgY9bRuOGWqF_UwLMoXOxQbatJ5E
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_by_the_Apocalypse#cite_note-:0-25
drive.google.com/open?id=1X-aqdUXH2rO0x7eAv-5sz7rZl8_8Y1fQ
discord.gg/cctzCD
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

We made it on time to use the Christmas picture! It's a Christmas miracle, all thanks to mage shitposting!

Personally, I'm amused by the thought of a crewe of Sin-Eaters reenacting A Christmas Carol on unsuspecting people.

>For starters, I could see crude versions of several normal Traditions arising, like "miracle worker," "weird neopagan" and "dude drugs lmao," but what paradigms are not covered by a Tradition and what Traditions would likely not exist, even in analog?

Maybe a paradigm where post numbers on an image board shape the future?

>>Not being a mage in a vtm crossover
>>Not beating the fuck of vampires to steal their vitae
>>Not becoming a mix of vampire and mage that surpasses both
>The Tremere called, and want their idea back. And, by the way, it doesn't work out as expected.
>It was all part of the plan

You arguably can keep your avatar from leaving when you get turned into a vampire, if you use Spirit 4.
It's what is used to keep the avatar from leaving in the lich spell.

Sacred Hunt the spirits of holiday cheer.

Finally got around to doing Session 2 of our Mortals game. Next Mage session is in 30 hours.

drive.google.com/open?id=1hk2kFgY9bRuOGWqF_UwLMoXOxQbatJ5E

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.

After reading the previous thread looking into it a bit more, does anybody else share the opinion that Prime needs some serious tweaking in an Awakening chronicle?

Otherwise the Obrimos(or anyone proficient in Prime) is going to up and make all Mage opponents a non-threat, making an already undesirably vicious combat system all the worse.

If I remember correctly an Obrimos needs to know the particular spell they are dispelling. However a Moros can dispel a spell simply by being able to perceive it. Unless of course you're talking about Mana fuckery.

No they can dispel anything, not knowing the arcana involved only makes it trickier.

Using the actual practices you can meta anything another Mage preps and/or throws at you

Yay it got used.

Merry Christmas.

I don't think there has been a Christmas session in any of the WoD games I've been in.

There was a Christmas session in one of the games of Maid I played.

Prime is easily the strongest Arcanum within its own game. Not so in crossover.

They must have changed that in 2nd edition.

Looks to be a bastard of dungeon/apocalypse world .

Hears the big list of them take your pick
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_by_the_Apocalypse#cite_note-:0-25

With one dot of Prime, you can counterspell if you know at least one dot of the magic being cast. With two dots, you can universally counterspell anything. Prime's anti-magic shit is its major utility, since it's much narrower in scope and in application than the other Arcana. And to counterspell, you need to already be in Active Mage Sight, or else you won't catch the Imago in time. It's also not a sure thing, since it invokes a Clash of Wills that the Prime Mage can lose, and iirc it's not a reflexive action. Dispelling is trickier, requiring actual spellwork with factors involved. Prime is useful when dealing with other Mages but it hardly makes them a non-threat.

So I was thinking about running an Ocean's style game with a bunch of monsters trying to rob an occult depository of some mage. Could some magefags give me some good ideas for security stuff for the players to bypass? They'll be vamps, wolfs or minor supernatural stuff like psychics. I never really got into mage lore so just lookin for some ideas

If the Magefags tell you how to set it up, you'll just have a TPK on your hands.

Use the weird msyterium vault with all the artifacts and super security from their order book.

>Punishes humanity for the supposed crimes of the Fallen
>Damns the Fallen to millennia of torture that will twist them into monsters
>Leaves Lucifer out of the abyss cause lolz
>Humanity goes to shit without the influence of the Fallen
>Reconcilers still believe it's all part of the Keikaku
How can someone be so spineless to just bend over to a cruel and careless god?

Many mages like to set up sanctums in hard to reach places, like in the Shadow or Underworld, or somewhere you have to teleport to. Mind, Spirit, Fate, and Death could be used to bind guards for the sanctum. Probably the easiest thing to do is to look pick 3 of the 10 Arcana to theme things around.

Spirits are a good option, a mage with 5 in spirit and the right legacy can do it. look up the eyes of Erin soph they are all about hording artefacts. Can also use a death master controlling underworld entities, a cwn awnn using lower depth monsters, worlds your oyster really, just be careful you don't do things only an archmage should be able to do.

>Prime is useful when dealing with other Mages but it hardly makes them a non-threat.

It's certainly the most powerful Arcanum to use against other Mages.

I don't get the hype surrounding prime other than 'muh tass'
I picture acanthus as the anti mages, not much prime can do against time.

Hey, anyone here interested in a fan-splat idea involving aliens?

Elaborate. Do you mean like playing aliens or what?

Playing as their servants.

The idea is that the game is called "Abducted: the Chosen". Taken by one of five alien species to act as their agents on Earth, and carrying out their bidding. Or else.

Gonna need more information. Is it a conspiracy thing like Demon?

Prime fucks with Time like any other Arcanum.

