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

Canonically speaking, the Tremere and their rise to power make zero to no sense. Whatsoever. But they're one of the earliest Clans, so they HAD to write something...

I mean, really, Blood Treachery and the Masassa War is fucking hilarious. You can't look at it as anything other than a "look how awesome they are gais! aren't dey cool?"

Yes I'm a Tzimisce fanboy. I can only agree with the magefags on how terribly and mary sueish the Tremere are. Their survival in the Dark Ages was one in a fuckin' million.

They literally had to play the Tzimisce and Hermetics off as bumbling retards for them to win out, and the writers skillfully woven it so you wouldn't notice. Absolutely hysterical writing.

And I mean this is the most sincere way imaginable. Good fucking comedy and a showcase at how bad White Wolf was in their 'prime'.

Actually what I find weird about them is how they're the best at blood magic. They should be the worst thaumaturges, not the main ones. They can have more numbers with all the clan being thaumaturges but certainly not the quality since in the past they practised a completely different form of magic and they only had a few years to adapt while the other magic practicioners had milennia.

>They literally had to play the Tzimisce and Hermetics off as bumbling retards for them to win out
This

>Why do you think the Clan's creation and rise to power couldn't have happened?
I can get that the fucked over the Salubri - that makes sense to me. Saulot himself was known for playing 5-dimensional backgammon so allowing himself to be diablerized to steal Tremere's body later on down the road seems par for the course. Plus, Salubri were known for being a small as shit clan even before the usurpation so them being all but wiped out in a short amount of time is fairly realistic.

What I don't get is how both the other vampies and the mages of the world let this shit happen.

While the Salubri weren't exactly trusted (as no vampire ever really trusts another, especially ones so egregiously nice), would vampires really take the side of a bunch of treasonous mages who had already diablerized an Antediluvian and had overtly acted shady as shit just because they said "Well the Salubri seemed kinda iffy too, didn't they?" I mean, I get that the Camarilla wasn't formed yet and thus every clan was pretty much in it for themselves but still - I find it hard to believe everyone would just allow a new power player to arrive on the scene.
No one fucked with the Salubri because they were small-time and generally kept to themselves (or helped others when they didn't). The Tremere immediately would have been shit on by everyone just so they couldn't carve out their own empire, as they so obviously wanted to do.

In addition, the Tremere also betrayed the mages when they went full vampire.
I doubt that the full might Order Hermes wouldn't be able to absolutely shit on the newly-formed clan considering the "mages" of said clan lost access to their normal magic as soon as they died and basically had to relearn/redevelop everything to work with an undead body. Plus, Tremere was/is weak as shit for an Antediluvian and his clan was small as shit starting out. Even without help from other vampires, I doubt the clan could survive the first first Massasa War.

There are at least three threads over at the OPP forums describing your exact same feelings, user.

>Could you expand on the learning gifts bit? I don't understand how you learn shadow gifts. Do you buy the renown and the individual gifts and ranks?

Basically it works like this You got Gifts list and facets of gifts that are divided by renown (purity facet, honor facet, etc). Think of Gift as MMO Talents trees and facets as talent inside that tree.

You have to "unlock" a Gift list from a spirit (via hunt or via negotiation) and paying XP. When you do, you automatically gain 1 facet from said list that you have at least 1 renown in.

After that you either buy facets with XP (From the same Gift list you "unlocked") or when you gain renown you gain a free facet from any of your unlocked gifts list.

Example: Say you have a Iron master with Renown honor 1 , cunning 1 and Glory 1.

You want the Technology Gift list so you find a spirit and via hunt or negotiation you get it to "unlock" the technology Gifts (paying 3 XP because its tribal affinity). When you do you authomatically gain a facet and you only get to choose from the facets you got a renown dot in. In this case

Technology Gifts List´s Facets:
Garble (cunning)
Unmake (Glory)
Command Artifice (Honor)
Shutdown (Purity)
Iron Slave (Wisdom)

You may only select either Garble (Cunning), Unmake (Glory) or Command Artifice (Honor). Lets say you choose Garble (Cunning).

Later you want to get Unmake (Glory) facet so you find a spirit, convince him or hunt him and then pay 2XP to get the facet.

Finally, you character gets gains 1 renown dot in cunning (have to pay 3 XP) so he gets a free facet, in this case the only Facet available to him is Command artifice (Honor) so he gets that one for free.

That's really helpful. Thanks.

