Countermagick and Vampires
LEONARD Daniel
A friend of mine, who like more mage then vamp, has come with a rule about
vamps and magick. Everyone knows that with the right combination, a mage
can turn a vampire in a chair or do many thing as sily.
Since , in my eyes, a vamp in defenition is unchangeable (hairs no longer
grow and other stuf like that), I employ the term 'stuck in time'.
(nothing to do with Zathras). They are 'stability' by excellence. This
argument apply even more as long as the vamp ages.
Although it is say that many magickal feats again super. roll again their
willpower, my friend added something else.
For every generation better than 11th, the vamp get 1 dice of
countermagick. But this dice is involuntary and might be roll by the ST
anytime an effect is directed at the vampire (I tend to add specifictly at
the vamp, but it is ST call). This is to reflect that they are stability
incarnate and the curse (blessing?) of God to Caine.
Comment?
*******************************************************
* *
*Daniel Leonard *
* *
* www : http://www.jsp.umontreal.ca/~leonard *
* *
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"Total freedom means total responsability"
-Dominique, Children of the Inquisition
Kevin Andrew Murphy
LEONARD Daniel <leo...@JSP.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
>A friend of mine, who like more mage then vamp, has come with a rule about
>vamps and magick. Everyone knows that with the right combination, a mage
>can turn a vampire in a chair or do many thing as sily.
>Since , in my eyes, a vamp in defenition is unchangeable (hairs no longer
>grow and other stuf like that), I employ the term 'stuck in time'.
>(nothing to do with Zathras). They are 'stability' by excellence. This
>argument apply even more as long as the vamp ages.
>Although it is say that many magickal feats again super. roll again their
>willpower, my friend added something else.
>For every generation better than 11th, the vamp get 1 dice of
>countermagick. But this dice is involuntary and might be roll by the ST
>anytime an effect is directed at the vampire (I tend to add specifictly at
>the vamp, but it is ST call). This is to reflect that they are stability
>incarnate and the curse (blessing?) of God to Caine.
>Comment?
There are still a dozen ways around this, among them the "Paris is
lovely this time of year" rote whereby you teleport the annoying vamp
to the observation deck of the Eifel tower. (Correspondence 4).
Assuming you're anywhere in the New World at the time, it'll be
daylight in Paris and the tourists will get the treat of seeing
someone appear and undergo spontaneous human combustion.
Or the "Vampire in Apsic" rote (Matter 2 + Prime 2, depending on
paradigm) whereby you say, "Fine. You're unchangeable, immutable,
etc. But the air around you isn't. I think I'll change it into high
density Jell-O."
Of course, those are vulgar, but there are a number of simple,
non-vulgar ways a beginning mage can take out even an Elder. Remember
the old prank phone call "I know who you are and I saw what you
did...."? Well, try it as a rote -- Correspondence 2, Mind 2. Tag a
mental beacon on the damn vampire you want to get rid of, then go out
wandering through your dreams and into other peoples and drop helpful
hints about the nasty old vamps whereabouts into the dreams of
hunters, sleeping Garou, anyone sufficiently nasty....
So they think they received a divine revelation from the Virgin Mary
or Gaia. They believe in those anyway, so it's Hallelujah, pass the
ammo, and say goodbye to that annoying old bloodsucker.
If you're a virtual adept, you can do the same thing with more mundane
phonecalls, calling people in the middle of the night with anonymous
tips.
Simple, easy, stylish and paradox-free. Taking out a vampire is no
big deal.
But it's fun to occasionally change them into lawnchairs or
gingerbread men just because you can. Yes, there's paradox, but you
need to occasionally remind the Tremere of exactly what they gave up.
If Viscissitude fleshcrafting doesn't heal back, then neither should
transmutation into gingerbread. Or at least that's my take on it.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Author of assorted Goth weirdness
New fiction available at:
http://www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy
JBRocky
Have to agree on one point. If you turn a Vampire into chese he stays
that way. Remeber the Mage change reality. However there would be a
nasty paradox backlash.
However killing a Vampire is never easy not even for you MegaMage
types. It can be done ut you have to work at it. I run a character under
the Elysium rules so lets se how he would handle a mage. Lets se he could
use Dominate 3 meserism so that every time the mage thought about using
magick he would do nothing but laugh. He could obfuscate and appear next
to the Mage and just rip him to pieces. Oh what the heck he could just
use celerity and just give the Mage lead poisining. forgot to mention he
has Majesty so that might just be a problem. With his presence he could
make the Mage a sweet as a little puppy and the shoot him.
This is just what one Vmpire could do. Basicly any Mage or Vampire
could kill the other. It just depends on who uses their powers to take
advantage of the others diadvantages.
Robert Christopher
Archon, Clan Ventrue
Kevin Andrew Murphy
jbr...@aol.com (JBRocky) wrote:
> Have to agree on one point. If you turn a Vampire into chese he stays
>that way. Remeber the Mage change reality. However there would be a
>nasty paradox backlash.
Not so terribly nasty. The Elder vamp isn't likely to have any
sleepers around, so you'll get only one pip, maybe two, easily burnt
off with something like the old "milk curdling" flaw. ("I see," say
the paradox spirits, "if it's cheese you want, cheese you'll get...")
> However killing a Vampire is never easy not even for you MegaMage
>types. It can be done ut you have to work at it.
Of course, but that's the danger of it. One patient, pissed little
newbie mage, with sufficient time, will be able to take down anyone.
The worst case for anyone is if the mage escapes and goes back and
locks herself in her sanctum then gets out the voodoo dolls.
> I run a character under
>the Elysium rules so lets se how he would handle a mage. Lets se he could
>use Dominate 3 meserism so that every time the mage thought about using
>magick he would do nothing but laugh.
Which could be countermagicked.
> He could obfuscate and appear next
>to the Mage and just rip him to pieces.
At which point you might allow the mage to roll Wits + Intuition to
see whether immediate teleportation to Tahiti and damn the paradox
might not be a good idea...
> Oh what the heck he could just
>use celerity and just give the Mage lead poisining. forgot to mention he
>has Majesty so that might just be a problem.
Yes, but Majesty doesn't work at range....
> With his presence he could
>make the Mage a sweet as a little puppy and the shoot him.
While at the same time the mage turns him into the worlds sweetest,
most charming little puppy which can't hold a gun.
> This is just what one Vmpire could do.
Or one mage.
> Basicly any Mage or Vampire
>could kill the other. It just depends on who uses their powers to take
>advantage of the others diadvantages.
True enough. The short answer is that in any surprise situation, the
vampire wins. But in any instance where the mage has time to prepare,
the vamps are screwed if the mage has even half a clue what he's
doing.
Last mage/vamp game I played in, my Dreamspeaker lawyer realized he
was going to be walking into a den of vampires and he needed
protection. A quick desperate prayer at the hospital's chapel got him
the protection of St. Sebastian so long as he kept a candle burning,
for which purpose he went and bought one of the big Hallmark 3-day
specials.
What did the Spirit 2 spell do? Well, it put a bright blazing aura on
him which told every vampire "Hi. You so much as lay a finger on this
guy you'll be on my shit list for the rest of eternity. <signed> St.
Sebastian."
It did a few other things too, but then a pact with a major Umbrood
will do that. The elder vampire he ran into just about passed purple
twinkies when he came into the office, since while he didn't know
quite what the aura was, it was the last thing he wanted to deal with.
Of course, he wasn't turning the elder into gingerbread either, but
things like Umbrood pacts are one of the MANY reasons that the last
thing a vampire wants to do is kill a mage. Death curses are another.
After all, if I'm already dying, I might as well scream, "Paradox take
me away! I want him to be a floppy-eared puppy dog for the rest of
eternity!"
Bamm! Dead mage, and a cute little immortal puppy with Majesty.
JBRocky
Basicly we are both right but I have one disagreement and one
question.
A Mage won't necessarily win if he prepares ahead of time. Vamps can do
this too. Remeber some of them have lived a long time, and they don't get
this far without prior planning. But if the Mage does a better job
scratch one Vamp, also the reverse is true.
question: How does a mage use Countermagick on a Vampire discipline.
They don't even know what's happening.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
jbr...@aol.com (JBRocky) wrote:
> Basicly we are both right but I have one disagreement and one
>question.
> A Mage won't necessarily win if he prepares ahead of time. Vamps can do
>this too. Remeber some of them have lived a long time, and they don't get
>this far without prior planning. But if the Mage does a better job
>scratch one Vamp, also the reverse is true.
True. The smarter and luckier character rises to the top.
> question: How does a mage use Countermagick on a Vampire discipline.
>They don't even know what's happening.
The same way they countermagick another mage's Mind effect, even if
they don't know what's happening. If I try to magickally enslave you
with Dominate or with Mind 4 it doesn't matter--a character with Mind
1 can resist by rolling his Arete, with a possible additional boost
from Wits + Meditation. The best example of this are the MiBs: "These
are my orders and I will follow them to the letter...." The call of
duty will force them to do what they were planning to do, no matter
how much it might pain or frighten them. And this is a Mind 1
effect.
Nyarlathotep
In article
<Pine.SGI.3.95.970130...@epsom.jsp.umontreal.ca>, LEONARD
Daniel <leo...@JSP.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
> A friend of mine, who like more mage then vamp, has come with a rule about
> vamps and magick. Everyone knows that with the right combination, a mage
> can turn a vampire in a chair or do many thing as sily.
>
> Since , in my eyes, a vamp in defenition is unchangeable (hairs no longer
> grow and other stuf like that), I employ the term 'stuck in time'.
> (nothing to do with Zathras). They are 'stability' by excellence. This
> argument apply even more as long as the vamp ages.
>
> Although it is say that many magickal feats again super. roll again their
> willpower, my friend added something else.
>
> For every generation better than 11th, the vamp get 1 dice of
> countermagick. But this dice is involuntary and might be roll by the ST
> anytime an effect is directed at the vampire (I tend to add specifictly at
> the vamp, but it is ST call). This is to reflect that they are stability
> incarnate and the curse (blessing?) of God to Caine.
>
> Comment?
A simple one word answer: FORTITUDE. Soak the mages successes
(Fortitude only, Vulgar effects included) before rolling willpower (This
also applies to Garou with Luna's Armor, but only the gift successes
count). Fortitude applies to all damaging effects. I personally think my
sudden and uncontrolled trans-
formation into lawn furniture could be considered quite damaging. Hell, it
would (or at least should, since it interrupts life functions) kill a
mortal.
Besides, if Mages can counter-magic any and every Vampiric discipline
(and I hate to think of gift-reliant Bete fighting a guy with Spirit 5!),
then there has to be some defense (aside from the everyman willpower roll)
that applies in the opposite direction.
For what it is worth, this is the system I use in my game (It increases
the value of that defensive discipline/gift that is held by the
Ventrue/Silver Fangs).
--
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Eric Robert Sylwester
Kevin Andrew Murphy (grim...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: jbr...@aol.com (JBRocky) wrote:
: > I run a character under
: >the Elysium rules so lets se how he would handle a mage. Lets se he could
: >use Dominate 3 meserism so that every time the mage thought about using
: >magick he would do nothing but laugh.
[snip]
You're playing an elysium character and this is as subtle as you
can be? Awww...let me tell you how I'd do it.
Get in touch with the Men in Black, and inform them of your
opponent's location. Get into his police record and make him Public Enemy
No.1 Use your political influence to have the government build a highway
where his Sanctum presently is. Put a lein on him (which is
ridiculoulsy easy even in RL). Screw that- have everybody you know
put leins on him. Find anyone he has ever wronged and use
them to sue the pants off him. Booby-trap his car with old-fashioned
TNT. He has intuition? Keep doing it- you may not kill him, but
he'll be constantly annoyed. Not to mention having to spend a lot of time
buying or stealing new cars. Need I go on? Save the direct confrontation
for the garou and other noble savages. Do what leeches do best and remain
behind the scenes.
[snip]
: It did a few other things too, but then a pact with a major Umbrood
: will do that. The elder vampire he ran into just about passed purple
: twinkies when he came into the office, since while he didn't know
: quite what the aura was, it was the last thing he wanted to deal with.
: Of course, he wasn't turning the elder into gingerbread either, but
: things like Umbrood pacts are one of the MANY reasons that the last
: thing a vampire wants to do is kill a mage.
Boy you allow Spirit 2 to do a lot. Any particular reason your average
dreamspeaker- of which there are probably hundreds- can so easily attract
the positive influence of one of the major movers of the universe? Seems
to me this is a bit like a vampire calling up Caine to help him out.
AFAIK, major spirits have better things to do than play bodyguard to a
mortal.
Though on a lesser scale the aura trick is neat. Make your aura
look *really* funky and you're right, someone who can see it may not want
to mess with you just out of caution. Then again, every malkavian within
blocks is going to come at you like fireflys to a lamp.
--
| (#) -Eric
=/ /===_)----- Oh better far to live and die,
\_/ under the brave black flag I fly,
// \\ than play a sanctimonious part,
/ / with a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Eric Robert Sylwester
JBRocky (jbr...@aol.com) wrote:
: question: How does a mage use Countermagick on a Vampire discipline.
: They don't even know what's happening.
Some might, if they know about vampires and know the guy who they
are facing is one. Also, some disciplines are obvious- dominate
and obtenebration, for example, are both pretty hard to ignore.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
hedg...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Eric Robert Sylwester) wrote:
>Boy you allow Spirit 2 to do a lot. Any particular reason your average
>dreamspeaker- of which there are probably hundreds- can so easily attract
>the positive influence of one of the major movers of the universe?
Wits + Theology, Wits + Occult, Wits + Diplomacy. And roleplaying,
not to mention a good Arete roll.
If you follow the rules of theology and myth, only a sincere and
honest prayer will work. My character had one, and knew how to behave
around spirits.
This is the difference between a master shaman and a neophyte. The
master is not the one with Arete 5/Spirit 5. The master is the one
who can speak to the spirits and get them on his side as allies.
Spirit 2 gives you a telephone. You say, "I have Arete 5 so get your
butt over here," all but the wimpiest spirits will laugh and hang up.
Whereas if you beg, plead, cajole and honor the spirits, you'll get a
lot farther.
>Seems
>to me this is a bit like a vampire calling up Caine to help him out.
If you've got Caine's phone number, might as well use it. If you have
a really good reason, he shouldn't mind. If it's just BS, he may get
pissed, but most likely his receptionist will just put you on hold,
laugh, then go on to the next call.
Same thing with saints. If you look at them as the politicos of
Heaven, then they have angels coming to them with a prioritized list
of prayers.
St. Sebastian: "Anything interesting today, Gwendael?"
Gwendael: "Well floods, fires, a request for a cure, and a plea for
protection from vampires by someone who just got bit by one."
St. S: <Looking over prayer on antique gold parchement> "Hmm, not one
of my usual worshippers, but sincere, honest... Postmark says this
came from one of my lesser shrines?"
Gwendael: "Yes, sir."
St. S.: "Well, haven't had a miracle there in a while. Good to keep
up appearances. Extend my standard 'Aura of Benevolence,' nothing
fancy, and tell him it'll last only so long as he keeps a candle
burning to me. After all, if we ignore these pagans, they'll go back
to worshipping those turtle spirits, and we can't have THAT, now can
we?"
Gwendael: "No, sir. I'll see to it right away."
>AFAIK, major spirits have better things to do than play bodyguard to a
>mortal.
It wasn't bodyguard. St. S. just put his Seal on the Dreamspeaker's
aura with a nice bright neon flourish. Any vampire who wanted could
still have killed him. They'd just have to deal with an annoyed
saint.