Acanthus are constantly overestimated at my table. They're not really good fighters by any means, always being the most subtle with their magics. All they do is run away and try again.

In a way. You aren't fighting the alien invasion. You're working for it. Right now I have a Discord chat setup, as well as a Doc folder to facilitate development.

drive.google.com/open?id=1X-aqdUXH2rO0x7eAv-5sz7rZl8_8Y1fQ

discord.gg/cctzCD

It's goddess, actually. Check xir privilege.

>always being the most subtle with their magics

Can they not rapidly age you into a decrepit corpse?

so, basically, Advent operatives from pre-invasion XCom ?

Close enough really. The game takes from modern abduction myth, alien fiction, and of course, Ancient Aliens.

i'm pretty interested, what would the species be and what kinda powers are you thinking of?

Nobody's saying Dominate is better than Mind, but being able to amass limitless servants and permanently alter their memory on the cheap is something vampires plain do better than mages.

A mage isn't going to want to maintain any more spells than he wants to, and suppressing memories are not exactly a fun use of his spells long term.

Noone's disputing a mage has a bigger penis than a vampire, don't worry.

Er, why? Of course Prime should let you win vs other mages, Death should let you win vs vampires and Spirit should let you win vs spirits. Of these, Prime is the nichiest of the niche club, because Prime doesn't let you make pet mages like Death/Spirit lets you make pet ghosts/spirits.

The species are drawn from alien fiction.

Mulloch: Big, muscular, green, seeking military conquest of the planet Earth.
Reticulans: Gray, thin, with a devotion to developing their own species by using others as guinea pigs.
Sirians: Reptilian infiltrators looking to give glory to their "god-like" rule.
Locusts: Planet-devouring bugs, and now you're working for them.
Aes: Ancient Aliens who just got back from tooling around the multiverse after a War in Heaven deal. Check the links above to see the initial beta draft if you're interested.

Prime can counterspell, dispel, and can defend against directly hostile magic very well.

is there a saboteur or anti-alien agenda subsplat for people who don't like their master's plans? (kinda like the sorta opposing thing of the reintegrators in demon)

There are at least nine canon possibilities (3 of what Lucifer was about, 3 of what happened to the angels and 3 of what happened to God).

Few of them are very flattering to God, but eh.

Outside of the context of God being, generally, a douche in owod, being a Christian demon or vampire makes sense to me. The most logical immediate response to going "I'm damned hurrrrr" and really believing it is going "oh wait I can just praise Jesus."

Letting it go is also healthy for a demon.

That's pretty interesting, actually.

They're an antagonist faction of abducted humans. The aliens have systems of making sure their hybrids are properly controlled, but sometimes those methods are..."defective".

What are the most minmaxable/broke/overpowered arcanum? I want to test this out at the table with a friend and post the results here

why are insurgent an antagonist faction? what separates a chosen from an insurgent?

sounds great, kinda halfway between Changeling, Demon and Hunter but somehow not redundant with them
I'm sensing great potential here

The only three that really came close to ruining my game(s) were Spirit, Mind and Time.

not him but I'd say it's a nice change from the systematic "underdogs underdogging" theme that pervades the other lines to play as agents of a higher power instead of renegades

Oh jesus stop the arcana war already

Hell, you can probably combo dominate with majesty to get an entire room.

Here's what I've gotten as a draft so far. Essentially, the Chosen have basically accepted that their life is now out of their hands, and do as they're told. The insurgents fight because the systems of control didn't take over properly, or they found ways around it.

Again, the roughest draft is here, so go ahead and read it over.

Some are better than others.

This is a good exercise for new players.

I was more wondering why they're a discrete different thing, if they're the same as the other chosen except not liking their masters and actively working against them, why are they a different thing? instead of being a merit or background or addon subsplat to role.

There isn't a fucking Arcana hierarchy, you imbecile. They all do completely different things.

>hurdur life can cause aneurysm diarrhea
>how can _____ even compete

I've seen an argument for every arcanum being 'overpowered'

>Letting go millennia of torture
>Letting go the suffering of humanity
>Letting go the decadence of creation
>Demons accepting jesus, who's the son of god but also god
user... you have been eating reconciler propaganda

Here's the roughest draft I have for the Abducted, look it over and see what you think.

Well you could have a ghost mage as your pet with Death.

X Files: The anal probing

Christ this fetish bait is more disgusting than Princess. Get yourself an appointment with a proctologist if you want to indulge and get that shit, literal and figuratively, away from us

Yeah, but only one gives you the power to resurrect the dead and generally be free of consequences at fucking level 3.

Let me guess, you're the guy that throws autistic fits of rage at the slightest mention of Genius

For humans, forgiveness is often weakness.
For demons, butthurt actually poisons them, mutates them and fucks up their powers.
So there's a good reason for them to become a footwasher.

>implying any arcanum can't achieve the same results with enough creativity
begone, brainlet

Wait, is there actual anal probing or are you a hyperbolic retard?

The only thing that I really dislike about Genius is that it was made as a one up/take that at Mage.

Not even close, sorry.

