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

It'll either be a Mage or Werewolf game, so they'll defo have ways to fight back.

I follow the GM philosophy of 'fuck 'em'.

Sometimes having your players face the impossible is the best way to shake things up and stop encounters from becoming episodic.

Spirit mages work really well with Uratha

At least in thematics

I'm thinking of a way to reconcile VtM lore and mechanics by introducing a bastard variant of VtR's Blood Potency system, please tell me if you remember some story that openly contradicts the following:

- Blood Potency is the thickness of the blood, a trait that determines several things such as the amounts of Vitae that can be stored in a body or spent per turn, as well as access to higher level Disciplines
- Blood potency slowly increases with age, capped by the generation rating (it effectively works as a sort of slow-filling gauge) 13th gens have a max potency of 0, 3rd gens could presumably go up to 10.
* When potency is 0/very low, thinbloods are sired. Potency goes down after embracing(?)
* High blood potency causes elders to feel the pull of torpor, also the amount of time needed to rest after being sent into torpor is determined by blood potency instead of path rating. (eg Methuselahs sleep for centuries or millenias even if their path rating is above 1.)
- Blood potency is affected by torpor in some way, perhaps decreasing temporarily.
* Elders who just awakened from torpor don't have access to their full powers because their potency has been lowered. The older and more powerful they were (and the more they slept?) the longer it takes to get their potency back to their former rating. (Maybe it takes days to get back to Potency 5 but months to get back to potency 8, for example)
* Diablerie speeds up the process significantly, Methuselahs are particularly likely to snack on kindred prey when they wake up (whether they can still feed on humans or not) because they really hate feeling weak and vulnerable.
* Blood Sympathy (as in VtR): vampires are likely to sense dramatic changes to close relatives (final death principally), this effect gets stronger with potency and/or generation

The items I marked with * explain several canon stories that would otherwise be nonsense from a mechanical point of view, or explain why some degenerate scenarios don't occur.

Kind of.

If you're gutting Caine and most all the top down Jyhad lore why even play VtM?

I'm not, at all?

ACKCHYUALLY

It sure sounds like you've eliminated any meaningful connection with the blood of elders. Kinda kills the whole Jyhad thing.

Contrary to belief, a lot of people weren't fond of the Caine thing. It's hilarious seeing how they gutted it in Requiem, which is now one of the weakest splats.

Good ass is better then good tits literally 100% of the time.

Yeah, Requiem has no interesting high level play at all.

>Apprentice mages can work spirit magic even elder werewolves's can't
>interfering with a mage is a great way to find out which fates are worse than death
>Packs are essentially mystery religions
>lodges are true cults and religions

Who wrote this tripe shit

I'm literally trying to make the mechanics closer to the lore as presented in the metaplot and the fiction because as it stands, the mechanics and the theme are incoherent. I'm trying to AVOID abolishing anything in the process, which is why it ends up pretty convoluted.
In case you have missed it, not only is potency hard-capped by generation, elders effectively accumulate and hold onto their potency, it's just that they're temporarily weakened for a short time (this part is VtM canon.)

It does with Devotions. Onyx Path really went down hard on the obnoxious Masquerade players of the 90s. Funny seeing that Mage still has 'high level play' as one of its themes.

Poor Vampire.

The devotions in 2e are literally all shit. One lets you start fires. Like neat, that might have been cool before man harnessed fire. But its also a merit than mortals can just pick up. As an elder power. Maybe they'll get something good now that Rose "I'm shit at mechanics" isn't on staff anymore, but odds are there just won't be any more vtr books for years.

It doesn't take a lot of vampfags trying (and failing) to contest muh merge serprermercy to ruin threads going on for weeks. If they were this bad back then I can see why they'd punish them. Then again, White Wolf was HORRIBLE at their job. They still are. There's just so much cringe going on with Swedracula.

M20 was the last nail in the coffin for mages and fuelled vampire supremacy unfortunately, Swedracula wants to give the power back to vampires

God that's such a pretentious image. almost as bad as the vampire voice-over in this youtube.com/watch?v=4wewNseVo24

Why do people buy into owod again?

He didn't even do approvals for m20 though. Why would you use something he didn't touch to judge what hes doing in the future? Also vamps got a huge nerf in power in his playtests, so you're probably wrong. Vampire is more like Requiem now. Shit street level boring garbage with no large scale political play of any interest.