>That's really helpful. Thanks.

No problem. Let me know if you have any other question.

They arnt the best at blood magic tho.

ur Shuggli-wuggli woke up and undid one of their greatest magical acts that took great sacrifice over night on his own.

A single individual isn't a good argument, user.

There's also Baba Yaga.

>Should I stop making new threads
Yes but I know you won't. And if you don't someone else will.

I'm trying to update an old WtF1e campaign to 2e because the players want to jump back in.
What do I need to look for when making the change? What will the players need to account for that could trip them up?
Are there any houserules you have used to make for a better game?

Its a fucking great argument that they arnt the best at magic you cock sucker.

The tremere are just very good at spreading their lesser blood magic around so its everywhere.

There arnt many Bugatti Chirons around but you cant argue that they arnt better than a robin reliant. Numbers dont mean shit user.

There isn't a clan tremere in nwod, though there might have been a tremere bloodline that destroyed itself trying to become mages and accidentally cursed them to become souleaters.

>lesser blood magic
>can assimilate all other known blood magics
>btfo pretty much every clan except for a few cases

lel

Koldun are the best blood mages. I don't see Tremere being able to house 6 earthbound inside them.

>Koldun are the best blood mages
No

That nonsense was retconned later in the Assamite Clanbook (Revised, at page 44) and V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary:

"To peform the Breaking, ur-Shulgi crafted a unique ritual that allowed him to borrow a portion of the magical power of every vampire descended from him. As over two-thirds of the Assamite sorcerers can trace their ancestry to ur-Shulgi, this ritual affected all but a handful of them. This ritual's effects lasted in full for a year and a night, then gradually faded over the next year. Between 1998 and the latter part of 2000, all sorcerers found themselves diminished in strength for the purposes of all blood magic, not just "foreign" practices (see Assamite Sorcery, p. XX) and were required to spend one extra blood point for any blood magic invocation, be it a path or ritual. By the end of 2000, these effects had disappeared, leaving the sorcerers with only their "default" caste weakness."

The thing that is really good about Thaumaturgy is that it has two powers that 99% of PCs will desperately want: Focused Mind 5 and Blood 3. That sort of shit really can't be duplicated.

Hi Tremere fanboi.

Whats it like knowing your Clan is just Saulots Bitch?

And the Tremere cant do that shit so obv arnt as good at blood magic.

The Awakening 1e core rulebooks in the pastebin aren't working for me, does anyone have any other pdfs?

Is there a huge difference between editions of V:TM content/rules wise? Like can I use a splat from the Revised edition with the 2E rulebook?

use 2e.

You should, it would be for the best for the general to take a break until a new book comes out.

Would mages in crossover be balanced if ES Unmaking was removed?

I would, but the ST is adamant about using 1e for some reason. I have to use 1e

If I could, it'd be 2e all the way though

Some disciplines have changed afew times between versions. Celerity being one of them.

Botches have changed over the versions along with exp costs are other subtle stuff but over all converting between then is easy. Just pick one core system and if anything from outwith it is odd, convert it

Then dont play user.
Grow a spine.

Would that use the Life arcana?

Nope. Every single Arcanum is abuse-worthy.

Yes actually they can. Tremere Thaumaturgy's most widely used paradigm is Hermeticism and with that comes the ability to use the Principle of Contagion (Sympathetic Magic, elaborated on Rites of the Blood)

In one of the the Gehenna events Lord Tremere (even though greatly reduced in power because of the Withering effects) used the Mormon Family Tree Records & the Human Genome Project to Dominate everyone in the world

Though if you want a more grounded argument with mechanics then there's stuff like Power of the Pyramid ritual (what the Tremere used to bind/curse the antitribu and the Assamites)

Possibly CLOSER to being balanced if they could use a Clash of Will to save themselves like a spirit. I would probably also let ephemera Withstand with Resistance instead of Rank -- its not clear at all why ephemera would be so drastically weak against all forms of mage magic in particular. Maybe if using Withstand: Rank instead of Resistance was a special ability of Death/Mind/Spirit mages for ghosts/goetia/spirits. As is, spirits are in the weird position of wanting to become Claimed to protect against a mage's spells and to not be Claimed to protect against any other splats.

The bottom line is that mages are just plain better in most respects... especially in terms of what they get on an XP for XP basis. A mage might be okay for elder methuselahs, for example, but neonates are just plain fucked by comparison. The elder is also fucked if it was PvP oriented (which most chronicles are not), but in terms of PC vs NPC affairs the elder can probably hold his own to some degree. The mage is still better, but it won't go noticed as much.