St. S. <three weeks later> "So, Gwendael, what else?"
Gwendael: "Well, we have a prayer from one of your Templars saying
that he's killed all the 'Evil ones' he can find, and he'd like to
kill a few more for you Glory. Except he can't find any."
St. S. "Hmm. Any spring to mind?"
Gwendael:; "Well, there's the one who cacked the little Dreamspeaker
last week."
St. S. "What? The one who sent me the cute, old-fashioned prayer?
Well, I don't know if that vampire's a 'great' evil, but he's
certainly annoyed ME. Go appear in a vision and give the Templar his
marching orders. Can't have an uppity corpse sneering at MY seal of
protection."
Gwendael: "Yes, Sir!"
> Though on a lesser scale the aura trick is neat. Make your aura
>look *really* funky and you're right, someone who can see it may not want
>to mess with you just out of caution. Then again, every malkavian within
>blocks is going to come at you like fireflys to a lamp.
That's why the seal of a major Umbrood is more useful.
BLAKE 1001
> For every generation better than 11th, the vamp get 1 dice of
> countermagick. But this dice is involuntary and might be roll by the ST
> anytime an effect is directed at the vampire (I tend to add specifictly
>
> Comment?
Perfectly good idea, actually. Of course, you should also let mages
countermagick disciplines, if they have apropriate spheres (fair is
fair). In my own campaign, I added a Discipline that allowed Vampires
to counter or dispel many forms of mage magick (I'll post it if anyone's
interested).
Donald Bachman
Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
magickal attack upon themselves. One wonders exactly why any vampire
would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
under 1st edition rules it wasn't something that even an Arete 6 mage
was likely to be able to pull off short of specializing in performing
that particular act. Under 2nd edition it is even less likely, given
full body transformation of others requires 4-5 successes, and even
assuming such can be explained as Coincidental, will be at high difficulty,
require Matter and Life at non-trivial levels. Shit, the mage required to
perform this act is on par with vampire elders in terms of what type of
experience it would require to buy a starting character up that far.
Do you give your vampires special ways of resisting Methusaleh?
Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
: In article
: <Pine.SGI.3.95.970130...@epsom.jsp.umontreal.ca>, LEONARD
: Daniel <leo...@JSP.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
: > A friend of mine, who like more mage then vamp, has come with a rule about
: > vamps and magick. Everyone knows that with the right combination, a mage
: > can turn a vampire in a chair or do many thing as sily.
: >
: > Since , in my eyes, a vamp in defenition is unchangeable (hairs no longer
: > grow and other stuf like that), I employ the term 'stuck in time'.
: > (nothing to do with Zathras). They are 'stability' by excellence. This
: > argument apply even more as long as the vamp ages.
: >
: > Although it is say that many magickal feats again super. roll again their
: > willpower, my friend added something else.
: >
: > For every generation better than 11th, the vamp get 1 dice of
: > countermagick. But this dice is involuntary and might be roll by the ST
: > anytime an effect is directed at the vampire (I tend to add specifictly at
: > the vamp, but it is ST call). This is to reflect that they are stability
: > incarnate and the curse (blessing?) of God to Caine.
: >
: > Comment?
: A simple one word answer: FORTITUDE. Soak the mages successes
sv...@ll.mit.edu
Eric Robert Sylwester wrote:
> Though on a lesser scale the aura trick is neat. Make your aura
> look *really* funky and you're right, someone who can see it may not
> want to mess with you just out of caution. Then again, every
> malkavian within blocks is going to come at you like fireflys to a
> lamp.
These came to mind while I was thinking about auras...
Mind o Spirit o AURA PERCEPTION
(I'm sure it's in the core rules somewhere, if I bothered to look.
You could also pull this off with just Mind o (the effect 'Pathos') or
just Spirit o ('Spirit Eyes'), but the combination of the two achieves
the color/emotion/spiritual combination that vampires with the Auspex
Discipline are used to seeing.
This one is a favorite with the Cultists...)
Mind o Spirit o WILD MOOD SWINGS
(Really, the 'mood' label is unnecessarily specific. This trick can
be used to manipulate almost any aspect of the caster's aura, provided
he/she has some familiarity with the emotion/feeling/color(s) being
simulated -- a eunuch, for instance, may simply be unable to grasp or
exactly imitate the 'feeling' and 'color' of sexual arousal, and a real
cold, cruel Ebenezer Scrooge of a man may be unable to fake, much less
actually experience, gratitude, devotion, or joy.)
(Difficulty is variable -- easy changes like 'I'm happy' or 'I'm mad'
should reside at diff 6 or so, while 'I'm a vampire' should notch up
to an 8 or 9, and outlandish feats such as 'I am a vampire who has
achieved Golconda' or 'I possess True Faith' should sit firmly at
difficulty 10, as well as requiring the caster to have some familiarity
with what that variety of aura even looks like.)
(A Mind oo Spirit o variant exists that allows others' auras to be
manipulated, although both this rote and its modification are seen as
extremely dishonest and manipulative by the passive Cult of Ecstasy
and Dreamspeakers...)
Mind o Prime o Spirit oo DUMB DOWN
(The caster suppresses all traces of his/her Avatar, any free
Quintessence circulating through his/her Pattern, and all hints of
magickal awareness and/or enlightenment in his/her thoughts and
subconscious for a brief but agonizing period of concentration. This
is the equivalent of an Alfa submarine blowing ballast and going into
an uncontrolled dive in response to an unshakable torpedo lock...
Any attempts to detect the caster as a Mage (through sniffing out
Quintessence, peering at his/her Umbral self to see an Avatar, probing
his/her thoughts, etc.) automatically go to a resisted roll (Willpower
or straight countermagick with lowered difficulty, as appropriate to
the situation and method of probe).
As an unfortunate side effect of this rote, the caster must physically
dump all his/her Quintessence (typically into the surroundings), and
even Tass must be discarded or hidden away somewhere for retrieval
later. A botch may also result in temporary memory loss.)
Correspondence oo Spirit oo WINDOWS OF THE SOUL
(Often used as a last-ditch defense against supernatural sensitives,
such as Aura-viewing vampires or Technocratic scanner teams. The mage
effectively, for a short time (requires concentration), 'flips' his/her
aura with another person in the vicinity (typically a Sleeper). Anyone
sensing the caster's aura (or that of the target's) will incorrectly
read caster's aura as target's aura, and vice versa, and will be unable
to detect the misdirection unless actively sensing for Spirit magick.
This rote, needless to say, drives the New World Order CRAZY -- they
have not yet stumbled on to the truth yet, after mistakenly arresting
the wrong suspects, using vulgar magick in front of Sleepers they had
assumed to be Awakened Tradition mages, and have begun to circulate
memos and research concerning a possible Craft or variety of Avatar
that does not register to magickal senses as do its counterparts...)
horsefly
Sven, very nice rotes (i liked 'em enought to save them to disk), but why
use Spheres at all when a mage can just use the Awareness Talent (level 3
or higher) to do most of those things? until you brought it
Correspondence, i pretty much thought it was overkill.
-=|horsefly|=-
Michelle the Elf
On 3 Feb 1997, Donald Bachman wrote:
> Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
> that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
> the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
> magickal attack upon themselves. One wonders exactly why any vampire
> would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
Okay, forgive me for asking a stuped question, but. . .
Lawn chair. . .
Any particular reason?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Well, aside for the need for corrective lenses
And the tendency to be abducted by extra-terrestrials
involved in international govermental conspericy,
my family passes the genetic muster."
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JBRocky
Damn don't think I got the text I wanted to copy. If anybody could
give me a little help I would appreciate it. Now for what I wanted to
say.
Eric,
When I first wrote the post I was just being blunt and to the point,
In showing what a vamp could do in a hurry. Yes you are absolutly right
about how an elder would do it. As a matter of fact since my character
has a lot of influence with FBI what you said was perfect. At present he
also has a Woman in Grey as Goul (don't know if the blood bond is there or
not) so contacting the NWO is a foregone conclusion. He also has five
points in Military which gives him as we see it FBI, DEA (has some
influence here to) SWAT teams anywhere in the country on a moments notice.
So yes your right he wouldn't even need to show his face.
Robert Chistopher
Archon, Clan Vntrue
verkuilen john v
horsefly <eber...@haywire.csuhayward.edu> writes:
The mage can use Awareness to _read_ auras, but can't use it to mask or alter
his or someone else's aura. Also, this could be a different route to aura
reading for mages without Awareness 3.
LEONARD Daniel
On 3 Feb 1997, Donald Bachman wrote:
> Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
> that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
> the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
> magickal attack upon themselves. One wonders exactly why any vampire
> would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
> under 1st edition rules it wasn't something that even an Arete 6 mage
> was likely to be able to pull off short of specializing in performing
> that particular act. Under 2nd edition it is even less likely, given
> full body transformation of others requires 4-5 successes, and even
> assuming such can be explained as Coincidental, will be at high difficulty,
> require Matter and Life at non-trivial levels. Shit, the mage required to
> perform this act is on par with vampire elders in terms of what type of
> experience it would require to buy a starting character up that far.
>
> Do you give your vampires special ways of resisting Methusaleh?
----------->Do you give neophyte specials way to resist Oracles?
*******************************************************
Eric Tolle
Michelle the Elf <elb...@robles.callutheran.edu> wrote:
>Okay, forgive me for asking a stuped question, but. . .
>Lawn chair. . .
It comes from a rant at the end of the Book of Shadows, wherin one of
the writers ranted about 'mages turning vampires into lawn chairs'. I
think that was bsed on a thread from the early days of Mage, which was
evidently based on an incident in gaming...
The reasons are realy lost in prehistory. But really, it's because
lawn chairs are so cool...
Eric Tolle unde...@rain.org
"An' then Chi...@little.com, he come scramblin outta the
terminal room screaming "The system's crashing! The system's
crashing!" -Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
Oh yeah...there's a U.S. $5.00/byte access fee for all
unsolicitated commercial e-mail to this address...
Michelle the Elf
On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, Eric Tolle wrote:
> >Okay, forgive me for asking a stuped question, but. . .
> >Lawn chair. . .
>
> It comes from a rant at the end of the Book of Shadows, wherin one of
> the writers ranted about 'mages turning vampires into lawn chairs'. I
> think that was bsed on a thread from the early days of Mage, which was
> evidently based on an incident in gaming...
>
> The reasons are realy lost in prehistory. But really, it's because
> lawn chairs are so cool...
Well, you can't argue with logic like that.
-Michelle the Elf
BLAKE 1001
> On 3 Feb 1997, Donald Bachman wrote:
>
> > Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
> > that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
> > the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
> > magickal attack upon themselves. One wonders exactly why any vampire
> > would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
Countermagick can be used against effects other than those actually
affecting you.
It's usually a bad idea though. You only get to use your Arete pool
once in a turn,
and it's better to use it defending yourself then trying to keep someone
from
healing themselves or teleporting away (or whatever). When I run, I
make CM vs
effects that only affect the caster harder, by giveing the caster a
resistance
roll against the CM.
In 1st ed, all direct magick was resisted by willpower - everyone got to
do it
even sleepers. In 2nd ed the willpower roll is virtually gone - you can
do a
'mental dodge' and that's about it. Direct & Indirect effects were also
dumped,
the distinction is no longer there. IMHO, these two rule changes were
BIG mistakes - they actually hurt game balance. Reinstating Willpower
resistance is an excellent and simple way of keeping mages in line (both
in crossovers and in straight mage games).
Nyarlathotep
In article <5d4312$7...@ionews.ionet.net>, dbac...@ionet.net (Donald
Bachman) wrote:
> Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
> that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
> the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
> magickal attack upon themselves.
Yes, but everyone has that defense regardless. Mages get
counter/anti-magick against direct attacks and may unweave other effects
(So, gangrel, you were saying something about having claws...). Mage also
assumes that if you have the sphere you may counter the effect regardless
of whether you are aware of it or not (counter-magic in your sleep!?!?).
In some cases I would rule the willpower automatic (a Mage trying to
manipulate a Ventrue with Mind magick). But against Vulgar damaging
effects, or physically altering ones, I would rule that Fortitude (and
Luna's Armor) can soak it. Now there is nothing to say that the mage can't
use his first attack or subsequent ones, to unweave these defenses.
> One wonders exactly why any vampire
> would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
> under 1st edition rules it wasn't something that even an Arete 6 mage
> was likely to be able to pull off short of specializing in performing
> that particular act.
You obviously never read the short essays in the back of the Book of
Shadows. Sheesh... No sense of humor here...
> Under 2nd edition it is even less likely, given
> full body transformation of others requires 4-5 successes, and even
> assuming such can be explained as Coincidental, will be at high difficulty,
> require Matter and Life at non-trivial levels. Shit, the mage required to
> perform this act is on par with vampire elders in terms of what type of
> experience it would require to buy a starting character up that far.
The argument here is that a Life 5 /Matter 5 Mage could do this while
sipping coffee at an all night cafe (Paradox be damned!). Fortitude (and
Luna's Armor) is supposed to be the measure of the Vampires resistance to
things he can't soak (fire, sunlight, all things aggravated which includes
the "unsoakable" vulgar magick). If a Tzimisce wanted to flesh craft
somebody with Fortitude unwilling, I would allow a roll (fortitude only).
I would rule the same with Luna's Armor, if the Garou was
smart/lucky/prescient enough to have it up at the time.
> Do you give your vampires special ways of resisting Methusaleh?
Just what is in the rules (like the above). But the two Methuselahs I
use in my game have 15+ die pools. Automatic successes can be a real
bitch...
Donald Bachman
BLAKE 1001 (Op...@october.com) wrote:
: > On 3 Feb 1997, Donald Bachman wrote:
: >
: > > Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
: > > that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
: > > the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
: > > would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
: Countermagick can be used against effects other than those actually
: affecting you.
Not according to M:tA 2nd, page 233.
: It's usually a bad idea though. You only get to use your Arete pool
: once in a turn,
: and it's better to use it defending yourself then trying to keep someone
: from
: healing themselves or teleporting away (or whatever). When I run, I
: make CM vs
: effects that only affect the caster harder, by giveing the caster a
: resistance
: roll against the CM.
: In 1st ed, all direct magick was resisted by willpower - everyone got to
: do it
: even sleepers. In 2nd ed the willpower roll is virtually gone - you can
: do a
: 'mental dodge' and that's about it. Direct & Indirect effects were also
: dumped,
: the distinction is no longer there. IMHO, these two rule changes were
: BIG mistakes - they actually hurt game balance. Reinstating Willpower
: resistance is an excellent and simple way of keeping mages in line (both
: in crossovers and in straight mage games).
We must be reading different books. The distinction between direct and
indirect effects is still there, page 166. Direct attacks on a pattern
may not be soaked, indirect ones may.
Further, the Willpower resistance roll is a darn'd good thing to have gotten
rid of. If your mages are overpowering the other supernaturals in your
crossover, you're doing something wrong. Or perhaps you care to explain
how your mages, with a 3 dice Arete pool in a threshold system where you
have to name the level of success you are attempting to achieve before you
roll and wherein you get nothing if you don't get what you are shooting
for (or at ST's option you get a weakened effect if you get at least
half the successes you are shooting for) are managing to overpower others?
Frankly, I don't buy it.
Mage: I roll my Arete, 3 dice, at difficulty 8 to Rip the Man Body.
I'm trying to Maul him, which will require 3 successes.
Version 1: (Standard 2nd ed. rules, average result)
Mage: Darn, short 2 successes. . .guess I get nothing.
