Paradox Buys White Wolf from CCP

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Dec 24, 2015 4:30 pm

Mechalich wrote:The power level available in Mage was so much higher than Vampire or Werewolf that it wasn't even funny. Not for nothing were the stats for military hardware printed in Technomacher's Toybox, a Mage supplement. Heck, if you could find a suitable target for it, you could absolutely deploy nuclear weaponry in a Technocracy game.

This is actually more complicated than Mechalich presents. Mage's ability to do anything is sharply limited by the mage having time and information to prepare for the threat in advance. If a mage has a week to prepare then he can cast massive telekinetic shield and bump dexterity up to ten and stuff. But if a vampire got a jump on the mage, then most of the time mage would just die from being unable to soak lethal damage and having only one action per turn. Your average mage has Arete 3 and so rolls 3 dice to cast a spell. If the mage has Forces, then he can turn light into sunlight and kill a vampire. If the mage doesn't have Forces, then his magical attacks do 1 die of damage before soak on average.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 6:32 am

I never understood how Mage was supposed to be op, when you have a dicepool of 1 to 3 and have to get like 5 successes to even get the spell going.

K · Post by K » Fri Dec 25, 2015 9:19 am

The thing to remember is that 3-4 failed castings meant a ruined and/or dead character from just the Paradox (not to mention the problem of losing actions in battles), so even the most basket-weavery of basket-weavers made starting characters with starting Arete of 3, at least Avatar 3 for Quintessence-burning, and maybe some extra dots in Willpower to burn for an extra success.

The "power-gamers" of Mage then added to that by thinking asymmetrically. For example, the number of successes to flash-fry a vampire with Forces is right at the edge of what you might be capable of pulling off in a turn, but those same successes can do a lot more damage by setting off the grenades that vampire is carrying.

Regular gamers just stalled and cast over several turns, adding up successes until they could coup de grace.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 4:49 pm

A smart mage never attacks directly with Magic, that's a sucker's bet. The OP nature of mage is in enhancing attacks you already have - like using a forces effect to 'overcharge' your plasma rifle for an extra four agg damage with every attack for a scene - or in extended rituals.

Mages have a unique ability in the WoD to launch attacks from effectively infinite range (technically Werewolves can summon spirits to do stuff like this but its not quite the same). It's not difficult to use a Correspondence + Entropy effect to locate a Vampire sleeping in their coffin and then a Forces effect to burn their house down (if you manufacture a gas leak it's even coincidental). Unless the Vampire has thaum and has taken the time to put up wards against mages, they cannot do squat to stop that.

Stacking up power builds from various WoD products is largely an exercise in futility because there's no good way to adjudicate the interactions, but as a general comparison the ability of mages to hit you from far away and their equal ability to build super-powered stuff to synergize their capabilities (a starting Technocrat can absolutely put enough into requisitions to borrow a tank if they can justify the need).

The Mage books are filled with nonchalant examples of Mages doing absurd things like teleporting oil tankers (in a character bio in the Etherite book if I recall correctly).

Vampires have the advantage if they can get the drop on a Mage, but since mages pretty much have to live their lives inside a little cocoon of wards to prevent other mages from tagging and bagging them more or less at will, the circumstances for a vampiric ambush are incredibly limited.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 5:17 am

The biggest problem with Sphere magic was that the key skill always was "Fast-Talk GM". Because, as far as I remember flamewars of old, the key mechanical concepts, like, oh, whether the universe itself serves as an observer for the Paradox purposes, or whether you can actually "cheat" past your spell damage caps by exploiting the environment, such as by making your enemy's ammunition cook off, as mentinoed above, were never consistently codified. There were vehement disagreements about them. Also examples of what could be done contradicted each other too often (rotes vs Sphere descriptions).

If I was asked to rewrite Mage for a crossover setting, without scrapping everything, and even on the assumption that other splat would have decent superheroic power level (they should, because that's what people seem to actually want), I'd kept "Spheres" as a name and tried to sneak in nerfs that essentially turn them into sorcery. The most obvious change would be mages only being able to cast by rote, with invention of new rotes being sufficiently difficult and time-consuming to be only done by experienced mages in their downtime. Accidentally that would also make hunting for old books of forbidden knowledge viable again.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:03 am

I like that idea in general, FatR, but I do think that something is lost when you disallow "fast and dirty" non-rote magic entirely. You don't need to go full spheres, but I do think you should be able to manage some basic suite of effects by sphere without having a rote for, say, "make pipes burst"

