Some of these seem like 6+ Dot (Skill Level, restricted/hard capped to 5 for normal games) abilities and outside the scope of most events that aren't earth-shattering. But, yhea. Mages are bullshit cheaters in general, even at lower levels of power. There's a very good reason their antagonistic mechanic is called Paradox because they regularly break the natural laws' spine over their knee. Mixing splatbooks is not recommended even if the core rules are the same. A more narrative-based approach, probably easier too adapt the power levels, but if you want to play a spellcasting character there's always the Tremere, or Tzimisce, to fill that role.
Some are, though things like control major forces is still a standard power, Entropy has spells obtainable for players that are: Affect Thought: The mage can affect synapses within a target's brain, causing random behavior. Shape Memes: The mage can infuse ideas itself with entropic energy, changing, evolving, bringing them to prominence, or discarding them as he sees fit. Binding Oath: The mage can create a geas, an oath that will bring terrible misfortune on anyone who breaks it. Control Probability(A level two power by the way): The mage can influence Patterns with Entropic energy, which allows them to control the outcome of simple events (like altering a dice throw). Obtainable correspondence powers: Rend Space: Allows a mage to create permanent portals to any location within the Tellurian. Co-locate Self: By causing their own Pattern to manifest in several perceived spaces, the mage can appear to exist in multiple places at once. Through the adjacent use of the Mind and Life Sphere, the appearance can interact and think just as the mage would. Ward: The mage can isolate forces, spaces, objects, or people into their own tiny realms with the use of various auxiliary Spheres. Mutate Localities: Allows a mage to bend space according to their will, altering sizes and volumes, stretching distances and willfully manipulating any objects that appear in space. Co-Locate Space: Allows a mage to merge chunks of space together, superimposing location on each other instead of creating a portal. And pretty much all of the time powers the player can use. Time travel, bullet time, rewind, the ability to see the past and future(Both count as the same power). The only one that doesn't seem all that good is their first dot ability which literally just tells them what time it is. That's it. But it also lets them automatically know of any distortion or interference with anything in the time stream so... The Sword of Malkav: Change a fundamental truth of a target with an idea of your own and make them unable to fathom that the new truth could be false This would be an advanced old blood vampire power. Phobia: Make someone irrationally afraid of something. That's a level seven power only obtainable for elite class vampires. This is a standard mage power: Control Subconscious: Allows a mage to rewrite a subject's personality and beliefs totally. So yeah. Even a standard mage is just "I can do everything the other races can BUT BETTER." Except for maybe Antediluvian's who have the power of plot device. https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Plot_Device Which basically is the same power Mangeto has in memes, that they can just do whatever the hell they want as long as they're talking about magnets while doing it. But yeah. Witches seem to suffer the dnd thing of just kind of being overtly broken(The trade off being you need to live long enough to get to the end levels, but it's usually not that big of a problem to overcome.) Not that the high end vampires aren't powerful, but they usually have to commit to a specific route instead of just having everything. I don't know about werewolf or fairy powers. There's also a thing called Beasts that I don't know anything about, but may look into. I wouldn't recommend trying to incorporate all these things though, except maybe for enemies. A group of hunters tracking down the supernatural could be given more than a few targets that way, I think. I don't know what Tjf plans for a story. If players decide they want to do a specific race or clan of something, then I feel lit's only fair they provide the sources and info to give details on what it means. Up to the GM what's allowed and what isn't though. Just seems like mages at any length are really hard to work around(Except maybe for the Aegis Kai Doru, the one highly specific hunter conspiracy to mage killing at the expense of not being good at fighting anything else. Kind of like the Cainite Heresy which pretty much exclusively hunts vampires.) I'll make an information post pertaining to given a brief outline of hunter factions and what they're all about and what they do later so people don't need to flip through too much to know what they may be up against or what they want to do.
