No, no factions have the bullshit tesources that wod has. No one can drop a technocracy battleship on our heads, or summon a country killing anti or malign us as a terrorist like pentex or a thousand other things that the factions in this world just aren't capable of. The technocrats have an entire dyson sphere for fucks sake and pentex can print super soldiers really easily. Like literally hundreds of thousands of abomination cyborgs or the sheer influence vampires have in that world.
The current iteration of the Unseelie Accords was created and enforced by Mab when a skirmish between the Winter and Summer Knights resulted in the city of Milwaukee vanishing for two hours.
Storm Front chapter 5 said:
Susan Rodriguez was a reporter for the Chicago Arcane, a yellow magazine that covered all sorts of supernatural and paranormal events throughout the Midwest. Usually, the events they covered weren't much better than: "Monkey Man Seen With Elvis's Love Child," or "JFK's Mutant Ghost Abducts Shapeshifting Girl Scout." But once in a great, great while, the Arcane covered something that was real. Like the Unseelie Incursion of 1994, when the entire city of Milwaukee had simply vanished for two hours. Gone. Government satellite photos showed the river valley covered with trees and empty of life or human habitation. All communications ceased. Then, a few hours later, there it was, back again, and no one in the city itself the wiser.
The principal PoV character is a PI, and this is reflected in what we can see.
That doesnt mean the rest of the setting is playing on the same street level.
@uju32 I feel like you keep mixing up fast healing with soak or extra health levels. When someone walks off injuries that means that they were in fact injured and recovered not that they didn't get injured in the first place.
@uju32 I feel like you keep mixing up fast healing with soak or extra health levels. When someone walks off injuries that means that they were in fact injured and recovered not that they didn't get injured in the first place.
Not useless per se.
More that you need to be....very generous with the gunfire to be sure to kill a vampire in WoD.
EDIT
If you're shooting and hitting with an assault rifle(Damage 7) at a Stamina 3 vampire with no armor or blood buff, you roll an average of 3 against his average of 1, which gives you 2 damage.
Which then gets halved, down to 1 damage. Dude still has 6HLs left, assuming he started with 7HLs.
===
And in this AU, it might not even just be Blacks; Reds have terrifying durability, as seen here:
Once Murphy's Sig was pointing elsewhere, Maroon produced a gun from beneath his desk and raised it. He was pulling the trigger even before he could level it for a shot, blazing away as fast as he could move his finger. He wasn't quite fifteen feet away from Murphy, but the first five shots missed her as I spun and brought the invisible power of my shield bracelet down between the two of them. Bullets hit the shield with flashes of light and sent little concentric blue rings rippling through the air from the point of impact. Murphy, meanwhile, had opened up on LeBlanc. Murph fired almost as quickly as Maroon, but she had the training and discipline necessary for combat. Her bullets smacked into the vampire's torso, tearing through pale flesh and drawing gouts of red-black blood. LeBlanc staggered to one side—she wouldn't be dead, but the shots had probably rung her bell for a second or two.
I lowered the shield as Maroon's gun clicked on empty, lifted my right fist, and triggered the braided energy ring on my index finger with a short, uplifting motion. The ring saved back a little energy every time I moved my arm, storing it so that I could unleash it at need. Unseen force flew out from the ring, plucked Maroon out of his chair, and slammed him into the ceiling. He dropped back down, hit his back on the edge of the desk, and fell into a senseless sprawl on the floor. The gun flew from his fingers.
"I'm out!" Murphy screamed. I whirled back to find LeBlanc pushing herself off the wall, regaining her balance. She gave Murphy a look of flat hatred, and her eyes flushed pure black, iris and sclera alike. She opened her mouth in an inhuman scream, and then the vampire hiding beneath LeBlanc's seemingly human form exploded outward like a racehorse emerging from its gate, leaving shreds of pale, bloodless skin in its wake.
It was a hideous thing—black and flabby and slimy-looking, with a flaccid belly, a batlike face, and long, spindly limbs. LeBlanc's eyes bulged hideously as she flew toward me.
I brought my shield up in time to intercept her, and she rebounded from it, to fall back to the section of floor already stained with her blood.
"Down!" Murphy shouted.
I dropped down onto my heels and lowered the shield. LeBlanc rose again, even as I heard Murphy take a deep breath, exhale halfway, and hold it. Her gun barked once. The vampire lost about a fifth of her head as the bullet tore into her skull. She staggered back against the wall, limbs thrashing, but she still wasn't dead. She began to claw her way to her feet again.
Murphy squeezed off six more shots, methodically. None of them missed. LeBlanc fell to the floor. Murphy took a step closer, aimed, and put another ten or twelve rounds into the fallen vampire's head. By the time she was done, the vampire's head looked like a smashed gourd. A few seconds later, LeBlanc stopped moving.
