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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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ManusDomine said:
According to an old book, there are more vampires in Clan Tremere than in the entire Camarilla.

(I can't remember the books's name, I'll get back to you there.)
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I believe that it is Clanbook: Tremere. And it's repeated in Lore of the Clans for V20.

The LD Man said:
What's up with the Tremere, out of curiosity?
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The thing is, the Tremere have a base-7 pyramid structure.


At the top is Tremere, under him are seven Councilors, under each of the Councilors are seven Lords, under each of the Lords are seven Pontifeces, under each Pontifex are seven Regents, under each Regent is seven Magisters, under each Magister is seven Apprentices, under each Apprentice are seven Acolytes.

So, that's Σ n=0 to 7 of 7n​ Tremere. 960, 800 Tremere, total.

And they are supposed to be one of the smaller and more exclusive of the main clans, because their stupid modulo-7 pyramid hierarchy keeps their numbers down.

Furthermore, these numbers are distributed evenly across every Chantry. Every Chantry has 1 Regent, 7 Magisters, 49 Apprentices, and 343 Acolytes. This is true of a Chantry in New York. This is true of a Chantry in Chișinău, Moldavia
 
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hyzmarca said:
I believe that it is Clanbook: Tremere. And it's repeated in Lore of the Clans for V20.



The thing is, the Tremere have a base-7 pyramid structure.


At the top is Tremere, under him are seven Councilors, under each of the Councilors are seven Lords, under each of the Lords are seven Pontifeces, under each Pontifex are seven Regents, under each Regent is seven Magisters, under each Magister is seven Apprentices, under each Apprentice are seven Acolytes.

So, that's 7^7+1 Tremere. 823,544 Tremere, total.

And they are supposed to be one of the smaller and more exclusive of the main clans, because their stupid modulo-7 pyramid hierarchy keeps their numbers down.
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Haha, what the hell. I knew they did a seven level pyramid, but all of them having seven under them? That makes no sense on a practical level, math aside.
 
Sydonai said:
I could maybe believe that if that number included non-vampires.
Ghouls, Revenants, Sorcerers(?), and mortal flunkies.
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Tremere do apprentice mortal Sorcerers.
Never played a Tremere aligned Sorcerer before.
Blood Magic is least practical type of casting a Sorcerer can employ.
Squishy mortals usually lack an easy method of replenishing blood.
That and learning it comes with Tremere's worth of strings attached.
Nobody among my comrades would bother with it for upcoming Sorcerer's game.
 
hyzmarca said:
I believe that it is Clanbook: Tremere. And it's repeated in Lore of the Clans for V20.



The thing is, the Tremere have a base-7 pyramid structure.


At the top is Tremere, under him are seven Councilors, under each of the Councilors are seven Lords, under each of the Lords are seven Pontifeces, under each Pontifex are seven Regents, under each Regent is seven Magisters, under each Magister is seven Apprentices, under each Apprentice are seven Acolytes.

So, that's Σ n=0 to 7 of 7n​ Tremere. 960, 830 Tremere, total.

And they are supposed to be one of the smaller and more exclusive of the main clans, because their stupid modulo-7 pyramid hierarchy keeps their numbers down.

Furthermore, these numbers are distributes evenly across every Chantry. Every Chantry has 1 Regent, 7 Magisters, 49 Apprentices, and 343 Acolytes. This is true of a Chantry in New York. This is true of a Chantry in Chișinău, Moldavia
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IIRC, V20 brings up that while that is meant to be the rule, Clan Tremere rarely has enough vampires to fill even a fraction of their ranks.

Let me go check, see if I'm giving WW to much credit...
 
It's also worth noting, when considering the nearly 1 million Tremere, that there are only supposed to be 70,000 vampires on the entire planet.

And then divide that number between 13 major clans, plus Antribu, plus Bloodlines, plus the Laibon Legacies. And then divide those into 9 generations.
 
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Yeah, but Tremere aren't really Kindred, so that's not an issue. There can be nearly 1 million of them without cutting into the 70,000 number.
 
Alternately, Tremere really aren't vampires at all. They're actually Maurauder mages with the "I'm a vampire" paradigm.

This explains how they keep getting more and more bullshit Blood Magic paths. They're actually faking it with Awakened magic.
 
hyzmarca said:
Alternately, Tremere really aren't vampires at all. They're actually Maurauder mages with the "I'm a vampire" paradigm.

This explains how they keep getting more and more bullshit Blood Magic paths. They're actually faking it with Awakened magic.
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It also explains why Thaumaturgy is so broken!

Because Mages are inherently munchkins.

Yes all of them.
 
hyzmarca said:
So, that's Σ n=0 to 7 of 7n​ Tremere. 960, 830 Tremere, total.
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NonSequtur said:
Nah, it's
LaTeX:
\[$$\sum_{n=0}^{7} 7^{n}=960800$$\]
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Quantumboost said:
Yeah, but Tremere aren't really Kindred, so that's not an issue. There can be nearly 1 million of them without cutting into the 70,000 number.
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I think million Tremere number might sufficiently answer the very ancient question. . .

