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[Bluecho]

So last night, I got back from a trip to attend my sister's wedding. And, by shear luck and at the last minute, I managed to host a DnD game for the groom and his buddies, as part of his bachelor party. Which marked the first time I've been able to DM (or play DnD in general).

Needless to say, between the wedding and the DnD, a pretty enjoyable trip.

Because it was a one-shot game - there's virtually no chance I'll be able to get that exact group of players together for another session to continue the game - I decided to run the "Delian Tomb" dungeon, from Matt...

[Bluecho]

Huh. Looks like the comic was pretty successful, if it got adapted.

Don't know how accurate the show will be to the comic, given what I've seen here. But I'll keep my eyes on this nonetheless.

[Bluecho]

I'm with MatterofTact on this one. There is a time and a place for a face-concealing mask, but the utility to be found when one is appropriate is inarguable. Especially since most flexible mask material - like that of a balaclava or ski mask - allows the wearer transition between worn and unworn in seconds. You can hide a ski mask in a pocket, and throw it away if need be. The user who "dares" to use a mask isn't locked into their choice. Nor is a mask's utility somehow negated by there existing ways of getting by without it. Saying "you can just use X" is not a mark again...

[Bluecho]

The Basic Rules and Basic DM's Guide are available for download as free PDFs. So, you know, it's easy to famliarize oneself with the 5e rules. Those two pdfs are basically all you need to run the edition....

[Bluecho]

124) A Syndicate woman who hasn't left her home in thirty years.

A trauma sufferer, she developed agoraphobia early in life, leading her to become a shut-in. When her parents died, she used her meager inheritance to play the stock market. A well-educated and savvy woman, she became very good at it. In order to ensure her financial stability - and simply out of boredom and a desire to have an effect on the outside world - she started using her money to form a network of connections and employees. Through intermediaries paid from shadow accounts, she gathered information. About people,...

[Bluecho]

1) Blackmail.

2) Threatening loved ones, or something else the PC values.

3) Extracting a point of their Vitae, so they can threaten to sick a blood sorcerer on them from afar.

4) Getting the PC hooked on a drug (mixed in blood) that is difficult to procure without the elder's resources.

5) Dominating the PC into regularly reporting their activities, so the elder knows how to force the PC's hand.

6) Promising to provide the PC resources, then threatening to take those resources away if the PC doesn't comply....

[Bluecho]

Dataweaver is correct. Syndicate reps operate by pushing the limits of mundane resources. Whether that's money, style, etiquette, architecture, consumer products, or the physical limits of the human body and mind. It's an Art of Desire they've been practicing since the Renaissance - when they were the High Guild - and have now refined into a science. That science being, of course, their personal unified field theory called Hypereconomics. Wherever there is a bit of leeway - a gap in the ways things work - a Syndicate rep can use money, people skills, expertise, and raw Charisma to exploit that...

[Bluecho]

146) A Ventrue Ancillae asks the PCs to investigate a series of attacks on university students, which he has reason to believe are being perpetrated by kindred or kindred agents. The Ventrue's stated interest in the university is because it was his mortal Alma Mater, and is personally offended by the attacks on it. Since he's a Ventrue, of course, the PCs would be perfectly in their rights to assume this nexus of humanity - this place where so many different sorts gather - would serve as solid cover for the Ventrue's feeding restriction. If the PCs investigate and find the perpetrator - a rival...

[Bluecho]

135) Assuming a PC is devoted to maintaining a high Humanity, they discover that a serial killer walks the streets, and they know exactly who it is. Moreover, someone is tying the hands of the local police, preventing them from investigating him or even taking the accusation of his activities seriously. If the PC comes to know him, they discover that he's not maliciously murderous; rather, he is a slave to urges he can't control. For a vampire, the obvious solution is simply to kill him, and spare society from at least one predator in the night. But to kill in cold blood would be a transgression...

[Bluecho]

132) A small but growing movement of kindred have taken to an unorthodox track as of late: trying to revive the medieval Road of Heaven, so as to curb the Beast through raw faith. And not as the bastardized parody of religion the Sabbat practices, but as genuine religious devotion. As far as they're concerned, the Kindred condition, by nature of definition, raises questions that secular philosophy and science cannot answer. Moreover, as the frustrations of modern life mirror the emptiness of vampire unlife, this movement wonders if, now more than ever, appealing to a higher power isn't a prudent...