Murphy reloaded again and kept the gun trained on the corpse.
Note how many pistol shots it took to kill that Red. Two or three full pistol mags.
Or when the Eebs took a vampire hitsquad into the Chicago FBI building and trashed it in Changes. No guns, just fang and claw.
The Einherjar have been at this for centuries at a minimum; they dont need advice.
Murphy, otoh....Love Hurts happened between Turn Coat and Changes.
The lady lacks a lot of experience at this point in time.
Really wondering what she will take from this fight.
She just saw three guys go full auto with assault weapons on us and it barely matters.
And these guys are good, compared to most mortals, certainly most cops.
Really wondering what she will take from this fight.
She just saw three guys go full auto with assault weapons on us and it barely matters.
And these guys are good, compared to most mortals, certainly most cops.
She has to survive first.
She's going with the Einherjar after three akuma with automatic weapons, and we still dont know where the other two akuma are.
If she lives, there's a non-zero chance she'll pencil Molly in as a loup-garou-tier threat.
The one that tore up the police station.
Especially since you have to figure she saw the Einherjar and Lydia all take damage, and Molly simply ignored it without any shields.
VOTE [X] [GARD] Loan you some good fortune in battle (-1 to all DC to replace BSM)
[X] [MOLLY] Just keep attacking him in melee, he has to be running out of chi and nihilus is costly to invoke
[X] [WRITEIN] Have Gard/Lydia commit Brother Dev + Valkyrie runecaller + 3rd infantry squad
RATIONALE Not too proud to accept help; thats why we brought the mercs.
Reasoning is straightforward;they've showed their reserves, show yours.
Our civilians are out of the building(or they'd better well be), and the vampires can sit on the girl bakemono, so the infantry squad dont even have to leave two people behind to watch her.
I assume Boss Akuma here soaks bullets with full Stamina. Assuming Stamina 6, we are looking at around Sta 6 + Armor 2+ Demon Armor ???, total soak 10+. Assault rifles(Dmg 7) are going to be fairly ineffective against a Minister of Hell with that much armor in Demon Shintai. So Gard is better off spending her effort elsewhere than making him visible to
Assuming Stamina 6, we are looking at around Sta 6 + Armor 2+ Demon Armor ???, total soak 10+. Assault rifles(Dmg 7) are going to be fairly ineffective against a Minister of Hell with that much armor in Demon Shintai.
Like I've previously pointed out, even ghouls, who are some of the lowest level antagonists of the setting, will survive losing half their limbs in a combat scenario and still remain not only conscious but ambulatory. Whites regen shotgun blasts to the knees and walk off center mass gunshot wounds to the sternum with no armor.
Glass cannon, at least as I use and know the term, is someone whose damage output vastly outstrips their toughness. I.e., Mab can freeze the planet, but will, if not die, than at least be discorporated, by a single nuke. Uriel can destroy galaxies, but I am fairly sure that with a right keyword he won't need to have supermassive black holes thrown at him to kill him.
The GSNF stuff seems way more annoying than the issue warrants.
I think a reasonable option is to add it as auto successes to the damage roll and let the the target soak it.
It's not as good as being unsoakable or as bad as letting the target roll their full defense pool against 3-4 points of damage. Which isn't a small amount of damage, especially Agg, but against the sort of people we'll spend a mote to hurt it's fairly likely they'll soak most of it.
Glass cannon, at least as I use and know the term, is someone whose damage output vastly outstrips their toughness. I.e., Mab can freeze the planet, but will, if not die, than at least be discorporated, by a single nuke. Uriel can destroy galaxies, but I am fairly sure that with a right keyword he won't need to have supermassive black holes thrown at him to kill him.
The GSNF stuff seems way more annoying than the issue warrants.
I think a reasonable option is to add it as auto successes to the damage roll and let the the target soak it.
It's not as good as being unsoakable or as bad as letting the target roll their full defense pool against 3-4 points of damage. Which isn't a small amount of damage, especially Agg, but against the sort of people we'll spend a mote to hurt it's fairly likely they'll soak most of it.
Added at the damage dice level but before soak against a target worth using it on would tends towards some additional damage getting through, but not as much as it being unsoakable or as little as them getting a separate soak roll for it.
With that damage not being soakable the most dangerous thing I can throw at you becomes lots and lots of mortals with guns, or really anything with guns, anything that can aim, pull the trigger and hang on at full automatic. I don't mind perfect or die in general for the mid to late game, but we are not there yet. It would do a disservice to the narrative and warp the world...
I hate to do this as a GM, a lot, but I am going to have to ret-con GSNF to be soak-able for things that can soak agg for the sake of being able to write this quest long term. I've had this sinking feeling before and I know where it leads, the land of 'no more quest'. If anyone wants to stop reading because of this I entirely understand. I made a mess of this thing
For the record I am fine making it unsoakable later but not right now it does not fit the story.
