White Wolf's World of Darkness

[Revlid]

You know, I think I'd like it if Mages had basically no power to directly influence the Consensus. Granted, they already don't, because they're just one person, but I'd like that emphasised. It'd be a very different direction, absolutely, but it'd put more focus on the idea that you're winning hearts and minds with your ideas rather than just waging clandestine war from your ivory tower against those other fuckers in their ivory tower.

Let's say you sharply reduce the number of Mages, and greatly increase the number of non-mage practitioners and the ease of establishing a local Consensus (so that even things like "local urban legends" are significant factors for a visiting Mage to work around or practitioner to rely upon).

Then you give every Mage a version of the Arcane background – at 0 dots it's impossible for you to affect the Consensus directly (i.e. by believing stuff or showing people stuff directly) and further dots occlude you from human perception more and more. Your presence is quickly glossed over once a story concludes – or once a scene concludes. Your true identity is forgotten, or it becomes nigh impossible to interact with anyone without adopting a Shadow Name appropriate to the local Consensus and thereby "infiltrating" it.

So as a Mage of the Traditions, you promote your paradigm by protecting and cultivating local enclaves of mystery, whether you're nurturing an abandoned god whose shrine was demolished for an apartment complex, or building a small community of witches in rural America, or guiding an archaeological dig to discover prehuman artefacts. Or prodding a small student programming team to create a Turing-capable AI, or whatever your crazy paradigm thing is. Keeping the world strange, to borrow a pitch from Planetary.

Meanwhile, the Technocracy exist to eliminate those pockets wherever they pop up – debunking faith healers, sending in the FBI to turn over local cults, looting and detonating alien tombs before they can be discovered.

Both sides also try to protect and guide those special humans who have the opposite of Arcane, a disproportionate ability to affect the Consensus – kings and leaders, inventors and philosophers, Pioneers and Chosen Ones. The living legends who've yet to come into their own… and may never do so, if you decide they're not what you want. You're not King Arthur, you get to be Merlin, promoting a Consensus of knightly valour and chivalrous excellence among the kingdom's armoured practitioners.

This version is actually veering a little closer to Awakening in spirit than Ascension, really, since it seems to work better if all sides are aware of the "purple paradigm" and are just manoeuvring people within the real world, secret-masters-of-the-truth style. It probably also works better if there actually are laws to the universe, and the Consensus is something human that actively alters them… Eh, well. Probably requires more thought than this, anyway.

 

[GardenerBriareus]

Soooooo...

I just found a giant pile of homebrew Promethean Lineages in varying stages of completion, moldering quietly in the corner of my Google Docs account. All in all, they've got to be... at least 3-4 years old, maybe more? They seem to have avoided the sucktasticness of a lot of my older work, despite a certain "White Wolf" tone in a few.

Here you go, thread - tell me how shit or un-shit you think they are! Each one is presented in its pristine, unedited form, just how it was when I first stopped adding to them!

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Veneficus

Troglodyte

Nycallus

Nosophoros

Jantukar

Chimeran

Bedlamite

Aidelon

Aretean

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[Aaron Peori]

So, out of some curiosity-

If you all had the power to rewrite oMage's spheres, how would you do so? I've been banging around ideas for a nuAscension for a while now in my head and come to the conclusion that something like this basically has to be done.

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Steal FATE style Aspects wholesale.

Note that this is only for Magick (with the special K) not for any other part of the system. Maybe run NWoD 1e mechanics as the basic underlying format of the game with Aspects on top of that.

Players would define their own Aspects as representations of their Paradigm. Probably rename them Paradigms, in fact, to avoid copyright fu1​ as well. The Paradigms can be as broad or as narrow as the player prefers but should be defined with three hooks; two positive hooks and one negative hooks. We'll call these Coincidental Workings, Vulgar Workings and Paradox. The broader the Paradigm, the more Coincidental and Vulgar Workings you can use it for, but the more broad (and thus, restricting and punishing) your Paradox would be as a result.

Coincidental Workings would be things you could do that would not violate consensus reality with your Paradigm. By default all Coincidental Workings should have three of the following traits: they are slow, they are weak effects hard to notice, they require pre-existing circumstances, they make something likely but not guaranteed or they require special preparation. Stuff like using your magic to get a lucky lottery ticket would be a Coincidental Working: it requires a circumstance (ie a lottery must exist), it requires special preparations (you must buy a ticket) and its slow (you must actually cash the ticket, which gives a chance for people to notice you pulled shenanigans).

Vulgar Workings would be anything that obviously violates consensus reality with your Paradigm or that fails to fulfill at least three of the conditions above. Having a bank error deposit a million dollars into your account is Vulgar (it requires a bank account but not mmuch else). You automatically gain one point of Paradox from a Vulgar Working if performing the Working in such a way that a Sleeper notices you just violated consensus.

In the Umbra (including the Digital Web) and Sanctums compatible with your Paradigm all Workings are Coincidental or Vulgar as you please unless they effect things in the consensual world or a Sanctum hostile to your Paradigm, in which case they become Coincidental or Vulgar based on the above criteria.

Paradoxes are the explicit and implicit downsides of your paradigm. The Paradox must be at least as broad as the Coincidental and Vulgar Workings your Paradigm allows. Paradox comes in the forms of Bans and Costs. A Ban is a thing your Paradigm can not do. A Cost is a thing your Paradigm causes that is negative for you and your goals. Anytime you perform a magical act that fails to fulfill your Bans and Costs you gain Paradox points.