Version 2: (With Willpower Resistance, above average result)
Mage: I get 2 successes, and spend a Willpower for the 3rd.
Vampire: I roll my 7 willpower at diff 6, and lookie, 3 successes.
Guess you get nothing.
Game balance may suffer when mages crossover, but by the rules it is usually
the mage that is getting the short end of the stick.
Donald
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) wrote:
> Yes, but everyone has that defense regardless. Mages get
>counter/anti-magick against direct attacks and may unweave other effects
>(So, gangrel, you were saying something about having claws...).
Unweaving, as a rule, is something long and tedious, ie. takes extra
time. So you wouldn't be able to do it in combat vs. a Gangrel's
claws.
Spell vs. effect magick, however, can be done. Such as using either
Matter 3 or Life 3 on the Gangrel, saying, "No, I say you put the
claws BACK IN." That's even coincidental.
Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
>Mage also
>assumes that if you have the sphere you may counter the effect regardless
>of whether you are aware of it or not (counter-magic in your sleep!?!?).
You're subconsciously aware of it, and can do subconscious
countermagick, so long as it's in your paradigm. For example, the MIB
may never notice someone trying a Mind effect on him. It just fails
because he will not deviate from his rigid stringent training.
Same thing with the SOE with his "Mentalo-Protection-Helmet." So long
as he wears it to bed, it works. If he leaves it on the bedpost, then
the Tremere Sabbat boys can enter his dreams--though if he dreamt
about it, he might be able to countermagick subsequent effects.
Eric Tolle
Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) wrote:
> Yes, but everyone has that defense regardless. Mages get
>counter/anti-magick against direct attacks and may unweave other effects
>(So, gangrel, you were saying something about having claws...). Mage also
>assumes that if you have the sphere you may counter the effect regardless
>of whether you are aware of it or not (counter-magic in your sleep!?!?).
If you are talking about a game-world rule, disregard the below. but
officially...
Mages may counteract only attack disciplines such as Domination,
Presence, Serpentis and Thautamurgy- they may only do unweaving on
anything other then magick effects. And countermagick is _not_
automatic- it takes a concious decision, and an action to do. So, a
mage either attacks, defends, or splits his dice pool.
Donald Bachman
Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
: In article <5d4312$7...@ionews.ionet.net>, dbac...@ionet.net (Donald
: Bachman) wrote:
: > Did I miss something? A mage can only countermagick vampire disciplines
: > that are affecting him, not any and all vampire disciplines. Further,
: > the willpower roll you speak of is only for those aware of a direct
: > magickal attack upon themselves.
: Yes, but everyone has that defense regardless. Mages get
: counter/anti-magick against direct attacks and may unweave other effects
Fine, so mages can counter each other. That was not a problem.
: (So, gangrel, you were saying something about having claws...). Mage also
: assumes that if you have the sphere you may counter the effect regardless
: of whether you are aware of it or not (counter-magic in your sleep!?!?).
I would have assumed that you have to be aware of an attack to counter it,
and I don't consider most people to be very aware in their sleep. Of course,
Mind mages may arrange for this not to be the case, but that is hardly a
universal thing.
: In some cases I would rule the willpower automatic (a Mage trying to
: manipulate a Ventrue with Mind magick). But against Vulgar damaging
: effects, or physically altering ones, I would rule that Fortitude (and
: Luna's Armor) can soak it. Now there is nothing to say that the mage can't
: use his first attack or subsequent ones, to unweave these defenses.
: > One wonders exactly why any vampire
: > would ever have been fearful of being turned into a lawn chair, as
: > under 1st edition rules it wasn't something that even an Arete 6 mage
: > was likely to be able to pull off short of specializing in performing
: > that particular act.
: You obviously never read the short essays in the back of the Book of
: Shadows. Sheesh... No sense of humor here...
I read the essay (no humor) and it was prompted, so far as I could tell,
by reports of players doing things that had the ST been properly following
the rules would never have happened. I've no desire to go into the calculation
of it all again, and Deja News should be able to provide it if you care
to see how I arrive at my statement.
: > Under 2nd edition it is even less likely, given
: > full body transformation of others requires 4-5 successes, and even
: > assuming such can be explained as Coincidental, will be at high difficulty,
: > require Matter and Life at non-trivial levels. Shit, the mage required to
: > perform this act is on par with vampire elders in terms of what type of
: > experience it would require to buy a starting character up that far.
: The argument here is that a Life 5 /Matter 5 Mage could do this while
: sipping coffee at an all night cafe (Paradox be damned!). Fortitude (and
: Luna's Armor) is supposed to be the measure of the Vampires resistance to
: things he can't soak (fire, sunlight, all things aggravated which includes
: the "unsoakable" vulgar magick). If a Tzimisce wanted to flesh craft
: somebody with Fortitude unwilling, I would allow a roll (fortitude only).
: I would rule the same with Luna's Armor, if the Garou was
: smart/lucky/prescient enough to have it up at the time.
No. The argument was that mages are somehow overpowered and that special
steps are necessary to balance them against poor defenseless vampires.
Do many of your players have Life 5/Matter 5, and 5+ Arete? And even if
some do, how likely is it with 5 dice that they are going to make 5
successes at any but the lowest of difficulties? Yes, if the mage manages
to stake out the vampire ahead of time, gets the opportunity to perform
some extended rolls (and mind you the vampire should begin to get a bit
suspcious when parts of him begin to transform once the half-way point
is reached), and manages to drop the difficulty some, he will likely win
out. But that is assuming the mage has been able to set the stage. If
instead the vampire had been able to set the stage, ambushed the mage, and
had Celerity 5 and Potence 1 (mind you he could afford more with experience
equal to what the mage must have to have advanced to Matter 5/Life 5),
he'd win out over the mage, who has no ability to just offset Potence and
6 attacks per round. However, I don't see anyone saying vampires are
overpowered.
:
: > Do you give your vampires special ways of resisting Methusaleh?
: Just what is in the rules (like the above). But the two Methuselahs I
: use in my game have 15+ die pools. Automatic successes can be a real
: bitch...
: --
: Machine shared by Anne Gwin (ag...@mail.utexas.edu) and Nyarlathotep (nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu). Sometimes we forget to change the name on the post.
: "ZOG!!"--The Brady Bunch Tiki
: "Please, Mr. Garibaldi, do not thump the Book of G'Quon. It is disrespectful." -- Citizen G'Kar
: "Yes, John, of course, John, anything you say, John." -- Delenn
Donald
Nyarlathotep
> Mages may counteract only attack disciplines such as Domination,
> Presence, Serpentis and Thautamurgy- they may only do unweaving on
> anything other then magick effects. And countermagick is _not_
> automatic- it takes a concious decision, and an action to do. So, a
> mage either attacks, defends, or splits his dice pool.
Yes, that's all nice and well and according to the rules. But it
entirely misses the mark. Conscious decision has little to do with it. But
I will say that I am wrong as the 2nd Ed. does say "the mage must be aware
of the attack inorder to deflect it." My Men in Black with their tiny
little video cameras are now very, VERY, happy.
And by the way, you can unweave the Protean power of Wolf's Claws as it
is a continuous magickal effect (pg. 174).
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) wrote:
> Yes, that's all nice and well and according to the rules. But it
>entirely misses the mark. Conscious decision has little to do with it. But
>I will say that I am wrong as the 2nd Ed. does say "the mage must be aware
>of the attack inorder to deflect it." My Men in Black with their tiny
>little video cameras are now very, VERY, happy.
Yes, but remember--the effectiveness of an effect is limited by
Paradigm and Focus.
If your MiBs and their tiny spy video cameras decide to spy on Penny
D-- and she draws the thick black velvet gothic curtains as part of
her privacy charm (aka Correspondence 2 "Close Window/Ward"), they are
SOL. Penny's focus ruins their focus, and all they'll be able to spy
on is the drapes.
Of course, she doesn't carry her drapes with her everywhere, but if
she were out on the street and the MiBs tried to tune her in through a
few ATM security cameras, I'd allow her a roll of Wits + Intuition to
guess that someone is spying on her. If she makes it, she gets to
countermagick, and if she succeeds in that, then she ducks into a
florist shop, or flips out her fan, or does any of a dozen things
which make it impossible for the MiBs to get a make on her.
If it were Madame Sosostris trying to tune her in on the crystal ball,
Penny instead might be prompted to make a hand sign or pinch her
earlobe or perform whatever minor charm that is usually done to mess
with an attempted scrying.
All countermagick. All valid.
> And by the way, you can unweave the Protean power of Wolf's Claws as it
>is a continuous magickal effect (pg. 174).
Yes, but unweaving is still tricky and tedious, and unless you have
the Gangrel staked, you'll have a time of it.
Better by far to just throw another spell on top of the first to clip
the claws or turn them into rubber than to try to unweave the initial
effect.
Mark A Hagley
In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
>Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
>to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
>Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
>via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
>bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
heheheheh, amusing, but i would say that it is still a life 5 effect to
most tradition mages... that dna stuff is a bit technocratic, and to
anyone with a bit of common sense outside of that horridly contrary
scientific jazz, garou-to-poodle is a big change.
--
i need something to put it's hands on me... + .
give me stronger poison and then stronger. . +
+ icarus.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu (Mark A Hagley) wrote:
>In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
>>Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
>>to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
>>Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
>>via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
>>bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
>heheheheh, amusing, but i would say that it is still a life 5 effect to
>most tradition mages... that dna stuff is a bit technocratic, and to
>anyone with a bit of common sense outside of that horridly contrary
>scientific jazz, garou-to-poodle is a big change.
Ah yes, but that's the beauty of paradigm--it may limit you many
times, but it also gives you some substantial perks. A Progenitor
Life Adept can do tricks that it takes a Verbena master to pull, but
by the same token a Verbena doesn't have to trot out the vats or the
serums or anything apart from her Circe wand. Moreover, she can
instanty change a subject's mass, whereas the Progenitor can't do that
unless he's hooked into Prime 2 and a damn good bit of technobabble as
he reinvents the Star Trek transporter beam.
BLAKE 1001
Nyarlathotep wrote:
>
> In article <5djbjb$dem$1...@news.rain.org>, unde...@rain.org (Eric Tolle) wrote:
>
> > Mages may counteract only attack disciplines such as Domination,
> > Presence, Serpentis and Thautamurgy- they may only do unweaving on
> > anything other then magick effects. And countermagick is _not_
> > automatic- it takes a concious decision, and an action to do. So, a
> > mage either attacks, defends, or splits his dice pool.
>
> entirely misses the mark. Conscious decision has little to do with it. But
> I will say that I am wrong as the 2nd Ed. does say "the mage must be aware
> of the attack inorder to deflect it." My Men in Black with their tiny
> little video cameras are now very, VERY, happy.
Remeber any magickal effect is automatically visible to the spheres used
in
it's creation. So they shouldn't be celebrating to much, as every mage
with
Correspondence will note effects tossed though survailance equipment.
> And by the way, you can unweave the Protean power of Wolf's Claws as it
> is a continuous magickal effect (pg. 174).
>
Whenever you cross storyteller games, there are no gaurantees.
BLAKE 1001
Donald Bachman wrote:
> : Countermagick can be used against effects other than those actually
> : affecting you.
>
> Not according to M:tA 2nd, page 233.
>
I know there was an example in M:tA 2, of Countermagicking on behalf of
someone else. There's also Anti-Magick, which is specifically meant
to make it harder for someone else to cast magick.
> We must be reading different books. The distinction between direct and
> indirect effects is still there, page 166. Direct attacks on a pattern
> may not be soaked, indirect ones may.
Nope, that distinction is very specifically for attacks that do HL
damage
using Life or Entropy. Also, 2nd ed considers 'direct' effects to be
those that can be dodged - like lightning bolts, because they are
directed
at the victim I suppose. The use the word direct, but the formal
distinction
between Direct and Indirect effects is gone from 2nd Ed.
I'm sorry, the thrust of my post was 'Go back to 1st Ed, and you won't
have
as many problems.' I read 2nd ed once and disliked it intensely, and so
haven't memorized it. In any case, I was suggesting variants, not
quoting
rules.
> Game balance may suffer when mages crossover, but by the rules it is usually
> the mage that is getting the short end of the stick.
>
> Donald
This is my personal experience as well. It's very hard to get a
magickal effect
off. Somehow, everyone misses that. For one thing, I think most people
ignore
or reduce the requirement that you state the level of effect you're
going for.
For instance, I require that you get enough successes for range and
area, but
consider damage to be variable. But then, I don't use the rediculous
damge
chart in 2nd Ed, or the astronomical damage multipliers in 1st Ed
(sometimes,
if you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself).
I guess in a lot of crossovers, the storyteller looks at what a mage
*could* do
and gets worried, instead of considering just how difficult it might be
to
accomplish.
Donald Bachman
BLAKE 1001 (Op...@october.com) wrote:
: Donald Bachman wrote:
: > : Countermagick can be used against effects other than those actually
: > : affecting you.
: >
: > Not according to M:tA 2nd, page 233.
: >
: I know there was an example in M:tA 2, of Countermagicking on behalf of
: someone else. There's also Anti-Magick, which is specifically meant
: to make it harder for someone else to cast magick.
Yes, you may countermagick magick for someone else, not discipline usage.
:
: > We must be reading different books. The distinction between direct and
: > indirect effects is still there, page 166. Direct attacks on a pattern
: > may not be soaked, indirect ones may.
: Nope, that distinction is very specifically for attacks that do HL
: damage
: using Life or Entropy. Also, 2nd ed considers 'direct' effects to be
: those that can be dodged - like lightning bolts, because they are
: directed
: at the victim I suppose. The use the word direct, but the formal
: distinction
: between Direct and Indirect effects is gone from 2nd Ed.
Not having the book with me at the moment, I can't verify this, but am
fairly certain that 'direct' maintains its old meaning. If I find otherwise,
I'll post.
: I'm sorry, the thrust of my post was 'Go back to 1st Ed, and you won't
And the annoying thing is that in 2nd edition, things have been made even
harder to pull off. While I love the cohesiveness of 2nd edition, the
simple fact is that starting mage characters aren't people who perform
magick, they are people who every now and then get a bit lucky. A starting
supernatural could trust in his supernatural abilities, a starting mage
would be a fool to do so--and would remain one for the next 56 to 96
experience points. This is likely because of people complaining during 1st
edition that mages were too powerful. I am on record as having pointed out
then that it simply wasn't so, and to my great annoyance, even though
mages have come down in power, they continue to do so. Frankly, I don't see
what is so hard to understand in this regard. Mages have the only mechanic
where they need to achieve a pre-specified number of successes, with
anything less than that result getting them nothing. Toss in that mages don't
roll <attribute>+<ability> but rather Arete, which is limited to starting
at 3, and I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that their
starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city. Ineffective idiot
shouldn't be Prince, if you ask me.
Donald
Nyarlathotep
In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
> No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
What!?! A DEAD thing grows UNNATURAL claws and you say it is not
magick-based? I don't think so...
Nyarlathotep
In article <5dn4ic$l...@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>, grim...@ix.netcom.com
(Kevin Andrew Murphy) wrote:
> Ah yes, but that's the beauty of paradigm--it may limit you many
> times, but it also gives you some substantial perks. A Progenitor
> Life Adept can do tricks that it takes a Verbena master to pull, but
> by the same token a Verbena doesn't have to trot out the vats or the
> serums or anything apart from her Circe wand. Moreover, she can
> instanty change a subject's mass, whereas the Progenitor can't do that
> unless he's hooked into Prime 2 and a damn good bit of technobabble as
> he reinvents the Star Trek transporter beam.