And yet everywhere else disagrees and demands they still be nerfed. M20 is such a mess that nobody looks at it the same way.

Literally no one likes 5e from the sounds of it.

In my experience with the various versions of mage, including NWoD, most people calling for nerfs don't actually know anything about the gameline and seem to assume its some sort of white room fighting game.

So why do Magefags hate M20 and all the imposed limitations it brought and always cry "muh revised"? They were undisputably nerfed; principally the average mage player. True you still can make specialized munchkin builds, but so can all other splats

Or they assume that crossover is mandatory.

>So why do Magefags hate M20 and all the imposed limitations it brought and always cry "muh revised"?

I'm just going to take a wild guess and assume that you've never played it? The biggest complaints aren't the "nerfs", whatever that means, it's the inability to actually play the game.

>I'm just going to take a wild guess and assume that you've never played it?
Yes I have, I in fact played a Dreamspeaker character for a few years by M20 rules; what would you say are the things that make its inability to play?

The book literally says that you die if you ever even try to interact with spirits with less than 30 xp spent. How did you play a Dreamspeaker?

Literally everything? Paradigm? Nephandi? Inconsistent Foci rules? Inconsistent rules in general? Major contradictions?

>I in fact played a Dreamspeaker character
Sure

The biggest problems with M20 are

>Completely butchering the lore hopelessly confusing Foci, Paradigm, and Spheres. Its so bad you have Virtual Adepts using yoga and TAFTANI using hypertech to blend in! Its unforgivable
>Contradictory or absent mechanics, to the point they had to write an entire extra book with the magick rules in it. Its a 600+ page book about playing a game about magick and they left out the rules for magick.
>Senseless nerfs.

Hello thread ruining Vampfag who only likes M20 because it supposedly makes mages less of a threat to your precious creatures of the night.

You forgot the best part.

"How do you do that."

That's the Extra Book. Its not even a good book! They're so confused on the rules of the game they think you need extra Spheres for Foci!

>"What's that? You're casting a Forces 3/Prime 2 Effect to invoke the Angel of Fire via Hermetic Formula? You need Spirit 2 for that goyim!"

Its so dumb it hurts.

>post about whether making abilities default for Spirits is OP or not
>It's another m20/awakening debate

More proof that OPP is obsessed with Mage supremacy

>Completely butchering the lore hopelessly confusing Foci, Paradigm, and Spheres.
I had never played Revised before M20, going in with a clean slate I was never bothered by any of this, why should I?

>Contradictory or absent mechanics, to the point they had to write an entire extra book with the magick rules in it.
This was by design, they planned to split the books, and why does it matter? I can just pirate them for free
>Senseless nerfs.
This would only bother you if you had an expectation from playing Revised and thought they should remain unchanged, I didn't, also the "nerfs" I encountered are reasonable looking at it with a clean perspective

You're either are acting disingenuous or are just dumb, but it's okay

The book gives mechanics for summoning and bargaining with otherworldy entities and says you can try it without such skills but that you "probably won’t survive the experience"; just check the system the book allows you to use and see where it could go wrong if you lack those.

At "Preparation" it tells you that without preparations summoning an otherworldy being is really unwise, and that "a Storyteller may
feel free to impose drastic penalties – difficulty modifiers for the rolls, and horrendous consequences for failure – for a mage who simply “calls up what he can’t put down.”

As a rookie Dreamspeaker I never summoned spirits, I wasn't presumptuous enough to, rather I just interacted with those I met in Umbra strolls

Then you go to "Setting the Space", which involves a series of rolls to prepare the space properly, it also says "exact rolls and Traits will depend upon the mage’s practice and the sort of space involved, but generally involve the knowledge to set up ritual"; which I'm assuming would also be where the knowledges are applicable; not for me though, I'm not summoning anything

Going to "Offerings", my character always did this, bringing what he thought would be appropriate to the different spirits he'd encounter, regardless whether I was trying to challenge them for a favour;

Most of the time I never made deals with them, just talked, so far so good, by the system nothing bad can happen to me seeing I don't need to initiate "Challenges and Bluster"

That's quite different than "the book literally says that you die if you ever even try to interact with spirits with less than 30 xp spent."

>Admits to knowing nothing about the game
>Says the changes are fine and doesn't know what they are

Thanks for posting contradictory material then talking about a summoning that dind't kill you despite not having the skills to interact with spirits listed in the book.