You may combine Paradigms you have to allow you to produce broader effects on a per use basis, but doing so also combines the Paradox of those Paradigms.

You may have a number of Paradigms equal to 10-Arete. You generally want multiple Paradigms because that allows you to have a variety of plausible ways to do things so you can pick and choose which Paradox is easiest to avoid in the specific situation. As your Arete grows you have to start marking off Paradigms in excess of your maximum. You may do so by combing two existing Paradigms if you wish, but recall that this means you combine their Paradox as well. This will make that Paradigm more versatile but harder to actually use without accruing Paradox points.

Instead of sphere ratings the level of your effect is determined by your successes on the casting roll. Each success grants one 'dot' of Sphere effects you can use. So using an effect that would require Matter 3 means you need 3 successes. Yes, you can ritual cast to accrue more successes over time. Success above and beyond the Sphere level can be spent on various factors such as duration, range, area of effect, damage and so on.

Your dicepool for Coincidental Workings is Arete + (a relevant Skill as chosen when you defined the Paradigm). Ritual Casting a Coincidental Working takes one hour for the first roll and double that for each additional roll, you also suffer a -1 penalty for each roll after the first.

Your dicepool for Vulgar Workings is Arete. You may Ritual Cast once per turn but may take no other actions (not even defending yourself unless you have an ongoing defensive magic effect). You suffer a -1 penalty to your roll for each turn past the first.

You may spend Quintessence on your casting roll, provided the Quint you have access to and the method to use it is compatible with your Paradigm, to add dice on a one per one basis. You may spend a maximum of your Avatar rating, or if you raise the difficulty by 2 (to simulate Prime 2) you may spend as much as you wish. Note that this is per working not per roll. If you ritual cast you can either spend a maximum of (Avatar) over the course of all your rolls or you should raise the difficulty by 2 to let you spend whatever you have access to.

On a botched casting roll you gain one point of Paradox and an immediate Paradox backlash whose severity is determined by your total Paradox points. You also suffer a Backlash if your Paradox exceeds (10-Arete). Yes, as your Arete grows you become less able to operate in consensual reality. No, that is not a bug. You can not trigger a Paradox Backlash in the Umbra (including the Digital Web) or in a Sanctum compatible with all your Paradigms, but you retain all Paradox points and may trigger an immediate backlash once you reenter a consensual reality zone or a Sanctum hostile to your Paradigms if you have too much Paradox. Why yes, most Archmasters do spend all their time in special sanctums in the deep umbra, why do you ask?

You may bleed off Paradox points by submitting to the Paradox conditions of your Paradigm without gaining any benefit from them. Essentially anti-casting. This can be relatively trivial if you have a very simple Paradigm with a proportionally weak Paradox but if you have a single incredibly broad Paradigm this can be and should be excruciatingly painful and hard. (For example if your Paradigm is "I am the son of God and can do anything I want because I am omnipotent" than "I die crucified on a cross" should be enough to remove one Paradox point).

EXAMPLES!

The Law of Sympathy "Like Effects Like"
Skill: Occult
A typical Hermetic Paradigm, this Paradigm allows you to cause certain events to occur to the actual target by causing a similar event to occur to a thing over which you have more control. So for example by destroying an effigy you may harm a person or by ritualistic binding a mathematical model of a place you may cause effects to occur in that place. Often combined with other Hermetic Paradigms to allow long distance Working.
Coincidental Working example: Cause an existing chronic condition of your target to temporarily worsen by symbolically harming a sample of their flesh (weak, takes preparation, requires circumstances)
Vulgar Working example: 'Predict' a target will die tomorrow by examining their astrological charts.
Paradox example: The subject becomes aware of your Working through omens and signs as well as the fact you did it or the effect rebounds on you and effects you as well.

Cavorite "To The Skies!"
Skill: Science or Engineering
You can manufacture or refine a rare metal called Cavorite which acts exactly the opposite against normal gravity. This allows you to make things fly.
Coincidental Working example: By alloying your Cavorite with mundane materials you make them lighter and easier to carry (requires preparation, weak, slow because you have to build the object) until the cavorite loses potency.
Vulgar Working example: I have an airship!
Paradox example: Cavorite is incredibly costly and difficult to manufacture (requiring significant Resources expenditure each time it is used) or you lose control over it and end up launched into the sky where you can fall from great heights and maybe even into outer space itself...

1: Copyright Fu "Never Piss off Disney"
Skill: Bureaucracy
Ideas are property, citizen, or so the New World Order and Syndicate tells all their agents. You can manipulate intellectual property to hinder your enemies and aid your allies. Patent troll those Etherites and Virtual Adepts. Get a Dreamspeaker sued for violating the trademarks of a major league baseball team. The credulity of the judges are the limit.
Coincidental Working example: Real nice website you have there, shame if something were to happen to it like it being shut down for copyright violations (requires preparation, requires circumstances, not guaranteed to work)
Vulgar Working example: You can't summon snow golems to fight me without paying Disney a kickback!
Paradox example: You can not violate copyright and sometimes you'll end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit.

 

[EarthScorpion]

So I'm about to run a solo game focusing on a WWII-era Virtual Adept of the WRAITH Methodology, and I need a bunch of dudes he can requisition, I'm reasonably experienced with various examples of technology, so I explicitly need examples of Technocratic soldiery and units that can be requisitioned.

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Your best source material here is Captain America: the First Avenger. Both the Hydra stuff and the Allied stuff.

Then there's the stuff that Panopticon produced for SECRET NAZI WEAPONS OF WW2.