Posting a concept character, we'll see how things work out once Tjf posts more information. Change a few things at the end, and she can be adapted into a hunter. Imani Taylor Image Link Affiliation: Camarilla Clan: Tremere or Brujah Background: The priest's hellfire and brimstone sermons were meant to scare the children away from being influenced by the satanic forces active in society. It had the opposite effect on Imani. Her fundamentalist Christian upbringing didn't tame this curiosity, instead often feeding it by the wild and vivid descriptions of everything that could lead you into sin, be it witchcraft or roleplaying games, that made them seem so exciting. Nothing ever came from playing heavy metal music backward, no hidden messages, and no demons were summoned, but that didn't seem to matter for the growing young woman who submerged herself in neopagan and New Age culture. Although never quite embracing it as a true believer, it became her home away from home. Her studies followed the same direction. After emerging from the underfunded public education system with good enough grades to apply for university, she began studying art and literary history with a focus on the paranormal. Imani's family had disowned their rebellious black sheep by this point, so she funded her own way through with loans and money she made from the odd job and starring in porn. Eventually, she graduated and left to make her own way in life. Spending a few years moving between employment in museums, and a brief stint at her old university, she eventually abandoned the career opportunities that lay ahead of her and set up her own business, enticed by the freedom of self-employment. A small corner store shop, selling paranormal paraphernalia like crystals and herbs with supposed healing capabilities and the like along with the collection of books on a number of esoteric topics. She also offered other services like identifying the age and origin of pieces of art and much they'd sell for, other times finding them for clients, things in line with her education. Not enough to make her rich, but enough to pay her loans with a little set aside after each month. Setting down her roots in the community, she also involved herself in local politics, volunteering at the soup kitchen, and even lead a self-defense class in her free time. One of her frequent customers was a vampire, though she didn't know it until it was too late. They were always making especially troublesome requests, with a number of conditions that should've scared her away and told her what they were doing wasn't normal. But, just like when she had been a child, it just drew her further in. Everything they brought for identification or she was asked to find was different from the usual junk others came to her with and with the secrecy behind it all... A few too many questions were eventually answered and she figured it out, and after confronting the vampire she was offered a choice. Death or undeath. She chose the latter.
I don’t what Tjf’s plan is either. I know it’s going to be a bitch when I get to recording the vampire clans for the thread. I’m still not sure how attributes and stuff will actually factor in for this, so a lot of more detailed mechanics and points don’t matter too much, I think. Tremere is probably one of the better clans especially when not limited to a standard system that holds back some of their better powers.
Cool character. Seems to lean Tremere, at least to me. It's going to be simplified, probably not unlike the character creation I've already done.
*Sighs* Finally finished up streamlining the info on Hunters. That took a while. It's missing some of the more die roll based things, but it covers all the bases most players would need to know.
I mean, most people are only going to need to know about 20% of it. Though I think the general rule they have is right. Hunters aren’t usually going to strength match a lot of vampires by stats alone, but they usually get more to invest in skills. Maybe something like that might help trying to think of a system? Edit: I'm ignoring Hunters: Reckoning which involves the imbued hunters with supernatural powers...but none of it is especially interesting. All of them have some form of supernatural gift in the form of Edges, but none of them are especially cool or interesting. Even players don't care enough about Reckoning to extensively record it on wikis or sites, in favor of the improved and overhauled version of Vigil instead.
Wouldn't disagree, has at least a bit of a foot in both camps so some flexibility depending on what I feel like playing and what other types of characters other people have. Doing impressive work so far. Read and very much appreciated. A lot of comes down to Thaumaturgy/Blood Sorcerery and its sheer versatility and as an investigative tool together with their easy access to Auspex and Dominate. Make for pretty good detective characters.
I imagine it will balance out due to vampires have access to blood powers and all. Also all the research into lore gave me some thoughts on more defining Jeanne's hunter group. Spoiler: The pirate conspiracy (Custom) The Dutchmen: The main focus is destroying what goes against the natural way of things. Oddly, they see werewolves as a natural species and are content to leave them be unless they're actively hurting people. As far as mages go, they're only expressly interested in hunting mages or witches committing things like human experimentation and their magic can be accepted as a natural part of themselves. Faeries are natural beings and can be even on shockingly good terms with a few, though they will still target malicious fae-folk and generally assume that while they truly don't want to fight the Faeries, the Faeries themselves don't truly believe that and are will undermine their efforts against the real menaces, leading to a lot of the Dutchmen to act out due to the constant