The State of the Chronicles of Darkness

[Arkandel]

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor

You still sort of get exactly what you're talking about here, it's just not innate.

Mmm, unless you're a very combaty Vampire (I'd even specify a Gangrel with ze claws) I wouldn't bet on you beating a comparable Werewolf one on one in 2.0. A pack? No, a pack will just tear a big hole through anywhere near the same numbers of Vampires.

[ThatOneDude]

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor

You still sort of get exactly what you're talking about here, it's just not innate.

Mmm, unless you're a very combaty Vampire (I'd even specify a Gangrel with ze claws) I wouldn't bet on you beating a comparable Werewolf one on one in 2.0. A pack? No, a pack will just tear a big hole through anywhere near the same numbers of Vampires.

But I don't think that is an issue so to speak and more the way things are designed with a purpose, agreed?

[Arkandel]

@ThatOneDude said:

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor

You still sort of get exactly what you're talking about here, it's just not innate.

Mmm, unless you're a very combaty Vampire (I'd even specify a Gangrel with ze claws) I wouldn't bet on you beating a comparable Werewolf one on one in 2.0. A pack? No, a pack will just tear a big hole through anywhere near the same numbers of Vampires.

But I don't think that is an issue so to speak and more the way things are designed with a purpose, agreed?

I'm pretty sure that's by design, yes. This time, unlike in 1.0, where I've no idea what to tell you.

[ThatOneDude]

@Arkandel said:

@ThatOneDude said:

@Arkandel said:

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor

You still sort of get exactly what you're talking about here, it's just not innate.

Mmm, unless you're a very combaty Vampire (I'd even specify a Gangrel with ze claws) I wouldn't bet on you beating a comparable Werewolf one on one in 2.0. A pack? No, a pack will just tear a big hole through anywhere near the same numbers of Vampires.

But I don't think that is an issue so to speak and more the way things are designed with a purpose, agreed?

I'm pretty sure that's by design, yes. This time, unlike in 1.0, where I've no idea what to tell you.

Agreed

If you read the fiction of WoD there is a pecking order to things in a lot of ways. I love in Three Shades of Night when the vampire Loki is stalking this cute blond lady, and his beast starts to stir, goading him on to feed. He sticks to the shadows, turns on Auspex to follow her and then he notices her aura and wigs out. Oh shit! She's a mage and then "booom" hit by a lightning bolt.

Does that mean all vampires are scared of all mages? Not at all but if he knew that woman was a mage he'd have approached that situation a little differently.

[Arkandel]

Even if in 2.0 Mages receive no buffs whatsoever, they're still so far on top of the food chain it's not funny. Any kind of smart money is still on those wacky spellcasters.

[ThatOneDude]

@Arkandel said:

Even if in 2.0 Mages receive no buffs whatsoever, they're still so far on top of the food chain it's not funny. Any kind of smart money is still on those wacky spellcasters.

And below is Loki figuring out the meeting of the minds he is in included a pack of werewolves. I like to point out this book because I like that it shows that the spheres can and should work together in a lot of ways. Showing how in a game with multi-spheres it can be a cohesive game that leads to funny and entertaining stuff, where the spheres have a healthy fear/respect for the others >.>:

“No, Heartsblood’s from out East,” one of the others said, a dark-haired woman. “But he’s with a pack of… well, they’ve got a good reputation back home. And he’s come specifically to help with this.”

Heartsblood? What the hell kind of name was that?

“Yeah,” the red-haired man said. “And these are the Haunts, a pack with a good reputation here.” He gestured around. “Mercedes, Erik, Little Blue. And this here’s Anna.”

“Pack?” The Beast was suddenly alert, on guard. Loki felt his muscles grow tense, picking up its warning without knowing what it was. “Interesting way to put it.” He could see it then, as he dimmed his perceptions of the visible world and let what was unseen sharpen. The rippling colors in their auras were too bold, too primal, to be merely human. And there were five of them, and he was alone. “Fuck. Fucking shit.”