>WoD
>Non-Wraith Spirits having separate Attributes and Abilities instead of Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower

The only question after this is if you have them resist damage with Rage or Willpower. Maybe, on occasion, you assign them stats for dealing with Land of Eight Million Dreams or the like, but by and large, they're very simplified in mechanics.

>Admits to knowing nothing about the game
Not knowing about Revised prior to playing M20

>Says the changes are fine and doesn't know what they are
I have then looked into what has changed when it concerns to Spheres and everything strikes me as magefags being butthurt

Are you actually retarded or just retarded

I was more thinking just having Abilities on top of the regular four stats they have. It makes zero sense that when they manifest, they can manifest martial arts skills or knowledge they didn't have previously. Rage/Willpower/Gnosis act as their 'attributes', but the abilities are the icing on the cake.

>why does it matter that the rules for magic are not in the Mage core rulebook but in another book that came out months later?
are you DaveB posing as a naive fan or are you genuinely stupid

So you like that the best part of the game, paradigm, is meaningless and does nothing to change how a character does magick? Enjoy your reality hacking yoga. Its clear there is no point discussing this with you, as you literally HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT THE GAME OTHER THAN m20.

Why is it contradictory? Aren't hyperboles a narrative tool?

The book never states you'll always die 100% of the time, only that it's probable, which is true statistically following the systems of the book if, but mostly you act like a fuckwit and try to get anything from the spirit other than minor shit;

Death is probable but not mandatory

And my character never summoned any spirits as a rookie fyi, walking up to them isn't summoning them

user claimed --INTERACTING-- with any spirit without having 30 xp spent would automatically kill you which is a lie, because the book never says that, nor it's even mandatory an inexperienced mage will die if he tries to summon and bargain with a spirit

>nor it's even mandatory an inexperienced mage will die if he tries to summon and bargain with a spirit
That's really not how the text is written in m20 though.

Those nerfs are overblown horrendously. M20, compared with Revised, has distributed both buffs (no more dividing dice pools) *and* nerfs. It's still unquestionably the strongest of the 20th anniversary gamelines, despite what a select few seem to deny.

Yes, it is, probably != 100% of chance he will die; just follow through with the system and try to do this shit with a really weak spirit, giving him an offering and bargaining for barely anything and see if you'll die

>Quotes section that says you aren't smart enough to bargain properly without spending XP
>Says if you bargain properly its not a problem

youtu.be/vfWxORracT8

excuse me for the reddit cartoon but it's too on the nose

>Says if you bargain properly its not a problem
nice strawman, I'm not saying it's not a problem, I'm saying that if you meet every other additional requirement, deal with a spirit with negligible willpower while yours is really high, asks for nearly nothing and offer the spirit something it wants that exceeds his expectations, and are lucky with the social rolls then you have a high chance of surviving by the system suggested

Which is nothing compared to what the other user suggested, you don't suffer these probable-death penalties for merely interacting with them, you suffer them for summoning & bargaining

I'm sorry you're too much of a dimwit to understand that

>meet every other additional requirement,
Which, by RAW, requires spending XP.

Behold, the only funny joke in that entire episode.

Does Arete 6+ allow a mage to up his Abilities and Attributes above 5?

>M20
>are you DaveB posing as a naive fan or are you genuinely stupid

DaveB had absolutely nothing to do with M20. Dave writes for Awakening. M20 is OWOD, and every books has been written almost entirely by Phil Brucato.

You might not like or agree with Dave, but he's nowhere near as big a douche as Brucato.

>Which, by RAW, requires spending XP.

Only some steps do, Preparation (including placing wards), Setting the Space, Offerings, Challenges and Bluster do not;

granted for Protocols you need the specialties, which seems to be one of the most important step, and could potentially put you at great penalty for the Battle of Wills, but you can still succeed even without them

Assuming you win the "Challenges and Bluster" contest against the spirit, which uses non-specialized Social Attributes and Abilities like Esoterica, Etiquette, Intimidation, Leadership (which any mage can have from char gen; if you don't and still want to deal with spirits you're dumb) then you go to the Pact.