Indeed so. I feel for the poor puppy who runs into a Progenitor
Pharmacopeist outfitted like a Juicer from Palladium's Rifts. Now that is
a frightening thought.
Nyarlathotep
In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
> No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
>And the annoying thing is that in 2nd edition, things have been made even
>harder to pull off. While I love the cohesiveness of 2nd edition, the
>simple fact is that starting mage characters aren't people who perform
>magick, they are people who every now and then get a bit lucky. A starting
>supernatural could trust in his supernatural abilities, a starting mage
>would be a fool to do so--and would remain one for the next 56 to 96
>experience points.
There's a difference between trusting in something and relying on
something. True, a starting mage can't turn into a slavering monster
or regenerate at the drop of a hat, but a starting mage with a touch
of subtlety can win almost any contest hands down, and they don't have
any of the hideous weaknesses of the other supernaturals.
And there are still some damn powerful things a starting mage can do.
With Prime 2/Forces 3 and Arete 3--easy for a starting character--you
can make a telekinetic or pyrokinetic. Want a teleporter?
Correspondence 3. The Hulk? Life 3. A world-class psychic? Mind
2/Correspondence 2/Time 2.
>This is likely because of people complaining during 1st
>edition that mages were too powerful.
They were, if you had someone who wanted to rules weenie. Prime
2/Matter 2. I make a couple plutonium spheres and blow up the city.
Or Forces 2. I know how to control the nuclear weak force, and unlike
the writers of the book, I have a degree in physics, and know that
this allows me to create nuclear reactions whenever and wherever I
want. Stuff like that.
>I am on record as having pointed out
>then that it simply wasn't so, and to my great annoyance, even though
>mages have come down in power, they continue to do so. Frankly, I don't see
>what is so hard to understand in this regard. Mages have the only mechanic
>where they need to achieve a pre-specified number of successes, with
>anything less than that result getting them nothing.
Depending on how you want to define "nothing." If I want to turn you
into a toad, and I've got 5 Arete dice to do it, I roll, and then see
that I only got one success. By usual rules interpretations, I'd need
5 successes to turn you into a toad permanently, so it's a Storyteller
call as to what happens.
"Nothing happens" is boring, and unrealistic. Easier to say that one
success means either limited duration or reduced effect. So either I
turn you into a toad and a minute later you turn back--still very
useful for an escape--or else I give you a wart on the end of your
nose which lasts the rest of your life, or at least until you have one
of your fellow mages perform an unweaving.
Same thing with "extended rolls" and multiple successes. My magickal
whammy needn't be gathering power in the Umbra until finally it lashes
out and does the deed. It may be that right now I've done the warts,
next I need to do the green skin, then the hunched posture, then work
on the size and so on, cf. The Riddlemaster of Hed, and the 101 curses
of the Wizard Nun, which would, in sum, turn a man into a boar.
It may also be that I've managed to do the one-minute-toad spell, and
once I've done that, I'll be working frantically to increase the
duration.
Depends on your spell, the way you conceive of it, and how the
storyteller thinks it would be most stylish to play it.
>Toss in that mages don't
>roll <attribute>+<ability> but rather Arete, which is limited to starting
>at 3, and I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that their
>starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city. Ineffective idiot
>shouldn't be Prince, if you ask me.
Yes, but a subtle mage may still be able to deal with him. And there
are ways to increase your dice pool or to guarantee an automatic
success.
The easiest one is using Abilites to augment your Arete. Let's say
you have your Cultist of Ecstasy dancer trying to summon the spirits.
Yes, dance is her focus, but you needn't roll the focus for some basic
dance move. If she's a master at the art, you just assume it.
But if you want to have it augment her Arete, and she has the time for
an extended roll, I've found it's far easier to allow the character to
roll Attribute + Ability, then take the successes and add them to
their Arete pool for the Arete roll. It's faster and less tedious
than doing the "extended roll" business, and boils down to the same
thing. The CoE dancer begins her interpretive dance to Salome, which,
by it's nature, takes a good while. She rolls 9 dice for her
Manipulation of 4 and her Dance of 5. She get's five successes. You
take these and add them to her Arete of 2, giving her an effective
Arete 7 for her roll. She rolls, and gets 4 successes, summoning the
spirit of Salome to go seduce the MiB then chop off his head.
It also keeps the "extended success" rolls from going on till
doomsday, especially with characters who are completely ignorant of
what they're trying to do. If you have a Dex of 1 and a Dance of 2,
the spirits are not going to be impressed by your clumsy tapdancing,
and will lose patience before you get enough successes to propitiate
them.
As for a method whereby a mage can always rely on his magick, pick a
spell/rote that's within your Spheres and which you need only one
success for it to be useful--for example, one success on Prime
2/Forces 3 to levitated the frenzied vampire into the air and hold
them their for a minute--then burn a Willpower for an automatic
success and DON'T ROLL THE DICE. After all, with three dice,you might
pop a 1, and all you need is long enough to get away--or to take the
time to strengthen your spell. Once you've got the vamp in the air,
you've got a moment to ready your foci to lower your difficulties and
throw a few more successes onto your original levitation spell. Sure,
the vamp may have Celrity. Without traction, it doesn't 'do him much
good, does it? (Unless he has a gun, but that's another point.)
Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
can still be dangerous and annoying.
John H
BLAKE 1001 <Op...@october.com> spit out some electrons that said:
>Nyarlathotep wrote:
<SNIP>
>> And by the way, you can unweave the Protean power of Wolf's Claws as it
>> is a continuous magickal effect (pg. 174).
>>
No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
John -
Don't confuse comfort with happiness.
Don't confuse wealth with success.
Don't confuse polyester with Dacron.
Donald Bachman
Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
: In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
: jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
:
: > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
:
: No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
: the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
: That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
No! Only mages do magick--that is definition. And just as mages may not
unweave a light bulb because it is a static effect, so the same goes for
the claws, as all other supernatural powers are similarly static effects.
: --
: Machine shared by Anne Gwin (ag...@mail.utexas.edu) and Nyarlathotep (nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu). Sometimes we forget to change the name on the post.
: "ZOG!!"--The Brady Bunch Tiki
: "Please, Mr. Garibaldi, do not thump the Book of G'Quon. It is disrespectful." -- Citizen G'Kar
: "Yes, John, of course, John, anything you say, John." -- Delenn
Donald
Kevin Andrew Murphy
dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
>Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
>: In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
>: jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
>:
>: > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
>:
>: No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
>: the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
>: That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
>No! Only mages do magick--that is definition. And just as mages may not
>unweave a light bulb because it is a static effect, so the same goes for
>the claws, as all other supernatural powers are similarly static effects.
A mage can unweave a lightbulb so long as the unweaving is being
performed by a Technomancer. The same as a Hermetic knows how to
unweave another Hermetic's cabalistic spells, but a Virtual Adept
won't have a clue how to go about it.
How do you unweave a lightbulb? You unscrew it from the socket or
smash it.
Of couse, since it's static magick that any Sleeper can use, it's
static magick that even a child can unweave.
Mikko Rautalahti - Warner Music Finland Oy
This is what Kevin Andrew Murphy (grim...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
>>Toss in that mages don't
>>roll <attribute>+<ability> but rather Arete, which is limited to starting
>>at 3, and I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that their
>>starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city. Ineffective idiot
>>shouldn't be Prince, if you ask me.
>Yes, but a subtle mage may still be able to deal with him. And there
>are ways to increase your dice pool or to guarantee an automatic
>success.
What's more... if you don't want your character to have three
points of Arete, GIVE HIM MORE. Obviously, this requires a chat with your
storyteller to see if he'd be interested in running a Mage campaign that
starts from a bit higher power level, but apart from that, there're no
problems that I can see here. Especially if you're the Storyteller, who
obviously has the right to decide what kind of a campaign he wants to
run. So, hey, if you think the beginning mages are too weak -- which I
personally don't; Kevin already gave some very good examples of why
beginning mages can do some pretty nasty tricks if they want to. Yes,
certainly, they would run into trouble if they tried to take on a roomful
of vampires (unless they simply decided to toss a BIG fireball at them
and toast the lot of them (Forces 3, Prime 2, no probs)) you can always do
some Mind magicking and subtly influence them (Mind 2) by pushing them
just a liiittle bit into the right direction. This may take a bit of
work, but is quite possible to accomplish with even an Arete pool of 3.
And if you're doing this, who says you gotta go after the biggest,
baddest and toughest guy in the room? You can begin with the Neonate over
there and move up once HE has opened his mouth and started to influence
the others. Sure, he's just a Neonate, but even Neonate's words work if
they say the right thing.
So, no, I don't think the beginning mages are too weak, but if
you do, just make them more powerful. Give them extra ten or fifteen
freebie points if you want to, and then they'll be quite strong enough to
do whatever they please. Which doesn't mean that they won't run into
opposition stronger than them...
>Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
>can still be dangerous and annoying.
More than that. Hell, a starting mage with the aforementioned
Arete pool of three, Forces 3 and Prime 2, can make a nice fireball, have
it float in front of him (or in his hand) and tell the Prince in a very
calm voice that he has four seconds to call off his dogs before he turns
the entire building into a raging firestorm.
Now, he may not be able to do that. Certainly not in time until
he's been ripped to shreds by someone with Celerity and Wolf Claws. But
the point is, he MIGHT be able to do that. And if you're the Prince of a
city and have someone who can toss fireballs around show up in your
city... what're you going to do; try to attack him, or try to keep him
happy? It's not like you know that this is a new character who is
considered to be a young whelp by his peers. All YOU know is that you
have a guy floating a fireball around that makes you real nervous, and he
has just told you to do something.
'course, as it is, could be that the bluff fails. Or, maybe this
particular prince is a liiittle bit older than you thought, and knows for
a fact that he can take you out before you can do anything with that
fireball. But, hey, what's life without a bit of risk?
Issa dangerous world, innit?
- Mikki
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Mikko Rautalahti --- "I judge a woman solely by the size and shape of -
- watc...@xgw.fi --- her nostrils." -- "Weird Al" Yankovic -
- WatchMan @ IRC ----------------------- http://www.xgw.fi/~watchman/ -
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald Bachman
: There's a difference between trusting in something and relying on
: something. True, a starting mage can't turn into a slavering monster
: or regenerate at the drop of a hat, but a starting mage with a touch
: of subtlety can win almost any contest hands down, and they don't have
: any of the hideous weaknesses of the other supernaturals.
Two leap to mind. First, their supernatural power can kill them (or in the
words of Charlie X, 'Make them go away') when they botch--something that
simply doesn't occur with Potence, or Scent of Man. Second, some situations
simply require brute, non-subtle effectiveness, and with the mage this
means going from not very likely to straight out impossible rather
quickly.
: And there are still some damn powerful things a starting mage can do.
: With Prime 2/Forces 3 and Arete 3--easy for a starting character--you
: can make a telekinetic or pyrokinetic. Want a teleporter?
: Correspondence 3. The Hulk? Life 3. A world-class psychic? Mind
: 2/Correspondence 2/Time 2.
Telekinetic, eh? So when the mage is being faced down by a thug with a
gun, and assuming he spent his one remaining dot of Spheres on Time, so
he can react quickly enough to intervene with the bullet that is flying
at him from the thug's gun, we are looking needing 2 successes on 3 dice
with difficulty between 5 and 7--depending on the precise details of the
situation. On average, the mage gets shot.
With the way some people run Mage, being a teleporter is always being vulgar.
I'm sure such individuals hit the 10 paradox barrier and then conveniently
explode in a backwash of paradox.
The Hulk would probably qualify as being within the realm of the vulgar, so
you get a combination of the above waiting paradox explosion combined with
pattern leaking.
Plus, all of these examples have fallen into the trap that those who argue
about mages being powerful tend to. They assume that because it can be done
it is likely to occur. Well, a young German named Mattias Rust proved that
it was possible to fly a civilian aircraft through Russian air defenses
and land in Red Square--I defy you to do so.
Remember, mages state the number of successes they have to recieve before
they make the roll, and with 3 dice at difficulty 6, that average is in
the general neighborhood of 2. What does 2 successes get you? Some examples
are:
* Changing your own shape.
* Influencing (not radically altering) someone else's mood.
* Conjuring a ball of flame.
* Cause an oil lamp to explode.
* Breach the Gauntlet in a rural area.
* Forecast/Precognate an event within 5 years.
* Deal 0 damage with Mind, 6 with Forces, 2 with any other Sphere.
* Manipulate an object/location with which you are very familiar.
* Improve his appearance or physical traits by 2 dots for a scene.
* Hit a point of weaknesses to deal 2 extra levels of damage.
* Learn that poison is affecting something's respiratory system
(without determining exactly what type of poison).
* Heal 2 levels of damage to a living thing (no repititions allowed).
* Blank one sense in a target.
* Completely and utterly fail to gain even a single extra action via
the Time Sphere (requires successes over 2).
Truthfully, this isn't a bad little list. And so long as the mage interacts
with mundanes, a far better list to have than not have. But people here have
been speaking of mages overpowering their crossover campaigns. Somehow I
have a hard time believing that any of the above items is going to mean
much to a neonate vampire or werewolf.
: >This is likely because of people complaining during 1st
: >edition that mages were too powerful.
: They were, if you had someone who wanted to rules weenie. Prime
: 2/Matter 2. I make a couple plutonium spheres and blow up the city.
: Or Forces 2. I know how to control the nuclear weak force, and unlike
: the writers of the book, I have a degree in physics, and know that
: this allows me to create nuclear reactions whenever and wherever I
: want. Stuff like that.
Pardon me? I still have my copy of 1st edition. It states quite clearly
that the materials to be created must be stable in the environment in
which they are created under Matter 2. Plutonium fails this check in
every environment I can think of. Nuclear forces are quite specifically
listed under Forces 4.
I'm sorry, but it was simply failing to read and apply the rules that got
1st edition labelled as being overly powerful, in much the same way that
2nd edition is being labelled now by some.
: >I am on record as having pointed out
: >then that it simply wasn't so, and to my great annoyance, even though
: >mages have come down in power, they continue to do so. Frankly, I don't see
: >what is so hard to understand in this regard. Mages have the only mechanic
: >where they need to achieve a pre-specified number of successes, with
: >anything less than that result getting them nothing.
: Depending on how you want to define "nothing." If I want to turn you
: into a toad, and I've got 5 Arete dice to do it, I roll, and then see
: that I only got one success. By usual rules interpretations, I'd need
: 5 successes to turn you into a toad permanently, so it's a Storyteller
: call as to what happens.
If you have 5 Arete you are far from a starting mage. In fact, you have
spent 56 experience at a minimum. Moreover, to transform me into a toad
you'd need, according to the chart on page 170, 4 successes. This is
not subject to interpretation. That is, 4 successes on 5 dice on an action
that is likely vulgar with me as the witness, thus meaning difficulty
9. If somehow you can interpret this to be easy, then we probably shouldn't
even begin to discuss this as my notions of easy and yours don't share
anything in common.
: "Nothing happens" is boring, and unrealistic. Easier to say that one
: success means either limited duration or reduced effect. So either I
: turn you into a toad and a minute later you turn back--still very
: useful for an escape--or else I give you a wart on the end of your
: nose which lasts the rest of your life, or at least until you have one
: of your fellow mages perform an unweaving.
Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
: Same thing with "extended rolls" and multiple successes. My magickal
: whammy needn't be gathering power in the Umbra until finally it lashes
: out and does the deed. It may be that right now I've done the warts,
: next I need to do the green skin, then the hunched posture, then work
: on the size and so on, cf. The Riddlemaster of Hed, and the 101 curses
: of the Wizard Nun, which would, in sum, turn a man into a boar.
: It may also be that I've managed to do the one-minute-toad spell, and
: once I've done that, I'll be working frantically to increase the
: duration.
: Depends on your spell, the way you conceive of it, and how the
: storyteller thinks it would be most stylish to play it.
Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
I'm sorry, but multiple turns necessary to perform action is not a sign of
being overpowering.
: >Toss in that mages don't
: >roll <attribute>+<ability> but rather Arete, which is limited to starting
: >at 3, and I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that their
: >starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city. Ineffective idiot
: >shouldn't be Prince, if you ask me.
: Yes, but a subtle mage may still be able to deal with him. And there
: are ways to increase your dice pool or to guarantee an automatic
: success.
: The easiest one is using Abilites to augment your Arete. Let's say
: you have your Cultist of Ecstasy dancer trying to summon the spirits.
: Yes, dance is her focus, but you needn't roll the focus for some basic
: dance move. If she's a master at the art, you just assume it.
: But if you want to have it augment her Arete, and she has the time for
: an extended roll, I've found it's far easier to allow the character to
: roll Attribute + Ability, then take the successes and add them to
: their Arete pool for the Arete roll. It's faster and less tedious
: than doing the "extended roll" business, and boils down to the same
: thing. The CoE dancer begins her interpretive dance to Salome, which,
: by it's nature, takes a good while. She rolls 9 dice for her
: Manipulation of 4 and her Dance of 5. She get's five successes. You
: take these and add them to her Arete of 2, giving her an effective
: Arete 7 for her roll. She rolls, and gets 4 successes, summoning the
: spirit of Salome to go seduce the MiB then chop off his head.
Yes, abilities are allowed to augment Arete. Again, it is a multiple turn
process. At best, assuming the ability to be used may be used in a round,
it takes 2 rounds to go this way. And some abilities by their very nature
are going to take far longer to perform. Creating a masterful work of art
in a gun battle simply isn't going to occur.
: It also keeps the "extended success" rolls from going on till
: doomsday, especially with characters who are completely ignorant of
: what they're trying to do. If you have a Dex of 1 and a Dance of 2,
: the spirits are not going to be impressed by your clumsy tapdancing,
: and will lose patience before you get enough successes to propitiate
: them.
Not a point with which I have ever disagreed.
: As for a method whereby a mage can always rely on his magick, pick a
: spell/rote that's within your Spheres and which you need only one
: success for it to be useful--for example, one success on Prime
: 2/Forces 3 to levitated the frenzied vampire into the air and hold
: them their for a minute--then burn a Willpower for an automatic
: success and DON'T ROLL THE DICE. After all, with three dice,you might
: pop a 1, and all you need is long enough to get away--or to take the
: time to strengthen your spell. Once you've got the vamp in the air,
: you've got a moment to ready your foci to lower your difficulties and
: throw a few more successes onto your original levitation spell. Sure,
: the vamp may have Celrity. Without traction, it doesn't 'do him much
: good, does it? (Unless he has a gun, but that's another point.)
Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
: Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
: can still be dangerous and annoying.
I never said they couldn't be dangerous, I said that they'd be foolish to
rely on their ability. What you have outlined is that with preparation a
mage is dangerous, but this is true for anyone. It doesn't meet my criteria
of being universally reliable if I have to go through all sorts of careful
preparation well in advance to make sure that it works. As example, if I
can talk my friend Jones into allowing me to get a good position I might
be able to restrain him, but just walking up to him and grabbing him probably
means serious pain in my future if he chooses to deal it as he was a college
wrestler and I have avoided physical activity rather successfully throughout
my life. So, would you say that because I might be able to talk him into
allowing me time that I can rely on my ability to hold him?
: Kevin Andrew Murphy
: Author of assorted Goth weirdness
: New fiction available at:
: http://www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy
Donald
Starknight
In article <Nyarlathotep-1...@slip-91-8.ots.utexas.edu> Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) writes:
>In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
>jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
> > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
> No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
>the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
>That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
Possibly, Oh Crawlingly Chaotic one... but if you can find a Gangrel who's
willing to hold still for long enough, let me know. Most mages would much
rather use some other method of disarming the Kindred, especially since it
wouldn't be permanent - the Kindred in question would simply regrow the claws
and be a bit hungrier. "I do so enjoy working up a good appetite..."
Starknight
Haven't seen you in Callahan's in a while...
Kevin Andrew Murphy
dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
>: Depending on how you want to define "nothing." If I want to turn you
>: into a toad, and I've got 5 Arete dice to do it, I roll, and then see
>: that I only got one success. By usual rules interpretations, I'd need
>: 5 successes to turn you into a toad permanently, so it's a Storyteller
>: call as to what happens.
>If you have 5 Arete you are far from a starting mage. In fact, you have
>spent 56 experience at a minimum.
Unless I bought a familiar at the start and usually have an Arete of
4.
However, it needs to be a starting character? Fine. I've spent my
background points on a Talisman, the "Wand of Circe" that has an Arete
5 and can turn people into appropriate animals. Vulgar but fun.
> Moreover, to transform me into a toad
>you'd need, according to the chart on page 170, 4 successes. This is
>not subject to interpretation.
Yes it is. The chart on page 170 is meant to give examples, not
dogma. What you need to look at is the part of the chart where it
says "4 successes=Impressive Feat"
Turning you permanently into a toad is far more impressive than
turning you into a toad for fifteen seconds.
The interpretation you need to give is "Alright, is the feat Simple,
Standard, Difficult, Impressive, Mighty, Outlandish or Godlike?"
The examples given are with the assumption that the effect is
permament, or at least very long lasting (or with long-lasting
effects, such as blowing up a house). It's a Godlike feat to summon
Cthulhu. However, if I only conjure him long enough to drive the
neighbors insane, it's merely Mighty.
> That is, 4 successes on 5 dice on an action
>that is likely vulgar with me as the witness, thus meaning difficulty
>9.
The hypothetical situation was at the private vampire tea party. In
which case it's Vulgar without witnesses, and therefore easier.
> If somehow you can interpret this to be easy, then we probably shouldn't
>even begin to discuss this as my notions of easy and yours don't share
>anything in common.
>: "Nothing happens" is boring, and unrealistic. Easier to say that one
>: success means either limited duration or reduced effect. So either I
>: turn you into a toad and a minute later you turn back--still very
>: useful for an escape--or else I give you a wart on the end of your
>: nose which lasts the rest of your life, or at least until you have one
>: of your fellow mages perform an unweaving.
>Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
>the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
>even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
>partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
>would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
Good enough.
>Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
>the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
If the Storyteller allows it, it most certainly is.
>: Same thing with "extended rolls" and multiple successes. My magickal
>: whammy needn't be gathering power in the Umbra until finally it lashes
>: out and does the deed. It may be that right now I've done the warts,
>: next I need to do the green skin, then the hunched posture, then work
>: on the size and so on, cf. The Riddlemaster of Hed, and the 101 curses
>: of the Wizard Nun, which would, in sum, turn a man into a boar.
>: It may also be that I've managed to do the one-minute-toad spell, and
>: once I've done that, I'll be working frantically to increase the
>: duration.
>: Depends on your spell, the way you conceive of it, and how the
>: storyteller thinks it would be most stylish to play it.
>Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
>But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
>achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
>partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
>thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
>completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
>reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
Actually, no. Read the rules regarding WildMagick and the powerspike
which can accompany a mage's awakening or death.
The way I play it, a mage's last work (ie. the last spell they cast
before their death) gets supercharged by their fleeing life force,
making the classic Death Curse.
Woofie would be left as a man-toad for the rest of his life, despite
almost all attempts at Unweaving or other magickal therapies.
Which is why most supernaturals dread killing mages. The serpent can
bite even after it's dead.
Naturally. But is the yardstick of power mere combat effectiveness?
>: It also keeps the "extended success" rolls from going on till
>: doomsday, especially with characters who are completely ignorant of
>: what they're trying to do. If you have a Dex of 1 and a Dance of 2,
>: the spirits are not going to be impressed by your clumsy tapdancing,
>: and will lose patience before you get enough successes to propitiate
>: them.
>Not a point with which I have ever disagreed.
>: As for a method whereby a mage can always rely on his magick, pick a
>: spell/rote that's within your Spheres and which you need only one
>: success for it to be useful--for example, one success on Prime
>: 2/Forces 3 to levitated the frenzied vampire into the air and hold
>: them their for a minute--then burn a Willpower for an automatic
>: success and DON'T ROLL THE DICE. After all, with three dice,you might
>: pop a 1, and all you need is long enough to get away--or to take the
>: time to strengthen your spell. Once you've got the vamp in the air,
>: you've got a moment to ready your foci to lower your difficulties and
>: throw a few more successes onto your original levitation spell. Sure,
>: the vamp may have Celrity. Without traction, it doesn't 'do him much
>: good, does it? (Unless he has a gun, but that's another point.)
>Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
Dogma. Is it Simple or Standard? That's all you need to look at.
But even so, you just burn a Willpower and levitate yourself. Saves
your bacon just as nicely.
>: Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
>: can still be dangerous and annoying.
>I never said they couldn't be dangerous, I said that they'd be foolish to
>rely on their ability. What you have outlined is that with preparation a
>mage is dangerous, but this is true for anyone. It doesn't meet my criteria
>of being universally reliable if I have to go through all sorts of careful
>preparation well in advance to make sure that it works. As example, if I
>can talk my friend Jones into allowing me to get a good position I might
>be able to restrain him, but just walking up to him and grabbing him probably
>means serious pain in my future if he chooses to deal it as he was a college
>wrestler and I have avoided physical activity rather successfully throughout
>my life. So, would you say that because I might be able to talk him into
>allowing me time that I can rely on my ability to hold him?
If you can get him into a pair of handcuffs, you can rely on those.
But as for careful prep, it's a matter of wits, not brute strength. A
werewolf has more brawn than a mage, same as Jones has more than you.
But if you use your wits, you can come out on top.
Mages have the biggest toolchest of all the WOD supernaturals. It
takes wits to use it, but if you have them, then you're better
prepared than any of the others.
Eric Robert Sylwester
Mark A Hagley (hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu) wrote:
: In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
: >Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
: >to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
: >Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
: >via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
: >bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
: heheheheh, amusing, but i would say that it is still a life 5 effect to
: most tradition mages... that dna stuff is a bit technocratic, and to
: anyone with a bit of common sense outside of that horridly contrary
: scientific jazz, garou-to-poodle is a big change.
Even more unfortunately, since the difficulty of changeing form
for a werewolf is based on what form she is changeing TO rather than FROM,
your enemy spends a point of rage or gnosis (I forget which- I think it's
rage) and is right back in Crinos for the next round. Perhaps even later
THIS round if the garou wants to blow all their rage points.
Verbena using this tactic can hopefully stalemate a single garou,
but probably do nothing more serious...
--
| (#) -Eric
=/ /===_)----- Oh better far to live and die,
\_/ under the brave black flag I fly,
// \\ than play a sanctimonious part,
/ / with a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Nyarlathotep
In article <seanr.738...@fs-gate.uchicago.edu>,
se...@fs-gate.uchicago.edu (Starknight) wrote:
Very true. It would be easier to make the Gangrel VERY clumsy (He just
can't seem to maintain his balance. He just keeps tripping and
falling...). And with multi-tasking, you could do it while running... ;)
The point though is that the Mage can do it (no matter how unwise it
is. The gangrel has celerity and twists our mage into a giant pretzel by
inflicting non-aggravated damage). That has always been the greatest
strength of a Mage. A variety (limited by the spheres possessed and by the
players imagination) in the exercise of their powers and the ability to
produce these effects at a range. Only a Fae comes close in regards to
these powers (Always thought that would be a fun fight).
> Starknight
> Haven't seen you in Callahan's in a while...
I will have to pop in soon.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
hedg...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Eric Robert Sylwester) wrote:
>Mark A Hagley (hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu) wrote:
>: In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
>: >Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
>: >to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
>: >Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
>: >via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
>: >bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
>: heheheheh, amusing, but i would say that it is still a life 5 effect to
>: most tradition mages... that dna stuff is a bit technocratic, and to
>: anyone with a bit of common sense outside of that horridly contrary
>: scientific jazz, garou-to-poodle is a big change.
> Even more unfortunately, since the difficulty of changeing form
>for a werewolf is based on what form she is changeing TO rather than FROM,
>your enemy spends a point of rage or gnosis (I forget which- I think it's
>rage) and is right back in Crinos for the next round. Perhaps even later
>THIS round if the garou wants to blow all their rage points.
Well yes, but it's a Crinos were-peke (which would have points of
PIQUE instead of points of RAGE).
After all, we're playing MAGE, not D&D. Lycanthropes do not
automatically switch back from unfortunate transformations.
If the Progen swaps the wolf DNA for pekinese DNA, you have a
were-peke. Dangerous and shrill, to be sure, but still less dangerous
than a werewolf.
And you can use the fact that he just turned into a pekinese as the
basis for a threat, with Mind to back it up. "Wanna stay that way
forever?"
> Verbena using this tactic can hopefully stalemate a single garou,
>but probably do nothing more serious...
Stalemating a single Garou can still be terribly useful.
Donald Bachman
: > Moreover, to transform me into a toad
: >you'd need, according to the chart on page 170, 4 successes. This is
: >not subject to interpretation.
: Yes it is. The chart on page 170 is meant to give examples, not
: dogma. What you need to look at is the part of the chart where it
: says "4 successes=Impressive Feat"
I admit, I am wrong. Everything is subject to interpretation, what is at
issue is the appropriateness of the interpretation, and I don't find
the path you are treading to be particularly justificable for reasons that
I'll show below.
: Turning you permanently into a toad is far more impressive than
: turning you into a toad for fifteen seconds.
This is a determination that you have made. I don't care how long a person
remains a toad, the simple fact that he even was turned into one for
a few scant seconds qualifies in my book as Impressive.
: The interpretation you need to give is "Alright, is the feat Simple,
: Standard, Difficult, Impressive, Mighty, Outlandish or Godlike?"
: The examples given are with the assumption that the effect is
: permament, or at least very long lasting (or with long-lasting
: effects, such as blowing up a house). It's a Godlike feat to summon
: Cthulhu. However, if I only conjure him long enough to drive the
: neighbors insane, it's merely Mighty.
Where did you get this? With a given number of successes you may achieve
an effect for upto a certain duration. If you don't need that full
duration, so be it, but shortening the duration was never detailed to
allow you to drop the number of successes required.
: > That is, 4 successes on 5 dice on an action
: >that is likely vulgar with me as the witness, thus meaning difficulty
: >9.
: The hypothetical situation was at the private vampire tea party. In
: which case it's Vulgar without witnesses, and therefore easier.
Fine, difficulty 8.
: > If somehow you can interpret this to be easy, then we probably shouldn't
: >even begin to discuss this as my notions of easy and yours don't share
: >anything in common.
: >: "Nothing happens" is boring, and unrealistic. Easier to say that one
: >: success means either limited duration or reduced effect. So either I
: >: turn you into a toad and a minute later you turn back--still very
: >: useful for an escape--or else I give you a wart on the end of your
: >: nose which lasts the rest of your life, or at least until you have one
: >: of your fellow mages perform an unweaving.
