[Balance discussion]Combat archery from Hurt Locker

[Morangias]

The only difference between moonlight and sunlight is that the former is a reflection of the latter.
And yet, that difference matters.

In broad terms, CofD runs on symbolism, not common sense.

The difference between sunlight and moonlight can be clearly intuited by anyone with a lick of folklore knowledge. There is no symbolic difference between two sharpened wooden shafts of different length and thickness.

Just because sometimes logic and common sense fail you in WoD/CofD doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered at all.

And the other significant difference is the classic vampire stake is made of wood and the majority of modern arrow shafts are made of carbon fiber or plastic or aluminium.

Obviously, this wouldn't apply to non-wooden arrows. I'm sorry, but did that really merit explicit mention?

[lnodiv]

The difference between sunlight and moonlight can be clearly intuited by anyone with a lick of folklore knowledge.

Kind of like the common folklore knowledge of using a stake to pin a corpse to the grave so it wouldn’t rise again? Something that certainly never involved using a crossbow to do the job during it’s Slavic origins?

And yet, common sense *should* cause us to disregard that knowledge, but not knowledge about the symbolic differences between moonlight and sunlight. Interesting stance.

[lnodiv]

To be clear, I’m not disputing the RAW, where it clearly works. I’m not even saying it shouldn’t work. I’m just suggesting that it is not at all unreasonable for someone operating in ignorance of the RAW to believe it might not work, based on symbolic arguments and the focus of the text.

[KieranMullen]

The only difference between moonlight and sunlight is that the former is a reflection of the latter.
And yet, that difference matters.

In broad terms, CofD runs on symbolism, not common sense.

I'm not familiar with the Vampire rules: If I use a mirror to reflect sunlight on a vampire, does it hurt them?

BTW, moonlight is 400,000x dimmer than sunlight, so maybe moonlight is only at worst an annoyance?

[Heavy Arms]

Hell, if archery is this effective, why don't other vampires use it?

Well, because the Combat Archery Merit isn't actually that great for taking out vampires. The best anti-vampire long-range staking is with the Powered Projectile Merit, which is Firearms based and uses crossbows (among other options).

Combat Archery is a good all around Fighting Style because it's Athletics based and ranged, giving you great flexibility compared to most options. It's doesn't max out your "ranged stake from stealth" potential much, but if you can pull that off fairly well and you want some good combat skills to fall back on if it wasn't enough it's great.

If I use a mirror to reflect sunlight on a vampire, does it hurt them?

Yes.

BTW, moonlight is 400,000x dimmer than sunlight, so maybe moonlight is only at worst an annoyance?

Probably, but the intention has always been symbolic rather than practical. Vampires in VtR don't take damage from artificial lights even if they're pumping out all the same rays as the sun either. How bad sunlight is for a vampire is also keyed off of both their Humanity and Blood Potency, making it even more a metaphysical thing than a physics thing.

[proindrakenzol]

Probably, but the intention has always been symbolic rather than practical. Vampires in VtR don't take damage from artificial lights even if they're pumping out all the same rays as the sun either. How bad sunlight is for a vampire is also keyed off of both their Humanity and Blood Potency, making it even more a metaphysical thing than a physics thing.

An artificial light isn't sunlight, reflected or otherwise. Personally, I'd allow a Mage that cast a spell with the 12 or 13 potency needed to bump moonlight up to the same strength as direct sunlight to have that be treated as, well, direct sunlight.

[ArcaneArts]

An artificial light isn't sunlight, reflected or otherwise. Personally, I'd allow a Mage that cast a spell with the 12 or 13 potency needed to bump moonlight up to the same strength as direct sunlight to have that be treated as, well, direct sunlight.

Seems like too much work, and honestly I'd still argue that normal physics asides, you can bump up that moonlight all you want and it still won't be sunlight.

[Heavy Arms]

proindrakenzol I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not... my point was just that scientifically created light with the identical physics as sunlight doesn't harm vampires.

On the mage thing? A mage that's going for 12+ Potency can just... use a damage spell and kill you.

[proindrakenzol]

proindrakenzol I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not... my point was just that scientifically created light with the identical physics as sunlight doesn't harm vampires.

On the mage thing? A mage that's going for 12+ Potency can just... use a damage spell and kill you.

The only "scientifically created light with the identical physics as sunlight" we can produce is a hydrogen bomb, so whether it harms vampires is moot, the explosion will annihilate them.

ArcaneArts it is a lot of work, and probably won't come up, I'm just saying my personal inclination is that if you were able to boost the strength of the reflected moonlight 400k times then I think it counts as sunlight, both because I feel like it does carry the same mystic woowoo these days and because, from a meta perspective, if you've pulled it off you deserve to have it work.

