Posts made by Arkandel

@Miss-Demeanor Damn though, 9 pokestops together... that's 450 XP every few minutes even without a lucky egg. If you get really bored you can powerlevel like nobody's business there.

Toronto's mayor e-mails Nianti's CEO to nerf the 9 (!) Pokestops causing congestion at the ferry terminal.

Playstation owners: The Playstation Network has started using two-step authentication. Turn it on!

@Coin Are you more used to a controller, is that why you got one for the PC instead of using a mouse+keyboard?

@Sunny This happened about... 11 years ago? At the time as a young PHP developer trying to save some money I was also teaching computer classes to novices as an extra income after work (the company I was working for also had a school in the same building so they tossed me extra hours as a 'benefit').

Anyway, this class was full of professional people. Electrical engineers, doctors... we're not talking kids barely out of highschool or uneducated folks here, right? So this was the very first session in which we were supposed to start with the very basics just in case, and I was just naive enough back then to think that hilariously unnecessary; stuff like 'this is the monitor, this is where you turn it off, but this is the computer and they're separate things', etc.

After demonstrating a couple of things I then took the mouse and waved it in the air as I explained how when you move it around, the lil' arrow of the cursor on the screen does as well. "Okay guys, now you try it and see."

And doesn't this goddamn doctor in his thirties pick his mouse up and wave it in the air as well.

I still facepalm about that one years later. The hell dude, you've never watched a movie or been to a store where someone used one of them things?

@Thenomain My favorite bah-roken nWoD 1.0 power in general was a Theban Sorcery ... 4? rite called Spear of Faith if my memory serves. With X successes on the roll, whose pool was hilariously easy to stack up, you did X damage to the first target, X-1 to the next, X-2 to the next, etc... without any resistance rolls, bypassing armor or defense.

@Ganymede Pft. Primeval Miasm. Basically anything that buys the Vampire a minute - then the Werewolf is so screwed.

@Misadventure The 'terror' thing is just one interpretation, I don't have the book in front of me but I don't think it justifies why there's no skill factoring into defense.

@Ganymede said in Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux:

I'm not sure what you're going on about, but people disappearing is a defense maneuver to a superior opponent in combat.

And a tactical choice. Gauru -> Obfuscate + wait -> sadwolf works wonders.

@Coin said in Fanbase entitlement:

@Karmageddon I suspect the larger the better for t-shirt design.

The makings for a your momma so fat joke are all in there but it's her birthday, I just can't do it.

@Goldfish +1. If you need an extra set of teeth, Werewolf is my second favorite after Geist which... you know.

@Coin said in Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux:

Except the theory is that when you are confronted with a werewolf in Gauru, your Defense is reduced to your instincts because of the sheer terror.

The way I always thought of it is that against that primal state of living in the moment, with the enhanced reach of a giant nightmare given flesh, defense can't work; you simply can't react faster than that damn thing can act. It's all instinct, and you are not.

Another factor: Escaping if things are going badly. Vampires have way more ways to do that than Werewolves do. So if your first turn's dice were catastrophic... reset the encounter!

EDIT: Cheesy as fuck but wait until they pop Gauru, then escape... wait for it to run out, then kill'em.

@Ganymede Well, it comes down to many factors if we're talking MU* here. Renown availability is one of them - on every game I've been on vampires could just buy just about anything but Werewolves couldn't, for example. And MU* do tend to err on the side of caution (with good reason, I think) on making larger XP pools available to characters.

Or... we need to consider whether characters are prepared to have a fight as that changes everything. For example any wolf group worth a damn would try to have the fisticuffs during the day because, wtf. Similarly vampires would use silver. And if we're talking Mages (whose thread this is after all) they sure can fuck your life up if they get to sit in a room and fling shit your way.

But it's a fun exercise to do number crunching anyway.

@Coin said in Mostly Mage, Partially Descent Mux:

It really comes down to the dice rolls, but werewolves are beassssssts.

Speaking of the dice rolls, Vampires have a great advantage in spending vitae to boost their rolls. That much aggravated damage upfront can end a fight before it begins; so if they get aggravated damage done to them that just means they need to hold back nothing for self-healing and front-load everything to take the bad dog down before they are taken down instead.

I think Vampire and Werewolf are actually very well balanced against each other, and I don't just mean it in combat. The equilibrium and specialities are pretty well done.

@Ganymede One on one I'd take a combat-specialized Gangrel over a similarly specialized Werewolf any day. Aggravated damage is the great equalizer here.

In fact for that reason a clever Demon who can stay out of range and rain bullets will be pure hell on Uratha.

@Auspice I just wish they'd introduce actual new, fun features to the game. Ever since it launched they've worked on server stability, which is great, but nothing new fun to do. Appraise is so utterly useless I can't even - where's trading? Or fighting with your buddies' Pokemon?

@Auspice I have 3-4 albums worth of Magic: the Gathering cards from Revised to ... whatever came after Ice Age. They used to be my pride and joy but I haven't even looked at them for years - I'm told to sell them but a) they probably wouldn't fetch as much as people thought they would 'one day', and b) what a betrayal that would be to younger-me.

@Ganymede That's kind of what I meant, but in a different way. For example (and it's just an example):

Staff can demand/enforce through the rules that Werewolves properly spend Essence for their stuff. In that case staff creates an administrative overhead - they need to make it part of the game's culture for those players to type +spend Essence=1 properly when it's appropriate in all of their scenes whether they're PrPs or on the everyday grid, and all the extra policing isn't pleasant for anyone involved.

Staff can also make resource management be an essential part of the game - yes, Uratha fight for territory because it's in their nature, blah-blah. But if with territory come tangible effects - Loci with Essence flowing, codified Renown-gaining benefits, systematised NPC reputation gains, easily tracked through your +sheet and not just out-of-date wiki pages somewhere still showing packs inert for months holding that ground... then players themselves will want to use these in-game achievements, and they'll insist others do the same. After all if you've bust your ass for weeks to control the Locus in the gas station's bathroom you'll remind the other guy to use their goddamn Essence when he shifts reflexively. At that point it's just ingrained into the game. It becomes a good thing, it actually enhances roleplay way past the PrP you're in.

That's what I meant by 'entice'. Yes, it's enforced, but enforcement doesn't need to be a bad thing - when done properly.

The lazy way (sticking a rule in a policy file: "USE ESSENCE OKAY? OR ELSE!", donefixed) doesn't work remotely as well.