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Mage the Ascension Discussion, Homebrew, Worldbuilding, and Game finding.

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BossFight said:
Anyone have advice on how to make combat fun? I feel like all the encounters I'm making are devolving into "I run up and stab him, then I keep stabbing him until one of us falls down".
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Have you looked at the World of Darkness Combat Guide? It was a sourcebook all about combat and included things like special moves that might spice things up.

But in general, the WOD engine wasn't really designed for playing lots of combat, and Mage wasn't really envisioned as a very combat-heavy game (that was more Werewolf's thing).
 
BossFight said:
Anyone have advice on how to make combat fun? I feel like all the encounters I'm making are devolving into "I run up and stab him, then I keep stabbing him until one of us falls down".
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Typically, for combat, I would simply alter the stakes. Have the enemy Mage simply come prepared for that. Matter 3 shield, Time accelerated dodging, any sort of defense which forces more creative brawls. In Mage, you should always try to force fights to become accelerated imagination duels rather than as you said, knife fights.
 
The Narrator said:
But in general, the WOD engine wasn't really designed for playing lots of combat, and Mage wasn't really envisioned as a very combat-heavy game (that was more Werewolf's thing).
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Years ago I saw a home brew port to take a bunch of WoD material over to Feng Shui, but I don't remember where and I doubt the site is even up anymore.
 
The Narrator said:
Huh. Never thought about using Feng Shui to do WOD, but it does have magic and vampires in it and the magic system is pretty loosely defined.
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It takes a reasonable amount of effort to create 'Arete' and other such things, but Feng Shui really is built for action. It's not a small amount of work, because there's a lot of M:tA systems that don't casually translate over, but it's not an impossible amount either. It's not something I would do casually if I didn't know players would be fine with it.
 
So it sounds like the best way to do combat in this system is to
A: Remember I am fighting mages so they should have defenses against such petty things as "just shoot him"
B: Try to set the players up in situations so that killing the other person isn't all that is going on. Car chases, sniper battles, etc.


Related, how do Simultaneous Effects work? I understand that while you have a magical effect active further magical spells have their difficulty increased by 1 but does that mean:
A. If I cast a spell with a duration of 3 days then as long as that spell is active I am suffering a +1 to difficulty
B. If you cast a spell with an instant duration, you can keep it going indefinitely at the cost of +1 to difficulty?

TheLastOne said:
It takes a reasonable amount of effort to create 'Arete' and other such things, but Feng Shui really is built for action. It's not a small amount of work, because there's a lot of M:tA systems that don't casually translate over, but it's not an impossible amount either. It's not something I would do casually if I didn't know players would be fine with it.
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What is Feng Shui?
 
Wasn't Feng Shui one of those games where the typical TN/DC were set so high that starting characters failed at everything 80% of the time
or more?
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Wasn't Feng Shui one of those games where the typical TN/DC were set so high that starting characters failed at everything 80% of the time
or more?
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No, the problem with Feng Shui is that because of its probability curves (its dice system is basically skill+d6-d6) variance was extremely low, which is a problem when characters often started with significantly different levels of fighting skill. The game often gave you a fixed, relatively high fighting skill at chargen, but because different character archetypes would have different levels of that fighting skill, the problem wasn't really fixed unless everyone agreed to play characters with similar fighting skill levels. Later, Feng Shui introduced proper chrome-and-plastic cyborgs (instead of weird demon cyborgs) and the way they represented them was literally gamebreaking after a few sessions because cyborg stat boosts would just set your stat to a very high level which you couldn't raise ever again (and penalize another stat, unless it was also augmented). But this allowed you to basically instantaneously end up with a sky-high combat skill by buying an extra cyborg modification.

Like, instantly blasting yourself from "can fight mooks and low level named enemies" to "lmao, I can 1v1 high-end boss level characters."
 
Two questions (2e):

How does paradox work with ongoing effects? If a player spends 15 rolls making themselves super strong in their chantry where it's not paradoxical, can they then just walk around the city throwing takes with no consequences?

Similarly, how does it work with talismans/artifacts/etc? Can I build a super sword artifact and then not worry about paradox since I'm using it's innate powers instead of my own magik?
 
BossFight said:
Two questions (2e):

How does paradox work with ongoing effects? If a player spends 15 rolls making themselves super strong in their chantry where it's not paradoxical, can they then just walk around the city throwing takes with no consequences?

Similarly, how does it work with talismans/artifacts/etc? Can I build a super sword artifact and then not worry about paradox since I'm using it's innate powers instead of my own magik?
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RAW, yes, they could theoretically do that I suppose. Unbelief is supposed to be a thing, but its poorly mechanized and a nothing burger.

I believe talismans generate Paradox as normal, but have their own internal paradox counter. Most of my knowledge is Revised tho.
 
Any good house rules for it? Leaning towards making each obvious superham action or the like generate 1 autoparadox as if casting a vulgar spell
 
BossFight said:
Any good house rules for it? Leaning towards making each obvious superham action or the like generate 1 autoparadox as if casting a vulgar spell
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Typically how I do it is having it procc as a vulgar/ maybe with witnesses if there are witnesses and then, afterwards its consensual because you have obviously done the thing.

Consensual to the current audience of course. So there is large advantage to preparing before a fight because of course there needs to be, but its still dangerous to go all one-winged angel on some nerds unless you are arm deep in the Umbra.
 
TheLastOne said:
It already exists!

Paragons

Some Orphans Superheroed, and succeeded at it in a way that couldn't be swept under the rug. This led to more doing the same, and scientists (real ones, not Mages) started groking that something really weird was going on. That is to say, weirder then Superheroes suddenly being a thing. And they started figuring out that more and more people probably Hedge Wizards paranormals, at lower and lower levels. Yes, there were supers. But there were also people who were just... too good at everything. And then there were the people who were too good at, like, one thing. And they started suspecting that everyone was a 'paranormal' on some low level.