But on top of that:

HITMark III
A cutting edge product of Iteration X's factories, the HITMark III is a walking tank proof against hostile reality deviant forces. With an ultra-modern mechanical-electronic brain with 4 kB of RAM and combat skills derived from the Mechanically Emulated Movement (MEMory) of the top combatants of the Union, the HITMark III is a sign of the development of designed intellects. HITMark IIIs are temperamental in the field and prone to breakdown in damp environments - like, sadly, much of Europe - but with trained engineers and the proper water-resistant drab olive paint their breakdown can be delayed.

HITMark IIIs are slow, heavily armoured and cumbersome. They can't move faster than a slow, inexorable walk, and can't pass as human - after all, they're two and a half metres tall and make audible mechanical noises when they move. HITMarks deployed on the European front are customarily painted in military colours and are depicted as experimental tech from the boffins back in the lab. On the other hand, a HITMark III can carry ultra-heavy weapons more suitable for a light armoured vehicle, or simply heft several units' worth of ammunition and provide all the suppressive fire you'd ever want.

The HITMark III will later be replaced by the HITMark IV and V, which are smaller, smarter, and able to pass as human - especially once the problems with the early prototype rubber skins are resolved.

WRAITH Esper Computer Unit
Highly trained women who have been taught to exceed the cognitive limits of baseline humans, these computers can perform prodigious calculations in their head in seconds. Such real-time data analysis permits them to make localised manipulations of circumstances to support units in the field, rapidly analyse combat situations, and in extreme circumstances or in self defence overload the brains of hostiles with sensory data.

WRAITH Espers are linear sorcerers trained to perform ultra-rapid computations in their heads. This gives them access to paths allowing them to curse enemies, analyse situations rapidly, bless allies, and the ability to rapidly profile and so 'read the minds' of captured enemies.

With the defection of the Virtual Adepts, most of WRAITH's espers stay loyal to the Technocratic Union. To a large extent they are absorbed by the Watchers in the New World Order, and play a major role in the NWO's later psychic programmes. They survive the suppression of psychic powers nearly untouched, and many of their techniques are retained for use in the modern New World Order as "cognitive tricks" and "analytical training".

Ladislov-Treated Soldiers
The Ladislov treatment is a relatively low cost treatment consisting of a tailored regime of vitamins combined with intense physical therapy and blood transfusions from gorillas. These combined factors allow weak recruits to pile on the muscles and acquire the traits of their genetic betters. These's a few small risks of bestial behaviour and other atavisms, but that's just one of the consequences of drawing on the inner ape that hides within man.

Yaaaaay creepy eugenics logic that's probably pretty racist too. Basically, buff your soldiers to Captain America levels at the small cost of a few ape-like paradox flaws.

The Ladislov treatment is later discredited by the increased focus of DNA manipulation by the Progenitors. It is recorded as a lamentable misguided effort based on unsound theories, but which still worked due to the steroid doses given to the suspects. The evidence of ape-like transformation among test subjects is suppressed and forgotten, and the mental effects are blamed on the steroids

 

[EarthScorpion]

Anyway, @MJ12 Commando and @Quantumboost, I'm putting a backported Death-as-an-oWoD-Sphere up for scrutiny.

Death

Death, the Dead, decay and souls make up the providence of the sphere of Death. From this sphere comes knowledge of the doom which waits for all men, regardless of their power or wisdom and what comes next. The soul is a fleeting bird which nests briefly, and those who study this power can separate it from a host, cage it, or even slay it permanently.

Compared to its 'sibling' Entropy, Death is a rarer sight among the mages of the modern era. While it was not-uncommon in Europe before the Renaissance and there is strong evidence which suggests that the blood-mages of Mesoamerica who the Verbena claim as antecedents performed something similar, since the foundation of the Council it has been unfavoured – and sometimes worse. This is not helped by how dangerous it is to use it in the Dark Umbra, where it draws the attention of spectres. Wise practitioners in the arts of Death ward themselves against the dead before they venture into that forsaken realm.

It is often commonly assumed that the Euthanatoi are the masters of Death. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, this sphere is forbidden to most of their major factions, and viewed with extreme suspicion by the others. Perhaps the only people who learn this sphere more rarely than the Euthanatoi are agents of the Technocratic Union (because the kind of 'flexible' Technocrat who dabbles in certain not-permitted fields is much more likely to learn Spirit), who find this unabashed mysticism to be alien.

However, among the ranks of the Order of Hermes and Verbena alike it still possesses a fair number of practitioners. There is power in death, just as there is in life, and the Hermetics have never been ones to listen to people (especially the Euthanatoi) who tell them what to do. It can be found among Etherite Necronauts and Orphaned Ancestor cultists and while the mainstream Chorus frowns on it, there have always been undercurrents of its use among its ranks. Death may substitute for Matter in the spheres required to affect vampires and other such undead beings.

There are those among the Hollow Ones who are trying to make it 'their' sphere, and so solidify their claimed position as a Tradition. Hollow Ones who do study it too deeply tend to drift away from their old faction, however. It is one thing to talk about the briefness of life while drinking absinthe and wearing lots of black; it is another thing to live with the knowledge that this sphere brings.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, masters of Death frequently gather less pleasant forms of Entropic resonance if they put their skills to certain ends. Those who abuse this sphere must wrestle with the looming spectre of Jhor – indeed, there are those among the Euthanatoi who assume that members of other Traditions who display that certain madness have been dabbling in this sphere. Certainly, practitioners tend to acquire a weighty air, and a certain solemnity which indicates their innate understanding of how fragile life is.


