General WoD Discussion #5: Chronicles of Duty: Modern Darkness

[Ignimortis]

So, in VtM, just what are the rules for vampires who aren't specifically of a sorcerous clan learning Thaumaturgy? I know that blood magic isn't exclusive to Tremere (or Tzimisce or Lasombra) and that there is some history of other vampires picking up a bit of magic. Would you let a starting character use freebie points to buy a dot in, say, Weather Control, at out-of-clan cost?

It costs the same as an out-of-clan Discipline for the first path (10 EXP for first dot, 7xRating for other), and then less for additional paths (7 first dot, 4xRating new dots).

And no, I wouldn't let a starting character pick up Thaumaturgy unless he had a really good reason for it. Tremere don't teach blood magic to anyone out of clan, and Tzimisce/Lasombra don't do either, even though their blood magic is different.

[The Jack]

Start with at least three dots of occult.

If you're sabbat or anarch, sure. You'll want a dot of mentor to get any better.
If you're camarilla, the following options are available;
Be a nosferatu
Be a malkavian
Take a lot of dots in mentor.
Have ties to someone from another sect (take a relevent flaw, also Take dark secret)
Take clan friendship, tremere.
Take spirit mentor and dark secret. Maybe then you can be buying dots at x 5 and paths as x3, if you know what i mean...

Of course, the independent clans have their own sorcery, but most sadhanna stays in india, setite sorcery needs you to be in the cult both to acquire and to use, and necromancy is a different thing. Assamites are an option should they have joined the cam.

Weather control is a weird one to start with.
Tremere like to enforce the path of blood -first- because they can control advancement (each new power is different from the last and thus needs to be taught or researched) whilst paths like movement of the mind are bad primary paths because they can be improved independently, reducing the control the tremere have.

[Jeivar]

If you're camarilla, the following options are available;
Be a nosferatu
Be a malkavian
Take a lot of dots in mentor.
Have ties to someone from another sect (take a relevent flaw, also Take dark secret)
Take clan friendship, tremere.
Take spirit mentor and dark secret. Maybe then you can be buying dots at x 5 and paths as x3, if you know what i mean...

A Nosferatu/Malkavian hybrid with a dark secret, a spirit mentor, a Tremere buddy AND a Sabbat buddy? That's quite a lot of munchkinry, but okay, I'll try it out.

(I'm kidding.)

[Anonymouswizard]

So, in VtM, just what are the rules for vampires who aren't specifically of a sorcerous clan learning Thaumaturgy? I know that blood magic isn't exclusive to Tremere (or Tzimisce or Lasombra) and that there is some history of other vampires picking up a bit of magic. Would you let a starting character use freebie points to buy a dot in, say, Weather Control, at out-of-clan cost?

IIRC you need a teacher and so it's GM-choice as to if a character can take it at the start of the game. Or to be more specific rules-wise it's just like any other OoC Discipline, but you won't have to get a Stage 1 Blood Bond to learn it.

Me? I'd allow another character to learn it, but I would generally give them a list of available teachers and paths or ask them for details about their teacher. No Path of Blood for nonTremere though. But I've met people who wouldn't.

[The Jack]

Tremere do teach snipets of thaumaturgy to those outside their clan, but thats a sensitive matter. To a trusted ally or perhaps to appease someone they owe, they, with permission, will teach early levels (likely path of blood) and a few minor rituals. They don't teach enough to break their monopoly, just enough that they satisfy curiosities and provide personal utility.

The path of blood is the primary path of most tremere, not because the chantry needs every member to taste blood and try dominate 5th gens, but because it's a complex path that needs a tutor for every level of advancement, so if you taught it to an outsider, they'd need a favour for every new level they learn. If you taught it to a stupid neonate that went anarch, they'd have a real hard time trying to advance their thaumaturgy without the clan.

That said. I'd put paths on ' shelfs'

Entry shelf
Path of blood for tremere. For dur an ki, this might be spirit manipulation but blood still holds water. For setites, there is no need for an entry shelf, you're layers deep and entering the priesthood.

Bottom shelf:
Movement of the mind
Lure of flames
... some of the shiity paths nobody cares about, like shadows or mars.

