Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux

[Deleted]

Adding Mage?

I'd rather have a dozen creepy skeezeballs on a game than Mage.

[surreality]

@Admiral As someone who notoriously hates Mage, I'd rather every game have Mage, and the mages be given 5x the XP as everyone else, than have that dude skeeving around being an abusive fuckhead on them.

Seriously. 5xXP Mage vs. that guy and that guy still loses.

And my take on mage is roughly: Mage is that kid with the huge trust fund, model good looks, super-genius IQ, and palatial home that mysteriously gets sent to public school to ass-fuck the grading curve along with everyone's girlfriend while driving the new Ferrari they got for their 16th birthday on the same day you finally managed to finish scraping together enough for an old junker you had to rebuild yourself and pulled it in the lot. I hate Mage.

[Cobalt]

@Admiral whelp, sucks to be you then because I'm almost done with the code.

@surreality Do you hate mage because of how its been played or because of what it does? I really, really like mage. And yeah it can be those things, but players who aren't dickholes to everyone around them don't turn it into that.

[surreality]

@Cobaltasaurus I actually think mage is fine in the context of Mage-only games; it's just horrible (through no fault of the players, honestly, in most cases) in multi-sphere. It's 'this sphere is better at EVERYTHING than EVERYONE else' problem -- better at spirit than werewolves (when that is the full core of their character focus vs. it being one of many options for the mage), etc., repeat with pretty much every single other sphere in some form or another.

I'm a firm believer in the 'jack of all trades is master of none' principle, and Mage, as written, is, 'jack of all trades trounces all the specialists in every area of specialty at once' more or less as a rule. That's just how it's written, really; there's not a 'bad player' problem there. There are definitely players that exacerbate the problem, to be sure, but they aren't the core issue for me.

[Thenomain]

@surreality

Mage at Arcana levels 1 and 2 aren't bad, as Mages can no longer, e.g., see you everywhere you are at any time and instantly gib your Vampire ass.

However, once they hit 3, keep the gun handy and the lye vat on stand-by. How cheap Rotes are make them no-brainers, and any game spitting out XP like chocolate will quickly have a Mage power problem.

On the other hand, Mages get a lot of penalties to overcome, and they aren't as powerful as they were in the past. I mean, this is like saying that the uzi isn't as powerful as whatever gets mounted on attack helicopters, but it's a thing. Generalizing the Clash of Wills also helps a lot.

[ThatOneDude]

@surreality said in The Descent MUX:

@Admiral As someone who notoriously hates Mage, I'd rather every game have Mage, and the mages be given 5x the XP as everyone else, than have that dude skeeving around being an abusive fuckhead on them.

Seriously. 5xXP Mage vs. that guy and that guy still loses.

And my take on mage is roughly: Mage is that kid with the huge trust fund, model good looks, super-genius IQ, and palatial home that mysteriously gets sent to public school to ass-fuck the grading curve along with everyone's girlfriend while driving the new Ferrari they got for their 16th birthday on the same day you finally managed to finish scraping together enough for an old junker you had to rebuild yourself and pulled it in the lot. I hate Mage.

New Mage isn't that bad and when put in a game with new vampires and werewolves they are less "badass".

Don't get me wrong, a smart player can still be great but the new system seems to make the playing field much more even. This allows smart players from all the splats to be great at what they do.

[Misadventure]

Some day I will try to remake Mage into a more modern version of Ars Magica, with similar Orders and junk so they can be played along side the other folks without dominating.

(Or I'll work on my Victorian Steam Romance game)

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said in The Descent MUX:

On the other hand, Mages get a lot of penalties to overcome, and they aren't as powerful as they were in the past.

Mages are very squishy. Very. Walking around with effects makes you a magnet for Seers, so staff ought to take advantage of this and start hitting Mages hard with Seers if they flomp around with impunity.

Still, yes. Mages can whomp you. Keep a firm handle on the tiller when it comes to XP, and you should be okay. And a pack of werewolves is a lot scarier than a Mage or two.

[ThatOneDude]

@Ganymede said in The Descent MUX:

@Thenomain said in The Descent MUX:

On the other hand, Mages get a lot of penalties to overcome, and they aren't as powerful as they were in the past.

Mages are very squishy. Very. Walking around with effects makes you a magnet for Seers, so staff ought to take advantage of this and start hitting Mages hard with Seers if they flomp around with impunity.

Still, yes. Mages can whomp you. Keep a firm handle on the tiller when it comes to XP, and you should be okay. And a pack of werewolves is a lot scarier than a Mage or two.

Riiiight, but what about the other spheres? Shouldn't they have like oversight?

The idea that a mage is "over powered" is an argument that creepy Rex player dude was making with what appeared to be little to no understanding of the rule set. Its like Trump supporter level lame...

[surreality]

@ThatOneDude Well, that's Rex. He'll just cheerfully drop all his points into Mind or whatever and play his usual power-tripping bullshit. He specifically places his focus there because it gets him hard to think about being able to strong-arm other players and ruin their fun/characters/etc. on the player level.

Anything that could possibly do the same to him, of course, surely needs a stop put to it.