● See Death

The mage may see immaterial ghosts in the real world, or see into the Dark Umbra to converse with the spectres of the long-departed. She may identify the presence of a possessing ghost or soul which does not belong there - though no other kind of spirit – and may try to identify it with whatever knowledge she possesses. Creatures of death, like ghosts and vampires, stand out to her senses when she chooses to look, because she is particularly attuned to morbid resonance and so can find creatures – and places – where it hangs heavy. Through this she can diagnose grievous injuries and dire sicknesses easily, and more minor ones with difficulty.

The future is always in flux, but the mage can predict roughly how long someone likely has to live – though the cause is much more difficult to establish. On those who are terminally ill or grievously injured, she may make more precise estimates and see the cause as well. For those who are already departed, she may see the last thing a person saw before they died - helpful if they were staring at the face of the person choking them, less so if they were shot in the head by a sniper from a kilometre away – and diagnose the cause of death (or destruction, in the case of an object).

The mage may examine the soul of another, searching it for damage or abnormalities, or note its lack (for example, in a HITMark). With extended study, she may even be able to determine its Essence, though this is much easier in an Awakened mage than a Sleeper, or the cloying stasis caused by addiction to vampiric vitae or other such conditions.

Correspondence with Death lets the mage find locations where creatures have died. Combining Time with Death might let a mage tell more precisely how someone is likely to die. With the aid of Forces, the mage might seek out weak spots with their shot or avoid those who are already injured.


● ● Touch Death

Firstly and most obviously, the mage may now touch - or strike against - immaterial ghosts, or reach into the Dark Umbra to retrieve an object. As with Spirit 2 she may ward an area against ghosts or ease their manifestation, though this only works against ghosts – other spirits may bypass such wards trivially.

The mage can encourage static patterns to rot and decay, hastening their natural ends if they are already damaged. They may not destroy an intact door, but one which is already rotten – well, that's another matter. This can also be used to cause minor inconvenience to dynamic patterns, though at this level of the sphere the caster cannot cause large scale changes - still, it is enough to snuff out a candleflame or cause a momentary feeling of unease in a human. More sinisterly, she may enchant an object to trap a soul unattached to a body within it - the so-called "soul jar" of folk tales. If the object is broken, the trapped soul may flee - and almost certainly will.

Her veils of death also allow her to conceal her own Resonance to the eyes of others, or conceal the cause of death on a corpse by making it appear as if some other method was responsible. Obviously it is much easier to conceal something like a subtle poison than 'cut in half by a HITMark'!

In conjunction with pattern spheres, the mage may learn to work soulsteel or make magic items which can affect the Dark Umbra. She may repair something to the state it was in before it was destroyed, or draw on the necrotic echo of an object and make it real. With great risk and great skill with Forces, she may even affect the Maelstroms of the Dark Umbra, though such actions will draw the malevolent attention of spectres.


● ● ● Welcome Death

At considerable personal risk, a skilled mage may step through the Gauntlet into the entropic realm of the Dark Umbra. To do such a thing puts the life of the mage in great peril, but there have been no shortage of magicians willing to do it for the gains. Such mages are put at risk of the Avatar Storm even before they arrive, especially if they have a strong spiritual guide. Mighty rituals and weak places in the world are usually required for these workings. Human sacrifice – or at least nearby death – helps.

Even in the material world, the mage may temporarily shed solid form, becoming an unseen spectre who may pass through solid matter (and solid matter through them) as if it was mere mist. The mage's understanding of the processes of death allows them to use this level of the sphere on creatures of death as Life 3 may be used on living things. Ghosts are treated as Simple patterns from the perspective of this sphere. Ghosts may also be forced to flee the proximity of the mage, which is often used to cast them out of a restrained body they are possessing - a trick common to exorcists.

Much like practitioners of Entropy 3, the Disciple of Death may hasten the end of predictable patterns. Unlike Entropy, though, Death may only speed the destruction of predictable patterns at this level. It may not protect them against their inevitable end.

With the Pattern spheres, the mage can destroy predictable patterns and ensure that they leave ghost-reflections of themselves in the Dark Umbra – or with Life, ensure a human leaves a ghost regardless of their personal feelings. Prime lets the mage render ghosts down into quintessence.


● ● ● ● Embrace Death

At this level, the mage may make permanent gateways to the Dark Umbra – or at least as permanent as anything is to that blighted place. Wise mages do not leave such things unwarded, for spectres and ghosts alike will try to enter the world through such a rift.

The control of the adept of Death extends to allow them to summon and bind ghosts. By binding a ghost to a soul jar, various magical items akin to spirit-empowered fetishes may be made. More sinisterly, a ghost may be bound to a corpse – or other things saturated with deathly resonance, like a rotten tree or funeral ashes – to create revenants.

A mage can delay their own death from natural causes, though they will still grow infirm and (if taken to an extreme) rot, suffering the indignities of old age. She may 'heal' herself and others, though in truth this is merely moving sickness and injury around, and if she cannot find another target to move her bottled death to or a soul jar to trap it in, it will afflict her. At this level they may also do the same to protect predictable patterns. More malevolently, they can force living patterns to rot and decay, inflicting Bashing, Lethal or Aggravated health levels or removing Attribute dots. They may even blight a soul giving its host points of Entropic Resonance.

With this level of Death combined with other spheres, a mage can make profound changes to the nature of a ghost, puppet it entirely or even wear it as a skin and walk in the Dark Umbra passing for a native.