Mid shelf: basically everything i dont mention elsewhere.

Top shelf
Mercury
focused mind.
maybe Corruption

Secret shelf
Everything thought to be dark thaumaturgy. I'm of the belief that everything DT is accessible without infernalism, as infernalism is a shortcut to power, not a source of unique power, but as it's all hugely powerful or immoral even to setites or a huge masquerade breach... It's the kind of stuff that elders keep to theirselves.

There's wiggle room, and i imagine chantries argue over the usefulness/neccessary security of some paths and rituals, but that's fine. Some paths might be 'first two levels are ok, three to four are to be guarded Nd 5 is banned' whilst others might be 'if we trust her to learn 1, she can learn the rest at her pleasure'

[LibraryOgre]

In the local Toreador Newsletter, there is a crudely drawn comic strip about the Nosferatu called "What We Poo in the Shadows". It is loved by Neonates. Frequently letters to the editor from elders demand its removal.

[Jeivar]

Oh, another magic question. I know vamps can't learn "true" magic in the Mage sense, but can they learn hedge magic?

Also, on the physical side of things: I know I'm not the only one who feels that vampires should have physical strength, and it's a bit odd that only a handful of clans get any kind of muscle edge. But giving Potence to everyone means having to come up with something else to give to Brujah, Nosferatu, Giovanni and Lasombra. So I thought about just making Strength dots cheaper in Freebies and XP points. Has anyone tried that?

[LibraryOgre]

Oh, another magic question. I know vamps can't learn "true" magic in the Mage sense, but can they learn hedge magic?

Also, on the physical side of things: I know I'm not the only one who feels that vampires should have physical strength, and it's a bit odd that only a handful of clans get any kind of muscle edge. But giving Potence to everyone means having to come up with something else to give to Brujah, Nosferatu, Giovanni and Lasombra. So I thought about just making Strength dots cheaper in Freebies and XP points. Has anyone tried that?

Can't you spend Blood Points to temporarily increase your attributes?

[lightningcat]

Oh, another magic question. I know vamps can't learn "true" magic in the Mage sense, but can they learn hedge magic?

That is basically what thaurmatugy is, as are the other sorcery disciplines.

[AshfireMage]

Can't you spend Blood Points to temporarily increase your attributes?

You can. I don't have a book in front of me, but if memory serves, this is limited to physical attributes (dex, strength, stamina) only and costs 1 Blood Point per additional dot. This boost lasts for one scene, unless you take something beyond your generational maximum, in which case those dots only last for a round.

For example, if your character is 12th generation, with 4 dots in strength, you could spend 1BP to increase your strength to 5 for the rest of the scene. If you still couldn't hit the stupid shovelhead hard enough, though, you could spend an additional blood point to push your strength to 6. However, since you generation limits you to 5 dots in any given attribute, that extra dot would go away at the end of the round and you could either stay at 5 for the rest of the scene, or spend another blood point to raise it again for the next round.

In essence, any vampire who has blood left can be as strong as the normal human maximum if they choose to be, even superhumanly strong for short bursts. But Potence still gives a big boost by A. having the passive boost to your strength dice pools whether you spend blood or not, B. not getting hindered by the generational maximum rule in terms of how many strength dice you can roll (although there's still the generational limit on how many levels of potence you can have), and C. having the additional active effect of being able to trade some of the strength dice for automatic damage successes if you hit.

Note that this is all from memory and a couple of ST notes from an old game, so some of the info might be wrong.

[LibraryOgre]

You can. I don't have a book in front of me, but if memory serves, this is limited to physical attributes (dex, strength, stamina) only and costs 1 Blood Point per additional dot. This boost lasts for one scene, unless you take something beyond your generational maximum, in which case those dots only last for a round.

For example, if your character is 12th generation, with 4 dots in strength, you could spend 1BP to increase your strength to 5 for the rest of the scene. If you still couldn't hit the stupid shovelhead hard enough, though, you could spend an additional blood point to push your strength to 6. However, since you generation limits you to 5 dots in any given attribute, that extra dot would go away at the end of the round and you could either stay at 5 for the rest of the scene, or spend another blood point to raise it again for the next round.