>using a pseudo-antediluvian as a basis for his argument

user pls

The editions are pretty close to each other, so you shouldn't have too much of a problem. Keep in mind:
>2E BRB covers rules for the seven Camarilla clans and the Caitiff - all other clans are exclusive to expansions/clanbooks
>RE covers rules for all thirteen clans in the BRB

>2E BRB only has 1-5 levels for Disciplines (commonly) present in the Camarilla
>2E BRB does NOT cover disciplines used by the Sabbat/Independants and/or all rank 6-10 disciplines
>RE covers rules for most disciplines clans in the BRB, regardless of sect/rank
>Malkavians switched Dominate to Dementation inbetween editions (previously, Dementiation was exclusive to Sabbat Malkavians)

>Some core abilities changed between 2E and RE
>>Talents: Acting changed to Expression
>>Skills: Music and Repair changed to Performance and Crafts
>>Knowledges: Bureaucracy was replaced by Academics
>>Linguistics changed from an arithmetic progression (+1/2/3/4/5 languages) to a geometric progression (+1/2/4/8/16 languages).

>2E BRB does not have Merits and Flaws included, limited selection of Rituals, Paths are very limited (basically only Path of Humanity)

>Like can I use a splat from the Revised edition with the 2E rulebook?
What exactly are you trying to use?

Masters don't walk out shitting unmakings you retards

No, but they CAN. If they wanted to.

Of course they do. There's four whole kinds of mages who are kill on sight and vice versa. Hell, there's more debate with *werewolves* about how much to be rip and tear (since killing Pure is against the rules) than all the kinds of mages who, if they detect one another, are going to immediately make each other plus a room sized chunk of space cease to exist.

As a clan, they are.

There's changes but white wolf policy was always to make old books usable. This applies to canon and metaplot and this is why almost all retcons came in the form of the story "advancing". But also to rules, generally.

This is also why they made nWoD instead of a new edition when they decided to introduce actual heavier changes and retcons.

>gives example of tremere using dominate when arguing about blood magic.
Holy shit ur dumb.

Right, I'm not allowed to constrast Lord Tremere (who was of the 4th generation by Gehenna, using Goratrix's body as host and that spent the better part of his life - 700 out of 1300 years - in torpor and was being affected by the Withering on top of it) to a Kindred of likewise generation who not only is the Avatar of Haqim himself but over 8000 years old.

But sure, how are you going discredit the fact the average Tremere, in unity, have tools for grandiose displays of blood sorcery through the ritual Power of the Pyramid (mere rank 3) which was that the clan used Clan to curse both the entirety of the antitribu & the Assamites?

Only in your head canon wank bank user.

>What do I need to look for when making the change? What will the players need to account for that could trip them up?

Well first of all they gotta understand that many gifts revolve around the sacred hunt ritual.

Its kind of jarring at first because sometimes the games's narrative flow has to stop for the pc to use waste 10 to 20 minutes (not rl time of course) to cast the hunting rite.

Gauru form doesnt suck now. It is now very very beefy.

When converting pc from 1st to 2nd the things to consider are:

1) the idea of rare/forbidden gifts are out. All werewolf can get any gift they want except auspice.

2) Gift power level: except auspice gifts all the other gift dont scalate. They all stand around 1st ed 3-dot equivalent but escalate with renown. The more renown you got the more powerful most of its related facets.

3) Only auspice renown limits the other renowns. Any cant raise any renown than your auspice renown. Tribe renown doesnt limit you anything.

4) Each tribe have a preffered prey and a bonus they gain to said prey when using their sacred hunt rite.

5) Rite roll is now "attribute + skill" at the players choice. The idea being each rite has a series of symbols so as long as you represent all of them you can make up you own way to do rites.

6) Shapeshifting is not a roll anymore it depends on your harmony so Survival isnt such an important skill anymore.

7) aggravated is rare. No gift in 2nd give you aggravated or silver claws.

8) spirits now have banes and bans. The former is thing that deals aggravated to them and the latter something they must or must not do.

9) Harmony is about sticking as close as possible to 5. With the extremes 0 and 10 being bad. Being balanced doesnt mean following the oath of the moon.

10) Lodges are very few released now but they dont suck ass like in first.