: >Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
: >the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
: >even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
: >partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
: >would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
: Good enough.
: >Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
: >the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
: If the Storyteller allows it, it most certainly is.
We are talking about Mage as published. I have been saying that mages are
not overpowered when played by the rules as published. Certainly they can
be if you decide to make changes that grant them more power, but then, who
is to blame for this? You. As written, and published, what I said holds.
: >: Same thing with "extended rolls" and multiple successes. My magickal
: >: whammy needn't be gathering power in the Umbra until finally it lashes
: >: out and does the deed. It may be that right now I've done the warts,
: >: next I need to do the green skin, then the hunched posture, then work
: >: on the size and so on, cf. The Riddlemaster of Hed, and the 101 curses
: >: of the Wizard Nun, which would, in sum, turn a man into a boar.
: >: It may also be that I've managed to do the one-minute-toad spell, and
: >: once I've done that, I'll be working frantically to increase the
: >: duration.
: >: Depends on your spell, the way you conceive of it, and how the
: >: storyteller thinks it would be most stylish to play it.
: >Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
: >But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
: >achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
: >partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
: >thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
: >completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
: >reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
: Actually, no. Read the rules regarding WildMagick and the powerspike
: which can accompany a mage's awakening or death.
Ehh? The point here was that his magick didn't save him. Fine, his magick
goes wild and the were-toadwolf thing is now permanent. This does not change
the fact that the overpowering mage is now dead.
: The way I play it, a mage's last work (ie. the last spell they cast
No, certainly it isn't. It is, however, one of the areas people are complaining
about, and was the one I was speaking to. And certainly, if there is a
condition in which your powers are not particularly easy to use then that is
the beginnings of a demonstration that those powers are limited.
: >: It also keeps the "extended success" rolls from going on till
: >: doomsday, especially with characters who are completely ignorant of
: >: what they're trying to do. If you have a Dex of 1 and a Dance of 2,
: >: the spirits are not going to be impressed by your clumsy tapdancing,
: >: and will lose patience before you get enough successes to propitiate
: >: them.
: >Not a point with which I have ever disagreed.
: >: As for a method whereby a mage can always rely on his magick, pick a
: >: spell/rote that's within your Spheres and which you need only one
: >: success for it to be useful--for example, one success on Prime
: >: 2/Forces 3 to levitated the frenzied vampire into the air and hold
: >: them their for a minute--then burn a Willpower for an automatic
: >: success and DON'T ROLL THE DICE. After all, with three dice,you might
: >: pop a 1, and all you need is long enough to get away--or to take the
: >: time to strengthen your spell. Once you've got the vamp in the air,
: >: you've got a moment to ready your foci to lower your difficulties and
: >: throw a few more successes onto your original levitation spell. Sure,
: >: the vamp may have Celrity. Without traction, it doesn't 'do him much
: >: good, does it? (Unless he has a gun, but that's another point.)
: >Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
: Dogma. Is it Simple or Standard? That's all you need to look at.
: But even so, you just burn a Willpower and levitate yourself. Saves
: your bacon just as nicely.
Rules, and if you are going to throw them away, then you have no grounds
on which to say, 'the rules makes mages overpowering'.
: >: Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
: >: can still be dangerous and annoying.
: >I never said they couldn't be dangerous, I said that they'd be foolish to
: >rely on their ability. What you have outlined is that with preparation a
: >mage is dangerous, but this is true for anyone. It doesn't meet my criteria
: >of being universally reliable if I have to go through all sorts of careful
: >preparation well in advance to make sure that it works. As example, if I
: >can talk my friend Jones into allowing me to get a good position I might
: >be able to restrain him, but just walking up to him and grabbing him probably
: >means serious pain in my future if he chooses to deal it as he was a college
: >wrestler and I have avoided physical activity rather successfully throughout
: >my life. So, would you say that because I might be able to talk him into
: >allowing me time that I can rely on my ability to hold him?
: If you can get him into a pair of handcuffs, you can rely on those.
True, and if I just walk up to him and start to handcuff him, I'm going to get
punched, >>>HARD<<<.
: But as for careful prep, it's a matter of wits, not brute strength. A
: werewolf has more brawn than a mage, same as Jones has more than you.
: But if you use your wits, you can come out on top.
And that has been my point all along. Mages aren't overpowering because in
order to be effective they have to take time, and think carefully and
creatively.
: Mages have the biggest toolchest of all the WOD supernaturals. It
: takes wits to use it, but if you have them, then you're better
: prepared than any of the others.
Depending on you circumstances, of course.
: >: Kevin Andrew Murphy
: >: Author of assorted Goth weirdness
: >: New fiction available at:
: >: http://www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy
: >Donald
: Kevin Andrew Murphy
: Author of assorted Goth weirdness
: New fiction available at:
: http://www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy
Donald
John H
Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) spit out some electrons
that said:
>In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
>jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
>
>> No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
>
> No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
>the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
>That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
Who says blood is tass (whatever that is)? It takes energy from the
vampire to work a disipline, big deal. Are you saying that you can
make a Garou go back to human from Crinos? Or even make a Vampire
who's in the form of a Bat into human? No, you can't do it.
Brian Cheebie Merchant
In the dying days of the second millennium, Nyarlathotep wrote:
>In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
>jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
>
> > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
>
> No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
>the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
>That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
No, the claws are formed from the blood. They dissolve when they are no
longer desired. Protean is the power to change the body. It is not the
same as Mage magic.
---
che...@smart.net
The Mighty Cheebie: loyal drone in the service of Da Queen
Eater of Oreos, wearer of wing weaves, maker of pillows.
Anne Gwin
> Who says blood is tass (whatever that is)? It takes energy from the
> vampire to work a disipline, big deal. Are you saying that you can
> make a Garou go back to human from Crinos? Or even make a Vampire
> who's in the form of a Bat into human? No, you can't do it.
Your unfamiliarity with Mage seems to be real difficulty here. Tass is
a wild/free form of Quintessence. Vampiric blood is a source of Tass.
Quintessence is, according to Mage, the stuff of Magick (and all of
reality is composed of it). This is what Mages manipulate. According to
Mage, the Gangrel spends a point of quintessence (tass) to activate/create
a magickal effect (Wolf's Claws). Therefore Unweaving can be used to
counter this effect (it specifically states tranformations in the text on
pg 174 of Mage). Anti-magic could be concievably employed to counter this
effect as well.
> No, the claws are formed from the blood. They dissolve when they are no
> longer desired. Protean is the power to change the body. It is not the
> same as Mage magic.
You are right. A discipline is not Mage magick. But it is a
form/manifestation of magick. And its execution closely resembles a
dynamic effect. Therefore it can be unweaved. The final word is located in
aforementioned page reference.
StarKnight provided the best end to this argument ("I love working up
an appetite." states the Gangrel as he burns another point of blood to
grow new claws). I do agree unweaving a Gangrel's claws is suicide in
single combat, but a highly effective way to protect a Mage's
non-fortitude possessing Vampire buddy as well as any other supernatural
consor that Mage may have that finds itself in that situation.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
ag...@mail.utexas.edu (Anne Gwin) wrote:
Since I'm one of the people who lobbied Phil to add the "Unweaving"
section, let me restate that Unweaving is a long and TEDIOUS process,
ie. of virtually no use in combat, requiring the mage to be hands on,
or at very least inspecting the spell with a magnfying glass to see
how it's put together.
If you look at it through the metaphor of weaving--which is why that
name was picked--even the simplest form of weaving, crochet, is
carefully knotted off at the end to keep it from unravelling.
Unweaving the Gangrel's claws in combat is roughly akin to trying to
find the one loose thread in his sweater so you can yank on it to
unravel it. If he's holding still, and you have a chance to do a
careful inspection, you may find it. But if he's moving around and
trying to claw out your throat--or your friend's throat--it's next to
impossible, even with magick.
And that's for a simple weaving. Most spells are knitted, knotted,
thatched and macramed together such that unpicking the threads is akin
to taking ten dozen knots out of a tangle of yarn. Possible, yes, but
timeconsuming and frustrating.
You also need to understand something of the technique behind the
magick. If the structure is Cabalistic, you need to know something of
the cabala to easily undo the pattern.
To unpick a Gangrel's claws, you'd need to know something of Kindred
Lore or Hearth Lore, or perhaps basic shapeshifting. A Virtual Adept
couldn't do it. A Verbena or Hollower might.
Mark A Hagley
In a previous article, hedg...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Eric Robert Sylwester) says:
>Mark A Hagley (hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu) wrote:
>
>: In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
>
>: >Then there's my particular favorite against Garou: "What, you're going
>: >to Crinos? No, no, let's adjust that. You're going to Pekinese.
>: >Woof-woof." (Life 4, slight readjustment of the canine DNA strand,
>: >via gene plasticity--ask any zoologist. You'd need Life 5 to do a
>: >bunny rabbit, but lap dogs work just fine most times.)
>
>: heheheheh, amusing, but i would say that it is still a life 5 effect to
>: most tradition mages... that dna stuff is a bit technocratic, and to
>: anyone with a bit of common sense outside of that horridly contrary
>: scientific jazz, garou-to-poodle is a big change.
>
> Even more unfortunately, since the difficulty of changeing form
>for a werewolf is based on what form she is changeing TO rather than FROM,
>your enemy spends a point of rage or gnosis (I forget which- I think it's
>rage) and is right back in Crinos for the next round. Perhaps even later
>THIS round if the garou wants to blow all their rage points.
> Verbena using this tactic can hopefully stalemate a single garou,
>but probably do nothing more serious...
escuse me? in the world in which -i- live, pekiniese do not have the
ability to shapeshift.
woof-woof.
Donald Bachman
Mikko Rautalahti - Warner Music Finland Oy (watc...@xgw10.pal.xgw.fi) wrote:
: This is what Kevin Andrew Murphy (grim...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: >dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
: >>Toss in that mages don't
: >>roll <attribute>+<ability> but rather Arete, which is limited to starting
: >>at 3, and I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that their
: >>starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city. Ineffective idiot
: >>shouldn't be Prince, if you ask me.
: >Yes, but a subtle mage may still be able to deal with him. And there
: >are ways to increase your dice pool or to guarantee an automatic
: >success.
: What's more... if you don't want your character to have three
: points of Arete, GIVE HIM MORE. Obviously, this requires a chat with your
Uh. . .the point was that people were claiming that starting mages were
too powerful, and I was refuting this, hence the section, quoted above,
that reads, ". . .I seriously have to wonder about people who claim that
their starting mages are challenging the Prince of the city."
Of course, most people treat the suggestion of a starting value of 3 as
holy writ anyway.
: storyteller to see if he'd be interested in running a Mage campaign that
: starts from a bit higher power level, but apart from that, there're no
: problems that I can see here. Especially if you're the Storyteller, who
: obviously has the right to decide what kind of a campaign he wants to
: run. So, hey, if you think the beginning mages are too weak -- which I
: personally don't; Kevin already gave some very good examples of why
: beginning mages can do some pretty nasty tricks if they want to. Yes,
: certainly, they would run into trouble if they tried to take on a roomful
: of vampires (unless they simply decided to toss a BIG fireball at them
: and toast the lot of them (Forces 3, Prime 2, no probs)) you can always do
: some Mind magicking and subtly influence them (Mind 2) by pushing them
: just a liiittle bit into the right direction. This may take a bit of
: work, but is quite possible to accomplish with even an Arete pool of 3.
I suppose that the list of things you can expect to achieve with Arete 3
didn't make it through, and instead some post from an alternate Earth
did where that alterversion of me suggested that mages should be able to
take on a room full of vampires. Or were you being facetious?
: And if you're doing this, who says you gotta go after the biggest,
: baddest and toughest guy in the room? You can begin with the Neonate over
: there and move up once HE has opened his mouth and started to influence
: the others. Sure, he's just a Neonate, but even Neonate's words work if
: they say the right thing.
: So, no, I don't think the beginning mages are too weak, but if
: you do, just make them more powerful. Give them extra ten or fifteen
: freebie points if you want to, and then they'll be quite strong enough to
: do whatever they please. Which doesn't mean that they won't run into
: opposition stronger than them...
The point, restated here, was--and remains--that mages are not overpowered.
: >Of course, challenging the Prince is still stupid, but a starting mage
: >can still be dangerous and annoying.
: More than that. Hell, a starting mage with the aforementioned
: Arete pool of three, Forces 3 and Prime 2, can make a nice fireball, have
: it float in front of him (or in his hand) and tell the Prince in a very
: calm voice that he has four seconds to call off his dogs before he turns
: the entire building into a raging firestorm.
Of course he's lying, but the Prince may not have Auspex and realize this.
: Now, he may not be able to do that. Certainly not in time until
: he's been ripped to shreds by someone with Celerity and Wolf Claws. But
: the point is, he MIGHT be able to do that. And if you're the Prince of a
: city and have someone who can toss fireballs around show up in your
: city... what're you going to do; try to attack him, or try to keep him
If someone shows up who is claiming the ability to toss fireballs around,
especially in my offices, I'm having the fool removed in a permanent fashion,
from both my offices and this life.
: happy? It's not like you know that this is a new character who is
: considered to be a young whelp by his peers. All YOU know is that you
: have a guy floating a fireball around that makes you real nervous, and he
: has just told you to do something.
: 'course, as it is, could be that the bluff fails. Or, maybe this
: particular prince is a liiittle bit older than you thought, and knows for
: a fact that he can take you out before you can do anything with that
: fireball. But, hey, what's life without a bit of risk?
: Issa dangerous world, innit?
: - Mikki
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: - Mikko Rautalahti --- "I judge a woman solely by the size and shape of -
: - watc...@xgw.fi --- her nostrils." -- "Weird Al" Yankovic -
: - WatchMan @ IRC ----------------------- http://www.xgw.fi/~watchman/ -
: ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald
JBRocky
Ok to be blunt about what I said earlier in this post is that a Vampire
can kick a Mages butt and a Mage can kick a Vampires butt. The same also
goes for Garou. The point is anybody can kill anybody you just have to
think ahead and be prepared.
Jeffryes Joshua M
Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
:|In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
:|jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
:|
:| > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
:|
:| No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
:|the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
:|That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
Nope.
Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
J. Spectre - only Mage things are "magick." Everything else is reality.
|"Those who trust do not question. |"A man who has not passed through |
| Those who fear dare not question." | the inferno of his passions has |
| -NWO slogan | never overcome them." -CG Jung |
+ --------------------Neighbors: the other red meat---------------------+
John H
cheebie@{remove}smart.net (Brian "Cheebie" Merchant) spit out some
electrons that said:
>In the dying days of the second millennium, Nyarlathotep wrote:
>>In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
>>jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
>>
>> > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
>>
>> No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
>>the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
>>That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
>No, the claws are formed from the blood. They dissolve when they are no
>longer desired. Protean is the power to change the body. It is not the
>same as Mage magic.
After a conversation with a Mage player (and reading the book) I feel
that the claws are a Magic effect, but not a Magick effect. There is
a difference.
Nyarlathotep
In article <5dvm45$l...@ursa.smsu.edu>, jmj...@nic.smsu.edu (Jeffryes
Joshua M) wrote:
> Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
> than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
> machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
I never argued that the vampire could be unweaved, only that 'magickal'
effects produced by him could. Wolf's Claws are a part of a magical
discipline and therefore are not natural to the vampiric form (like fangs,
blood pool, etc...). Besides it is an effect that must be created and is
not inherent to the vampiric form.