In essence, any vampire who has blood left can be as strong as the normal human maximum if they choose to be, even superhumanly strong for short bursts. But Potence still gives a big boost by A. having the passive boost to your strength dice pools whether you spend blood or not, B. not getting hindered by the generational maximum rule in terms of how many strength dice you can roll (although there's still the generational limit on how many levels of potence you can have), and C. having the additional active effect of being able to trade some of the strength dice for automatic damage successes if you hit.

Note that this is all from memory and a couple of ST notes from an old game, so some of the info might be wrong.

That's what I recalled, as well. So "Vampires need to find it easier to be stronger" doesn't jive with me. With Attributes at Current Rating * 4 to improve, a vampire with a strength of 3 who wants to get stronger is more XP efficient to pick up 1 level of Potence (10 XP) than actually increase his Strength (12 XP). Going from 3 to 4 is cheaper than from Potence 1 to Potence 2 out-of-clan (same cost if Caitiff), but Potence 2 is cheaper than Strength 5... and has the additional advantages of Potence (i.e. not just bonus dice, but bonus successes).

Even Out-of-Clan, strength via potence is relatively cheap for Kindred.

[AshfireMage]

My group has recently started playing Hunter: The Reckoning, which I'd barely looked at prior to starting my character. Initial thought is that I'm not as much of a fan as I am of Vampire, but it's still pretty enjoyable. But I'm waiting until things pick up a bit, since everyone just got Imbued.

So far the group consists of a psychiatrist/socialite (Judge), a community college student/raver (Martyr), and a single mother/ER nurse (Redeemer) (mine). Ended up going with the option presented by the ST of creating our characters and having the ST pick creeds for us based on how we acted during the Imbuing scene and immediately before it, which seems to have worked out pretty well.

[The Jack]

Oh, another magic question. I know vamps can't learn "true" magic in the Mage sense, but can they learn hedge magic?

Also, on the physical side of things: I know I'm not the only one who feels that vampires should have physical strength, and it's a bit odd that only a handful of clans get any kind of muscle edge. But giving Potence to everyone means having to come up with something else to give to Brujah, Nosferatu, Giovanni and Lasombra. So I thought about just making Strength dots cheaper in Freebies and XP points. Has anyone tried that?

Thaumaturgy is hedge magic.
A human could learn thaumaturgy... but a bloodpoint for them usually means damage.

IIRC
Vampire thaumaturges don't learn mortal hedge magic for a variety of reasons.
-Their magic is stronger, so why bother?
-Magic requires metaphysics; You need the right beliefs, you need to work with those beliefs. A vampire learning mortal magic has a lot to compensate for; They're dead learning the magic of the living, the spell might need daylight, they've lost a good deal of spiritual connection, their roll in the world has now changed significantly...

Spoiler

Show

One thing I'm convinced of; Vampires learn wards backwards. Vampires learn to block out ghouls first and demons last, while humans can conjure and ward away spirits by accident. This is because Vampires are natural masters over humans but spiritually dead, so learn to control more-human creatures first. Humans on the other hand are a combination of "favoured by god" and "Fear the other" and "All hail the mundane!" and would probably have a difficult time keeping away ghouls.

- Vampires have a bottleneck; They need a discipline to allow them to use magic. If you embraced a hedge mage, they'd lose the capability to cast spells, and would need to go through great efforts to recover that ability and adapt it for the vampiric condition. That said, they'd have an advantage over those that didn't practice before the embrace, since they're in recovery rather than initial learning.



As said, all vampires can blood buff. They also don't gain muscle when they buy strength, so a dainty child can be a powerlifter. 4 strength is well above what most humans have, and six is inhuman.
Getting Potence can be cheaper than strength, and potence works on top of strength, so that safe cap of six can be an eight or a nine.

A tangent not especially targeted at you.

I think WoD is best when you try to follow the books, especially when you're a new storyteller.
Your vampire city works best when, even where it's different from the norm, it's still mindful of the world around them.

There's a lot of stuff about Vampire that you look at and think "hold on, that looks dumb, I'm going to house rule it"
But for a lot of it (certainly not all of it; Some of it is just dumb) that stuff was very deliberate and maybe nuanced, and you don't really get the context (there is a LOT of context. You don't just read the books, you need to study them). WoD dedicated forums are full of home brewed "solutions" to perceived problems. WoD has problems (The entirety of V5), but a lot of these "solutions" come from 'not getting it' and just make things worse/less interesting/too self interested/V5.

