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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Can I ask for some help with the nWoD Mage game I'm currently in? Specifically, how to salvage a functional character out of what I've got?

So, when we started, this was going to be an investigative campaign, with relatively little combat. Also, very few in our group apart from the ST had played any WoD before, and the ST hadn't played it in like a decade. So we didn't understand a lot of the rules correctly. So! I made a sympathetic magic character, Acanthus, starting with Time 2/Fate 2/Space 2. All was good for a little while, and then we upended how we thought about sympathetic magic. I was less useful, but still had some tricks. Then we upended it again. And again. In the process, we went from a mostly-investigative and social campaign, to an all-fite-all-the-tiem campaign. People rock around with sniper rifles, we captured some magically-enhanced AKs from some Seers, we've been in multiple all-in stoushes that have left people on the brink of death...

And I still have my mostly-investigative focused character. One guy has Matter 5 (with an artefact that lets him cast at his Matter+1), another has Prime 5, multiple people have [Something] 4... and I have Time 3(+1), Fate 3, Space 3, Prime 2, Matter 2 (for conjunctionals), and Life 1. I've spread my XP way too thinly, and I'm not sure the character is salvageable. Everyone else is throwing around these utterly bullshit spells in combat, and I... hit things with a stick.

Rest of my character is Int/Wits/Resolve/Dex/Stamina all at 3, Strength, Presence, and Manipulation at 2, Composure at 4.

Academics (Specialty Archaeology) 3
Computer 1
Crafts 2
Investigation 3
Medicine 1
Occult 3
Science (Specialty Cartography) 2

Athletics (Long-distance Running, Sling) 3
Brawl 1
Stealth 2
Survival 2
Weaponry 3

Animal Ken 1
Empathy 2
Persuasion 1
Socialise 1
Streetwise 2
Subterfuge 1

Resources 1
Fast Reflexes 1
Quickdraw (Melee)
High Speech
Status (Mysterium) 1
Jittei Jutsu (homebrew fighting style) 1
Fighting Finesse (Sap)
Fighting Finesse (Jittei)
Language (Ancient Greek)
Language (Latin)
Occultation 2
Fleet of Foot 2
Toxin Resistance
Iron Stamina 3

A fair few. ST has refused to give me any more rotes until I up my Mysterium status, says I have exhausted all the goodwill.

Any tips? Are more actions possible? Battlefield control? It's been recommended to me that I pick three pillars to build a character on, and the other Acanthus mage has 'stacking the deck' pretty much covered. I'm thinking Defence/Battlefield Control (which I have no idea what to pick, or what I can do with what I've already got, but it's something we're lacking and something that I would think intuitively that my spread of arcana supports), Research, and either Sympathetic Magic or Steath. Only one of those is for combat, really.

Also, I want to get the Tellurian Legacy, from Lines of Power (it works with my character background), but I can't see any use for Ley Lines that don't either need like Matter or something, or can't be done simply by plugging your thing into the mains (they've been described to me as a source of mundane forms of power, not just electricity - apparently I can use them to power Wards, but not to assist in the casting of magic in any other way?). Can someone break down to me exactly what Ley Lines are in nWoD, why people seek them, and what they can be used for, please?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Doing this for the magical girl concept I wrote earlier. Each one covers how a different magical girl might deal with it.

MJ12 Commando said:
  • You are trapped in a burning skyscraper. It is a 50 meter drop from there to the ground. How does your character survive it?
  • You are awakened by a SWAT team hammering down your door. You reach under your pillow for something to help deal with this problem. What do you pick up and why?
  • You have created a work of finest artifice, a wonder which will bear your name and part of your will. What have you made?
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Magical Warrior Sunshine.
I transform. With Shuken I deny the vary possibility that my beauty could be dirtied by things like cuts or bruises. I calmly walk down the stairs, which stay intact just long enough to for me to use them( I'm very light!) and the smoke and flames always move in such a way as to leave me unburnt and with clean air.

Pretty Princess Black Licorice
I reach into my purse. drawing out a piece of candy cane. Using Haigeki I enhance its durability (it's in slightly for a lady's tools to break) and Shuken to whittle it to a razor sharp edges (blunt weapons are so mannish!). I dance around the SWAT team with consumate grace and skill, carving them into chunks. Their blood splatters fetchingly on my dress.