If we follow your argument here, then a Mage is incapable of performing
in form counter/anti-magick against any Vampiric discipline. Your argument
also alludes to the mage being able to produce any vulgar effect he wants
without fear of paradox just by flashing some life-magick produced fangs
and pale skin. It just doesn't wash...
Kevin Andrew Murphy
hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu (Mark A Hagley) wrote:
>escuse me? in the world in which -i- live, pekiniese do not have the
>ability to shapeshift.
>woof-woof.
"Why not?" says the Progenitor. "Genetically they and wolves are the
same species. A peke is just a highly-inbred domesticated Chinese
wolf. I'm changing the wolf into a peke. I could also change it into
an Irish wolfhound, but that would make it larger and far more
dangerous. So I think I'll do pekes and pomeranians."
Jens Hage
In alt.games.whitewolf Jeffryes Joshua M <jmj...@nic.smsu.edu> wrote:
: Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
: :|In article <5drfje$q...@neonlights.uoregon.edu>,
: :|jo...@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
: :|
: :| > No, its a physical change. Its not magick-based. The body changes.
: :|
: :| No, I think you are wrong. It takes one blood point (tass) to engage
: :|the effect which remains active until dispelled (claws are retracted).
: :|That sounds like a continous magickal effect to me.
: Nope.
: Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
: than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
: machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
You've said this before and people have said the same thing I'm about to:
tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension War.
: J. Spectre - only Mage things are "magick." Everything else is reality.
Jens "Sorry, I happen to think you're dead wrong" Hage
Jeffryes Joshua M
Anne Gwin (ag...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
:|> Who says blood is tass (whatever that is)? It takes energy from the
:|> vampire to work a disipline, big deal. Are you saying that you can
:|> make a Garou go back to human from Crinos? Or even make a Vampire
:|> who's in the form of a Bat into human? No, you can't do it.
:| Your unfamiliarity with Mage seems to be real difficulty here. Tass is
To quote, "your unfamiliarity with Mage seems to be the real difficulty
here."
:|a wild/free form of Quintessence. Vampiric blood is a source of Tass.
:|Quintessence is, according to Mage, the stuff of Magick (and all of
:|reality is composed of it). This is what Mages manipulate. According to
Nope. Mages can use Vampire blood *as* Tass. That does not mean it *is*
Tass, or that Vampires are romping around using Quintessence. It's just
very similar. Mages with Prime 1 can rob their own lifeforce for a few
extra Quintessence, but that doesn't mean that Health levels are
Quintessence, does it? Ditto with Caerns not *really* being nodes.
They're just close enough the differences don't matter.
:|Mage, the Gangrel spends a point of quintessence (tass) to activate/create
:|a magickal effect (Wolf's Claws). Therefore Unweaving can be used to
:|counter this effect (it specifically states tranformations in the text on
:|pg 174 of Mage). Anti-magic could be concievably employed to counter this
:|effect as well.
It also specifically states that no form of countermagick can be used
against vampires using Protean. See the section on vampires in the
section on othere denizens of the WoD.
:|> No, the claws are formed from the blood. They dissolve when they are no
:|> longer desired. Protean is the power to change the body. It is not the
:|> same as Mage magic.
:| You are right. A discipline is not Mage magick. But it is a
:|form/manifestation of magick. And its execution closely resembles a
:|dynamic effect. Therefore it can be unweaved. The final word is located in
:|aforementioned page reference.
No no no. Disciplines are static REALITY, no magick involved.
:| StarKnight provided the best end to this argument ("I love working up
:|an appetite." states the Gangrel as he burns another point of blood to
:|grow new claws). I do agree unweaving a Gangrel's claws is suicide in
:|single combat, but a highly effective way to protect a Mage's
:|non-fortitude possessing Vampire buddy as well as any other supernatural
:|consor that Mage may have that finds itself in that situation.
Sounds like a good way to make yourself a target, since all vampires get
a Alertness+Perception roll to notice any Mages in the area using Magick.
J. Spectre - how many successes do I need on my arete roll to
coincidentally make all Mage-players in the world actually read the
rules for once? Does this fall under "God-like Feats?"
Nyarlathotep
In article <5dvn0t$l...@ursa.smsu.edu>, jmj...@nic.smsu.edu (Jeffryes
Joshua M) wrote:
- big snip-
> It also specifically states that no form of countermagick can be used
> against vampires using Protean. See the section on vampires in the
> section on othere denizens of the WoD.
What they are refering to in the section (2nd paragraph, pg 233) is
Basic (specific) Countermagick. No mention is made of Anti-magick or
Unweaving. Nor is there a blanket policy statement to that end.
> No no no. Disciplines are static REALITY, no magick involved.
Really? It would logically follow that any Mage who creates an effect
that is similar to any Discipline (Say Presence or Dominate) would be
immune to paradox?
I guess if he changes to Crinos Garou, he would be exempted to? Right?
Using Disciplines is just as mundane as using a toaster or oven. No,
that's not a vulgar fireball I am throwing. It's a coincidental imitation
of the Lure of Flames. Sure.
> J. Spectre - how many successes do I need on my arete roll to
> coincidentally make all Mage-players in the world actually
read the
> rules for once? Does this fall under "God-like Feats?"
CC
Nyarlathotep
In article <5duil1$9...@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com>, grim...@ix.netcom.com
(Kevin Andrew Murphy) wrote:
-snip-
> You also need to understand something of the technique behind the
> magick. If the structure is Cabalistic, you need to know something of
> the cabala to easily undo the pattern.
>
> To unpick a Gangrel's claws, you'd need to know something of Kindred
> Lore or Hearth Lore, or perhaps basic shapeshifting. A Virtual Adept
> couldn't do it. A Verbena or Hollower might.
Agreed. I would require some level of knowledge. A Progenitor who works
at DNA, for example.
Yes, unweaving is quite time consuming (5-15 success @ diff of around
8). It would be easier to use Prime to make the blood used for Wolf's
Claws activation inert, or diffuse the power being released. A Life/Matter
effect could change the Wolf's Claws into non-aggravated weapons (more
effective, the Gangrel wouldn't realize what had happen until it was to
late).
But the point is that the Wolf's Claws could be unweaved. Thank You.
sv...@ll.mit.edu
Jens Hage wrote:
[in response to Joshua Jeffryes]
>: Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more
>: magickal than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to
>: unweave soda machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off
>: it.
>
> You've said this before and people have said the same thing I'm about
> to: tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension
> War.
Whereas I don't believe that vampires fit into any sort of Paradigm --
the _Mage_ materials heavily hint, if not declare outright, that
vampires and werewolves would probably still exist in _any_ dominant
consensual reality, because of the old 'carry-their-own-pocket-reality-
around-with-them-by-strength-of-will' explanation in _Book of Madness_.
They're not like, say, Umbrood (who, the books go on to hint, would
instantly turn into 'space aliens' and lose their spiritual dimension if
the Technocracy were to win).
How long they'd last, however, after a Technocracy-centric paradigm
turned their attentions to eradicating them, is a matter of debate.
-- S. Skoog
PS -- Does a Technocrat call what he/she's using (technology) "magick?"
Even if he/she doesn't, is he/she aware on any level that it is
magick? This is kind of an important question, and a pivotal
difference between the way each faction works their will...
James McPherson
: Nope. Mages can use Vampire blood *as* Tass. That does not mean it *is*
: Tass, or that Vampires are romping around using Quintessence. It's just
: very similar. Mages with Prime 1 can rob their own lifeforce for a few
: extra Quintessence, but that doesn't mean that Health levels are
: Quintessence, does it? Ditto with Caerns not *really* being nodes.
: They're just close enough the differences don't matter.
Actually, Blood *IS* Tass, caerns *ARE* nodes and Health Levels *ARE*
Quintessence.
What is tass? Anything that contains more quintessence than is needed for
the object to exist. Ergo Vampiric blood is an example of Tass.
So could a vampire consume Tass? Yes, but only when it was blood.
What are nodes? Areas where the quintessence flows much more freely and
the guantlet is lower. Ergo nodes are a kind of caern.
Could a Garou summon a spirit or step sideways easier at a node? Sure, as
long as the node resonance matched.
What are Health Levels? An indication of the condition of a creature,
nothing more.
Can draining a creature's quintessence harm it? Yes, vampires (and mages
to some extent) do so on a regular basis.
Can harming a creature free quintessence? Yep, some spirits (Scrags IIRC)
draw energy from inflicting harm. This is also the basis for ritual
sacrifice.
Does this mean I agree with the "unweaving claws" bit? No, because while
Quintessence=Gnosis=Blood=Spirt Power I don't think Sphere=Gift=
Discipline=Charm. What works on one doesn't work on another. Both
manipulate the same kind of energy but do it different ways.
--
Kilroy
MynstiomN
Kig Mat'Zo Mat
http://www.ntr.net/~kilroy
PGP Public Key on Web
Kevin Andrew Murphy
sv...@ll.mit.edu wrote:
>PS -- Does a Technocrat call what he/she's using (technology) "magick?"
> Even if he/she doesn't, is he/she aware on any level that it is
> magick? This is kind of an important question, and a pivotal
> difference between the way each faction works their will...
Technocrats don't call what they're doing "magick" because they don't
believe it's magick--they believe it's Science, with the capital S.
They also don't believe in Paradox. What they believe in is
"uncontrolled random factors when a theorem is tested outside a
sterile laboratory environment"--ie. you try that trick outside of
your Sanctum, you get Paradox.
Do they believe that other mages can work magick? Yes and no. After
initial skepticism, they will conclude that, "The Hermetic's ability
to cause spontaneous combustion of air molecules is a demonstrably
reproducible phenomenon, linked in some manner to his pronunciation of
certain sylables which bear some resemblance to Classic Latin."
Do they believe this is magick? Not as such. Some will state
Clarke's Law and its tranverse. Science=Magick, Magick=Science. The
difference between the two is the degree of inquiry and the Scientific
method. Scientists question and experiment. Mages don't.
Confronted with a Hermetic conjuring fireballs apparently via Enochian
incantations, a number of hypotheses present themselves.
Hypothesis 1: The sonic resonic and harmonic variance of the chanting
is able to cause spontaneous combustion of air molecules, resulting in
the phenomena quaintly refered to as a "fireball."
Hypothesis 2: Being that Science is ancient, and Time travel
theoretically possible, it may be that there is a large
extra-dimensional reality-warping computer which can produces such
phenomena as "fireballs" in conventional reality when accessed with
the proper programming language and code sequence. Enochian is
obviously this lost computer language, misinterpreted by the Hermetics
as "The Language of the Spirits."
Hypothesis 3: After consulting with the Hermetic, it is discovered
that he believes his chant to be a command to the Elemental King of
Fire, who resides in a realm known as the High Umbra. This sounds
like an old-fashioned and superstitious way to refer to a powerful
Energy Being from Dimension X. However, since requests in English
"for the Extradimensional Energy Being to cause spontaneous combustion
of air molecules" have as of yet netted no results, it is more
appropriate to follow the Hermetic and study his methods, since, if
this Energy Being does in fact exist, the Hermetic has demonstrated a
working relationship with this entity. Therefore, taking the methods
of anthropology and becoming a participant-observer in the practices
referred to as "magickal rituals" is what is recommended by the
Scientific Method so as to gather more data on this phenomena.
The beauty of this, of course, is that the Scientific Method can be
applied to everything. Ash, my rogue Progenitor, when confronted with
a satyr in the process of using the Song of Pan to spark an orgy,
concluded that he was witnessing an extreme example of sonics causing
mood swings and the release of various hormones in the brain. Since
he has Mind, Life and Entropy, he was able to reproduce this phenomena
himself.
Yes, to the uninitiated it appears that he's casting a spell, singing
an ancient faerie song. To his philosophy, however, he's reproducing
a series of notes and tones to cause a chemical reaction in the brain.
He knows that many of the syllables and consonants in the "song" are
unnecessary, but has not, as yet, had time to do labratory trials to
find which notes are in fact the necessary ones. So, for a quick
scientific solution in the field, it is far better to use something
which has been demonstrated to work than to attempt to find the exact
tonal sequence at that moment. Though the Song of Pan is of course a
corruption of the actual tonal sequence, there is obviously a degree
of tolerance and as such it is inadvisable to deviate too far for fear
of losing a crucial note.
The Scientific Method is a wonderful thing. When confronted with his
brother, who'd gone Marauder and was out dimension-hopping between
worlds, the other mages screamed, "Ah! He is one of the Mad Ones!"
After Ash talked with his brother, he came back to the party and told
them, "The terms 'sane' and 'mad' are highly subjective, and of very
little use in modern psychology. Rather, you should look at
'functional' and 'non-functional.' I find my brother to be a highly
functional individual, and his eccentricities are merely coping
mechanisms designed to deal with the alien realities of alternate
dimensions."
"But he's Awakened!"
"He's Self-Actualized."
"He's wearing powered armor and flying a dragon!" the other mages
counter. Which merely makes Ash shrug. Yes, so what? Though he'd
like to inspect the dragon more fully.
Science is so much fun.
Eric Robert Sylwester
Nyarlathotep (Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
: In article <5dvn0t$l...@ursa.smsu.edu>, jmj...@nic.smsu.edu (Jeffryes
: Joshua M) wrote:
: - big snip-
:
: > No no no. Disciplines are static REALITY, no magick involved.
: Really? It would logically follow that any Mage who creates an effect
: that is similar to any Discipline (Say Presence or Dominate) would be
: immune to paradox?
No, it wouldn't logically follow. Whether something is Magick or not is
an argument over method, not results. Two vastly different abilities or
circumstances which produce the same result.
A metaphor: You can earn money by working, betting, inheritance,
robbery, counterfeiting, etc.. and which method you use is really going to
change the circumstances. How you come by it makes a difference, even
though it might be all cash in the end. To extend the metaphor, mages who
warp reality to create an effect have to deal with reality police-
paradox. If you inherit the ability to do that same effect, naturally
have the ability to do it, or earn the ability to do it through
"reality-allowed practices" (i.e. studying hedge magic) you DONT have to
deal with these consequences. Even if its the same cash/effect in the
end.
Magick is a way of performing feats. It is not the feat itself. Now, I
don't know the details of unweaving or antimagick, but if it only works on
Magickal effects, then I'd have to say that unless that Gangreal rolled
his Arete to make his wolf claws grow, they probably can't be unwoven.
Curtis Shane Way
Actually, the M:tA2E is very clear on the Countermagick thing:
(oh god i'm a rules lawyer)
The only Disciplines that can be Countered are those working on the mage
directly (i.e. Dominate, Thaumaturgy, Vicissitude, Chimerstry).
Disciplines that change the vampire cannot, even if they have a resulting
external effect (Protean, Vicissitude 1, Fortitude, Presence, Obfuscate,
Auspex)
So Mesmerize can be countered, Wolf Claws cannot.
--
---',@ Lazarus,
Tzimisce Artist.
--------
This Weeks Obscure Monty Python Quote:
"If that penguin came from the zoo, it'd have 'Property of the Zoo'
stamped on it."
"They don't stamp animals 'Property of the Zoo!' You wouldn't stamp
a huge lion!!!"
"They stamp them when they're small."
"What about when they molt?"
"Lions don't molt!"
"Ah but penguins do. Ha! Run rings around you logicly!"
"Ah... Intercourse the Penguin!"
BLAKE 1001
> Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
> than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
> machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
>
You are absolutely right, in that this is what the official rules say.