Basic WoD has a good spirit, I think. It's got mass appeal and a lot of it feels relevant (unless again, it's v5). There's a lot you won't agree with, but you're not supposed to agree with it.

You should just roll with it.
Except combat rules
Skip rolling and soaking, assume you got half your dice pool.

A counterpoint:
Infernalism isn't bad. The Elders just tell you it's bad because it gives you an advantage over them. Back in their day they were all into infernalism to get an advantage over their own elders, and they all know too well what you'd do if you had that advantage, because they did those atrocious things when they were your age.
Carthage was the best city.
Trust me.
I'm an expert.

The books say infernalism is bad, but the books are also full of unreliable narrators (and freelance writing). So you can't trust them.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Getting Potence can be cheaper than strength

Nitpick: this is untrue. Attributes cost 4x current score. Disciplines cost 5x current for in clan, and 7x current for out of clan. It is always more expensive for equivalent levels of Potence than Strength.

[Ignimortis]

You can. I don't have a book in front of me, but if memory serves, this is limited to physical attributes (dex, strength, stamina) only and costs 1 Blood Point per additional dot. This boost lasts for one scene, unless you take something beyond your generational maximum, in which case those dots only last for a round.

For example, if your character is 12th generation, with 4 dots in strength, you could spend 1BP to increase your strength to 5 for the rest of the scene. If you still couldn't hit the stupid shovelhead hard enough, though, you could spend an additional blood point to push your strength to 6. However, since you generation limits you to 5 dots in any given attribute, that extra dot would go away at the end of the round and you could either stay at 5 for the rest of the scene, or spend another blood point to raise it again for the next round.

In V20 those dots last three rounds after you stop spending blood. Also, you can get to Limit+1 for a scene, and only dots above that go away after not spending blood, so you can have 6 STR for a scene, or pump it to 10 if you keep spending blood each turn.

And personally as someone who has played almost exclusively physical-focused characters, I dislike it. There needs to be a hard cap based on character stats, not generational limits, otherwise that Gen 8 Toreador ponce with bad Celerity can get to the same levels of physical prowess as a dedicated combat character if he uses two turns to buff himself, but a combat character can't become a charmer by just pumping blood. Our group actually allows to Blood Buff stats only 2 dots higher than your actual rating, and if you have STR 5, for instance, you can get STR 7 for a scene and not STR 6.

Nitpick: this is untrue. Attributes cost 4x current score. Disciplines cost 5x current for in clan, and 7x current for out of clan. It is always more expensive for equivalent levels of Potence than Strength.

Nitpicking the nitpick: Jack specifically referenced the situation where getting Potence would be cheaper than getting the next STR dot, i.e. if you have 4 STR and 0 Potence, the next STR dot will cost you 16 EXP, but learning Potence will only cost you 10 EXP. If it's in-clan, then you can get Potence from 1 to 3 cheaper than STR from 4 to 5 (5+10 vs 16). It's not about equivalent levels, it's about low Potence dots costing less than high stat dots.

[The Jack]

There needs to be a hard cap based on character stats, not generational limits, otherwise that Gen 8 Toreador ponce with bad Celerity can get to the same levels of physical prowess as a dedicated combat character if he uses two turns to buff himself, but a combat character can't become a charmer by just pumping bloods.

The game is better when you discourage starting backgrounds beyond 3. But combat characters are supposed to get ahead with skills, disciplines and prep. Buffing stats mid-combat is for when things have gone wrong.
Mentals are the best combat attributes, you cant buff those .

You can be a charmer by pumping blood. It's called Presence.

[Ignimortis]

The game is better when you discourage starting backgrounds beyond 3. But combat characters are supposed to get ahead with skills, disciplines and prep. Buffing stats mid-combat is for when things have gone wrong.
Mentals are the best combat attributes, you cant buff those .

You can be a charmer by pumping blood. It's called Presence.