paranoia of fairy trickery. It's not helped by the evil fairies who may knowingly play into the paranoia to create chaos. The more sociable fairies realize that this only fuels the idea that they can't be trusted further, but there's always one or two of their kind who will play tricks or be hostile against them anyway, purely for the amusement or believing it's necessary to protect themselves, creating a vicious cycle of one expecting the other to turn completely hostile, right the moment where they might start to finally open up and trust the other. Vampires abuse humans and conduct all kinds of experiments as well as use people for their own amusement, and therefore have to actually die. Unlike some other groups, they know vampires define themselves differently and have a clan based system, even if they don't have a grasp on the finer points of what it means. They acknowledge some vampires are reluctant or good natured, but they find the Giovanni and Venture clans abhorrent and won't tolerate the idea of sparing them. Giovanni for it's practice in necromancy and pretty much by even other vampire clans agreeing the Venture are terrible. However, they especially revile the Tzmisce. Their clan and everything they do cannot be allowed to ever exist. Given even a good deal of vampires would actually welcome the Tzmisce wiped out, not many are actually against this part of their agenda, specifically. Their feelings about the Tremere is they can't be trusted for their blood magic ways. Nosferatu only need to be looked at to know they're cursed. Whether or not their victims or abominations is a split issue inside the conspiracy. Malkavians are prisoners of their own mind and it's better to just put the poor bastards out of their misery. Really. It's easier for them to think of all the reasons to why a vampire should die rather than reasons to spare them. They don't know or understand what Prometheans are exactly. They just know it's wrong. They're inherent abominations to be destroyed. Probably the biggest target of their aggression, they won't stop to think if the Frankenstein like monster could be peaceful and can often just make things worse. It's also possible that they can be entirely right that the monstrosity before them, really is just that. Some members will even call them tragic victims by their creation, but know they are the enemy to the natural forces and must be destroyed. To a degree, they respect Prometheans undertaking the goal to become real, which they attribute to something "being like Pinocchio", with the intention of joining the natural order, but there is little ways for one of them to prove this is their goal rather than just saying it to avoid being hunted, making it a controversial topic between the group, though most newer members are pushing for a change to relax their policies on the created race. However, given veteran members who had made attempts to let some go in the past only for them to become berserk later, the ideas for change are met with a lot of pushback. Aside from the supernatural, they aren't fond of human testing, though they avoid trying to take human life when they can and want to expose these crimes to cause the most damage to government divisions and companies that do this. They may be other hunters, but because of this, the Dutchmen despise the Cherion Group and everything they are. They're actively looking to create abominations and their company needs to be dismantled. They also consider the Ashwood Abbey to be reprehensible and acceptable targets who don't truly count as people. Sport hunters like the Bear Lodge are met with distaste by most members, though there is a few of the Dutchmen who also hunt for the adrenaline, but any fun should only be taken when it's saving people from actual threats instead of their main focus. They do have a respect for the Lucifurge trying to redeem themselves and things like the work that the Talbot Group does or other groups who focus on the protection of the community. As for how they're ran, cells have captains, much like their pirate origins. Elected officials, the reasoning a cell may elect their leader can vary, but they win their seat by democratic vote. Following the pirate code of their ancestors, it's expected to be adhered to and what punishments are given for breaking it is up to the respective cell leader. 1. Do not put yourself before the common good of your crew. 2. Do not steal or kill from other members of the crew. 3. No matter how much you like or hate someone, they have the same voting power and right to expression of actions as any other crew member. 4. The position of a Captain is strictly as an elective official and can be revoked either by nominating a new leader or word of the Commodores. 5. Always keep your equipment ready and maintained for action on a moments notice. 6. The loss of a limb in action will result in full compensation from the cell. 7. Abandoning your crew in time of need will be punished severely and execution is premissable in these circumstances. Pending a hearing and discussion by the crew of action and consequence to be taken. The cells report to the commodores. Commondores report to the Rear Admiral, who go to the Vice Admiral, then the handful of Admirals who report to the Fleet Admiral themselves. Next to nobody but the Admirals know what the top dog of the ranks look like, but some speculate it may be Blackbeard himself, trying to atone for his attempts at seeking immortality. The Admirals are all direct descendants of pirates, so the possibility is speculated though it’s maintained by some members the Fleet Admiral is the literal Flying Dutchman himself, not quite dead or alive after his involuntary participation in experiments for eternal life. The last theory is generally liked more because “it’s cooler” though only a select few members know if it’s true. I’ll try to come up with endowments later when I can sleep.