I'd honestly prefer the exp back and make it a future problem with the understanding we can get things like that later. Instead of lawyering the rules on skills.
Like I pointed out before?
In Proven Guilty, Thomas blasted Madrigal Raith with a shotgun at short range, first in the ankles, then in the knees without worrying about killing him. Either of which would have been mortal injuries for a vanilla.
Of course you can.
Lara Raith walked off a landmine in Turn Coat.
Lara didn't dispute the statement, but her eyes hardened like silver mirrors, reflecting the dancing flames that were still burning here and there as we moved through the site of the battle and out the other side. "Madeline has betrayed me, my House, and my Court. She is mine. I prefer you remained a living, breathing ally. You will not interfere."
What do you say to something like that? I shut my mouth and concentrated on finding Binder. It took us about five minutes to reach the piece of shoreline where Binder and his companion had come ashore. A pair of Jet Skis lay discarded on the beach. So that's how they'd done it. The tiny craft would have no problems at all skimming over the stone reefs surrounding the island, though they would have been hellish to ride in the rough water.
We swung past the discarded equipment and up a little ridgeline, running along a deer trail. I knew we were getting close, and suddenly Lara accelerated past me, supernaturally fleet of foot on the even ground.
I don't know what triggered the explosion. It might have been a tripwire stretched across the trail. It's possible that it was detonated manually, too. There was a flash of light, and something hit me in the chest hard enough to knock me down. An ugly asymmetrical shape was burned into my vision as I lay on my back, trying to sort out what had just happened.
Then my body tingled, and Madeline Raith appeared over me. I realized that she was straddling me. There was a fire burning somewhere close by, illuminating her. She was wearing a black surfer's wet suit with short arms and legs, unzipped past her navel. She held a mostly empty bottle of tequila in one hand. Her eyes were wide and shining with a disorienting riot of colors as she leaned down and kissed me on the forehead and . . .
And Hell's freaking bells.
The pleasure that surged through me from that simple touch was delicious to the point of pain. Every nerve ending in my entire body lit up, as though someone had run up the wattage on my pleasure centers, or injected their engines with nitrous. I felt my body arch up and shudder, a purely sexual reaction to a physical bliss that went far beyond sexuality. I stayed that way, locked into a quivering arch of ecstasy. It took maybe ten or fifteen seconds to subside.
From a kiss on the forehead.
God. No wonder people came back to the vampires for more.
I could barely register what was happening around me. So I only dimly noticed when Madeline produced a gun of her own, the other favorite model of those with more than human strength—a Desert Eagle.
"Good night, sweet wizard," Madeline purred, her hips grinding a slow rhythm against mine. She drew the half-inch-wide mouth of the gun over my cheek as she took a slug of tequila and then rested the gun's barrel gently on the spot she'd just kissed. It felt obscenely good, like a caress on skin that has just been shaved smooth but hasn't yet been touched. I knew that she was about to kill me, but I couldn't stop thinking how good it felt. "And flights of angels," she panted, her breath coming faster, her eyes alight with excitement, "sing thee to thy rest."
I aimed a punch at Madeline's face. She caught my hand as the weak blow came in, and kissed the inside of my wrist. Sweet silver lightning exploded up my arm and down my spine. Whatever was left of my brain went away, and the next thing I knew she was pressing her chest against mine, her mouth against mine, slowly, sensuously overbearing me. And then a burned corpse came out of the woods.
That was all I could think of to describe it. Half the body was blacker than a hamburger that had fallen through the bars of a charcoal grill. The rest was red and purple and swollen with bruises and bloody blisters, with very, very occasional strips of pale white skin. A few wisps of dark hair were attached to her skull. I say her because technically the corpse was female, though that hardly mattered amongst all the burned and pulverized meat that smelled slightly of tequila.
The only things I really recognized were the cold silver eyes.
Lara Raith's eyes were bright with an insane rage and a terrible hunger as she snaked her bruised, swollen left arm around Madeline's wind-pipe, and tightened it with a horrible strength.
Madeline cried out as her head was jerked back sharply—and then she made no sound at all as the wind was trapped inside her lungs. The burned, blackened corpse that was Lara Raith dug one fire-ruined hip into Madeline's upper back, using Madeline's own spine as a fulcrum against her.
Lara spoke, and her voice was something straight from Hell. It was lower, smokier, but every bit as lovely as it ever was. "Madeline," she purred, "I've wanted to do this with you since we were little girls."
Lara's burned black right hand, withered, it seemed, down to bones and sinew, reached slowly, sensually around Madeline's straining abdomen. Slowly, very slowly, Lara sunk her fingertips into flesh, just beneath the floating rib on Madeline's left flank. Madeline's face contorted and she tried to scream.