11) Partial change is a gift now. Cant do it without it.

You missed the point entirely. Tremere used a ritual (blood sorcery) to build a sympathetic connection to every single individual (of mortal descent) on Earth. He decided to use the connection to Dominate everyone but could have affected anyone with a different power if so he wished.

>Are there any houserules you have used to make for a better game?

Yes.

1) I replaced Kuruth trigger with "i tell you when to roll "resolve + composure" found trigger to be clumsily designed and counterproductive to a game about raging monsters. Anything that isnt a trigger doesnt piss you off and many of the triggers feel forced.

2) If 2 Urathas in gauru didnt enter the combat witht the intention to kill, one getting his WP score in aggravated will force them to spend 1 wp each turn to continue or get the fight knock out of then.

No fuckface, I've been around since Ars Magica and im well aware of arcane connections.

You are obv a Tremere fan boi so nothing will convince you otherwise.

Just keep sucking on Saulots cock.

>my irl face @_@
Shit, I gotta put some work in.
user, you are a fucking baller, I raise a drink to you.

>What do I need to look for when making the change? What will the players need to account for that could trip them up?

Also they have to consider that there is a lot less gifts in 2nd. And OPP abandoned the line so either they hombrew or change their previous pc gifts

>OPP abandoned the line
:<
But why? I just want a game about a band of brothers fighting against the world for their own little plot of peace, not another game of who can be the bigger dickbag.

Who is the strongest one then?

The Assamite? Who canonically cowarded up after Alamut was discovered and breached by a lone Nosferatu and fearing a Tremere-led Camarilla assault to their fortress willingly handed some of Haqim's vitae (so they could be cursed and appease the nascent sect) because otherwise they suspected if the Tremere got to Alamut there was enough of the Clan Assamite's vitae in Heartsblood (the great magical well) for them to destroy all Assamites including Haqim?

>Tfw you'll never be a Tzimisce
>You'll never make your haven in the depths of the ocean
>You'll never fleshcraft whales, sharks and giant squids to be your servants

1. Is the sympathy/contagion ritual thing just for Thaum or is it for all blood magic?

2. Are there any particularly outrageously abusable rituals for casting on someone a hundred miles away? Such as a ritual that's good for killing people.

Haven't seen a single argument from you, guess there's none hence you had to resort to ad hominem like a little bitch

Could a vampire blood sorcerer, owod or nwod, take on a mage?

In OWOD? Yes. nWOD I wouldn't know.

Nope. Not in old or new. At least not a sufficiently powerful Mage.

Koldunic, Assamite and Abyss mysticism > Thaum.

Prove me wrong nigga.

Assamite sorcery broke the Assamite clan curse easily, so it got reconned to weaken the clan for 2 years after it still undid one of the greatest rituals the tremere ever did.

>Should I stop making new threads
Yes. Seriously. Stop.

A normie can take on a mage, so yes.

Not every mage is prepared for every situation and not every owod ST is going to allow mages to slather on +30 to their stats.

Nwod blood magic in Sacraments and Blasphemies is also fantastically powerful and has no paradox/unbelief/etc. mechanics and has no limit on concurrent spell effects either.

>Partial change is a gift now
Wasn't it a merit before?

>owod
No. Literally no. Blood magic is so fucking weak in comparison.

The only edge vampires have against wizards is the element of surprise - which just doesn't mean much to powerful masters.

>nwod
Can't even surprise them. Blood magic barely does anything.

Assamite sorcerers get high and climb the stairs of heaven to learn new spells. Thamutergy is hermadic rotes and memorization, words spoken that can gange with time and understanding to suit needs.
The Dark Ages saw the attempt at using lightning with... minimal success. Upon underatanding the universal constants of how electricity worked. It became easy.
But whats "Best" is all up to you. I like Necromancy myself. Dont care for tge Tremere either.

>Could a vampire blood sorcerer, owod or nwod, take on a mage?

Can someone who can kill you from a million miles away while you can do nothing about it, still kill you?

The answer is yes, they can kill you from a million miles away while you can do nothing about it, and, of course, vice versa.

Keep in mind that at time the blood magic was being weakened.
That's why Beckett managed to destroy the wards of that Mountain that Cain was living.

nwod blood magic is awful, user

We got 1 shitty supplement and then radio silence until even the sychopants in opp forums complained.

The shady Ritch admitted that the line dev had left the line months ago. They promise a night horror book on balehounds, ghost wolves and maybe pure to put people at ease.....but then radio silence again.

