Ask a Simple Question, Get a Simple Answer: General Chronicles/World of Darkness

[Tessie]

So it's a mistake that managed to get copy-pasted into two (technically three) additional manuscripts? Yikes.

[Yelesom]

Can a plain mortal fake a supernatural effect well enough to inflict breaking points on other mortals?
Think like with smoke and mirrors or performance acts.

[Unahim]

Can a plain mortal fake a supernatural effect well enough to inflict breaking points on other mortals?
Think like with smoke and mirrors or performance acts.

Sure, why not? But the threshold for what looks sufficiently "real" will differ from mortal to mortal. A stage magician is not routinely inflict breaking points on his entire audience. I feel it would have to be something more terrifying and hard to explain.

Like, say... if you make a "dead baby" doll that looks pretty real/horrifying and then rig it up with nearly invisible wires and use it to chase the head of an abortion clinic out of their bed at night while letting it play a pre-recorded admonishing speech in a twisted baby voice... that would probably work. (None of this reflects on my political views in any way.)

But disappearing from a stage in a puff of smoke? Eh, probably not. People expect that sort of thing from a performance. Some of the supernatural splats in CoFD have inherent qualities to their supernatural abilities that always make them breaking points, but effects that merely look like them won't necessarily be.

So TL;DR: Yes, but it usually has to be blatant, shocking, and specifically target the person's worldviews.

[Draconis]

Yeah, I would say the breaking point comes from something that fundamentally shakes your worldview. The actual cause behind it doesn't matter.

If I see someone levitating during a stage-magic show, it's not going to affect my worldview in any significant way, even if they were actually a Mage (who had found some way to deal with the Quiescence I guess). If someone forces me to relive the worst moments of my life over and over again, that's going to have an effect, even if it's induced by perfectly mundane drugs instead of a vampire's Nightmare.

[The MG]

Is there any benefit to the Fight option of the Fight, Flight, Freeze Merit (I know it from the Deviant Kickstarter preview; no idea if it can by found in other books)? The Insane Tilt it causes seems really punishing.

[Tessie]

Is there any benefit to the Fight option of the Fight, Flight, Freeze Merit (I know it from the Deviant Kickstarter preview; no idea if it can by found in other books)? The Insane Tilt it causes seems really punishing.

The Insane Tilt is really punishing, but for some reason it's viewed as beneficial in combat by the devs. The first dot of the Berserker Style in Hurt Locker is even worse because you have to pay WP to get the Insane Tilt, and unlike Fight, Flight, Freeze, that's the only "benefit" you get.
No, I would not like to remove the ability to spend WP. A measly +1 is not worth not being able to use fighting styles that require WP expenditure, or being able to increase your attack pools with +3 instead. Melee combat in second edition is balanced around having to spend WP for the +3 to get through Defense. The Insane Tilt is completely backwards if it's considered beneficial.

[lnodiv]

The Insane Tilt is really punishing, but for some reason it's viewed as beneficial in combat by the devs.

Yeah - I mean, taking your action dead last as a result of the tilt is basically a guarantee of a lost combat. The bonus would have to be truly ludicrous (+4 or +5) to really make this tilt worth it.

[Lorekeeper]

Does archery (whether using the Firearms, Athletics, or Dark Eras Archery skills) subtract defense from it's attack?

[Tessie]

Does archery (whether using the Firearms, Athletics, or Dark Eras Archery skills) subtract defense from it's attack?

No.
Archery (the skill) operates identically to Firearms (with the exception of replacing the Dramatic Failure result, as if other attacks had any such results written).
Bows count as ranged weapons and use the ranged attack rules, meaning Dexterity+Firearms and ignoring Defense. The special rule allowing you to use Athletics instead of Firearms doesn't change the type of attack.

[Lorekeeper]

Thanks, Tessie! My group was subtracting Defense unnecessarily, then

[totalgit]

This might have been asked before but how does autofiring into a melee work. The firing into melee states that it doesn't include autofire so does that mean one can shoot a single person in melee with the bonus from autofire and not take the penalities from firing into melee and not hit the others?

That seems really odd, one feels like there is a rule missing from autofire saying if you fire into melee you hit every body in it similar to the covering fire rules..

[Stupid Loserman]

First edition rules assert that any autofire on a character in melee combat, even a short burst, automatically targets everyone in that melee combat, as if targeting multiple characters normally. It is possible that the second edition's autofire exception for firing-into-close-combat penalties was written not realizing that the autofire targeting rule had been dropped for space or somesuch; if autofire targets all parties in a close combat, then there's no need for a penalty to try to only shoot one party, because it is no longer an option.

[Elythia]

Question:
Is it possible to use Willpower for breaking point roles? (Any references in the books?)

[nofather]

No, you can't, usually it's mentioned in the breaking point section.

[Kvark]

Question:
Is it possible to use Willpower for breaking point roles? (Any references in the books?)

For vanilla humans, I think nothing explicitly prohibits it (per CofD p74). EDIT: I originally said something wrong after this, so it's gone now!

I understand your question though. Mages cannot spend Willpower to prevent losing Wisdom from Acts of Hubris (Mage p88). Werewolves cannot spend Willpower on Breaking Points to maintain Harmony (Werewolf p104). Vampires cannot spend Willpower to prevent losing Humanity from Detachment (Vampire p109).

That humans can spend Willpower to maintain Integrity makes them the odd man out, but I rather like that. I think it's totally appropriate to Houserule that you can't, though.