Lara shuddered. Her shoulders twisted. And she ripped an open furrow as wide as her four fingers across Madeline's stomach, pale flesh parting, as wet red and greythings slithered out.
Lara's tongue emerged from her mouth, bright pink, and touched Madeline's earlobe. "Listen to me," she hissed. Her burned hand continued pulling things out of Madeline's body, a hideous intimacy. "Listen to me."
Power shuddered in those words. I felt an insane desire to rush toward Lara's ruined flesh and give her my ears, ripped off with my own fingers, if necessary.
Madeline shuddered, the strength gone out of her body. Her mouth continued trying to move, but her eyes went unfocused at the power in Lara's voice. "For once in your life," Lara continued, kissing Madeline's throat with her burned, broken lips, "you are going to be useful."
Madeline's eyes rolled back in her head, and her body sagged helplessly back against Lara.
My brain got back onto the clock. I pushed myself away from Lara and Madeline's nauseating, horribly compelling embrace. Binder was sitting with his hands over his ears, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. I grabbed him under the arms and hauled him away from the entwined Raiths, maybe fifty yards downhill, through some thick brush and around the bole of a large old hickory tree. Binder was obviously in pain as I pulled him—and he was pushing with his unwounded leg, doing his best to assist me.
"Bloody hell," he panted, as I set him down. "Bloody hell and brimstone."
I staggered and sat down across from him, panting to get my breath back and to push the sight of Lara devouring Madeline out of my head. "No kidding."
"Some of the bloody fools I've known," Binder said. "Can't stop talking about how tragic they are. The poor lonely vampires. How they're just like us. Bloody idiots."
"Yeah," I said, my voice raw.
We sat there for a few seconds. From up the slope, there was a low, soft, and eager cry.
We shuddered and tried to look as if we hadn't heard anything.
Thats Lara, who McCoy feels free to force choke earlier in the same chapter.
Whites are the physically weakest type of vampire in the setting, have less endurance than other vampires when going all out, and vastly prefer social manipulations to physical ones. But they are objectively not weak at the higher ends, and still do shit like jumping off six story parking lots and walking away without a scratch.
And they are quite willing to seek powerups outside their native powerset. Whether magics or items or allies.
In White Night we see Vittorio Malvolo and Madrigal Raith show up with all three.
With specific regard to Lord Raith, the man did a deal with some entity, probably an Outsider, for an Investment-equivalent that gave him immunity to mortal magic. Not resistance, immunity, by word of McCoy. Which is why Maggie LeFay's death curse didnt attempt to strike directly at him, and why Ebenezar McCoy hadnt killed him three decades ago.
There's no reason why the Investment-equivalents he bargained for would be limited to magic immunity.
Do recall that we only see him in canon after three decades plus of starvation.
He's not at his best.
1)Only on Halloween or at the Stone Table.
2)DF is not full of glass cannons. Wizards are relative to the rest of the setting, but most others arent.
Like I've previously pointed out, even ghouls, who are some of the lowest level antagonists of the setting, will survive losing half their limbs in a combat scenario and still remain not only conscious but ambulatory. Whites regen shotgun blasts to the knees and walk off center mass gunshot wounds to the sternum with no armor.
Nevermind Reds and Blacks and Icks and trolls/ogres and Jotun and grendelkin and the like.
Most have specific vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
That doesnt make them glass cannons.
@DragonParadox it may be better to have a mini vote on GSNF if is a serious issue for you. Depending on the vote, you could go back and edit the scene.
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Apr 7, 2023 at 1:50 AM, finished with 127 posts and 8 votes.
[X] [MOLLY] just keep attacking him in melee, he has to be running out of chi and nihilus is costly to invoke
If I was building a greater Akuma, a Minister of Hell?
I would be looking at Investments and Soul Treatments for the vast bulk of my upgrades.
For example:
Seven Shards of Ice, a Dharma 6, Willpower 6 mandarin, who does a deal with Emma-O and does frequent work on Earth.
I would take the base stat line of a shikome, add Hellweaving 9, Demon Shintai 6 and Iron Mountain 6, and then pile on as a basic set of permanent enhancements
Investments: 60 Soul Points Mask of Yomi: 10 points x1
Conceals Yama King influence Ebon Fountain: 10 points x2
Refreshes Demon Chi pool once each night. With two, thats 2x per night. Unfolding Scarlet Lotus: 5 points x6
+6 points of Disciplines
If they'd been a dedicated combatant, I would swap out Graceful Reed for Crimson Tiger(8 points of Disciplines).
And of course the Yama King would be free to add or remove additional Investments depending on whether or not the akuma was in favor that day, or the YK just wanted to fuck with someone.