● ● ● ● ● Become Death

Few things are forbidden to a master of Death. Many of the grim tales of this sphere and its abuse are grounded in their actions. A master may destroy a ghost utterly, or slay a mortal in a way which means no ghost may possibly form. They can cast their victims through the Gauntlet into the Dark Umbra in a way which leads to their instant death. They may unmake quintessence, scattering it from a source or spoiling a node. Even more feared is their capacity to remove a Sleeping soul and trap it in a soul jar, or carry out the rite of gilgul and destroy a soul entirely.

With this level of mastery, the mage may tamper with the very substance of a ghost. They can flense the Shadow from a wraith and make it into a separate being, or cause it to come to the surface and control a ghost. Their influence also allows them to rouse the Beast of the Kindred, or the po soul of the strange kindred of the East. They may cut out passions and rewrite the nature of their death.

With control of death comes immortality. Mages can steal the lifespan of others, remaining young while passing their mortality on to others. Some say that these mages can even defeat death itself and provide something akin to true life to a ghost if they bind them into a host. Certainly they can force a ghost to displace the mind and soul of their victim, who becomes a ghost in their own right.

Masters can excise curses from their own souls and lay blights of Entropic Resonance which follow the person even past the point of reincarnation. Hubristic masters of death who have studied the nature of time can even destroy periods of the past so they never happened – though such actions reap a frightful toll in Paradox. After the Avatar Storm, there are no masters of Death remaining on Earth, and this may well be for the best.

 

[EarthScorpion]

I admit, the only oMage book I have read is M20, which you've mentioned as being mechanically flawed. However, it does mention a ruling on HAB/HOO in favor of HAB, saying

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Yeah, fuck M20. It's one man's very particular paen to a certain subset of 2e (unlike W20 and V20 which are actual legit attempts to make an 'Ultimate edition') and thus as someone who got started with Revised I don't spare it the time of day.

When the person writing it was so "Oh, I'm settling arguments" as to waste all that space on his utterly dreadful "this is why turning a vampire into a lawnchair is a bad idea" spiel which any competent editor should have removed, the fact that he also tried to settle in favour of HAP doesn't actually increase my respect at all.

Especially when the funniest thing - as I see it - is that the more Revised-era viewpoint I favour means you don't need the Technocracy to be as strong. Which is far more gameable. Because the masquerade is far more self-enforcing and the real power lies in the hands of Sleepers, the Technocracy doesn't need to be around every corner, waiting to jump on you. You don't need an omnipresent police state to stop you from changing everything right now, because the real war is the war for the opinions of mankind - and thus you don't have to rely on bullshit conspiracies to justify why it's a hidden magic setting as heavily, which means that your mages actually can use magic more if they're smart about it and get used to hiding their magic in valid explanations.

That fact that it means that mages damn well should use their 1-dot spheres to be infowar gods to find out all the exploitable things in their local environment if they want to play well is only a plus from my PoV. It's lazy to just say "Oh, it was a gas main" when there wasn't one. But luring the HITMark down into the utilities closet you splashed water all over the floor of, so you can introduce it to Mr Electricity... well, that's something I'm much more in favour of. And sure, your nordic Verbena might be calling on Thor to introduce this walking machine to tamed lightning, but since you put the effort in to making an electrocution hazard and then used Thor to shape how the zapping happens, you can get away with it.

Wouldn't that imply that as long as a bystander would believe you really did blow up a gas main, its coincidental even if there wasn't one there? I.e. I shoot at a cluster of pipes in a warehouse . While they just contain steam and cables, an average bystander wouldn't know that none of them were gas pipes, so calling on Gabriel to cause a fireball while doing so would be coincidental. On the other hand, if someone present did know what the pipes were for, the effect would be vulgar as fuck, since I'm creating a fireball out of nothing.

Alternatively, am I mistaking your argument, and you're saying that doing so SHOULD be vulgar-without-witnesses, and what the book states is harmful/detrimental to the gameline?

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Okay, ignoring M20 entirely (as is fit and proper), this is what I consider to be the process of a player deciding to use an effect:

1. The player decides what they mechanically want to do. This is a purely OOC judgement, with no IC logic. What they want to do is not "throw a fireball", what they want to do is "inflict damage on the enemy".

2. The player checks their spheres and sees if they can do what they want to do. Again - and this is a big divergence from certain modes of play - this is also entirely OOC. Unless you are a Hermetic, the spheres are a purely OOC concept. The spheres are mechanics, not an in game thing, used to basically balance things and let the GM arbitrate things without turning it into a slapfight. The fact that they resemble the Hermetic paradigm spheres is an unfortunate thing, but unless you're a Hermetic, your character shouldn't be thinking in terms of spheres.

3. You devise your paradigmic explanation for what you're doing. Without a paradigmic explanation, you can't do it. At all. Because your paradigm is where your power really comes from - your spheres are just an OOC way of setting hard limits on what your paradigm can do. This mode of decision making is therefore flexible about the spheres, as @MJ12 Commando mentioned a while back; variant spheres like Primal Utility, Dimensional Science, the Death sphere I wrote a bit back... they're common, and even when they're not a formal alt-sphere, some people's spheres might have things moved around. Or, like the various Correspondence variants, use a different sympathy relationship.