Loki snapped his vision back to normal and was across the width of half the chapel in an eye blink, as the Beast snarled, a mixture of fury and terror. “You didn’t say that!” he shouted at Baihu in a fury. “You didn’t fucking mention! You set me up, you motherfuckers!”

“Loki,” Gwyn interrupted, “if you’re gonna tell us werewolves are the freakiest or the scariest thing you’ve ever met, especially this week, I’m going to let Glory here stick another stake in you for pure mercy’s sake. Stop being a pussy.”

“Pussy, hell.” Loki turned his anger on Gwyn, who likely deserved it more anyway. “You left out a relevant fucking detail!”

[HelloRaptor]

@Arkandel

Even if in 2.0 Mages receive no buffs whatsoever, they're still so far on top of the food chain it's not funny.

It's a little bit funny. ^_^

[Thenomain]

@HelloRaptor said:

@Arkandel

Even if in 2.0 Mages receive no buffs whatsoever, they're still so far on top of the food chain it's not funny.

It's a little bit funny. ^_^

I'm not sure which reply I want, so I'll give both:

1. Do I get to laugh at the Mage players when they continue to complain when people want them to stay far away? I don't think it happens that much anymore, but oh the white man's burden humanity,

2. Constrain XP for once and Mages aren't that hard to kill, and easier to avoid.

[Bobotron]

DaveB is apparently posting stuff about Mage 2e on 4chan (of all places) in the current WoD thread. No idea how much, if any of this, is new stuff for you guys, but...

Will Mage 2e fix its problem of uninteresting political schemes?

We've talked about this a lot on the Awakening blog.

1. We're developing the Free Council into a viable third sect who are allied to the Pentacle, rather than eternal fifth wheels.

2. We have never (and will not) say how rare mages are supposed to be, but the political structures described in the Order books require dozens of mages each, which means a full setting with every Order in it requires about 150 mages. Now, that's fine for my games, but too many for some people, and the nWoD is moving away from the artificial "a city never communicates outside of itself" model of the early games, so Order Caucuses are now explicitly decoupled from Consilia.

3. As noted by anon, Awakening's theme focus / story generator is Addiction to Mystery. Consilia are having their emphasis changed to really bring out their role as nondeadly means of resolving disputes between Cabals. Most traditional "politics" is moved to Convocations.

4. Some cities use the Free Council's Assembly model instead of Diamond Consilia, even with the Diamond Orders. One of our sample settings has both of them, so there's the Arrow mages in the Consilium and the Arrow mages in the Assembly, and so on.

5. The Dual Arcane's new rules are based on 2nd ed's social mechanics, and are awesome. I think this is the first time I've mentioned that, so there you go - an original preview for you.

What possible changes could be made to streamline the magic system even more?

1. All spells use the same dicepool (Gnosis + Arcanum,) and are all single rolls even if the spell is taking hours to cast in the game's narrative.

2. All spells are hard-pegged to their Practices. No "this is a shield, but it's so powerful it needs three dots". Different kinds of life, force, matter and so on no longer require increasing dots. A weaving spell of life is always three dots, whether you're casting it on a human being or a potato.

3. No more distinction between Vulgar and Covert spells - our Paradox system is based on a concept called Reach, measuring how close to the edge of your comfort zone your spell is. This system absorbs all the other cases where spells required more dots than they should; the spell list no longer has duplicates of spells at a higher dot level for casting instantly, or on someone else. Obviously magical spells still add Paradox dice, though.

4. All forms of dice bonus and casting style have been unified into a "Yantra" system, which incorporates both Magical Tools and Rote bonuses, but also things that were protuding nails in the system like magical runes, concentration-based durations, high speech, and some of the special Order Merits.

5. All other rules exceptions, where they require dots in an Arcanum, are split off from main spellcasting into a class of powers called Attainments - Mage Armor, sympathetic range, imbuing items, spell triggers, counterspelling, and so on.

6. We have a clearly defined list of things that require Mana, which we are sticking to. This list is in the creative thaumaturgy section, for Storytellers' reference.