Magical Queen Serenity IV
A Kingdom! By seeding the leylines with magical girls at strategic points, I have managed to perform a magical girl transformation on my Kingdom. It is a utopia where everyone and everything adheres to my aesthetics and ideals.
 
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RecklessPrudence said:
Mage: The Awakening. So... nWoD? Not including the God-Machine stuff they've released, that's still what Awakening and the rest of its generation is called, right?
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Cool.

You could honestly turn into a murder machine if you wanted to in 14 XP. Less if your ST is lenient.

1. Stop fighting in melee with Life 1. Either up your Life or get Firearms.
2. Ask if you can liquidate some of your skills and merits. I'll leave it to you to persuade your ST. Ditch Weaponry, Brawl, Quickdraw (Melee) and all of your fighting style Merits.
3. Buy Firearms 2 and Combat Marksmanship, if your ST allows it. Leftovers should go into upping Firearms some more.
4. Grab the Gunslinger merit.
5. Take a look at this list and look for the stuff that enhances rolls or decreases penalties. Fate has a ton and so does Time.
 
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runeblue360 said:
Cool.

You could honestly turn into a murder machine if you wanted to in 14 XP. Less if your ST is lenient.

1. Stop fighting in melee with Life 1. Either up your Life or get Firearms.
2. Ask if you can liquidate some of your skills and merits. I'll leave it to you to persuade your ST. Ditch Weaponry, Brawl, Quickdraw (Melee) and all of your fighting style Merits.
3. Buy Firearms 2 and Combat Marksmanship, if your ST allows it. Leftovers should go into upping Firearms some more.
4. Grab the Gunslinger merit.
5. Take a look at this list and look for the stuff that enhances rolls or decreases penalties. Fate has a ton and so does Time.
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I doubt my ST will be that lenient. So, either go all-ranged with Firearms, or boost my Life, huh? My character's been resisting guns for a while now, but we're in the middle of a big battle at the moment, so I could use that as justification to get a pistol.

We've got one melee character who has Life for massive damage, one ranged character who uses a fuck-off sniper rifle, two characters that like to sling around magic directly in a fight (one Vulgar as hell, one using Mind as the only direct-damage Covert) but will fall back on firearms if they have to, and me.

I'll have to think about which to do.

EDIT: Apart from Puissant Skill and Honing the Form, what's good in Life for making melee awesome?
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Mummy
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I'll note that Mummy is still leaps and bounds beyond anything that Geist and Beast have to offer, you just have to tweak it a bit. Now, the issue with Mummy isn't that there is nothing to do, but that you don't know why you would do it; fundamentally you want to acquire Relics and send them to the Shan'iatu, or maybe eat them for DELICIOUS MORE TIME BEFORE THE SLEEP OF AGES, but the game also wants you to politick against fellow Arisen (why would you do this?), hunt Shuankhsen (why would you do this?), influence mortal society (for shits and giggles maybe?) and display your power for all the world to see so you create problems for yourself later on when you're weak and can no longer call down meteors from the heavens (again, why would you do this?). Mummy is, unlike Beast a really great core idea and mostly good execution, it just needs a bunch of fixes and tweaks rather than burning everything down to start anew.
 
Generalissimo said:
Soon playing a game in 1235 Poland; half decade prior to Mongol's invading.
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Sounds cool

I'd love to do a Grand Strategy RP based on Dark Ages: Vampire that is essentially "Crusader Kings II with fangs" and I think it would be awesome. I know someone made a Dark Ages: Vampire mod for CK2, but I don't have a computer that can actually run CK2, let alone all the DLC's and possible mods, and I currently can't afford one. So, this game I have in mind would be the closest thing I can get until I get enough money to buy a dedicated gaming computer along with Crusader Kings II and all of its DLC's.

We would probably use the rules found in the hardcover of Dark Ages: Vampire from 2002, as I do not own V20 Dark Ages and currently have no interest in purchasing it. But I do own the previous edition on hard copy and on PDF, so I can make that work.
 