Not knowing protocols (because you lack specialized abilities) would put you at +3 difficulty for this roll, spirit rolls at standard difficulty; if you made sure you summoned a weak spirit then you'll roll your Willpower (hopefully it's high) at difficulty of the spirit's Willpower + 3 vs spirit rolling his Willpower at your Willpower's difficulty

So let's say the spirit is weak and has Willpower 3 and you have Willpower 8-10;

You roll 8-10 dice at difficulty 3 + 3 (protocol penalty) and the spirit rolls 3 dice at difficulty 8-10; you only need 3 successes to win and it needs 8-10 successes. So long as you don't botch you should be fine

Maeljin Incarna vs Antediluvian

Who wins?

Not stated for Abilities, though for Attributes the general guideline is outlined on Masters of the Art, it doesn't go by Arete but rather Sphere and the following chart:

So for example if you have Life 6, you could spend experience points to permanently raise your Strength rating to 6 as though you were buying a normal attribute

Stop

It really depends on if the Anti has any abilities to do anything to spirits. If it does, it probably wins. Other wise, auto loss.

The Archmage

Spooky stuff

Only one Antediluvian has any abilities that can affect Spirits; Tremere. And he's weak as shit. Any Maeljin stomps the Antediluvians.

Doesn't he lose the bulk of his 3rd gen power after he gets kicked out of his body?

On the other hand, can Maeljins even manifest in the physical world? I thought they were stuck in Malfeas

Sounds like a tie then!

Maeljin, like all Incarna, can manifest. They just don't, for whatever reason.

How do you even figure only one Antediluvian has abilities to deal with spirits if there're quite a few that were sorcerers themselves and that there exists several Methuselah with Thaumaturgy (or its different flavors) with stuff like Path of Spirit Manipulation? Or even if you consider spirits are vulnerable to Presence too

And about the Maeljin
>mfw there's a Thaumaturgical Path called Tyranny of the Wyrm that summons a Maeljin and lets you host it in order to tap into its powers, all you need to is ensure you can succeed the Courage rolls not to get taken over

Yeah he did, though he could still use Path of Blood to raise his generation temporatily and use the powers he had learned before; and even despite the Withering & being of the 4th generation he was still able to enchant all mortals, half-mortals and have-been-mortals on the world to be affected by any Discipline power

Antis are not PCs, they do not have the range of abilities that pcs have and are often pigeon holed into roles. The existence of a wyrm based ritual likely devloped while they were asleep isn't really relevant unless one of the antis had that in cannon.

>Methusalah's with path of Spirit manipulation
Name 1, and explain how an Antediluvian that's been asleep for aeons manages to acquire it.
>Spirits are vulnerable to Presence
Antediluvian's are vulnerable to Bane possession
>Tyranny of the Wyrm
I'm intrigued, where is this from?

>Dr. Acula
>he doesn't show up on the camera
>The mermaid poster on the wall
it's the little things.

>Name 1, and explain how an Antediluvian that's been asleep for aeons manages to acquire it.
A lot of Antediluvians went back to sleep either in the Dark Ages or some time before that; also be aware that the Tremere's Thaumaturgy is but one school of sorcery; most older vampires would either have Sadhana, Dur-An-Ki, Akhu which actually are several thousand of years old, and all of them have Spirit Manipulation under different names; for the Akhu it's called Path of Anubis, for Dur-An-Ki it's called Suleiman's Laws, for the Sadhana Brahmin it's called Asura-Raja etc...

For examples of Methuselah: Menele

>Spirits are vulnerable to Presence
Antediluvian's are vulnerable to Bane possession
Sure, but 1. most banes cannot do it as vampires are naturally resistant against bane possession; 2. there are plenty of rituals that ward against spirits, 3. if the vampire had something like Presence 5 he cannot get close enough to try without being rendered docile

Even a Methuselah like Baba Yaga which is comparably weak (she has less discipline dots than the suggested for an idle vampire of her age), and is killed in two seconds by another 4th generation vampire; had an Incarna subjected to her

>I'm intrigued, where is this from?
DAV20 Tomes of Secret

What kind of spirits would one expect to find in the average large city to use with Spirit Manipulation? Question is unrelated to your discussion.

Probably the Ante, who would then become a Maeljin. Some Antes are Yama Kangz, so its not a stretch.

Pffff, teenyverse

Weaver Spirits undoubtedly. Pattern Spiders and the like.