So you need an explanation for what you're doing. Your Chorister (or your Hermetic, because Hermeticism has a loooooooong history of this kind of thing) invokes angels, your Verbena sheds her blood and calls the sun's warmth down to earth, your Virtual Adept casts (Hostile) hitMark.transferEnergy(Long kilojoules, Object energySource), and your Technocrat simply loads an incendiary round.

From a practical, in-character PoV, these people are all doing completely separate things. The Traditions hold as doctrine that they're all fundamentally the same thing, but it's doctrine - you don't really grasp it until high Arete. Maybe the Hermetic tells the Verbena that they're actually just invoking angels via their crude and inefficient prayer, and the Verbena calls them an arrogant asshole, but they can sort of get into a similar reference frame for a ritual if they want to do one together. And the Verbena can get over the fact that the Hermetic is an arrogant asshole (but I present a tautology).

4. The next step is purely optional, and it's the "How am I hiding what I'm doing to the Consensus?". In the case of some people's paradigms, like most NWO Operatives, they don't actually do this step because their paradigms are so in line with the Consensus that they basically never have to worry about it - and on the occasions they're given non-Consensual foci as Requisitions, their orders to "keep it secret" do the rest. Not everyone else is so fortunate. If you don't feel like hiding it, perhaps because you're a Taftani, then you just skip this step too. And then probably get slapped around the face by Paradox for your pains. And they will be painful.

So, everyone else has to find a way to find a near-Consensual justification for what they're doing, which will hide their stage 3 explanation. This is not replacing their Stage 3 explanation. And this means they have to play in the Consensus' ballpit and meet it half way. When the Chorister invokes the angel Gabriel to make a fireball, they look for an explanation. And oh, look, there's a gas main here. Okay, Consensus - they metaphorically say - how about the angel Gabriel only makes a small spark, and then that sets off the gas main and that explodes. That's not a very big change, eh, Consensus? You can basically ignore the angel being involved, since most of the explosion was the exploding gas. Maybe an angel set it off. Or maybe the fact that there's a killer death robot shooting bullets all over the place set it off. Who can say for sure, eh? And then the Consensus nods thoughtfully, and says they'll buy that. And there's a gas mains explosion and the HITMark is consumed in a fireball and the Chorister doesn't take any Paradox. If people are watching and get suspicious, it might be pushed to being improbable.

Now, the problem arises when there isn't actually a gas mains. Because when there isn't a gas mains, an explosion is still manifesting from raw angelic fury, without any explosive gas actually being present. This is a small hiccup, because it means they haven't actually cloaked their magic in a Consensual justification and have in fact just smote the unrighteous. And while this is a righteous thing to do, sadly the Consensus isn't prepared to cut them a break just based on the righteousness of their cause. If they'd thought ahead, they could have brought a pipe bomb with them, and wrapped it in handwritten prayers so it is imbued with the holy fury of Gabriel and brings his vengeance (what they are doing - channelling the force of the angel; what they are selling the Consensus on - look, a really exploding pipe bomb), but alas, no pipe bombs. Well, maybe they can invoke him to unleash the terrible energies trapped in the HITMark's plasma gun, making it blow up due to a magnetic coil fluctuation which releases the energy...

Etc, etc. I think my point stands. Where I separate from the most lax versions of HAP which M20 and a lot of 2e stuff prefers is that your Consensual explanation has to be valid. If you could have had the gun in your pocket all along, you better not have been patted down and a Sleeper collapsed your "maybe I had a gun in my pocket" field. If you justify the explosion with a gas mains explosion, there actually better have been a gas mains running through the wall. If your blows are actually being guided by your hungry man-eating blade, but you tell people "Oh, I do kendo and know how to use a blade", then if you don't know how to use a weapon the Consensus will get suspicious (although not as suspicious as it'll get when your sword eats someone, boots and all, and then licks its lips).

(I sometimes call this HMLOP - Hypothetical Myopic Lazy Omniscient Perceiver. He's omniscient, but his vision isn't great if a Sleeper isn't watching directly so he misses smaller details and if he's given an explanation which makes sense, he'll let it pass. It's basically a representation of a smeared-out "Consensus" field made up of the sum of the beliefs of all the Sleepers in the area, saturating the area.)

 

[EarthScorpion]

But yeah, you kinda sorta did ping him for me, so should I just wait for him to come around, or start a convo with him?

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You might wanna talk to @EarthScorpion about his "Profession" system-concept and see if it can be applied to the nWoD engine.

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It's fairly simple. It came out of playing with system concepts for Cyborg Theory, one of my many dead quests. Rather than Attributes and Abilities, you have Traits, Talents and Training.

The pertinent area here is Talents and Training, which replace Abilities. Rather than nWoD Abilities, which go to 5 + 1 speciality, Talents go to 3 and Training goes to 3. Hence, you've got the same overall dice cap of 6 dice from them (because Cyborg Theory is basically a nWoD hack, stripped down as a test to see how I could optimise it for Quest running).

Talents are nWoD Abilities, in essence. There's a bunch of pre-defined fields, rated from 0-3, and they cover things like Firearms, Science, etc. They're general, broad field knowledges. With three dots in Science, you're incredibly well read and can talk at a studied level about pretty much any field of science. However, you're not a specialist.

By contrast, Training is the innovation here. Trainings are essentially short job/role descriptions - things like "Corporate Media Shark" or "Charity Store Volunteer" or "Political Activist" or "Couch-Surfing Moocher". And they're not pre-defined - basically, between the GM and the player they agree how acceptably broad that is. They're also rated from 0-3, and they can be applied to any roll where that role is something that is applicable. Essentially, they're there for the sort of less focussed way that humans tend to accumulate knowledge. Someone with British Soldier 2 can add 2 dice for things like shooting a weapon, resisting tiredness from long marches, understanding tactics, keeping their head under gunfire, etc etc.