The end result is that the 2nd ed casting flowchart is much more of a straight line, with a few optional loops for Attainments that modify it.

When asked about extended action casting for rolls...

All spells are cast in ritual time, on yourself (or something you're touching, or as an effect you aim manually), last a duration measured in combat time, and and affect one subject by default. Making spells instant to cast, casting on a subject you can sense, affecting multiple subjects and making the duration narrative are all part of the Paradox system - how your Arcana dots compare to the dots required for the spell's practice determines how many you can do before you risk paradox dice.

A "ritual spell" in 2E is a spell you're taking time to cast because you have better things to spend your Reach on. Also, you can only use one Yantra reflexively, so casting in a ritual lets you get more dice bonuses than normal.

Imbuing Items is actually now Prime 4.

You can't stop halfway through a spell - it's always all or nothing. Even if it takes you a long time to do in-fiction, a spell is a single act, so it doesn't fit with 2E's extended action rules.

Also, this way spellcasting is greatly simplified. We only need one set of spell factor tables, and don't have to worry about spells moving between two sets of dice mechanics.

The other big thing to get your head around in 2E is that it now obeys the WoD's action mechanics - one success is all you need. Number of successes is only important if it gets you an exceptional successes. Anything that used to be number of successes (like dealing magical damage) is simply done with the Potency spell factor. You get free steps in the primary factor of the spell equal to your Arcanum dots, so a mage with, say Forces 4 will do 4 Lethal with an Unraveling spell no matter how many successes she gets, more if she bought extra potency by taking penalties to her dice pool ahead of time.

This makes successful magic have a bit of strategy behind it - for high-end spells you take penalties to get the spell factors up, use Yantras to get bonus dice to offset those and try to keep 3-6 dice in your pool so you're likely to get a success and have the spell work.

For unimportant spells ("I'm an adept of Matter. I should be able to open this lock") you use Down and Dirty spellcasting, which skips the factors and yantras.

When asked about attack spells and damage...

Yeah - spells aren't attacks, even if the spell does damage - you don't get Defense against a spell.

If the mage has cast a spell at self/touch range and is then trying to zap you with it (2E's equivalent of a 1E "aimed spell", which are up there in the leagues of rules no one seems to understand) they do have to make an attack roll, though, depending on what they're doing - aiming a lightning bolt they're throwing at you is Dexterity + Firearms, for instance, while hitting you with the palm of their hand when they have a "I paralyze anything I touch" spell up is a brawl roll.

But those aren't the spellcasting roll. You do the spellcasting roll then any attack roll you get. And casting at sensory range to avoid that althogether is the magical difficulty equivalent of making your spell last a scene instead of a turn.

Magic's always been assumed to use the optional "repeat attempts incur a dice penalty" rule, even in 1E. I've just made a note to make sure we take the dozen words needed to make that crystal clear.

Which has other rules implications - supernatural powers that work against any ranged attack do not stop a sensory-range damaging spell, as it isn't a ranged attack. Not really. They would work against an attack roll used to fire a touch-range spell at the user, though.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said:

1. Do I get to laugh at the Mage players when they continue to complain when people want them to stay far away? I don't think it happens that much anymore, but oh the white man's burden humanity,

It still happens.

[Arkandel]

@Coin said:

I would hate to be anyone facing a pack of Uratha whom each have high Pack Dynamics Merits. That shit is fucking terrifying. It may not look like much, until you remember Grappling can be a Teamwork Action, and then you imagine 2-4 Uratha in Dalu grappling you while the last one shifts to Gauru right in front of you.

Now, I haven't actually crunched the numbers so if anyone wants to refute me by rubbing actual figures in my face feel free. But this seems to be a very bad way to spend your turn.

The most valuable resource in nWoD combat is the turn since you only get one. You can have 7 great powers but unless they're reflexive you can only use the one action, so you better make it count, so the idea of devoting an entire turn to delivering even a crippling penalty to any but the most serious enemies seems extremely wasteful.