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MJ12 Homebrew: ICEMS
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    • So because I'm sure @ManusDomine cares, if nobody else, I'm posting notes from Panopticon because this is easier than updating it (I have a post 90% written that I don't know how to finish :(). This was an implant which Jamelia could have gotten had she gone for the full Augmented Agent background, Jason Brakowski possessed an equivalent of, and Yinzheng had as one of her Enhancements. In line with most NWO augmentation it was significantly more coincidental but less powerful than radical ItX/Progenitor bioscience.

    Implanted Combat Effectiveness Maintenance Suite (ICEMS/"I-Chems/Invulnerability Chems")
    6 pt Invention

    NWO agents prefer the kinds of subtle augmentations which don't out them as obviously inhuman. Sometimes you want a cyborg who can walk through a wall of fire from a SWAT team and shoot them all in the kneecaps, but other times you don't need that kind of capability. Instead, you just need to be able to keep moving, unimpeded, if you get shot in the gut or exposed to tear gas. With this subtle nanotech Enhancement, a NWO agent has a mostly Coincidental ability to survive small arms fire and the ability to rapidly (but not implausibly) recover from wounds. The ICEMS surgery comes in two parts. First is a replacement of much of the lymphatic system with customized nanotech hives programmed to build, and maintain, a small swarm of nanomedical robots in the Operative's body. Second is the implantation of a handful of small biochips along major nerves. In conjunction, these biotech implants are invisible and nearly immune to rejection by Reality Deviance, but ensure that the body retains full combat functionality up to the point of total, irreversible organ failure. As a result, an ICEMS user can stay fully functional even after suffering multiple gunshot wounds, heals quickly (but not implausibly quickly), and feels no pain.

    The first effect is that whenever an ICEMS user takes damage, they heal up to 4 bashing or lethal health levels per turn, but cannot heal more damage than the user has taken in that turn (e.g. if a ICEMS user takes 5 levels of lethal damage turn 1, then 6 more in turn 2, then 0 on turn 3, she heals 4 levels of damage the first turn, then 4 the second turn, and 0 the third turn, suffering a net 3 levels of lethal damage). Second, this healing is illusory and disappears at the end of the scene, although this will never take the agent past Incapacitated. Unlike a combat homonculus's enhanced regeneration, ICEMS 'healing' just allows the Operative to ignore the wound, the wound itself is still there. As a side benefit, an ICEMS user recovers from wounds as if they were being cared for in a high-end hospital by a Medicine 4 doctor, even if they're in the middle of a disease-infested swamp.

    Finally, the ICEMS user suffers no wound penalties or similar dice penalties from the discomfort caused by poisons or diseases. The Operative still suffers from them and can still infect others, but the ICEMS takes care of the symptoms.

    As a result, an ICEMS user can survive far more punishment than a normal human. An ICEMS is pretty much always coincidental. Stories of PCP users who survive entire magazines of handgun fire and run on broken legs explain away the implausible toughness of an ICEMS user well enough that only the most ridiculous feats can inch into the implausible territory.

    Like ItX combat cyborgs, ICEMS users tend to wear body-concealing clothing (but theirs tend to be more NWO-issue black suits) to hide the bullet wounds. Unlike ItX combat cyborgs, ICEMS operatives find this significantly less convenient because they spend a lot more time undercover in the Masses.
     
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    • MJ12 Commando said:
    Finally, the ICEMS user suffers no wound penalties or similar dice penalties from the discomfort caused by poisons or diseases. The Operative still suffers from them and can still infect others, but the ICEMS takes care of the symptoms.
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    Could you elaborate on this one a bit? If an ICEMS user, say, swallows a cyanide pill, does that mean he still dies, and just doesn't suffer from symptoms like vomiting, heart rate increases, etc, before he dies? What about diseases like Ebola where the symptoms themselves are generally what kill you, not the disease--is something like that basically harmless to them?
     
    ChineseDrone said:
    Could you elaborate on this one a bit? If an ICEMS user, say, swallows a Cyanide pill, does that mean he still dies, just doesn't suffer from symptoms like vomiting, heart rate increases, etc. What about diseases like Ebola where the symptoms themselves are generally what kills you, not the disease--is something like that basically harmless to them?
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    Well, considering the panic over Ebola, wouldn't the disease actually be ten times more deadly and infectious and widespread than it was in canon...I mean real life?
     