As an also entirely deliberate side effect, it means you can't make super-polymaths as easily. You can't take Science 5 + Physics anymore - you have Science 3 + Solid State Physicist 3, which makes you worse at non-physics Science (and even potentially at obscure areas of non Solid State physics). But as a bonus, you can use that Physicist 3 as a bonus for things like doing academic research ("I know how to read scientific journals and even if this isn't in my field, I still know how to read the lingo"), helping someone write a grant application, and so on.

And yes. It is entirely deliberate that this helps with the fast-statting of NPCs. Training is designed to be pulled straight from a character's Concept - are they a GP? Well, they're pretty experienced, so let's give them General Practitioner 2. Let's say they served in the army when they were younger but are now out of shape - let's give them Retired Soldier 1 and Field Medic 1. And... yeah, let's say they're part of a motorcycle club, so let's give them Hobby Biker 1. Now you've got someone who can do all the things a GP has to do (including listening to people and getting information from people who might want to talk about how they got that rash), in extremes can muddle through if someone gets stabbed right in front of them (possibly by a PC), and can ride a motorbike, because why not?

 

[EarthScorpion]

That's certainly the least obtrusive way of doing it, but it's not the most mathmatically elegant, because it still exceeds 100% efficiency. It's just slightly harder to abuse that entropy-breaking efficiency. It's still abusable if you have an ability that lets you spend vitae to heal mortals.

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Your made-up 'mathematical elegance' doesn't actually mean anything at all. It's an arbitrary thing you've declared to favour your overcomplicated solution. Meanwhile, my one has actual elegance because it efficiently and effectively patches the rules exploit with a minimum knock-on effect.

As for your "spend vitae to heal mortals", well, yes, if people write stupid and athematic vampire powers that let them not be parasites upon the world, I can't do shit to stop that. Any vampire power for healing mortals would, at minimum, have to cost at least 2 vitae per lhl healed - so the vampire is always by their presence making the world a worse place.

Still runs into the X-Men issue. Namely "woe is poor, disenfranchised me; I have nothing going for me but the soul of a Primordial godbeast and the ability to spirit nuke an entire city " doesn't really work. Part of being systematically, like, shunned and excluded and ostracized is the fact that you're rendered powerless and the metaphor sort of falls apart when you start implying that the gays are in the same boat as a dude who's literally the Kraken on steroids.

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What I'd do is burn the idea that Beasts are in any way subliminal or hidden. They're not. They're superliminal. They're so real that the worlds humans know is just figment of the imagination. A Beast can open their eyes and leave the imaginary world of the mortals in their true form. They stride down the street, setting off car alarms and the like - and the wispy dream-mortals just bemoan the way all the car alarms have gone off.

(This is the precise opposite of making it crossover friendly. Look, this is a game where a starting PC can be a three metre tall giant who can toss boulders around. The limit is how much power they can effectively use within the dream world without tearing the world. Pulling out too much power means you shed the imaginary world and get booted into the real world of the monsters.)

The monsters never went away. The world humans know is just a pale dream, the Imaginary World, and the real world is where the dragons and the hydra and the other monsters still live. Humans walk through their world, so pale and weak and pathetic - and when two titans clash within their city, destroying the entire city... well, the humans who lived there are forgotten by the dream. They're not real. They never existed.

Thus, the conflict in Beast is that you are the Leviathan - both as a monster, but also as Hobbes' Leviathan. You're like a nationstate to mortals, because you can snuff out their lives and twist their whole world without noticing. You can do whatever you feel like to them. There's nothing stopping you from killing a mortal - only your own Humanity. It's easy to kill mortals. It's less easy to kill supernaturals, because they aren't represented in the real world - they're creatures of the Imaginary World or other stranger places and that means you have to go in with your chained powers and your chained form and not accidentally tear yourself out of the Imaginary World by letting too much hang out.

And as your Humanity falls, you find it harder and harder to return to the Imaginary World of the mortals. Eventually, you wind up as one of the monsters, forgetting the last remnants of the caterpillar you thought you were and becoming the monster in full. And the inhuman ones aren't chained by their human ties, so that's where the 60m long dragons come from.

So, therefore, how are Beasts good protagonist material? Well, for one, ones who still have Humanity left have attachments to the world. That's kind of a big deal. The idea that your wife or husband might just be crushed by a 60m tall dragon and no one apart from you will even remember them is sort of upsetting to a lot of people. So what do a lot of Beasts do? Claim a territory in the real world to keep an area of the Imaginary World safe from other monsters. Fight like fuck to stop some asshole from wrecking the place you're attached to. And of course, you're a monster, and the human world is a dream - but it's a comfortable one. It's very, very easy to play imperialist in the Imaginary World, chaining the anthropomorphic personification of a corporation and suddenly the Imaginary World changes so you've been CEO for five years.

Sure, it's a Humanity sin to casually warp the Imaginary World, but it's not like it's really bad, right? It's so easy. And you wouldn't have those powers if they weren't meant to be used.

Heroes? They're the Beast minor template. They're mortals with some powers who can see the real world, enter the place with the monsters and seize their weapons and gain their powers. In the past, Heroes told tales of their exploits. Now, many Heroes rant and rave on the subway. But the same realisation of the real world within them twists their form when they leave the Imaginary World. They start off as the heroes of legend, which is why a tramp looks like Hercules to someone who knows what to look for. But they become creatures of the lands of monsters too, and some day they'll become a Beast.