Vindictus said:
Well, sure, but I'm assuming a pure Vampire game because if we assume all splats are present we have to consider why vampires haven't been exterminated by Technocracy Terminators yet.
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Tremere vastly outnumber world's combined population of mages.

hyzmarca said:
It's also worth noting, when considering the nearly 1 million Tremere, that there are only supposed to be 70,000 vampires on the entire planet.

And then divide that number between 13 major clans, plus Antribu, plus Bloodlines, plus the Laibon Legacies. And then divide those into 9 generations.
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Only a minuscule number of Tremere bother to associate with Vampiric society.
Rest are playing wack-a-mole targets for Technocracy agents.
 
Incidentally, if you were actually trying to fix up some sort of Blood Sorcery for V:TR. Like, some form of 'use blood in a ritual to do *something*', how would you hack it?

Since I know that the people who made the setting never managed to actually have it be remotely balanced.

I mean, suggestions of 'It can never work' are of course valid, but I'm just curious about ways it could.
 
The Laurent said:
Incidentally, if you were actually trying to fix up some sort of Blood Sorcery for V:TR. Like, some form of 'use blood in a ritual to do *something*', how would you hack it?

Since I know that the people who made the setting never managed to actually have it be remotely balanced.

I mean, suggestions of 'It can never work' are of course valid, but I'm just curious about ways it could.
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Is this an "I have read the Blood Sorcery book and reject it" question, or an "I didn't know it existed" one?
 
Firstly and most importantly, do not ever, ever be so stupid as to give them freeform magic. Things can never be balanced when two Y-splats have access to freeform magic and the other 3 do not. The Blood Sorcery book is not worth your money because the mechanics are game-ruining trash.

Personally, I'd be inclined to make them effectivly a "minor template" that can be stacked on top of "Vampire" - but which can also be used with mortals to make mortal Blood Magicians who cast with their own health or that of their victims, and who you can use as human magic users in place of Mages in Vampire games. That means that blood rituals would be bought as Merits, be balanced at the minor template level, and probably would work like thaumaturges in Second Sight in that the minimum casting time would be measured in the minutes, and many would require extended rituals.

From a Mage PoV, their "spells" don't go above the 2-dot level in terms of effectiveness. There's a lot of minor buffs, utility effects, and the like. A Cruac user doesn't throw blood bolts at people; they prepare bullets (or arrow tips - it's the same basic ritual) from a mixture of mercury and their own blood in advance. They get minor visions of the future by disembowelling animals and reading their guts. They shed blood into a basin and scry for things. And so on.

No one gets to lay sympathetic curses or the like, because Mage balances that with how anyone can see a Sympathetic spell coming (via Mage Sight) and can learn to defend against it, but when only two covenants have access to it and the name of the game is "Vampire" not "Blood Magician", caster supremacy is unacceptable.
 
ManusDomine said:
I support everything @EarthScorpion said. Second Sight and Immortals both have some neat things to consider stealing.

And anything that would make a Mage say "that's neat", is out.

Also, they should interact with Humanity.
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Actually, that's another general question I've wrestled with. How Setting-OK is Second Sight with other stuff? Like, if you wanted to throw a Psychic in as the tool of a Seer, a mortal whose abilities they use because there are only so many Awakened and Proximi around and whatever this is has at least a few uses (and Seers want Arcane XP too by studying it), does that break the game balance or thematics somewhere?

I mean, and a similar question for any other splat combination, I guess.
 
ManusDomine said:
I support everything @EarthScorpion said. Second Sight and Immortals both have some neat things to consider stealing.

And anything that would make a Mage say "that's neat", is out.

Also, they should interact with Humanity.
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I've, mmm, always had the thing that I don't really get Theban Sorcery. Like, all it has tying it together is "vaguely Biblical or Egyptian shit, oh and you always need a ritual ingredient for it".

Now, Cruac? Cruac I get. Like, thematically and visually. It's dark, bloody magic. It invokes pagan gods. I can tell you if an effect feels appropriate for it. Cruac works with Vampire, because it's all paid for with Vitae (so you're paying for it with life force) and using it a lot makes you a terrible person even before you bring in humanity mechanics (because it's Vitae expensive and so you're hurting lots more people if you use Cruac than a vampire who only spends Vitae on day to day survival). Cruac does shit like making evil cursed knives, ripping open the guts of animals to read the future, scrying for things in basins of blood, painting blood on a chosen warrior to make them frenzy in a controlled way - you know, good wholesome villain stuff.

The Laurent said:
Actually, that's another general question I've wrestled with. How Setting-OK is Second Sight with other stuff? Like, if you wanted to throw a Psychic in as the tool of a Seer, a mortal whose abilities they use because there are only so many Awakened and Proximi around and whatever this is has at least a few uses (and Seers want Arcane XP too by studying it), does that break the game balance or thematics somewhere?

I mean, and a similar question for any other splat combination, I guess.
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Have my answer to this from 2008.
 
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