[Bluecho]

157) An Orphan living in the city went Marauder upon Awakening, and operated in town for a while. But recently, she appears to have come back from the brink and become sane. A known quantity in the Awakened community, the Orphan's apparent turn away from madness has piqued the interest of all mage factions. Did she actually stop being a Marauder? She's no longer floating around with a TV for a head and six arms, so it's a good sign. Or was she merely hovering around a severe Quiet all this time, and never went full Marauder? Many Awakened parties - including the Traditions, Technocracy, and Disparates...

[Bluecho]

Exactly. If modern mages have to go to circuitous lengths to access the Shadowlands, it's not necessarily because that's the only way to do it.

As I recall, Dead Magic 2 contended that, with the right mindset, a mage should be able to step sideways into the Shadowlands with just Spirit 3. There's also that one Merit that lets a character do the same thing. That might simply be evidence of the character being predisposed towards the Low Umbra. It mean said mage has something that cannot be acquired or tuned to in mages without the Merit.

Mindset and belief matter a great...

[Bluecho]

156) One of the PCs gains the ire of a spirit of Bureaucracy, which proceeds to negatively impact the PC's life. The IRS starts an audit, records for voting registration get lost or purged, property regulations change in a way inconvenient to their home or business, banks slap additional charges on accounts, etc. In general, the apparatus of government and business turn against the mage, while embroiling every attempt to resolve them in a dense clump of red tape. If the mage wants to avoid their public life being dragged into a bureaucratic quagmire, they'll have to find out what spirit vexes...

[Bluecho]

I imagine when you reach rank 5, you get to the level of being able to create intelligent undead (the animating process becomes complex enough to exceed mere unthinking automatons).

Another good one: Lichdom. If you reach this level of proficiency with necromancy, you ought to be able to transcend life and death, becoming an undying Lich. May or may not require conjunction with other Spheres/Minor Spheres, but I lean towards few to none other Spheres. After all, a Necromancy Minor Sphere is highly specialized for the purposes of manipulating the barrier of mortality.

...

[Bluecho]

513) Open Channel [Flaw]: A classic among mentalists and mind readers. When the mage opens up a channel to read a person's thoughts, they soon discover that, due to Paradox, they can neither close the channel nor be selective about whose thoughts they receive. Leading the situation wherein the mage becomes a hub for every thought in the vicinity. In an uncrowded location, this merely distracts, as if the mage were overhearing particularly loud individuals talking. In a packed location, however, the mage can be positively deafened by the mental activity. Severity of backlash also affects the Flaw,...

[Bluecho]

72) First Fertile Soil Brandishes Iron To Sunder Evil [Human, Way of the Kensei Monk]:
Yes, that is her actual name. No, it's not weird. At least, it might be by the standards of this strange country.

First Fertile Soil Brandishes Iron To Sunder Evil hailed from a distant land, until her monastery came under attack by a government who disapproved of its teachings. Many monks were slaughtered that day, but others - like Fertile Soil - were clasped in irons and sold into slavery. A buyer in distant lands purchased the lot of them, leading them on a slave ship. Fertile Soil knows...

[Bluecho]

I like to think of the Tal'Mahe'Ra as being the Sabbat's mirror opposite. Both are eclectic mixtures are various factions, "antitribu", and some proprietary bloodlines. Both have members that heavily explore alternative moralities and esoteric fields of study. Both also have members that seriously pursue the destruction of infernalism, while at the same time being more than a little compromised by the infernal on a subtle level (the Sabbat with its Ritae, the True Black Hand with the Molochim Baali). And both pursue a kind of vampiric supremacist agenda. Both even have a cellular structure,...

[Bluecho]

I'm sorry, are you saying that being able to pop out razor sharp claws and rend people asunder is underwhelming? My sincere apologies, but you and I have very different ideas about the value of claws.

Also, if I were to make Spider Climb the base Protean power, I would make it so the vampire doesn't even need to use their hands to do it. They can walk on walls and ceilings as easily as a mortal walks on the floor. Everything from Interview with the Vampire to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (although the last one is questionable, granted) has done that....