[Tessie]

If you rule that moonlight is just very diminished sunlight (symbolically speaking) with inherent potential to damage vampires if it weren't as diminished, then that would be the consistent outcome if you just pump it up high enough. I don't think it is, though, as vampires have no reaction to moonlight at all despite risking Frenzy when simply threatened with sunlight. Even if it's diminished to the point where it doesn't do any damage, I still think it should warrant a mention that vampires dislike the moon due to it redirecting a portion of their greatest Bane down on them.

My preferred way of having mages create sunlight would be to have a Reach option for adding Prime to any Forces spells that deal with light in order to turn it mystically into sunlight. Prime is the Arcanum dealing with Resonances and that's kinda the only thing that can differ between regular light and sunlight.

[proindrakenzol]

This is all just my interpretation, I'm not trying to change your mind, just explain my viewpoint.

If you rule that moonlight is just very diminished sunlight (symbolically speaking) with inherent potential to damage vampires if it weren't as diminished, then that would be the consistent outcome if you just pump it up high enough. I don't think it is, though, as vampires have no reaction to moonlight at all despite risking Frenzy when simply threatened with sunlight. Even if it's diminished to the point where it doesn't do any damage, I still think it should warrant a mention that vampires dislike the moon due to it redirecting a portion of their greatest Bane down on them.

I view the V!Beast's Frenzy response as a naturally triggered survival instinct, not a supernaturally triggered one. That means that, to me, the V!Beast must have a threshold for something to be recognized, below which it (as an instinctual, rather than reasoned response mechanism) simply doesn't react. Moonlight isn't merely half, or a quarter, or even a tenth as strong as Sunlight, it's four hundred thousandths as strong, it's simply not bright enough or damaging enough to cause a psychological or physiological reaction from the V!Beast.

It's like a peanut allergy, someone can be deathly allergic to peanuts, but if something only contained 1/400,000 of a lethal peanut dose they would be completely unaffected. So if moonlight carries the same metaphysical properties as sunlight they would be so diluted as to have no effect and be swamped by any metaphysical properties imparted by reflecting off the moon.

But if you could strengthen the moonlight enough it would still affect anything affected by sunlight.

My preferred way of having mages create sunlight would be to have a Reach option for adding Prime to any Forces spells that deal with light in order to turn it mystically into sunlight. Prime is the Arcanum dealing with Resonances and that's kinda the only thing that can differ between regular light and sunlight.

Create Light (Forces 5, Mage page 146) explicitly states it can create sunlight, it has no other Arcana required. This would seem to imply that the properties of sunlight are Forces based, at least to me.

[Mr.F.I.X.]

Staking = putting a piece of (presumably sharpened) wood into a vampire's heart. Stake is merely shorthand or crossbow bolts wouldn't be able to stake a vampire (as is included in the 2e core).

In addition to this bows have the same line of text in hurt locker.

[Tessie]

Create Light (Forces 5, Mage page 146) explicitly states it can create sunlight, it has no other Arcana required. This would seem to imply that the properties of sunlight are Forces based, at least to me.

Well, then.

[Morangias]

Kind of like the common folklore knowledge of using a stake to pin a corpse to the grave so it wouldn’t rise again? Something that certainly never involved using a crossbow to do the job during it’s Slavic origins?

And yet, common sense *should* cause us to disregard that knowledge, but not knowledge about the symbolic differences between moonlight and sunlight. Interesting stance.

While sunlight works on vampires about as you'd expect, the stake does not, because in folklore, the "staking" is literally the act of nailing the corpse to the coffin so it doesn't rise. Obviously they wouldn't use a crossbow for that! The "stake" itself is of little consequence and there are many "vampire burials" in which simple iron nails have been employed in place of wood.

But that's not how it works in WoD/CofD. Here, the wooden stake needs to pierce the vampire heart to send it into torpor for as long as it remains in the heart. So, what is a stake in that case? The only definition of the word applicable in this context is 'a stick pointed at one end'. So, since we're talking wooden stake, a pointed piece of wood. A definition that a sharpened wooden arrowshaft matches. Since there are no other qualifiers attached to the 'wooden stake' in CofD that would disqualify such an arrowshaft from counting as a stake, it follows that it counts as a stake.

See, applying logic and common sense to WoD can work! You just have to have some common sense and basic understanding of logic.

[Michael]

While sunlight works on vampires about as you'd expect, the stake does not, because in folklore, the "staking" is literally the act of nailing the corpse to the coffin so it doesn't rise. Obviously they wouldn't use a crossbow for that! The "stake" itself is of little consequence and there are many "vampire burials" in which simple iron nails have been employed in place of wood.

I'd add, they presumably used a hammer as well seeing as humans (and presumably vampires) have ribs. However, Requiem clearly takes inspiration from more modern vampire fiction where you can one-hand a stake like a wooden dagger, in which case, for a stake to be wieldable as a weapon, it'd need to be relatively thin.