    The Laurent said:
    Well, considering the panic over Ebola, wouldn't the disease actually be ten times more deadly and infectious and widespread than it was in canon...I mean real life?
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    This is why we have the Progenitors.

    (In all seriousness given that the Ebola panic was generally limited to places that weren't actually suffering from the disease, not West Africa itself, it wouldn't have exploded in West Africa. If the Consensus really did believe that Ebola infected a serious number of people in the west, that would probably have led to bad things, which is why the Technocracy made such a massive show of quarantining anyone who showed symptoms)
     
    ChineseDrone said:
    Could you elaborate on this one a bit? If an ICEMS user, say, swallows a cyanide pill, does that mean he still dies, and just doesn't suffer from symptoms like vomiting, heart rate increases, etc, before he dies? What about diseases like Ebola where the symptoms themselves are generally what kill you, not the disease--is something like that basically harmless to them?
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    You're immune but can still spread it.
     
    I just had a thought. What if the God Machine was the Exarch of Pantechnicon? Or just an Exarch in general. It seems like a decent fluff explanation for Demon npcs in a Mage game but I'm wondering if there are any holes in this idea/strange implications I may not have noticed yet. Like would that make its Seers high level elimination infrastructure or something?
     
    So, I finally have a physical copy of Chicago by Night 1e, my favorite setting for WoD, Classic or New.

    Purchased Chicago Chronicles Volume I off of Amazon recently, and it is awesome. I now have hard copies of CbN and The Succubus Club to go with my hard copy of the First Edition VTM corebook and I feel great.
     
    I've been considering sending in a submission to OP to try to get some work. But I'm not sure after the recent accusations by former devs and writers. Does anyone have any thoughts to help me decide either way?
     
    Walker of the Yellow Path said:
    What recent accusations?
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    That they pay well below industry standard, occasionally don't pay their writers, that they occasionally cancel books without telling the writers after the books are already written, that they do the whole 'we are altering the deal, pray that we do not alter it further' thing, and that one of the mods on the official forums was stalking a dev's wife and RichT refused to do anything about it. I think I might be missing a few things, but that's the gist of it.
     
    notanautomaton said:
    That they pay well below industry standard, occasionally don't pay their writers, that they occasionally cancel books without telling the writers after the books are already written, that they do the whole 'we are altering the deal, pray that we do not alter it further' thing, and that one of the mods on the official forums was stalking a dev's wife and RichT refused to do anything about it. I think I might be missing a few things, but that's the gist of it.
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    So far as I can tell, most of this is flatly nonsense and comes from Holden and Hatewheel reaping the consequences of being terrible at contract work.

    That said, the accusations of stalking is news to me, and if there's anything from other sources, I couldn't say.
     
    Imrix said:
    So far as I can tell, most of this is flatly nonsense and comes from Holden and Hatewheel reaping the consequences of being terrible at contract work.

    That said, the accusations of stalking is news to me, and if there's anything from other sources, I couldn't say.
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    It's been backed up by other devs, like Dave Hill, though.
     
    So for my nWoD Mage 1E game (that's what it's called before you get into the God-Machine stuff, right?), we're crafting some items, and I want to check that I understand some things. Any enchanted item, whether in your hand or in a backpack, so long as it's on your person and not like, across town, counts towards your 'spells on me' limit, right? I know they count as half round up, so a two-spell item counts as one, a three-spell counts as two, and so on. Combined Casting interacts with this, so you can have up to four spells on your item and only count as one, right? But if you activate one half of a CombiCast, do you have to activate the other half, or can you do it selectively?

    I'm considering a 'counts-as-1' item as a melee weapon. An item that is many in one, with multiple applications of Double Shape (it says "Additional castings of the spell allow for additional items to be added to the mix.", so I'm hoping that Double Shape stacks like multiple different kinds of Shields, and don't count towards your Spell Tolerance, because they're doing near-identical effects). Add to that, some of my group have figured out how to Enhance weapons and armour to provide up to the maximum of a 5-dice bonus (for weapons), or 5-dice soak (for armour, and only on items that already provide that kind of armour - so if something protects against melee but not ballistic, you can't get it to protect against ballistic using this method) without having any spells on them at all, the only thing you have to worry about is Disbelief if Sleepers see you using anything with more than double its base bonus.