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:35 am

Several of the extant thaumaturgy paths - Path of Transmutation of the top of my head, but surely others - allow for fairly general fast-effects like 'make object stronger' or 'turn solid to liquid' (the path of written by someone with little knowledge of physics or chemistry and if interpreted accordingly could be broken as all hell). Properly re-engineered, giving mages thaumaturgy (and necromancy too, because people want necromancy in WoD) would allow them to have a suite of powerful but only moderately flexible fast abilities while still utilizing rituals for more varied effects. Also providing some sort of 'fatigue mechanic' to mages (like having to spend blood for thaum but using some other resource) would prevent mages from ganking the system by spending all of their downtime casting powerful rituals in their basements.

MtA had a real problem that the rules technically allowed just about any master of spirit to spend an impossible to calculate amount of time opening a portal to some horrible nether-realm and unleashing world-ending demon hordes. The only thing in the game that really stopped your from doing that (aside from technocracy killsats monitoring energy spikes all BoS on the Institute style) was Paradox.

'You can destroy the world but Paradox won't let you' is a bad system. Doubly so when Paradox effectively boiled down to 'GM whim' and the source material specifically encouraged GMs to be fickle and spiteful when it came to Paradox. Speaking as someone who ran Mage while trying not to be a dick about it, that meant every Paradox point handed out needed to come with an explanation, and every backlash required foreshadowing.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 9:44 am

You could just have a spell that makes coincidental accidents happen to people you don't like and causes an amount of damage. Calculating what you need to generate a gas explosion or to have a bookshelf fall on people is way too much work, and the outputs are never going to be balanced (way too easy for minor changes to result in the destruction of half the planet). You should just go full effects-based for that shit.

-Username17

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 10:32 am

It all boils down to what is magic supposed to BE and what is its scope going to be in your setting?

If magic is just meant to be "pretty, but not a threat to the powers that be" for mages to be subordinated to Vampire's base game, then yes, paths are the way to go (even if they'd be entitled to start their splat with all the pathsplosion the Tremere books ended up with to compensate for their mortality).

Personally, I'll take an Effects-Oriented structure any day of the week because I love effects-oriented and I've never let the fear of munchkins get in the way of my fun *steps off soapbox*, but I understand why so many people hate it since E.O is broken from inception and exploitable six ways into Sunday, thus becoming 300% reliant on the Gentleman's Agreement.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 9:57 am

In 2016 Onyx Path is still reprinting the racist bullshit from the 90s, because fixing anything might provoke rabbid fanboyz. Specifically I'm talking about the fact that Assamite's skin grows black with age (unlike the other vampires who go pale). Yes, in Vampire there is a clan of drugged-up arab assassins who become black as a direct curse from God. Seriously.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 3:54 pm

after the Drow the Assamite didn't even faze me. "it's mystical" or some bullshit. at least they don't grow turbans, or have camels for ghouls... tell me they don't...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:25 pm

oh, I'm sure there's a canon camel ghoul somewhere in VtM...

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 6:55 pm

Rawbeard wrote:after the Drow the Assamite didn't even faze me. "it's mystical" or some bullshit. at least they don't grow turbans, or have camels for ghouls... tell me they don't...

They almost certainly have camel ghouls, but that's actually okay. Westerners had horse ghouls, and there's no particular reason a middle eastern vampire wouldn't ghoul his favorite camel.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:12 pm

Assamites ghoul people for seven years, at the end of which a Ghoul has to pass a test. If they pass, they are turned into a Vampire. If they fail, they are killed and eaten or forced to become a suicide bomber. I don't know that they have any camel ghouls, but things would actually be less racist if they did.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:42 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Assamites ghoul people for seven years, at the end of which a Ghoul has to pass a test. If they pass, they are turned into a Vampire. If they fail, they are killed and eaten or forced to become a suicide bomber.

I was imagining a couple ghouls sitting at desks taking a written test- one telling the other "I fucking hate finals".

But it's probably a practical (and loyalty) test, alas.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:41 pm

Longes wrote:In 2016 Onyx Path is still reprinting the racist bullshit from the 90s, because fixing anything might provoke rabbid fanboyz. Specifically I'm talking about the fact that Assamite's skin grows black with age (unlike the other vampires who go pale). Yes, in Vampire there is a clan of drugged-up arab assassins who become black as a direct curse from God. Seriously.

Since Middle Eastern 'vampires' traditionally went about at high noon, having them darken in response to the curse makes sense. And if they're going to have a visible symbol of a divine malediction, having skin go black (as opposed to melanin-rich) seems appropriate.

