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[Bluecho]

Well, he's an inmate at the asylum. He may not even have a reason. Or rather, his reasons are idiosyncratic to his own internal thought processes. He might see the Technocrat cabal as his long-ago friends, noble knights of the round table, assistants come to get his unruly actors under control and back to the stage, or worthy offerings for the Dark Ones that live beneath his cell (whether those Dark Ones are real or just delusions). Something even more esoteric or inexplicable. Note, further, that his motives may not be entirely benign (as far as he's concerned), nor will he necessarily remain...

[Bluecho]

If it was a Progenitor lab, the Damage Control methodology would be called in. They are experts at putting down their Convention's worst and most dangerous excesses and mistakes.

If the hospital was used for hyper-psychology research, it would be the New World Order. And generally, Conventions like to deal with problems internally whenever possible. Less embarrassing that way. That, and members of the Convention tend to be best qualified to handle problems created by the Convention. See the aforementioned Damage Control.

If it's a Shallowing, the Void Engineers would...

[Bluecho]

There are, indeed, many ways that an adversary can oppose or stymie a character.

If the Tremere doesn't want the mage to die (yet), she may be inclined to act to prevent him from engaging in activities that might threaten his life...even if they are risks he wants to take. This might involve thwarting attempts by the mage to obtain weapons or armor, so he has a harder time initiating conflicts. It might involve strategically assassinating the mage's enemies, but in a way that causes more problems for the mage in the long run (the enemy's friends might come looking for revenge, or...

[Bluecho]

285) Too Attached [Flaw]: Responding to an Effect cast with a hand-held Instrument, the Principle of Contagion causes that Instrument to become too strong to break. For the duration of the backlash, the Instrument will not leave the mage's hand; the bonds of sympathy are simply insurmountable. It's for this reason that the backlash also accompanies abuses of Correspondence, which can excel at strengthening or breaking bonds of sympathy. If the mage opens their hand, the object won't fall from their grasp, nor stick in a pocket or holster, nor allow itself to be pried from her flesh. While the...

[Bluecho]

Certainly you can. A djinn Familiar is far from the strangest thing Mage permits as a matter of course.

Familiars, by their nature, are not Awakened beings. If you wanted an Awakened creature to be your best bud, take multiple dots in Ally to reflect that (because a character with Spheres is inherently more potent than a common, mundane Ally; as are vampires, werewolves, changelings, wraiths, etc.). But more importantly, I don't think Djinn can be Awakened. They are spiritual beings, who live predominantly in the Umbra. So no, you wouldn't give a Djinn Spheres; they would have Charms...

[Bluecho]

My problem is not with the loss of control. Conflict occurs because of loss of control, on someone's part. My problem is with Predictability, and V5's lack thereof.

For as onerous as it is - both in-universe and among players - The Beast is understandable, because its mechanisms are simple and straightforward. It is Predictable, because a vampire (and a vampire's player) knows exactly what they will be doing if they Frenzy: Fight Everyone. It is known, and therefore can be come to terms with. A vampire in-universe knows they can flip out and go on a killing spree, so they know why...

[Bluecho]

Moving on, Clan weaknesses are usually a specific thing in VtM. Like I said, vampires plan around them. Ventrue gather their vessels. Nosferatu learn to hide or disguise their deformity. Gangrel wear bulky clothing and stick to the outskirts of civilization. Toreador surround themselves with enough beauty that it bores even their weakness to apathy. Malkavians learn methods to cope with madness, or to yet find method in it. Giovanni collect corpses and invest in blood banks to sup from. Ravnos learn to pick their battles when it comes to denying or indulging their vices (or virtues, in DAV20)....

[Bluecho]

I find that what makes the Clan weaknesses work is that, as annoying as they are, they're predictable. They are complications that can be planned around.

That may seem like it would make a game boring. Most certainly it does not, anymore than the very predictable need to feed on blood or avoid sunlight makes things boring. (In aggregate, obviously. As Aya Tari said, hunting scenes can get boring, at least for the other players). Life (and Unlife) are chaotic enough that a gaming group should never feel bored. The excitement comes from how the predictable runs headlong into the unexpected....

[Bluecho]

Indeed. The whole comment assumes that vampires only ever meet under ideal circumstances, in the best case scenarios. A laughable assertion if I've ever seen one.

Consider for a moment that you're in the late dark ages, early Renaissance. You've got Anarchs on one side looking to kill you for your position and blood, church zealots on the other with torches and pitchforks, and vitae-addicted assassins hiding in the shadows. Everyone's childer are rebelling and breaking their blood bonds. The whole of Europe is on fire. Now your only hope is to meet with a bunch of your rivals, in-clan...

[Bluecho]

As I was just out, grabbing a bite to eat, I had a sort of revelation.

I don't think the rules for the playtest are meant to be remotely close to final. Neither can I imagine how they could be.

Examining the design decisions of this Pre-Alpha, it strikes me greatly like we're looking at the same thing as those Revised-era quickstart guides for the various gamelines. Those books, too, simplified Attributes down to broad categories, simplified other traits, and included dirt-simple sample adventures to run through, that gaming groups were presumably meant to run through...