Not being able to access 9th and 8th generation at chargen (and, by extension, almost never at all, unless your games are way more permissive and ripe with targets for Diablerie than mine) basically shuts down any combat character who would actually want to use several blood points per turn, namely, Brujah and Assamites. Gangrel can get by with Claws and Fortitude and healing wounds slowly, and Protean is a busted discipline anyway.

Also, what point is there to having better mental attributes in combat aside from Wits playing a role in initiative? Your INT doesn't help you one whit to put people into their early graves, unlike any physical attribute.

Skills and disciplines can get you ahead, but it's still pretty unequal, because a social vampire can just become a musclebound hulk quite quickly, which can get him out of trouble where words or Social Disciplines won't help, and a combat vampire will have to rely on his subpar social stats to actually use Presence or Dominate or whatever, if they even have those (some clans don't).

Also, Presence isn't really effective if you have something like CHA 2 and relevant skills at 1 or 2, but a knife is quite effective when you've got Melee 2 and just buff yourself to 5 STR and DEX.

[The Jack]

Celerity in V20 is excempt from the blood expenditure limitations, thus high generation is not a problem. You know, Low gen Brujah neonates aught to be an extreme rarity, especially when you are playing rabble.
Celerity in 1e is something you ideally build up before an important move, you prep it. Ergo;
Mentals are the best for combat characters.

...and good socials means you don't need to combat.

[Ignimortis]

Celerity in V20 is excempt from the blood expenditure limitations, thus high generation is not a problem. You know, Low gen Brujah neonates aught to be an extreme rarity, especially when you are playing rabble.
Celerity in 1e is something you ideally build up before an important move, you prep it. Ergo;
Mentals are the best for combat characters.

...and good socials means you don't need to combat.

It sort of is, but it's also not, I think?

The player can spend one blood point to take an extra action up to the number of dots he has in Celerity at the beginning of the relevant turn; this expenditure can go beyond her normal Generation maximum.

So basically the way we've read this as "you can expend as many points as you like, but they will count at least as one point anyway", so you can't use Celerity and Potence in the same turn if you're not at least 9th Gen.

Also, why the hell should I be playing rabble? Brujah are not locked into that anyway.

And to be honest, good socials don't mean jack when you have seven people with AKs conducting a drug deal with your sworn enemy and you need to 1) steal the drugs 2) kill them all. Mentals don't matter much either, because you're dealing with things as they're handed to you. So high Fortitude, Celerity and Potence are vital in this situation, while Presence 3 and 4 don't do anything and Presence 1 doesn't do anything either.

No, I don't use ghouls for anything but daytime guards, why do you ask? :P

[Jeivar]

I'm thinking of just giving all the players one free dot of Potence, but non-smashy clans still have to buy that second one at out-of-clan costs.

Thaumaturgy is hedge magic.
A human could learn thaumaturgy... but a bloodpoint for them usually means damage.

IIRC
Vampire thaumaturges don't learn mortal hedge magic for a variety of reasons.
-Their magic is stronger, so why bother?
-Magic requires metaphysics; You need the right beliefs, you need to work with those beliefs. A vampire learning mortal magic has a lot to compensate for; They're dead learning the magic of the living, the spell might need daylight, they've lost a good deal of spiritual connection, their roll in the world has now changed significantly...

Thanks for clearing that up.

Infernalism isn't bad. The Elders just tell you it's bad because it gives you an advantage over them. Back in their day they were all into infernalism to get an advantage over their own elders, and they all know too well what you'd do if you had that advantage, because they did those atrocious things when they were your age.
Carthage was the best city.
Trust me.
I'm an expert.

The books say infernalism is bad, but the books are also full of unreliable narrators (and freelance writing). So you can't trust them.

Well of course demons are trustworthy. They say so.

[The Jack]

Demons are hardly worse than the usual associations players make.

[The Jack]

And to be honest, good socials don't mean jack when you have seven people with AKs conducting a drug deal with your sworn enemy and you need to 1) steal the drugs 2) kill them all. Mentals don't matter much either, because you're dealing with things as they're handed to you. So high Fortitude, Celerity and Potence are vital in this situation, while Presence 3 and 4 don't do anything and Presence 1 doesn't do anything either.