    So my idea is that you have a Sap (Base +1 dice, Bashing Damage, Size 1/P, Stuns based on Stamina rather than the usual way), Double Shaped with a Jittei (Base +3 dice, Bashing Damage, Size 2/J, +1 Defence in melee), Double Shaped with your Lethal Weapon of choice (I'm thinking a Rondel Dagger, Base +1 dice, Lethal Damage, Size 1/S, Armour Piercing 1, +2 Damage on Surprise Attacks), Double Shaped with a pistol of your choice (I'm thinking a Generic .40 S&W, Base +2 dice with 9-again, Lethal Damage, Size 1/S, Range 25/50/100, Capacity 12+1), and final Double Shape, any innocuous object that you can plausibly draw out of the clothes you need to hide the largest of the weapons (so 2/J for the Jittei). Using the trick my group members hashed out, all of them have an Equipment Bonus of +5. This causes Disbelief for all but the Jittei, but that'll generally be the only one I'll be using in front of Sleeper Witnesses anyway. On top of that, a CombineCast of Optimise Kinetic Attack + Puissant Skill (Weaponry). It will only work on the melee weapons, but because all of them have a native EB of 5, you only need three successes for the OBA to get them to +6 EB with 8-again (being the only instance of breaking the +5 EB limit I can think of, offhand), one additional success for Puissant Skill to happen, and every other success is split between the two spells evenly so that each attack has both abilities active, up to however many you got in your Extended Cast. This does not boost the pistol, at all, but it does mean you have a pistol on hand at all times. For all Weaponry attacks, you now have +6/8-again with Rote Action (rerolls on failed dice), for some number of attacks greater than one per scene.

    What my question is, does Double Shape work like I think it does for your Spell Tolerance, and does CombiCast on an Imbued Item mean that you have to activate both spells at once, or could I try and fit a fourth spell in as a CombiCast with the Double-Shape?

    Also, I have a question about an idea for some armour I ripped from a novel series. In context, it was based on an updated Riot Police uniform, modified for agents who will run into supernatural threats.

    Motorcycle helmet with mirrored glass to anonymise (for sympathetic stuff) and cut down on direct-eye-contact threats, the whole body covered with kevlar in a motorcycle leathers-looking kind of thing, with cervical airbags and extra padding around ankles, kneecaps, and elbows. Looks like motorcycle gear because it's designed to do largely the same job: provide whole-body protection against blunt and sharp trauma and being thrown about. The cervical airbags are a biker thing: bikers are taking to them to save their necks when they put down a ride at high speed - as armour, it's meant to help if you need to go hand-to-hand with someone with above-human strength - the person proposing it in the novel also spec'd out earthed chainmail inserts in case of lightning or tasers, and heavy-duty wards in case of normal supernatural attacks.

    If we up the Durability sufficiently, it should protect against firearms a lot better than the stock kevlar - and if we use the hide of a beast we encountered in a pocket dimension for it, it'll do even better.

    My questions for this one are, can you think of any other non-magical things it would be good to build into the armour, would you enchant it at all, and if so, what would you put on it? I was thinking of Double-Shape being on this as well, with its other shape the form of a ring, so that you're already 'wearing' it, and when you change shape it is already on you - not for in front of Sleepers, obviously, but useful for suiting up in a hurry. Maybe also a normal shield, a Prime shield, and a Mental shield, so you're covered for normal attacks, spells, and mental shenanigans? Assuming you could have the third one CombiCast with Double Shape without it meaning that when you activate one you activate the other, of course.

    If you had armour that has between one and four spells on it but counts as one, and a melee weapon/gun that also counts as one, that's two spells on you permanently, at least in any combat situation. Would you guys think that's an okay trade-off, for being able to be largely melee and bulletproof, having some Magical and mental protection and having multiple enhanced weapons at your disposal at any time?

    Also, do Imbued items always count towards your Spell Tolerance, even if they're in your backpack or something? Or do you have to be wearing/wielding them? My group thinks even in a backpack they count, I just want to see what you guys think (and hopefully scrounge some arguments for use in convincing them, if backpack items don't count).

    Thanks guys.

    EDIT: Also, anyone got any idea about Ley Lines, or what makes Life a requirement for good melee beyond Honing the Form and Puissant Skill?
     
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