[Bluecho]

Do you mean Perdo Magica? Because a quick search of the White Wolf wiki says that Rego Magica just makes new Paths, and it's Perdo that counters magic.

Whatever. Thaumaturgical Countermagic.

It works the way it works. Your rating gives you countermagic dice...against blood sorcery. According to V20, Thaumaturgical Countermagic works at half effectiveness against non-Thaumaturgy Disciplines (Necromancy, Ahku, etc.), and is "completely ineffective against non-vampiric magics and powers" (V20 Core, p. 228).

So, apparently, it does nothing against Mages....

[Bluecho]

Alright, I've managed to find the Night-Folk Counterspelling rules in the brick that is M20 (p. 546). It's time to clear up some misconceptions.

First, no one uses Willpower for their Countermagic dice pool. They use Wits + Occult, all of them. Not Willpower.

Willpower comes in, rather, as a limiter to a night-folk's countermagic dice pool. The dice pool cannot exceed the Willpower trait for Vampires (and most supernaturals, really). If the vamp has high Wits and Occult, but little Willpower, they can't do much. With Werewolves, their limit is either Gnosis or Rage (whichever...

[Bluecho]

As far as I'm aware, the presence of witnesses does not retroactively make a vulgar effect any worse. It only seems to matter if witnesses were around the moment the Effect was cast. In 2nd Ed and M20, you get a single Paradox point for Vulgar, regardless of who saw it. So it wouldn't matter on that front. Witnesses only really affect the difficulty to cast (well, that and how much 'Dox you get if you Botch, but that's another matter). So long as the Effect is already cast, the successes you got don't go down as a result of a retroactively higher difficulty number. That would make book-keeping...

[Bluecho]

Funnily enough, I've mused in the past about a vampire antagonist that stole a mage's phylactery, and used it as an integral focus for Sphere magick. I don't think I would ever make it a thing a vampire could commonly pull off. Like, the one phylactery had this as a unique property. Hence why it's sought after by basically everyone who knows about it.

Then again, I just kind of want an antagonist like Dio Brando. Not only a vampire, but also having cool magic powers. Stopping time all over the place, and generally being one of the most frightening villains around because of his stolen...

[Bluecho]

An idea I've toyed with, in relation to how Judeo-Christian thought would classify the Fae, is something similar to this. Fairies were angels that didn't Fall, per se. Rather, when the War in Heaven broke out, they were the angels who refused to take a side, either because of cowardice, reluctance to commit violence, or a desire to stay out of it until they knew which way the wind was blowing. When Lucifer's forces inevitably lost and were cast into Hell, God turned to the matter of the angels who refused to commit to a side.

They hadn't rebelled, as such, so they didn't merit being...

[Bluecho]

Yeah, when I said "the Technocracy won during Revised", I mean that's what the books themselves kept talking about at the time. They really wanted it to be true, so they could bring the game down to the street level, end the Ascension War as it was, and get characters on both sides to focus more on dealing with other problems. Like, for instance, the slow hardening of Reality. Even the Technocrats were threatened by that, as the bulk of humans were supposedly becoming so apathetic, the Consensus was going to just grind to a halt and become static. Not even hyperscience could advance,...

[Bluecho]

Which is odd, given that the ST Handbook also had an optional rule for letting characters with the Shapeshifter Kin, Faeblooded, and Ghoul merits cast magic that emulates those supernaturals, while also being Coincidental. So long, of course, as those Effects are reflected in the popular consciousness (Protean and Potence good, Serpentis and Vicissitude bad). If anything appears power-gamey, it's that.

Been meaning to start a thread about this over in the Mage forum, actually......

[Bluecho]

And, as of Rites of the Blood, you have the assorted Kindred - mostly Elders - who practice the various and sundry styles that fall under the "Old Skool" umbrella. Characters who were often practitioners of mortal magic before their embrace, and adapted the methods to blood sorcery. These can be any Elders, really, from old priests of Apollo, to Native Americans embraced during the colonial era.

[Bluecho]

To continue my rants about Mage Revised and the Avatar Storm, it made White Wolf into kind of the Fun Police, when it came to Mage fans. If you weren't playing Mage the way the designers wanted, you were playing it wrong. While street level games are good and important, players don't want to always play street level campaigns.

Further, the post-Storm metaplot permeated everything in the Revised era. You couldn't escape or ignore it. There were no options presented in the newer books for playing without the Avatar Storm and its assorted baggage. If you were a gaming group who wanted...

[Bluecho]

Over in games other than Mage, the flow of the game didn't change significantly. I can't say for Werewolf, but in Vampire you just lost a couple of Clan options (the Ravnos and Tremere Antitribu). That's basically it.

For Mage, the Week of Nightmares changed EVERYTHING.

If you aren't familiar with Mage, what the Avatar Storm did was create an angry wall of broken glass between the material world and the Umbra, that cut the souls of mages who tried crossing it. No other supernaturals were affected, just mages. It made it so every time a mage wanted to cross the Gauntlet...