No, I don't use ghouls for anything but daytime guards, why do you ask? :P

Obfuscate, dominate, presence 3+ for gravy.


You can get really creative with the first few levels of animalism too.

[Ignimortis]

I'm thinking of just giving all the players one free dot of Potence, but non-smashy clans still have to buy that second one at out-of-clan costs.

That's just gonna make clans with base Potence less attractive and Gangrel, which are already obscenely strong RAW, become absolute monsters right out of chargen, because they don't even have to worry about learning Potence anymore.

Obfuscate, dominate, presence 3+ for gravy.


You can get really creative with the first few levels of animalism too.

To be honest, I don't think I could pick those up at meaningful levels without compromising other stuff, and I've got about 170 EXP on my main character (Brujah with additional in-clan Fortitude through merits, currently Potence 3/Celerity 4/Fortitude 3/Presence 2/Auspex 2). I mean, Obfuscate starts working properly at level 2 which is 17 EXP, Dominate is sort of useless in mass situations, because dominating one guy to shoot the others is worse than disemboweling him and two others in the same 3 seconds, and Presence 3-4 doesn't really do anything here. Presence 5 is very good, but even for Brujah that's an investment of 45 EXP from level 2. Sure, if you're looking to play "Batman in a dark warehouse", then all of those aside from Presence are quite good. But for an upfront combat they don't do anything.

[The Jack]

Raw, gangrel are weak. Fortitude has been weak since someone forgot the difference between aggravated wounds and damage after 1e. But i suppose that's the buff to feral claws....
Gangrel do well because they're very self sufficient. Their discipline spread means they never need to truly owe people.

In combat...
Again, having no prep whatsoever is an assurance of final death. You should at least try to "batman" it.

Grabbing yourself all the physicals is the most xp ineffecient way to win fights. I mean, it's an enjoyable playstyle, but you aint going to come out on top in the jyhad.
Assuming clan disciplines only, A malkavian who knows what he's doing will always beat a brujah who knows what he's doing. 2 dots of obfuscate or dominate, a little knowledge of stealth and explosives and all you'll have to worry about is presence 4 combined with paranoia and cctv.

2 dominate will solve more combat problems than 2 in every physical. 3 presence will... its not a well written discipline so who knows how strong it is. 1 animalism gives you a more-humanity friendly suicide bomber and 2 gives you an army on call.


Potence is best for climbing
Celerity is best for running
Fortitude is a safety net.

But hey, Im unusually creative, and I [i]prefer [/]paranoid playstyles. Everything is after you, after all. I make WoD characters to be unreliant on the party, because you cant trust the party. Being the group's barbarian just seems like a bad idea to me.

With disciplines, its better to go wide than deep. The first dot of every power is usually the most widely applicable. obfuscate and presence are the exception. Auspex is the only power you'll want more than three dots for all your characters. Of course, the setting isnt fond of you going wide, but Im only talking the common disciplines.

Rare disciplines are nice, but its wise to only go deep with one.

[Ignimortis]

Raw, gangrel are weak. Fortitude has been weak since someone forgot the difference between aggravated wounds and damage after 1e. But i suppose that's the buff to feral claws....
Gangrel do well because they're very self sufficient. Their discipline spread means they never need to truly owe people.

In combat...
Again, having no prep whatsoever is an assurance of final death. You should at least try to "batman" it.

Grabbing yourself all the physicals is the most xp ineffecient way to win fights. I mean, it's an enjoyable playstyle, but you aint going to come out on top in the jyhad.
Assuming clan disciplines only, A malkavian who knows what he's doing will always beat a brujah who knows what he's doing. 2 dots of obfuscate or dominate, a little knowledge of stealth and explosives and all you'll have to worry about is presence 4 combined with paranoia and cctv.

2 dominate will solve more combat problems than 2 in every physical. 3 presence will... its not a well written discipline so who knows how strong it is. 1 animalism gives you a more-humanity friendly suicide bomber and 2 gives you an army on call.


Potence is best for climbing
Celerity is best for running
Fortitude is a safety net.

But hey, Im unusually creative, and I [i]prefer [/]paranoid playstyles. Everything is after you, after all. I make WoD characters to be unreliant on the party, because you cant trust the party. Being the group's barbarian just seems like a bad idea to me.