And then they started figuring out that reality was probably consensual on some level. And as normal unenlighted scientists started asking the same questions Enlightened ones normally do, and started getting answers... well maybe reality started breaking down. Just a little bit, and not in the cool way supertech way. More the the 'reality is picking up paradox flaws' sort of way. What this all meant was starting to get as exciting as it is frightening

At the same time the Not!MiB and the Not!Order of Hermes are fighting a shadow war, and things from the Not!Higher Umbra stir as more and more Paragons erupt and channel their various ideals into the world.


It honestly works really really well. I've always been surprised I couldn't find any traction here to make a campaign. It's really blatantly magey, and maybe a little unknown army'y. But mostly magey. And it's super easy to turn that way the hell up.
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Since I'm back on mage, what system does this use?
 
BossFight said:
Since I'm back on mage, what system does this use?
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Mutants and Masterminds. 2e, though as long as your aren't going to 3e it isn't a big deal.

M&M was the best adaptation of d20 to run superheroes, and it... changed a lot to make that work. Like a whole lot. Mutants and Masterminds doesn't have hit points.

But they still kept enough elements around that you could easily find you way once you adapted to the (massive) changes.

3e came out when 4th edition DnD came out, and the decided that was permission to give up a lot of the remaining DnD dna and do their own thing.

While that theoretically sounds like a good idea... I honestly didn't find it so. Sort of ironic, they hard-diverged from DnD because of 4th, but their divergence actually sort of ruined the system for me.

Anyways, Paragons was written for second, but second and first are pretty compatiable with a bit of work. And honestly, Paragons could easily be adapted to any super-hero RPG, or any perticularly freeform RPG. It's not tightly tied to a particular system.
 
TheLastOne said:
Mutants and Masterminds. 2e, though as long as your aren't going to 3e it isn't a big deal.

M&M was the best adaptation of d20 to run superheroes, and it... changed a lot to make that work. Like a whole lot. Mutants and Masterminds doesn't have hit points.

But they still kept enough elements around that you could easily find you way once you adapted to the (massive) changes.

3e came out when 4th edition DnD came out, and the decided that was permission to give up a lot of the remaining DnD dna and do their own thing.

While that theoretically sounds like a good idea... I honestly didn't find it so. Sort of ironic, they hard-diverged from DnD because of 4th, but their divergence actually sort of ruined the system for me.

Anyways, Paragons was written for second, but second and first are pretty compatiable with a bit of work. And honestly, Paragons could easily be adapted to any super-hero RPG, or any perticularly freeform RPG. It's not tightly tied to a particular system.
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Do you mind giving a rundown of how MM 2e works? It sounds like you enjoy the system and I don't know any good superhero systems anyway
 
BossFight said:
Do you mind giving a rundown of how MM 2e works? It sounds like you enjoy the system and I don't know any good superhero systems anyway
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M&M uses saves instead of hitpoints. You have a set of possible health states, and when you take a blow, you roll to resist moving to a worse state. Armor and the like give you a saving throw bonus. As you take more blows, you start taking penalties to your save until you lose. Some powers (super-toughness) can make it so that your rolls don't suffer penalties or you don't have to roll at all against weaker blows.

There are no character classes. Instead you have a PL. You have a certain number of points to build your character out of, 15 per PL. You use this pool to buy Superpowers, Feats, Attributes, and Skills. You PL also acted as a cap on Powers (oversimplifying things, you couldn't have a power higher than the PL). You PL was effectively your level, with the standard starting PL being 10.

You built powers out of a base power, Extras that made it more powerful, and Disadvantages that made it weaker or more limited. Almost anything could be turned into a power. For example, you could buy skill levels as a power, and then slap advantages on those skills.

There were systems for having arrays of powers (multiple powers all under one header, where you could only use one of them at a time), dynamic powers, and more. It was quite flexible.

It is pretty rules heavy though. I liked it because once you figured it out you could build all kinds of things, and it was lighter, and easier to use, and less constricting than than HERO (which is ususally seen as the gold standard for Superhero RPGs, but is... very very fiddly and wants to track everything to such an extent that it stops feeling like you're playing a game). But that doesn't mean it's rules-lite, just lighter than Hero.
 
TheLastOne said:
M&M uses saves instead of hitpoints. You have a set of possible health states, and when you take a blow, you roll to resist moving to a worse state. Armor and the like give you a saving throw bonus. As you take more blows, you start taking penalties to your save until you lose. Some powers (super-toughness) can make it so that your rolls don't suffer penalties or you don't have to roll at all against weaker blows.

There are no character classes. Instead you have a PL. You have a certain number of points to build your character out of, 15 per PL. You use this pool to buy Superpowers, Feats, Attributes, and Skills. You PL also acted as a cap on Powers (oversimplifying things, you couldn't have a power higher than the PL). You PL was effectively your level, with the standard starting PL being 10.

You built powers out of a base power, Extras that made it more powerful, and Disadvantages that made it weaker or more limited. Almost anything could be turned into a power. For example, you could buy skill levels as a power, and then slap advantages on those skills.

There were systems for having arrays of powers (multiple powers all under one header, where you could only use one of them at a time), dynamic powers, and more. It was quite flexible.

It is pretty rules heavy though. I liked it because once you figured it out you could build all kinds of things, and it was lighter, and easier to use, and less constricting than than HERO (which is ususally seen as the gold standard for Superhero RPGs, but is... very very fiddly and wants to track everything to such an extent that it stops feeling like you're playing a game). But that doesn't mean it's rules-lite, just lighter than Hero.
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If it's a d20 system, I assumed it is designed first and foremost for combat? How does.it handle things outside of combat?
 
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