Which is pretty typical bullshit, so far as these games go, he just takes it to a spectacularly toxic level due to his complete disdain for anyone else's ability to enjoy themselves without his implicit "permission".

TL;DR: Typical "What I can do to you is totally fair, what you can do to me is not!" + "I get off on knowing I can ruin the enjoyment of other players because the rules say I can, even though there's not a chance in hell I'd get away with this shit and be invited back if this was happening at an actual table in someone's house."

[Jennkryst]

... I mean, I'll dump all my points into mind for that sort of stuff, too, but I warn folks OOC ahead of time and won't WHAMMY them into minion-hood unless they are both cool with it, OOCly, and interested in that sort of thing. I may be fucked up, but I'm not a douchenozzle.

[Taika]

For what it's worth: I hate mage. I hate what big games with insanely high xp or unchecked creepers have twisted mage into. (HM with Juerg, FC/TR)

TDM is a really low-and-slow xp game. .2 xp/day, .4xp per plotty/big social scene, with an extra +.2 for the ST. And 10xp from cgen.

I think out highest XP pc has, uh... 21? 22? And we've been open 2 months or so.

I think as long as we stay on top of asshats and keep giving people lots of plot threads to chase and the xp low, that mage will be alright.

I thought about it a lot and poor Gehenna had to spend hours showing me the ways in which it will be alright. And that's when I realized my problems with mage aren't /mages/. I get frustrated with the complicated language, and I have that same kneejerk reaction to how mage touched my no-no places way back when by it being allowed to rampage unchecked.

ETA: (Premature entry)

My problem with mages are the uncheck abusers that go around using Mind 5 to force really messed up things on people. My problem with mage is multiple masteries and masaive epeens (impossible with 2.0 and low xp games. Unless we're open a few years). My problem with mage is that 'I can do it all and you don't get to participate' attitude.

These are not mage-the-game issues. They are whole-mush issues and mage-the-player issues.

[surreality]

@Jennkryst said in The Descent MUX:

... I mean, I'll dump all my points into mind for that sort of stuff, too, but I warn folks OOC ahead of time and won't WHAMMY them into minion-hood unless they are both cool with it, OOCly, and interested in that sort of thing. I may be fucked up, but I'm not a douchenozzle.

See, what you're describing as the things you wouldn't do to someone? Now picture someone who looks at those reasons (namely: it's a recipe for misery if people aren't going to have fun with it) and imagine someone who has more or less decided, "Well, if they enjoy it and run with it's fun, but if they don't like it, it's more fun for me as a player, because I'm forcing my RL will on another RL person, and the rules totally let me."

And then he'll (try to) argue that anyone who doesn't think that's super cool and awesome doesn't understand the point of the game in another round of attempted mindfuckery, whilst proclaiming his opinion to be fact.

It's more than a little pathetic.

I don't have any objections to Mage being added to Descent, for the record. It just seemed worth expounding on the level of my mage rage as an example of how serious I am about 'would rather play on a game with mages getting 5x the XP of everyone else than a game with Rex on it'. Because I haven't ranted on mage for a while.

[Auspice]

I'm intrigued by the setting... but I have no desire to play Vampire, Werewolf, or Mage right now.

(And I'll admit to being kinda special snowflake in that playing only Mortal PCs bores me to tears)

[Taika]

@surreality - Case in point, he initially wanted to play a Predator King.

[surreality]

@Taika This is my shocked face. Can you tell I'm wearing my shocked face? I'm totally wearing my shocked face.

(King in the actual type name? Extra aggro-rapey? Antagonist class? Goddamn, the only way that would be more him would be if they were lion shifters.)

[Coin]

@surreality said in The Descent MUX:

@Taika This is my shocked face. Can you tell I'm wearing my shocked face? I'm totally wearing my shocked face.

(King in the actual type name? Extra aggro-rapey? Antagonist class? Goddamn, the only way that would be more him would be if they were lion shifters.)

I'm surprised he doesn't want to be an Ivory Claw, given they are pretty much the closest thing to werewolf royalty since the Silver Fangs.

[Arkandel]

@Taika What I dislike about Mage:

1. It encourages people who know the system better than others (it intimidates the fuck out of many players) to try and do all the things in any given situation. They just take over entire scenes while others watch not knowing how to use their Spirit 3 or if they can really do this thing with Fate, does it work like that?

2. It really really turns characters into power-bots and plots into problems to solve. Very often it devolves from "what would my character do now" to "what power should I use now".

[Ganymede]

@ThatOneDude said in The Descent MUX:

The idea that a mage is "over powered" is an argument that creepy Rex player dude was making with what appeared to be little to no understanding of the rule set.

I wouldn't normally respond to irony, but you likened my reasoning to that of a Trump Supporter. Certain insults cannot go unaddressed.

You fat, bloated, sack of protoplasm.

Try reading my comment again, numb-nuts. I agree that Mage isn't over-powered in the slightest; however, a Mage can whomp you badly. And so can a Vampire. And a Werewolf.

Whomp.

[Deleted]

Mage isn't overpowered.

You can -totally- kill a Mage who for some reason forgets their hanging spells, is asleep, and somehow fails the difficult to fail rolls to avoid being surprised.