So, I've been playing around with character creation ideas. I'm thinking of doing something like this, tell me if it's too complicated, or if I'm shit at explaining: Name: Portrait/Appearance: Occupation: Personality: History: Sire (A brief description of the vampire that turned your character. N/A if playing a hunter): Clan (Hunter group for hunters. You can create one, or pick from the list Auraicide provided) Stats: So this is where it gets a little bit more complicated. Stats are divided into two different areas, Attributes and Skills. Attributes reflect things that are innate about your character, like strength and intelligence, whilst skills are abilities that your character has learned. For example, raw strength is an attribute, whereas knowledge of how to fight is a skill. Both combine to make various actions more likely to succeed. Attributes are subdivided into three categories, physical, social and mental, which are themselves divided into three areas you can spend points on: Physical attributes: Strength - raw physical strength. Dexterity - speed and ease of movement, covering both full body movement (i.e. gymnastics) and hand-eye coordination. Stamina - physical hardiness, including resistance to disease and physical trauma and how fast you can recover. Social attributes: Charisma - how you come across to others socially; how you conduct yourself in public when not actively interacting with others. Manipulation - how easily you bend others to your will, either through persuasion or threats. Appearance - your level of attractiveness; may be raised temporarily with clothing or other adornment. Mental attributes: Intelligence - memory and raw brain power. Perception - your ability to notice things, to perceive the world around you, through all your senses. Wits - quickness of thinking; measures how easily you make leaps of logic or intuition. Players rank the priority of each category, which in turn determines how many points they have to spend on each. The categories are rated: Primary: 7 points Secondary: 5 points Tertiary: 3 points So, if I pick physical attributes as my primary, I have seven points to spend on physical attributes. If I pick Social attributes as my secondary, I have five points to spend on social attributes, and thus I then have three to spend on mental attributes. Skills are also divided into three groups: Physical Skills often represent personal experience and training. Athletics - sports and movement Brawl - unarmed combat Drive - operating automobiles under rough conditions Firearms - identifying, using, and maintaining firearms and bows. Larceny - picking locks, burglary, bypassing security, sleight of hand, etc Stealth - moving silently and unnoticed Survival - enduring harsh environments Mental Skills often represent knowledge from formal education. Academics - knowledge in Arts and Humanities Computer - computer programs and operating systems Crafts - constructing, crafting, and repairing objects Investigation - solving riddles and finding evidence Medicine - physiology, anatomy, and medical treatments Occult - lore about the supernatural Politics - political processes and bureaucratic maneuvers Science - physical and natural sciences Social Skills often represent practiced and honed natural knack. Animal Ken - understanding animal minds and behaviors Empathy - observing emotions and understanding viewpoints Expression - art of communication and entertainment Intimidation - coercing via force and threat Persuasion - convincing others and inspiring their emotions Streetwise - navigating urban streets and gathering intel there Subterfuge - deceiving others and noticing attempts to deceive you Players also pick a primary, secondary and tertiary category of skills to determine the number of points they have to spend, in this case the points associated are: Primary: 13 points Secondary: 9 points Tertiary: 5 points Players can increase each of these skills and abilities to five. Zero points indicates that you're a complete layman in that area, while five points indicates that you're a master. For example: Someone with zero points in the Drive skill would know to operate a motor vehicle, but can't safely do much more than drive it around at the speed limit. Having five points in drive indicates that you're so good at driving that you could be a professional racer, capable of speeding and doing stunts easily. Each player also starts with one free point in resources (effectively your money and assets - net worth) that can be increased during the rp as they obtain wealth. If your character is a vampire, they also have two more characteristics: Disciplines: Disciplines are the special powers available to you, determined by your clan. Each clan has three, and they can be found on the wiki: https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Discipline_(VTM) Assamite - Celerity, Obfuscate, Quietus Brujah - Celerity, Potence, Presence Gangrel - Animalism, Fortitude, Protean Followers of Set - Obfuscate, Presence, Serpentis Giovanni - Dominate, Necromancy, Potence Lasombra - Dominate, Obtenebration, Potence Malkavian - Auspex, Dementation, Obfuscate Nosferatu - Animalism, Obfuscate, Potence Ravnos - Animalism, Chimerstry, Fortitude Toreador - Auspex, Celerity, Presence Tremere - Auspex, Dominate, Thaumaturgy Tzimisce - Animalism, Auspex, Vicissitude Ventrue - Dominate, Fortitude, Presence You start out with three points to spend on them, and each can be increased to rank five. As hunters are humans, without these powers, they instead have three extra points each to spend on attributes and skills.
Perfectly fine for me. But, I am familiar with the system used in WoD games already that this has been derived from, so could be biased.
Getting back to this. 1) Usually you make a skill check by combining an Attribute+Skill to form the dice pool. Firing a Sniper from a sniper's nest may be a Perception+Firearms whereas shooting a pistol in a chaitic firefight would be Dexterity+Firearms. Since we aren't making those here, do you still want us to indicate what we'd like to combine (justifying it in the In-Character description of the action) for you to gauge the success of our character's actions? Or leave it up to you to make that determination behind the scenes. 2) Fortitude, Potency, and Celerity. Without any overt skill checks, how would you like to handle these since they provide mainly a passive boost (Celerity being a kind of exception)? What would the difference be between a character with Strength 3, Potency 1, one with Strength 3, and a third with Strength 4? 3) Disciplines. Would we be limited by the three tied to the clan, or could we chose those outside of it, possibly with some restriction? 4) Activating a Discipline often requires drawing from an internal store of blood. And doing so tend to make you hungry. Will you be keeping this aspect, and if so, how would we track our character's hunger? In-story nudging? A stat? Something else?