>brainlet

Says the guy who can't actually think of a way for other arcanum to achieve the same effects.

What kind of bait is this

Certain Arcana overlap. Though minimally. The idea that there's a 'Arcana Hierarchy' is flawed.

>The idea that there's a 'Arcana Hierarchy' is flawed.

No moreso than the idea of a splat hierarchy.

Nah, see, splat balance was never a focal point. Period. Unlike Matt, Dave actually cares about internal consistency regarding the game itself.

Is Staurway to Heaven a WoD song for anyone else or just me?

Making the mage armors on par with each other definitely doesn't mean the mage arcana are even, which is totally absurd.

i can see it --

It's literally impossible to rank the Arcana, user. They're all completely different in function.

They're all equal in the sense that they take up the ten building blocks of reality. There is no 'best' or 'worst'. *That* is absurd.

no thats me

fuck genius

Where did Genius touch you

>It's literally impossible to rank the Arcana, user.

Not any more than its impossible to rank the splats.

> There is no 'best' or 'worst'.

Certainly, in the same hippy, postmodernish sense that there are no winners or losers, or that the splats are all equal.

The different arcana have different niches. For Death, its mostly creatures of death as well as negation; for Forces, its mostly situations where forces could be helpful, for Mind, its situations involving beings that have minds or where skills could come into play (100% of them), and for Time, its situations where repeated tries, breaking the action economy, or observing events in the past, future, or alternate timelines could come into play (100% of them).

So yeah, within their niche they all have their uses, but the niche of some is "Making magic better" and "everything."

There is no anal probing, you retard. This splat is a rough idea but I think it has potential.

>How do the various splats celebrate Christmas?

>Lion of Zion: Will someone please pass the the dumplings and chow mein...

>Oy vey! First you drink all my good Christian baby blood, now you want all of the chow mein?!

>Hey, shut the eff up, you took the last egg roll. Now, what movie do you want to see this afternoon?

Hey are human sacrifice rituals still good?

I think I saw some similar fansplat at onyx path forums. Monarch the Endless I think it was named.

Mage armor is one thing MtAw could have imho handled better. Consider how neither Death and Spirt armor scales with arcana dots. Or that both Mastigos' and Acanthus' arcanas have same type armor.

>Hey are human sacrifice rituals still good?

Mage 2e, p.87:

Blood Sacrifice offers Mana. In an Act of Hubris,
the mage kills a living being for Mana. Its death releases
Mana from its Pattern. A small animal offers one Mana,
while human sacrifices offer as much Mana as the person
had Integrity dots remaining before the killing blow. The
Mana gained from Sacrifice ignores the spend/Turn limits
on Mana if the sacrifice is part of a spell’s casting.

These threads could still stand to die for a couple of months

When's enemy action?

>These threads could still stand to die for a couple of months

Death isn't even an inconvenience in the oWOD/CofD.

>Vampire threads

Ahh nice. I've been on a major Nasuverse kick lately, and I love them ruthless, sacrifice happy mages.

Nah. The people who care enough to get in serious fights over their imaginary characters from made up stories aren't the kind to calm down over time.

These threds are shockingly ded except for mage shitposting.

Quick, let´s rank the Arcana:

Time>Fate>Mind>Spirit>Space>Death>Life>Prime>Forces>Matter

Alternatively: you get to choose 3 (yes, three) ruling and one inferior Arcana. What do you get?

>most broken not first on the list
You had one job.

Do you mean Fate or Spirit?

>but the niche of some is "Making magic better" and "everything."

Depends on what you mean by making magic better, or "everything", but yeah.

Even the strongest of the Arcana, namely Fate and Spirit, fall short of others.

>Fate>Time>Spirit>Space>Matter>Mind>Forces>Prime>Death>Life

FTFY

Spirit is *at least* as powerful as both Fate and Time. Prime is easily the meatiest Arcanum if we're talking home base. Matter is oft underestimated- greatly so.

Sad that only the Moros Path doesn't have one of the 'broken' Arcana as Ruling.

Oh well. Legacies are always a thing. *whimper*

I´m not sure Prime is much better than Death.
Anyway, just can a nice Legacy. Or maybe beg your ST to let you buy a third ruling with some houseruled merit.

Prime lets you defend against ANY supernatural power, boosts a mage's spellcasting capabilities AND allow him to Mage Green Lantern. This is before any expanded or clarified capabilities in Signs of Sorcery. Since mages are often the only real threat to other mages, and Prime is the anti-mage Arcanum, it's utility in this area speaks for itself.

Whoever thinks Prime is too niche or useless, even in crossover, lacks reading skills and imagination.

Prime is quite meta-y within its own game. It's certainly 'breaking' in the sense that, if used accordingly, will fuck over any given mage and become the biggest source of convenience to a Cabal.

Also this.

>Prime lets you defend against ANY supernatural power
Has this ever been actually confirmed anywhere?

If Prime Mage Armor can defend against any direct magical attack regardless of type or source, why would all the rest of the Prime Practices be somehow prevented from doing so? Remember, in 2e there are no Arcanum speed bumps.