With disciplines, its better to go wide than deep. The first dot of every power is usually the most widely applicable. obfuscate and presence are the exception. Auspex is the only power you'll want more than three dots for all your characters. Of course, the setting isnt fond of you going wide, but Im only talking the common disciplines.

Rare disciplines are nice, but its wise to only go deep with one.

Gangrel with Fort 5 and Protean 4 need only fear other users of aggravated damage, preferably with Potence. Before our group fixed Fortitude to actually soak claws and fangs better than RAW, an enemy Gangrel was the most feared opponent anyone, including our own Gangrel, could imagine.

A Malkavian will beat the Brujah because the Brujah doesn't have any tools to find him if the Malk goes into Obfuscate. That's the main problem. If they're both in a closed room and there's no time to Obfuscate, well, that Malk is dead two seconds ago.

Dominate 2 is useless if you're facing anyone higher gen than you, or if your enemies are more than a pack of 3. Getting an unwilling ally who might even resist the compulsion entirely is not as effective as being your own party of four people who just happen to share health and bloodpool.

Also, we're not playing in a party, I'm doing my own things all the time. So far my main character is being considered for an Archon position, because he has proved to be very tough to kill, quite uncompromising on questions of Camarilla Law and being able to demolish five shovelheads in twenty seconds. All he needs right now are some investigative abilities, which is how I got access to Auspex (my ST makes getting out-of-clan Disciplines quite a hassle most of the time) and maybe at some point I'll get Dominate 3 for Masquerade reasons.

Also, I dislike fighting by proxy and summons. What's the point in being a combat-focused character if a squad of nameless goons supposedly does better than you? Better prove that they don't...by beating them all before they can react accordingly.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Anyone know of a more powerful variant of the Thaumaturgy ritual "mirror of the second sight"? Preferably V20 or DA V20, but I can update if necessary. I'm looking for a way to reveal illusions to all observers that doesn't rely on Auspex or very small mirrors.

[The Jack]

Make one up. I have three rationalizations for you
- mirror of true sight for all is a third level ritual and a relatively minor alteration of Mirror only people dont use/teach it because it's a terrible idea*
-use the fouth level ritual inscription for mirror
-its a fourth or fith level ritual.

*Making an affect-all version of the ritual is going to be a terrible masquerade risk, and who you look at is going to look back and likely see a vampiric visage.

If you're talking chimestry, you can just prove it an 'illusion' and it will disapear. Swing sticks through everything.

chimestry is real though. Its not an illusion, its magical matter with the form of something. at least thats the simplified take on what a ravnos would say. Chimestry users have to accept their illusions as' real ' lest their disbelief destroys their own creations.


If its changelings... i think most of that logic stays the same. Its real dude!!!

If your dealing with malkavian hallucinations, thats entirely different. Not illusions at all.

Mages? No comment.

[AshfireMage]

Spent a good chunk of this afternoon trying to come up with Sabbat pack initiation rituals. Surprisingly difficult task to create something that was appropriately horrifying without loosing all logic or going completely over-the-top.

[fishyfishyfishy]

I mean, I'm the Storyteller, so I can just make up whatever I want. I prefer to use existing material if I can though, that way I have something to point the players at when they have questions.

Mirror of the Second Sight explicitly shows illusions to cast no reflection, which provides the proof needed to disbelieve. It's important for a scene in which the Coterie meets with some Sabbat elders, which includes a 6th generation Tremere Antitribu, that they are not able to use their usual tactic of Chimerstry and Obfuscate to murderhobo a group of supposedly powerful entities. If there's not a better ritual out there that will provide this benefit, I'll just say they have several of these in place for easy viewing.

[The Jack]

The tremere'll likely have auspex out the wazzoo.

Hell, Auspex is the most -must have high- discipline for surviving past two centuries, most of those elders are going to have 3+ level auspex. Especially as they're sabbat and the sharing barrier is much less/more have access to it. There's not much need for rituals to cover a weakness most of them won't have.

The Tremere, with the fourth level ritual inscription, can give a mirror ritual for that one-brujah to complete, if he/she thinks there's enough reason for it.