1: No, just write out what your character is trying to do, and I'll judge whether their stats make it feasible. If anyone sincerely wants to, we can maybe do dice rolls, but so far I'm planning to do it as in previous games. 2: Give me a moment to properly decide 3: Upon character creation, you only have the three disciplines of your clan, but you can gain other disciplines in the game through narrative. Eg: If you befriend a Tremere, they might teach a non-Tremere some thaumaturgy (bad example because they're very secretive, but still a possible scenario). 4: Yes, the vampires will all have a blood meter that decreases over time and with power use, and has to be refilled by feeding. (At first, feeding will be in detail, to establish how your character goes about it, but will then become more abstract and less time consuming).
Name: Jeannette Vaugrenard Profession(Note: Vampires can have occupations, but it's not the same as a Hunter with a profession. See info in the oversimplified thread): Lifeguard/Swimming Coach(Custom): Athletics and Medicine Group: Conspiracy: The Dutchmen Background: Spoiler: Info Background: In the old era of colonial times, if it wasn't enough that the vampires were running rampant to drain people dry, the commoners were getting bled dry by the crushing boot of the crown. Born under the heel of oppression and forced into the navy of the majesty's army, so many found the conditions unbearable that they found themselves asking "Why serve the crown for food when I can simply take it?" The age of piracy had began. And with it, the rise of legends like Edward Teach and Francis Drake. Men immortalized for their earthly deeds, but ultimately with the cold realization they were just men all the same. Dread pirates from all the seven seas gathered together trying to think of a way to overcome their mortal bonds, resorting to any desperate means they could find to circumnavigate their inevitable deaths. Eventually, after a few generations passed, one of them stood out. And claimed they had succeeded. Not becoming a vampire like Edward or deal with the devil as Drake had done, but rather, using their own funds and means to create a cure for the mortal condition. The legendary pirate queen, not having aged a day since that meeting, relayed her discovery to the rest and the descendants of those who didn't find a solution to extend their lives. At first, the crews of new pirates who hadn't made any pacts were excited about the prospect of eternal life. But then the captain revealed the process behind how she did it. Edward had his men burn the lab down out of disgust. Drake, however, saw nothing wrong with the discovery. If it was eternal youth, who cares how someone got it? A piratical civil war broke out between pirate lords, much of their former crews now calling for a mutiny, no longer able to abide Drake's cruelty, and the legend of the Flying Dutchmen was born. Pirates looking to return the souls of the dead to where they belong. Jeanette's ancestor is still alive and well as far as the order is concerned and while Jeanette had never met her, she grew up on the stories she was raised by. Like most of the order, she uses much of her wealth acquired from her ancestors doing questionable things now as a weapon against them, pooling it into resources to fight back against those who would dare commit crimes to the natural way of life. Attributes(+3(Hunter): Primary: 7 points Secondary: 5 points Tertiary: 3 points Physical(Secondary) attributes: Strength - ● Dexterity - ●●● Stamina - ● Social(Tertiary) attributes: Charisma - ● Manipulation - ● Appearance(Hunter+3) - ●●●● Mental(Primary) attributes: Intelligence - ● Perception - ●●● Wits - ●●● Skills(+3(Hunter): Primary: 13 points Secondary: 9 points Tertiary: 5 points Physical(Secondary) Skills often represent personal experience and training. (Profession+1)Athletics - ●●● Brawl - ● Drive - Firearms(Hunter+1)- ●●●●● (Hunter+2)Larceny - ●● Stealth - ●● Survival - Mental(Primary) Skills often represent knowledge from formal education. Academics - ● Computer - ●● Crafts - ●● Investigation - ●●●● Medicine - ●● Occult -●● Politics - Science - Social(Tertiary)Skills often represent practiced and honed natural knack. Animal Ken - Empathy - Expression - Intimidation - Persuasion - ●● Streetwise - ● Subterfuge - ●● Some helpful things for hunters: https://wodan.obsidianportal.com/wiki_pages/profession-style-professional-training http://fallcoast.net/wiki/Mortal/Professional_Training