If you have an alternative suggestion, feel free to make it.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:57 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:
Longes wrote:In 2016 Onyx Path is still reprinting the racist bullshit from the 90s, because fixing anything might provoke rabbid fanboyz. Specifically I'm talking about the fact that Assamite's skin grows black with age (unlike the other vampires who go pale). Yes, in Vampire there is a clan of drugged-up arab assassins who become black as a direct curse from God. Seriously.
Since Middle Eastern 'vampires' traditionally went about at high noon, having them darken in response to the curse makes sense. And if they're going to have a visible symbol of a divine malediction, having skin go black (as opposed to melanin-rich) seems appropriate.

If you have an alternative suggestion, feel free to make it.

Their skin is rough and flakes off like coarse sand with age. Their eyes go obsidian black or full red like smoldering coals. The temperature around them is a few degrees hotter and stulifying, making them unpleasant to be around. When you cut them, black and white silken material makes up the scarification/stitching together of their flesh. Go fuck yourself.

There. Several suggestions.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 9:34 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:
Longes wrote:In 2016 Onyx Path is still reprinting the racist bullshit from the 90s, because fixing anything might provoke rabbid fanboyz. Specifically I'm talking about the fact that Assamite's skin grows black with age (unlike the other vampires who go pale). Yes, in Vampire there is a clan of drugged-up arab assassins who become black as a direct curse from God. Seriously.
Since Middle Eastern 'vampires' traditionally went about at high noon, having them darken in response to the curse makes sense. And if they're going to have a visible symbol of a divine malediction, having skin go black (as opposed to melanin-rich) seems appropriate.

If you have an alternative suggestion, feel free to make it.

Assamites go about at night, just like every other vampire. Meanwhile, black skin being the mark of caine was an actual real life theory used as justification for slavery.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:53 pm

Longes wrote:Assamites go about at night, just like every other vampire.

Night was the time when desert people preferred to get things done and travel, the period when no one went out and only dangerous beings lurked was broad day. Not to mention that human beings (for unknown reasons) consider paler skin to be attractive in pretty much all historical societies. Only in the modern era among industrial peoples is tanning considered a mark of beauty.

Having vampires go pale as a result of a divine curse is rather ironic, since by the standards of most people across history that would make them more beautiful and attractive.

Disregarding actual regional mythology seems rather... disrespectful.

angelfromanotherpin · Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:31 pm

For the record, I'm pretty sure that OS is just making up all the things he's asserting about middle eastern mythology. I mean, I'm sure there's a small chance that all the countervailing evidence of traditional Bedouins doing things during the day, and tales of middle eastern vampires being active at night could be faked. But I'm pretty sure.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:53 pm

I found a reference worthy of your great genius: Our Vampires Are Different

The creatures in Vampire: the Masquerade draw heavily on modern ideas about vampires, very little from actual folklore, and virtually nothing from non-European folklore.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:24 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:I found a reference worthy of your great genius: Our Vampires Are Different

The creatures in Vampire: the Masquerade draw heavily on modern ideas about vampires, very little from actual folklore, and virtually nothing from non-European folklore.

Yup. Vampires in Vampire are not creatures of myth - they are draculas and lestats. And some literary genius decided to write a clan of arabic assassin draculas whose curse from god is that they become blackulas as they age. This is an odd thing to write in the 90s, and a very fucked up thing to include in your clan rewrite in 2016.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:48 pm

It says more about our obsession with a racial issue (one particular one) than about the writers of the game materials.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:10 am

Part of the issue is undoubtedly that the Assamite clan fluff and crunch went through so many damn revisions that pretty much the only things that stayed consistent about the clan were the most racist and embarrassing things. You would hardly be able to tell it was the same clan were it not for the skin thing and the love of murder.

Which tells you something else about White Wolf's taste, I guess...

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 10:59 am

Dark Ages 20 rewrote Ravnos clan weakness from being compulsive criminal gypsies to this:

While the Ravnos are masters of changing the reality around them, they have a harder time changing their own fundamental reality. All Ravnos have a key personality trait, chosen at character creation, which they are incapable of resisting if the opportunity to express it presents itself. This can be some kind of virtuous act, such as defending the weak, or something more sinister, such as taking advantage of someone in a lesser position. Often the trait is tied to the jati the Ravnos belongs to. When presented with the opportunity to indulge in her virtue or vice, she does so unless the player succeeds on a Self-Control or Instinct roll (difficulty 6).