84
As with the vampire-to-lawn-chair problem, it involved Matter magick in Mage 1e. One of the examples listed of "coincidental magick" for Matter was "transmuting bullets into air" with the coincidence of "the gun was never loaded." Now, earlier examples in the book of coincidental magick in the book suggested that to be coincidental magick, the coincidence ...
50
In first edition Mage, vampires fell entirely under the sphere of Matter, and changing the shape of matter was available at fairly low levels. (This was referenced in Book of Shadows, the Player's Guide to Mage, in a subhead: "Turning Vampires into Lawn Chairs and Other Works of 'High' Magick" -- although it wasn't a rote.) The notion that a starting mage ...
38
Because of confirmation bias
The act of Awakening is not described as a coherent, logically sound philosophical reasoning that leads the Mage to believe in his paradigm over ones of his peers. Awakening is enlightenment and as such imparts the Mage with an unyielding conviction that this one particular paradigm is right, wholly right and the only one right. ...
34
The most reliable way to reduce the damage caused by sunlight is through the use of the discipline of Fortitude. Fortitude allows you to soak aggravated damage, including that caused by sunlight. According to page 302 of the Vampire 20th Anniversary edition, the difficulty for soaking sunlight while "fully protected by heavy clothes, sunglasses, gloves, and ...
32
Because the world is broken and it's your job to fix it.
The rules are meant to suggest a world where the Technocracy has locked down magick hard — mages are supposed to take every advantage they can, using Willpower and Quintessence to add successes and lower difficulties, take advantage of magickal tools and rotes to modify die pools, and do lots of their ...
31
As usual, there are several grades of response. In order of goodness:
Option 1. Talk to him.
Discuss this concern with him as a fellow adult, outside of game. Bring to his attention that he's behaving like a homicidal maniac rather than the character he claims he's playing (sounds like a good reason to deny him Willpower restoration in WoD, too). ...
31
There's an online article on the homepage of the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries titled "Sex, Society and Medieval Women by N. M. Heckel" (NSFW reading, obviously.)
It is a rather thorough, concise and comprehensive summary that might very well help you with your inquiries, and may even help you and your ST outline your party's take on how ...
31
The Government has no time for small fries like you
Technocracy appears to be a monolithic Big Brother, spying on everyone at all times, but the truth is that their goals can leave even the best among them strained. Even the most oppressive governments are loath to devote precious resources (people, equipment, processor time) to small threats. In fact, such ...
29
The analog to White Wolf and the World of Darkness game lines in the classic World of Darkness setting is the Black Dog Game Factory. They were detailed fully in Subsidiaries: A Guide To Pentex, although there are earlier references in other books. The staffers described therein are parodies of the employees of White Wolf, and the entire sourcebook entry is ...
27
Despite the many similarities, they are different games with different systems and settings.
nWoD is a reimagined oWoD. The relationship between the two is much like that between 1970s Battlestar Galactica and 2000s Battlestar Galactica. Some core concepts have been kept, others have been significantly altered while reusing names, and some elements are ...
25
I would say yes, killing another vampire calls for a degeneration roll and may lead to the loss of Humanity.
Vampires (on the path of Humanity, which we're concerned with here) consider themselves, or at least try to consider themselves (at least partially) human - that is what's reflected by their Humanity score. If a vampire strictly and unquestionably ...
24
On Abstract Damage
under no circumstances should you be able to damage the armor wearer unless the attack is made at a not armored part of the body.
Vampire, like many RPGs uses an abstract damage system. This means that a single attack/defense/damage/soak series of rolls represents a much more complex series of actions than a single strike and parry.
...
24
This is a Dementation Advanced Power for 8 dots called Deny. It's from Clanbook Malkavaian (Revised Edition), pg. 64. (Info courtesy of the World of Darkness Wiki.) It would definitely work against stakes, but doesn't extend to sunlight.
The Malkavian using Deny is able to focus away from a certain object so completely that the object ceases to exist in ...
24
UPDATE (2014-07-25): He confirmed!!!
Mark Rein·Hagen himself confirmed that this is a "pretty cool summary" of his strategies. Thanks Mark!
Nothing unusual (which is good!)
From The Gentleman Gamer interview with Mark Rein·Hagen and The Gentleman Gamer Interviews Justin Achilli, developer of Vampire: The Masquerade, it is clear that White Wolf have always ...
24
Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition.
The sourcebook explicitly tells that there is no "fixed" canon history, you can play as you want to (the Avatar Storm didn't happen etc.), but it does contain a set of events and circumstances that it considers "the base assumption". They give some background to the world until the publication of the book in ...