God = Archmage

Archmage = Ramen King

Pretty much anything that would make sense, there's a huge list here & a reference: pen-paper.net/indices/wod/spirits.pdf

Blood Currency, Flame Wars, City Mascot, City Tree, Rat-spirit, Night Terrors, Phantasm, Kid Fears, Shrike, Pain-spirit, Disease-spirit, Bitter-Sweet, Spirit of Pain, Night-spirit, Quartz, Jade, Limestone, Serpentine, Raccoon-spirit, Wanderlust-spirit, Urban Engling, Lost Dog, Pattern Spider, Eletricity Elemental, Fire Elemental, Glass Elemental, Metal Elemental, Plastic Elemental, Hogling

-- to name a few;

Just keep in mind everything has a spirit, most of them will be slumbering, if there's enough an constant permeating stimuli they might be awakened or at the very least they'll be attracted to their spiritual correspondence

Those asylums that dealt with the crazy through shock treatment? Pain-spirits, spirits of Lunacy, Madness, Torture, banes etc

How would one rank the playables from strongest to weakest in both CWoD and CofD?

"Flaring" highest tier splats (a power level that doesn't usually stick around long); analyst demons while they are Going Loud (can arbitrarily combine exploits for pure insanity), Deceived using Blessed is the God King (Sekhem 10 and a bunch of other crazy stuff, 1/6th of a failed Judge in a mummy); rank 5 supernals (basically Masters with unlimited reach and bigger dice pools -- and requiring very weird arcana to affect, like how Matter governs what should be Mind for a Shade, but they fade fast).
The weirdest, strongest, max rank ephemera -- ephemeral master mages (aka liches), as they use supernal casting rules (which are insane), but they can be affected by fairly common anti ghost or anti spirit stuff. The strongest Echoes (Burned soul pact victims -- can combine demon, angel, and ghost powers under one roof). Rank 6+ cryptids. Presumably nu-rank 5 geists.
The strongest high tier splats at their peak (master mages, demons while they're Going Loud, Sekhem 10 mummies).
Most mages (adepts)
The higher tier, splat specific antagonists at their strongest -- the strongest of strix blood sorcerers, idigam, angels, qashmal.
Rank 5 ephemera of various sorts, especially the ones that are a little tweaked or otherwise merged with the strongest of low tier templates (pack totems, vampire blood sorcerer ghosts etc, empty wolves). Boneyard sin eaters probably fit here if they're as good as they were.

>CWoD
Archmage > Elder+ > Demon > Mage > Vampire > Wraith > Changeling > Hunter

>CofD
Archmage > Mage > Demon > Mummy > Beast > Geist > Promethean > Werewolf > Changeling > Vampire > Hunter

The "flaring" high tier templates when not in supermode (demons; supernals and mummies that have been left to sit for awhile).
"Ascended" low tier templates (maxed methuselah vampires with unlikely combinations of covenant powers and devotions, beasts with Merged Inheritance and using clever tricks, the highest primal urge werewolves with good influence, fetishes and gift tricks).
The weakest mages and and pangeaens (if SOMEONE didn't kill them off)
Common intelligent, rank 3 self aware spirit "citizens" (which, according to The Pack, are 20 dice average).
Unusually strong "minion" templated, proximi with good spells, demon offspring and stigmatics with lots of good embeds. Cryptids with lots of good numina, aether pools and form powers.
The oddball, high power splats (sin eaters if they're as good as they were, smart changelings and effective prometheans using weird combos). The strongest weird, physical antagonists such as high tier pandorans with insanely high stats.
Rank 2 ephemera.
The low tier splats (beasts, vampires, werewolves) when they're not using open ended powers. Conspiracy hunters, high tier slashers, deceived cultists and other "mortals with weird stuff tacked on". Minor templates from Hurt Locker.
Rank 1 ephemera.
Drones (as in an RC car with a bomb), simple enemies like a ghoul animal or most "Brief Nightmares" from core, mundane hunters, weaker slashers, normies.
Rank 0 ephemera.

>CofD
From strongest to weakest:
Plains
Mages
Mummies
Demons
Beasts
Sin-Eaters
Werewolves
Prometheans
Changelings
Vampires
Hunters

Master mages apparently shit on anything "playable" under an archmaster, except for perhaps true fae(yes they're playable) and incarnate beasts

Jesus fuck almighty, I didn't even know it was physically possible to have such a shit tier opinion. End yourself, you fucking subhuman

> incarnate beasts
Is the book for these out yet? It seems like a good antagonist guide.