Forsaken is as dead as Signs of Sorcery.

>I just want a game about a band of brothers fighting against the world for their own little plot of peace, not another game of who can be the bigger dickbag.

I like forsaken but i kind of wish there was something more to that. Miss the complex politics and deep society of apocalypse

>nwod blood magic is awful, user

You can nuke a vast area, summon thousands of gargoyles or homunculi, set contingencies to the like of "if someone is going to attack me with a supernatural power, obliterate them," destroy enemies from far away, and do nearly anything you want.

For it to be bad you'd have to resort to something like the assumption that all mages are safely hidden in other realms where, admittedly, blood magic can't reach you.

>Could a vampire blood sorcerer, owod or nwod, take on a mage?

Sure.

Step 1) Be a ordo dracul with the coil of Zinitra and max then.

Step 2) Buy Plain merits and max them.

Step 3) get the scale of the dragon and get the hand of a mage or some shift grafted into you to cast prime counter spell.

Step 4) threaten to film the mage with your cellphone to cancel their magic

That's... Still not going to do anything. I'm sorry.

>Step 4) threaten to film the mage with your cellphone to cancel their magic
WHAT

Yes and you could also make a roll to do it if i remember right

So much effort to take on a mage. I almost feel bad for vampires.

Yeah, a mage being obliterated seven ways from sunday the moment he even considers harming a blood sorcerer is entirely within the rules. You might not like it, but its still there.

Thats what happen when you lets a shitty writter like David Hill Jr work in your games

And then there's the thousands of other ways a Mage could do it to the vampire, user.

You may not like it, but minmaxing isn't something Mages need to obliterate a Prince's Dominion.

It cost the same as 3 dots of attributes.

For oWOD:

Here's the problem with the average blood sorcerer vs the average mage, there's just so many different ways a mage can be attacked that he needs a lot of Spheres (and pre-casted rituals) to effectively counter them.

Don't have a reasonable amount of dots of Mind? Have fun getting raped by Presence, Dominate and being made into a slave or insane with Dementation - as there's little you can do to resist it. Oh and you'll never see a vampire with Obfuscate coming too.

Don't have Forces 2 and a very inconvenient kinectic shield up (that takes up to days to cast) when you're walking down the street? You'll be made into be made into a ragdoll and die in two turns. Unless you have Time 3+ which is very awkward to cast in the heat of battle any Celerity-user will have several physical actions on you.

Don't have Prime 3? Cannot soak aggravated buddy.

Want to affect a vampire's Patterns directly? You better have the appropriate Sphere + Matter 2.

Want to affect them from a distance? You have to match the Effect's heighest used Sphere with an equal level of Correspondence. If you want to rack A LOT of successes it might take you days as per M20 ritual rules.

>mage uses time to kill vampire
lol so scary

>And then there's the thousands of other ways a Mage could do it to the vampire, user.

And vice versa. Its a stalemate, except for the fact that the vamp has unlimited concurrent spells, a much bigger dice pool, and no risk of paradox.

>You may not like it, but minmaxing isn't something Mages need to obliterate a Prince's Dominion.

Nice shifting the goalpost.

Nah, not really vice versa. There are 100x more ways for a mage to slaughter a blood sorcerer than the other way around.

The Practices literally hand out ways to counter -anything- as a point of the system. All mages need is information, which isn't hard, and you're thoroughly fucked.

These threads are groundhog day. Talk about something new instead of eating the same stale bait.

I bet none of you even have a game you play in.

>And vice versa. Its a stalemate, except for the fact that the vamp has unlimited concurrent spells, a much bigger dice pool, and no risk of paradox.

You do know blood sorcery in Nwod isnt free?

OWoD made a point that weaker mages are *really* weak

Not sure why they didn't run this way with Awakening - where every starting mage can tackle any threat using creativity.

>You do know blood sorcery in Nwod isnt free?

Yeah, it costs blood.

...which the vampire can draw from dozens or hundreds of people at once from the safety of his basement.

If you mean XP wise, they can improvise all they want.

You need to fuel Nwod blood sorcery with your menstrual blood right?

Why do you idiots keep reviving topics that have already been officially answered.

Mages win. End of story. Not even blood sorcerers are going to shift the odds.

This. If mage is mentioned and the question is not exclusively about mage and only mage don't fucking awnser, it's automatically bait.

>by design

bad design