So to use the example above, let's take 2-4 Uratha. All but one of them could spend their precious one action into a grapple which will going to turn the enemy into claw-bait, sure. That however occupies the entire group, and if the last one's roll happens to be shit due to RNG, there goes that. It's a wiser bet to diversify the risk by having them simply attack that one target instead; unless their defence/armor is truly scary you'll still destroy him and it allows the pack the flexibility to pick a different target if at that point he's no longer in play.

Conversely that's why I never liked powers which convey a penalty 'for the next turn'. There are of course exceptions (such as an enemy in Gauru getting hit with just lethal/bashing) but usually doing some damage now and some next turn is superior to doing a bit none now and a more damage next turn, since those penalties never translate to 'double'.

[Coin]

@Arkandel

Well, I was referring to a worst case scenario where the antagonist is ONE dude who vastly overpowers the Uratha pack, yes.

[Wizz]

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Okay. Werewolves have touchstones, just like Vampires do -- and that's FANTASTIC.

It's hard to sneer about the human sheep when you have to call mom every day -- she worries...

This is exactly what I was talking about. Werewolves aren't just "GRR ARGH I AM THE SON OF FENRIR" anymore, and that is awesome.

[HelloRaptor]

@Bobotron

aiming a lightning bolt they're throwing at you is Dexterity + Firearms, for instance

I hate this. Haaaaaate it. Have always hated it.

• One: Firearms is about more than just your ability to gauge distance and positioning, otherwise it'd be used for throwing, archery, etc. It's not. My knowledge of how to shoot a gun has very little, if anything, to do with my ability to point at someone and zap them with a lightning bolt. A bullet and its physics have nothing to do with a lightning bolt. Stop it. Stoooop iiiiit.
• Two: I dunno about in 2E, but right now it's pretty trivially easy to buff your ability to use a skill. Between dice bonuses, roll type modifiers (the dreaded 8-again plus rote action firearms roll), etc, it's just bad. I'm assuming that the damage from such a spell is it's Potency damage rating (Arcanum, I gather) plus the successes on the Firearms roll? If so, double stop it.
• Three: It creates weird rules interactions with other shit that modifies the Firearms skill and not explicitly the use of actual firearms, such as merits or the like.

There's probably more, but these are off the top of my head. Haaaate. If you need an aiming type roll for casting a lightning bolt at someone or whatever, and it shouldn't require a grandmaster sniper to be adept at doing so, make it Dex+Wits or Wits+Composure, whichever's appropriate to the spell. Just don't call the latter a 'Perception' roll or it'll bump into those rules interactions again.

It's generally more difficult to tweak attribute based rolls than attr+skill ones.

[The Tree of Woe]

It begins...

Soon Mage will come out, and Vampire and Werewolf alike will feel the pooping-on.

[The Tree of Woe]

But in all seriousness, and I'd like a serious answer --

Why bother playing vampire, or including it at all, if as this discussion indicates, they can't cut the mustard outside of their own game?

[Olsson]

Not everyone decides what they want to play on the criteria of who is the most powerful.

[The Tree of Woe]

No, but they do factor in being able to engage in risk without the automatic assumption that they're going to lose.

[mietze]

I guess, as someone who enjoys Vampire, I'd say that my ability to engage in risk is very seldom tied to cross-sphere PvP. So it really doesn't matter to me that my vampire would lose against a mage. That kind of thing just doesn't really either excite me or get me worked up. I don't really like Mage, but if I did, I'm sure that my enjoyment would probably involve more than just "Oh, I could defeat all those other supers if I wanted to." I don't really understand the type of thinking that makes a splat somehow not at all appealing if you can't "win" against everything. But I know there are lots of people that play that way, and it's fine, it's just I don't relate to it at all.

[The Tree of Woe]

Fair enough.

I played on Haunted Memories, mind you, where Mage, Changeling, and Werewolf players would go out of their way to black-hat Vampires. Werewolf less so than the other two, but it did happen.

I am mostly wishing that they'd fixed things so that that kind of bullshit was not going to happen again. Wishful thinking, I suppose.

Though I did once provoke a Changeling into burning down her own house. That was kind of fun.