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[Haquim]

I think Julia has been dead for an year and half at most but she seems to have a pretty decent level of Potence (I found it pretty awesome when she put a certain someone in his place...), at least some proficency with Obtenebration/Oblivion, same with Dominate. So yes, for a fledgling she's got a good amount of disciplines

CTPhipps: if people buy a visual novel expecting an action game with some Rpg elements and then review it it's them who make themselves ridicolous I think......

[Haquim]

It's a visual novel. I think it works pretty well in the context of the genre it belongs to. Obviously it's not a rpg or an action game, if you expected that you'll obviously be disappointed....

[Haquim]

• Boss Callihan dies early in the game and his death is basically the murder mystery the plot revolves around. This removes one of the most important players in NY introduced with New York by Night and obviously has consequences for the whole Anarch leadership of New York.
• I don't want to spoil too much but as everyone who followed Shadows previews knows Ecaterina the Wise is involved in the plot and we get some answers about her status and what happened to her post BJD

...

[Haquim]

Yes, like telling the player "let's keep things going, with that many dices, aggravated damage and automatic success you kill everyone before thay got a chance to move". The old combat system was simply to easy to abuse (and also "rocket tag" as hell) with the very concrete risk of alienating players who did not optimize for combat (which basically meant 2 dots in protean, as much celerity as possible and then some potence as well OR go Thaumaturgy heavy).

Certainly antisocial player types who like to hog the spotlight spending 5 minutes declaring actions and rolling...

[Haquim]

I've finished the game once so I cannot tell you for sure if that is the case or not. What I can tell you is the game lists at least 2 achievements (possibly 3) for reaching diferent endings (Good End, Bad End and possibly Dead End) so it stands to reason you can have different outcomes while making different choices. Note that I don't expect the choices made by the player to radically alter the outcome of the story but to change it on a personal level.

In coteries you only had one possible finale, the only way to make things end differently was to get killed before completing the...

[Haquim]

The Ventrue antediluvian might be dead or in torpor somewhere. Asked on a forum 20 years ago about his status during Gehenna (which is obvioulsy not canon in the current metaplot) Justin Achilli (whose favourite clan were the Ventrue) suggested the Ventrue ante used Fortitude 10 to wait for Gehenna to be over avoiding the Jhyad and surviving it that way.

Anyway the answer to your question, as with 99% of questions about antediluvians is: you've got to decide about his status in your chronicle.

Edit: note that there's basically no info on a lot of antediluvians while others...

[Haquim]

You absolutely can, as games Shadows and Coteries are independent of each other, aside from the fact they share a lot of the same "cast".

If you want to be surprised it's actually better to play this game without having played the first. On the other hand playing Shadows first and then going back to Coteries may be nice for people who want to get to know "the cast" better but will also rob them of quite a few "surprises" in the first game's plot....

[Haquim]

The social system is PCs talking with NPCs most of the time, discipline use (or abuse) should not be the norm, especially in places like Elysium. Combat requires you to roll dices, and the ST system for that was simply bad. You got 4 dots in celerity? Then we wait for you to carefully plan all of your moves, split your actions and roll a bucket of dices. People used to lose interest pretty quickly, in my experience it was actually worse than summoner types in D&D....

[Haquim]

Possibly because the combat system always was clunky, slow, messy and often unsatisfying...

[Haquim]

It's been out a couple of days now and I just finished my first playthrough. I feel like it is pretty good, better than coteries in some respects:

• characters are fleshed out better
• the system of choice makes you want to replay it more since every night has different events
• the way the ending is determined feels more organic than in coteries because your play-choices matter more
• apparently you can actually have different outcomes
• besides that Julia as a character has her own developed personality while in coteries the fledgling, no matter the starting clan, had very little personality

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[Haquim]

I have no issue with that definition but note how Incarnae and Celestines are still spirits.

Vampires are most definitely NOT spirits, they are spiritually barren....

[Haquim]

Because he might be dead or not depending on your chronicle but through the years White Wolf has touched on him more than once. You yourself mention the cab driver but I could cite Kapaneus from Gehenna and the fact that his mother was alive and well by the end of the 90s and planned to visit him so we can assume he was still alive by that time.

In other words Caine has been hinted to still be alive by WW, if you want him to be dead or never having existed that is all fine and dandy but it's only your choice....

[Haquim]

Some gods are celestines by WW and Mage lore (Jupiter, Luna, Helios...), some others, lesser ones, are Incarnae. Both Celestines and Incarnae are spirits in the WoD....

[Haquim]

Nice trolling

[Haquim]

Yet in the context of the World of Darkness a god is a very specific kind of being and Baba Yaga or any other vampire is not a god. They can very well impersonate one, their followers may even have faith in them... but they are still not gods in the WoD sense of the word as they don't even have a way to channel the spiritual energy generated by faith (unlike creatures like Earthbound demons, that are still not gods but are at least more spiritually "advanced" than vampires).

In the context of the WoD a god is a spirit, usually a powerful one. Age is a less important factor...

[Haquim]

She is not a god in any sense of the word. Gods in the WoD are spirits and Vampires are spiritually stunted cursed beings. Baba Yaga is a vampire....

[Haquim]

As a general rule, yes. The older the vampire the more powerful it is. That said, not all vampires are created equal, some are simply more skilled, intelligent, adaptable than others. Take ur-Shulgi, one of the most powerful 4th generation vampires ever presented. It's clearly stated his embrace was special and on top of that he is a second city vampire which means he's unfathomably old.

On the other hand you may have vampires like Critias, a 5th gen methuselah whose stats are clearly mediocre, which can only be justified in game with the idea he did not spend a lot of time trying...

[Haquim]

Lol the same talon of the Wyrm that fought Absimilliard and made him flee? A World of Rage says the Baba Yaga was "a truly ancient being with power nearing that of a Maeljin Incarna, she was a creature of the Wyld, corrupt true, but with her own vision for Russia's future".

So no, even in aWoR Baba Yaga is presented as ALMOST as powerful as a Maeljin Incarna, not as more powerful than one....

[Haquim]

Even a 4th generation Vampire as experienced as Baba Yaga doesn't work on the same palying filed of the Incarnae and Celestines. Vampires by becoming vampires are bascially creatures of the tellurian and as far as the Umbrae go they can visit the shadowlands with a modicum of difficulty (it requires dedicated discipline), Incarnae work on a different scale, that's to say Baba Yaga's personal power can certainly be a match for an Incarna (not the most powerful of them maybe) but the Incarna doesn't need to face Baba Yaga directly to win.
That said Baba Yaga is a bad example for this because...

[Haquim]

Vampires are not gods in any sense of the word. They sometimes manage to create cults that revere them as such but more often hijack existing cults portraying themselves as gods for a subsect of mortals. That is actually the case with Mithras. Check out DA Mage: Grimoire for confirmation.