You either die a Hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

 

[Chehrazad]

Chehrazad looks at Fighting Styles and cries herself to sleep - Episode 1
Okay, so I've been wanting to do this for some time now, @EarthScorpion has previously talked about how ridiculous Fighting Styles are, and how every game would be better if you excluded them. Therefore I have decided to embark on a journey in order to look more in depth at Fighting Styles and give you some quality entertainment in the form of me laughing at them.

So without further ado: Ladies, gentlemen, sentient wind of flaying, deadly knives.

I present to you:

Boxing

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The first Fighting Style we'll look at, is boxing. This Fighting Style requires Strength 3, Stamina 2 and Brawl 2, which are all easy to possess from character creation.

Body Blow (1)

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The first level of Boxing is Body Blow, which allows you to make a person lose his next turn if you do more damage than his Size. This is an acceptable ability, as it effectively means you make people lose their turns when you get an Exceptional Success, which I can live with.

Duck and Weave (2)

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The second level of Boxing is Duck and Weave. Duck and Weave allows you to use the higher of your Dexterity or Wits to determine Defense against Brawl attacks. This isn't too bad either, though if it didn't have the "against Brawl-based attacks" clause, it would have been ridiculous.

So still acceptable.

Combination Blows (3)

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Hahahahahahahahaha-

Combination Blows is the third level of Boxing, and it is also an ability that absolutely under no circumstances should exist. Combination Blows works like this: Say you want to use it and sacrifice your Defense, then make two Brawl attacks.

Multiattacks are stupid and should burn. Every Fighting Style that gives them is stupid too.

Haymaker (4)

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Haymaker allows a single attack that does more damage than the target's Size to knock the opponent unconscious if he fails a Stamina roll. Even if the Stamina roll succeeds, he is still affected by Body Blow.

Hahahahahaha- Excuse me what?

So if you get an Exceptional Success on hitting someone, they must roll not to fall unonscious for (Damage dealt) turns, otherwise he only loses his next turn.

I do so love Fighting Styles.

Brutal Blow (5)

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Spend a point of Willpower to do lethal damage for a single attack.

Acceptably strong.

Next up! Kung Fu and Two Weapons!

 

[Chehrazad]

Chehrazad looks at Fighting Styles and cries herself to sleep - Episode 2

In which we take a look at Kung Fu and Two Weapons, both equally ridiculous!

Kung Fu

I hate this Style so much. As a person who actually practices Baguazhang Kung Fu, I am infinitely furious over the fact that they simply go "it's kung fu lol", which completely misses the fact that anything that requires patience and training is Kung Fu. Besides, none of this looks like an actual Kung Fu style and more like something from Big Trouble In Little China or a Jackie Chan movie honestly. The Style has a requirement of Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2 and Brawl 2, so it's pathetically easy to get.

Focused Attack (1)

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This reduces Armor penalties against your attacks by 1, and makes penalties to hit specific targets 1 lower. This one is pretty good for a level 1, and infinitely better than anything Boxing can ever aspire to.

Iron Skin (2)

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Armor rating of 1 against bashing attacks. Acceptable, but I must honestly admit I would switch level one and level two around, as level one's benefit grants more than this.

[Defensive Attack (3)

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Defensive Attack basically allows you to take a -2 to your attack pool and add +2 to your Defense until your next turn.

This one is pretty good, because it means that even a character with Defense 1 will have a solid Defense of 3 when using it, and a Defense of 5 will grant you a rating of 7.

Pretty good.

Whirlwind Strike (4)

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What?

WHAT?

Okay, a character with Whirlwind Strike can make a single extra Brawl attack for every point of Dexterity he has above 2. Every attack takes a cumulative -1 modifier, and they must be aimed at the same target.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-

I fucking hate Fighting Styles.

"But you can't use your Defense the same turn, so it's totally balanced!"

Lethal Strike (5)

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Literally the same as Boxing 5. Spend one Willpower to make an attack lethal.


Two Weapons

This Style goes from one to four, so it has one level less. It has a requirement of Dexterity 3 and Weaponry 3, making it even more easy to get than Kung Fu. Also of note, is the fact that this Style doesn't actually remove the -2 penalty for wielding an off-hand weapon, meaning that you gotta buy the Ambidextrous merit to also use it, which costs 3 dots and is available only at character creation despite the fact that it is possible to train oneself to become ambidextrous, given the fact that I did it with a few years training.

Whirling Blades (1)

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First level of Two Weapons, allows you to Dodge and only start to take penalties for multiple attackers after (Weaponry) attacks against you. After that you take penalties like the first attack that happens after your Weaponry rating has prevented the previous ones was the first.

This does explicitly not work with Brawling Dodge. But it doesn't say anything against Weaponry dodge, meaning that by RAW you can totally use this with Weaponry Dodge, which is hilarious, though not too broken.

Deflect and Thrust (2)

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Add +2 Defense but sacrifice -2 attack, it functions the same as Defensive Attack, except it comes earlier in the Style.

Focused Attack (3)

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Make a single extra attack at a -1 penalty, though it doesn't allow you to apply your Defense yadda yadda.

Fluid Attack (4)

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This attack allows you to make a single attack against two different targets, this is worded weird because it says that the second attack takes a -1 penalty, but there is no second attack, so I presume that's an error.

Next up: Armory and the eternal mountain of broken Fighting Styles!