23
As a "mathy" person, Entropy is my favorite Sphere. Entropy, at its core, is the manipulation of probability. By increasing or decreasing the likelihood of an event occurring, the mage can twist reality into getting what they want. And because you're just changing chance, from the outside, you're just incredibly lucky, and so most effects will be ...
23
Explicitly so.
As said on page 16 of the 20th Anniversary rules:
Once a vampire is Embraced, her looks are frozen in time. Her skin will be unnaturally cold to the touch and become paler as she ages, but she will look the same in a thousand years as she does on the night of her Embrace.
In fact, there's even a Tremere Thaumaturgy ritual (Rebirth of ...
23
Because they can't eat anything else.
A vampire's (effective) generation has a significant effect on their power level in a variety of ways. This includes the maximum amount of vitae they can hold, the amount of vitae they can spend in a single round, and the maximum value their attributes can reach.
Lower (more powerful) generation has a drawback, however:...
22
As a rule of thumb, assume that there is one vampire for every 100,000
mortals. (...) The cities could certainly hold more Kindred, but there
are legitimate fears of discovery. (...) Despite this, however, there are currently far too many Kindred for the mortal population to support; the ranks of the anarchs have swelled to unprecendented proportions.
– ...
21
I think you have already come with a lot of ideas. I am going to take a more general approach.
The airport is like a strategic resource for kindred, and also for any power trying to take control of the city.
Kindred politics
As you have said, the airport is a potential entry point for enemy kindred (sabbat, anarchs, enemies of the prince,...). For that ...
20
Disclaimer: not sure, but I'll find this funny ^^
On TVTropes under the Table Top section examples we find this
In Mage: The Ascension this is a popular method of stopping a bullet,
since it is entirely coincidental if done properly (and thus incurs no
Paradox) - as long as an observer cannot be fully certain the mage
didn't have a Bible or ...
20
Stunt Dice
This comes from Exalted. Give them a bonus of +1 to +3 dice when they're:
Trying things that they haven't done before
Describing their actions with flair and flavor
Do not give the bonus for actions that they repeat over and over, or that are conventional approaches to the problem. Feel out how many dice to give by how impressive the ...
19
Attributes & Abilities
Awareness has been added as a Talent.
Dodge has been removed as a skill; its former functionality has been moved to Athletics.
Security has also been removed; its former functionality has been subsumed by the Larceny skill and the Technology knowledge.
Linguistics is no longer a skill; each language known is a 1-dot Merit instead. ...
19
I'm going to copy from another answer of mine regarding changes between Revised and the 20th Anniversary edition.
Potence and Celerity have been significantly altered. Each now adds a passive bonus (at no vitae cost) to their governing physical attribute; you add your dots as extra dice in pools using Strength and Dexterity, respectively. In addition, ...
19
Generally speaking, yes, but there are some exceptions
Hair, beard and other features return each dawn to the state they were when the Embrace. If a vampire cut his hair or shave himself, the next night will awake with the same appearance as the previous nights.
There are, though, some exceptions:
Vampires turn paler as the grow old, except Assamites that ...
19
Only material I know that deals with this theme is The Hunters Hunted ©1992 by White Wolf.
There is newer edition of it. I don't own it, don't have access to it, so what follows is based on the old one. But it is THE book about killing supernaturals (especially vampires) using mortal means.
Page 28 describes The Heavy Firepower Method, only hunt method ...
19
Vampire the Masquerade rulebook on Committing Diablerie (p. 225) states the following:
A vampire seeking to commit diablerie must drain all the blood from his Kindred victim. Following this act, the vampire must continue to suck, for (according to Kindred legend) the very soul is withdrawn from the victim's body and taken into the diablerist's. The effort ...
19
Yes, Having the level in a discipline allows you all the powers of that level or under, so at level 4 in a discipline you have the powers listed under 1,2,3 & 4. Evidence for this case in abscence of 'rules as written' (which I'm sure exist somewhere):
In the world of darkness systems where this isn't true (hunter, for example), it's made abundantly ...
18
What's missing here is an application of paradigm. Every mage believes with absolute clarity and certainty that the world works in accordance with the laws of magick as described by their tradition (or, in the case of orphans, the stuff that the School of Hard Knocks has taught them) — that application of will is how spells are cast and magick gets done. ...
18
Don't show more than you have to
Unless you have a very good reason not to, keep appearances of the various supernatural creatures very rare. For example, in a VtM game you have, by default, an excellent reason to have lots of vampire NPCs because the PCs are vampires and the setting encourages them to find each other and interact. However, there is no ...
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