However, there are such things as bad rules. The Vampire, Werewolf, &
Wraith do not have rules for anything resembling Paradox. Rather than
admitting that such creatures are inherently Paradoxical, the writer's
took the easy way out and just flat said: "They don't get Paradox." So
everyone asked "Why not." Now the real reason was "Because we don't
want to write the rules for it," but the best they could come up with
was "Uh, its Static, yeah, that's it."
If you want to look at Vampires from a Mage perspective you can come to
the following conclusions:
1) They must generate paradox because a) they perform what appears to be
Dynamic magick. and b) mages who attempt to use the 'Vampire
coincedence' get slammed with paradox.
2) The Vamps don't seem to know about or be concerned with Paradox.
3) Vamps do get Paradox, they just don't recognize it on a case-by case
basis the way mages do. They are so inanately Paradoxical, in fact,
that they are subject to Unbelief. Thus they are Thaumavores, feeding
on the blood of the living to maintain thier aberant existances.
If you use the official rules you're faced with a blatant
contradiction: On the one hand Vamps don't get Paradox because their
magick is 'Static' on the other, those supposedly static effects can't
be used as coincidences.
Just bad game design. White Wolf must know it too. Why do you think
they have the 'every rule is optional' clause?
John H
Nyarla...@mail.utexas.edu (Nyarlathotep) spit out some electrons
that said:
>In article <5dvm45$l...@ursa.smsu.edu>, jmj...@nic.smsu.edu (Jeffryes
>Joshua M) wrote:
>> Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
>> than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
>> machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
>
> I never argued that the vampire could be unweaved, only that 'magickal'
>effects produced by him could. Wolf's Claws are a part of a magical
Yes, Wolf Claws are magical, not Magickal.
<SNIP>
Kyle Anderson Felker
com> <5dhih0$a...@ionews.ionet.net> <32FF90...@october.com> <5dqueo$6...@ionews.ionet.net> <5dr9d8$j...@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> <5dsokt$b...@ionews.ionet.net> <5dt3as$e...@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>
Distribution:
:My lord, the Umbrood Spirit Kevin Andrew Murphy reports:
:
: >If you have 5 Arete you are far from a starting mage. In fact, you have
: >spent 56 experience at a minimum.
:
: Unless I bought a familiar at the start and usually have an Arete of
: 4.
It's recommended that a starting character not buy an arete score over
three. And buying a
familiar and keeping it are two different things, Familiar is a singularly
*bad* background for a beginning mage to take unless he's sure he's going
to have regular access to quintessence, which is not likely unless he and
the other players are willing to spend hefty points in Node.
:
: However, it needs to be a starting character? Fine. I've spent my
: background points on a Talisman, the "Wand of Circe" that has an Arete
: 5 and can turn people into appropriate animals. Vulgar but fun.
That would require an awful lot of freebies, remember that Talisman
background costs twice as much.
:
: > Moreover, to transform me into a toad
: >you'd need, according to the chart on page 170, 4 successes. This is
: >not subject to interpretation.
:
: Yes it is. The chart on page 170 is meant to give examples, not
: dogma. What you need to look at is the part of the chart where it
: says "4 successes=Impressive Feat"
Excuse me, but just where does it say that making you into a toad with
four successes is going to be permanent at all? According to the Duration
Chart, four successes gets you an effect that lasts for one story.
The chart is meant to give examples, but I think "changing someone else's
shape" is a pretty clear indicator that turning someone into a toad is
going to require at least four successes.
:
: Turning you permanently into a toad is far more impressive than
: turning you into a toad for fifteen seconds.
Ugh. There's no way I'm accepting this. We already have a duration
chart, thank you. This is just more work for me as an ST.
:
: The interpretation you need to give is "Alright, is the feat Simple,
: Standard, Difficult, Impressive, Mighty, Outlandish or Godlike?"
Which is mighty hard to do without the examples.
:
: The examples given are with the assumption that the effect is
: permament, or at least very long lasting (or with long-lasting
I'd like you to show me where this is written. I don't see that
assumption anywhere, in fact, I sort of figured from the duration chart
that it was assumed that *all* effects were temporary unless you scored
over six successes!
: effects, such as blowing up a house). It's a Godlike feat to summon
: Cthulhu. However, if I only conjure him long enough to drive the
: neighbors insane, it's merely Mighty.
*sigh* I'm not trying to be nasty, but this looks so much like rules abuse
that it makes me physically cringe.
Soi what you're saying is, I can do anything I want, with any number of
successes, as long as I don't do it for very long?
*cringe*
:
: > That is, 4 successes on 5 dice on an action
: >that is likely vulgar with me as the witness, thus meaning difficulty
: >9.
:
: The hypothetical situation was at the private vampire tea party. In
: which case it's Vulgar without witnesses, and therefore easier.
*puzzled look* no, it's nine. start at five (highest sphere), plus four
(vulgar without witnesses), adds up to nine. If sleepers were around,
it'd be ten.
: >Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
: >the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
: >even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
: >partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
: >would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
:
: Good enough.
:
: >Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
: >the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
:
: If the Storyteller allows it, it most certainly is.
If we're going to start arguing on the basis of "I'm ST, and I can do what
I want in my world", then there's no point to any of this.
: >: Depends on your spell, the way you conceive of it, and how the
: >: storyteller thinks it would be most stylish to play it.
:
: >Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
: >But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
: >achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
: >partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
: >thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
: >completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
: >reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
:
: Actually, no. Read the rules regarding WildMagick and the powerspike
: which can accompany a mage's awakening or death.
Dying to do something spectacular is hardly overpowered either.
(snip)
: >Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
:
: Dogma. Is it Simple or Standard? That's all you need to look at.
: But even so, you just burn a Willpower and levitate yourself. Saves
: your bacon just as nicely.
Again, if we're going to start arguing "I'm god in my game", then there's
no point. And again, Simple or Standard are just words that don't mean
anything without examples.
--
-Kyle Felker
______________________________________________________________________________
* Sorceror, Gamer, Magic:The Gathering player, Madman, Comic Book Enthusiast *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I'm sick and tired of being called evil by pompous elven tree-huggers and
others of their ilk, just because a few of my spells are not suitable for
small children and pets. And while we're on the subject, how come white
gets to be on top?"
-Matthew,
in a rec.games.deckmaster discussion about black spells.
Bruno Panz-Jones
In article <3304CB...@october.com>, BLAKE 1001 <Op...@october.com> wrote:
>You are absolutely right, in that this is what the official rules say.
>However, there are such things as bad rules. The Vampire, Werewolf, &
>Wraith do not have rules for anything resembling Paradox. Rather than
>admitting that such creatures are inherently Paradoxical, the writer's
>took the easy way out and just flat said: "They don't get Paradox." So
>everyone asked "Why not." Now the real reason was "Because we don't
>want to write the rules for it," but the best they could come up with
>was "Uh, its Static, yeah, that's it."
I don't mean to offend (in fact, I use the term from habit, not for
description: you've obviously given this some thought), but you have a
very bad case of AMPS (arrogant mage player syndrome). Just as Werewolf
cosmology and vampire politics don't explain everything about the WoD,
Mage metaphysics doesn't describe everything. Frankly, making everything
consistent would be boring, and would raise the question of what's left
for mage characters to discover.
For instance, why is there Hedge Magic? Or infernalism? Or True Faith?
Each of these Static powers seem to violate the laws of reality- but they
don't generate paradox. The difference is that they most certainly are a
crucial part of the Mage setting.
>If you want to look at Vampires from a Mage perspective you can come to
>the following conclusions:
>1) They must generate paradox because a) they perform what appears to be
>Dynamic magick. and b) mages who attempt to use the 'Vampire
>coincedence' get slammed with paradox.
This I can't agree with. Every mage player in any of the Baba-Yagaesque
threads took great pains to explain that she was weaker BECAUSE she didn't
perform Dynamic Magick.
Vampire sorcerors (especially the Tremere) have theorized that Vampires
carry their own realities around with them, in a manner similar to, but
superior to, the Marauders. And just as Marauders operate under
limitations due to their own expectations, Vampires may be subject to
something similar- forcing them to learn power very slowly. OTOH, this
could be completely different. Mages don't know exactly why vampires are
the way they are; it is the mystery which makes interaction so dangerous
and difficult for both.
BTW, werewolves are affected by the Gauntlet, as are all spirits
(including Wraiths). Spirits in Mage, Werewolf and Wraith are unaffected
by Paradox.
>2) The Vamps don't seem to know about or be concerned with Paradox.
This is really just a corollary to 1). They don't get it, so they don't
know about it.
>3) Vamps do get Paradox, they just don't recognize it on a case-by case
>basis the way mages do. They are so inanately Paradoxical, in fact,
>that they are subject to Unbelief. Thus they are Thaumavores, feeding
>on the blood of the living to maintain thier aberant existances.
OK, then here comes your contradiction. Either WW sucks because they
don't get paradox, or they suck because they do and don't admit it.
This is actually a legitimate argument to make. A fellow storyteller and
I are in the midst of a similar debate- he thinks that if the Technocracy
quashed all Vampire myths, they would disappear. I think that Vampires
have are outside the scope of belief, and Werewolves and Vampires lasted
when so many other supernaturals didn't for this reason.
The response to this argument is that Vampires don't generate additional
paradox for vulgar actions. In this scenario, vampires don't drink blood
because it is Tass (if this were so, why don't blood banks hold massive
Tass stores?) They drink the blood, gain sustanence from it- and then it
BECOMES mystically charged. In other words, blood itself isn't magical,
it is only once the Kindred drinks it that it takes on a magical nature.
>If you use the official rules you're faced with a blatant
>contradiction: On the one hand Vamps don't get Paradox because their
>magick is 'Static' on the other, those supposedly static effects can't
>be used as coincidences.
Again, this can be interpretted in several ways. Either vampires pay
their debt in paradox, and so should the mage. Or they aren't subject to
paradox, and mages haven't or can't reproduce the nature of vampiric
immunity. Don't blame WW for putting in competition for mages whose
tricks the mages cannot steal...
>Just bad game design. White Wolf must know it too. Why do you think
>they have the 'every rule is optional' clause?
Nonsense! Vampire was a great leap forward for roleplaying. It finally
made the transition from war simulation gaming to improvisational theater
complete- allowing every kind of gamer access to storylines which would
tickle their fancies. The setting, the stories and the characters made
the game very innovative.
Mage continued this revolution. With a wonderful universal system for
magic (whose philosophy you are currently using) and a great way of making
room for every magical style and yet keeping science possible, Mage was
another leap forward.
If you think that they aren't compatible, don't blame the developers.
They created the games one at a time. I don't think they are
incompatible, but even if you do, it was a problem of history- not 'bad
game design'.
As for the 'every rule is optional' clause, it was designed to make the
storyteller's responsibility crystal clear-- it is the entertainment of
the players. If a roll or rule ruins the game, then just silently undo
it. It fights powergaming. If a character is carrying too much, it isn't
because of some encumbrance tables, it is because common sense (or at
least storyteller whim) intervenes. It isn't a cheap out for bad
developers, it is a way of turning the player-storyteller relationship
from adversarial to cooperative.
Rob
--
Robert Mayberry Student of Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech
Official Media Assassin- GT College Republicans
gt8...@prism.gatech.edu | "Never underestimate the power of
tanz...@r39h29.res.gatech.edu | human stupidity"- R.A. Heinlein
Johann Hibschman
In article <5dtga8$7...@ionews.ionet.net>,
Personally, I've always wondered how to keep the mage with
Correspondence 2 and Time 2 from finding out everything. If a vampire
or anyone else does anything to attract this guy's attention, the mage
can just sit back in his sanctum and listen in on every important
meeting the vampire/werewolf/whatever has been involved in for the past
month. Then, if he decides that the vampire/werewolf/whatever is a
problem, hand grenades start appearing in inconvenient places. Or
poison. Or incriminating evidence.
All of this is done with nice, leisurely extended rolls, taking lots of
time, standing on a node, waving around armfulls of foci, and in the
mage's own sanctum. Not really a problem for even an Arete 3 mage.
Heck, depending on your views of vulgarity, the scanning/listening
may even be coincidental.
Of course, there's not much this guy can do to keep himself from being
killed should said vampire come knocking at the door, other than
predicting that event and not being home when the vamp comes a-callin'.
- Johann
--
Johann Hibschman
joh...@physics.berkeley.edu
JBRocky
You are absolutely right, in that this is what the official rules say.
However, there are such things as bad rules. The Vampire, Werewolf, &
Wraith do not have rules for anything resembling Paradox. Rather than
admitting that such creatures are inherently Paradoxical, the writer's
took the easy way out and just flat said: "They don't get Paradox." So
everyone asked "Why not." Now the real reason was "Because we don't
want to write the rules for it," but the best they could come up with
was "Uh, its Static, yeah, that's it."
If you want to look at Vampires from a Mage perspective you can come to
the following conclusions:
1) They must generate paradox because a) they perform what appears to be
Dynamic magick. and b) mages who attempt to use the 'Vampire
coincedence' get slammed with paradox.
2) The Vamps don't seem to know about or be concerned with Paradox.
3) Vamps do get Paradox, they just don't recognize it on a case-by case
basis the way mages do. They are so inanately Paradoxical, in fact,
that they are subject to Unbelief. Thus they are Thaumavores, feeding
on the blood of the living to maintain thier aberant existances.
If you use the official rules you're faced with a blatant
contradiction: On the one hand Vamps don't get Paradox because their
magick is 'Static' on the other, those supposedly static effects can't
be used as coincidences.
Just bad game design. White Wolf must know it too. Why do you think
they have the 'every rule is optional' clause?
The question is why don't vampires get paradox? Basicly vamps do not
change reality becase they DO NOT use Magick. Also Vampire came 2 years
before Mage. This means Vampire would have to be totaly rewritten just to
satisfy you. Mage is fun because its Mage and, Vampire is fun because its
Vampire. You are definently an arragent Mage player.
Eric Robert Sylwester
Johann Hibschman (joh...@physics20.berkeley.edu) wrote:
: In article <5dtga8$7...@ionews.ionet.net>,
: Personally, I've always wondered how to keep the mage with
: Correspondence 2 and Time 2 from finding out everything. If a vampire
: or anyone else does anything to attract this guy's attention, the mage
: can just sit back in his sanctum and listen in on every important
: meeting the vampire/werewolf/whatever has been involved in for the past
: month. Then, if he decides that the vampire/werewolf/whatever is a
: problem, hand grenades start appearing in inconvenient places. Or
: poison. Or incriminating evidence.
Well, there's obfuscate. And stepping into the Umbra, which garou tend to
do. Besides the fact that that's a pretty boring way to live. And
that's a lot of magick rolls to be making (say, if you want to sleep, you
have to redo it every time you wake) or one big one, and at least the
former increases your chances of botching.
Also, with max 4 successes (3 arete +1 willpower), how much can he
see?
Finally, if I hand *you* videotape of my last months' movements
(every second of my life, mind you), it's going to be a bitch to go
through and find, as you say "all the interesting parts." Sure you can
knock out those sleep times (and you'd better hope your subject doesn't
have telepathy of some sort, or you might be missing something there too),
but you're still going to want to listen to every conversation he has.
That's quite a lot of footage.
: All of this is done with nice, leisurely extended rolls, taking lots of
: time, standing on a node, waving around armfulls of foci, and in the
: mage's own sanctum. Not really a problem for even an Arete 3 mage.
: Heck, depending on your views of vulgarity, the scanning/listening
: may even be coincidental.
: Of course, there's not much this guy can do to keep himself from being
: killed should said vampire come knocking at the door, other than
: predicting that event and not being home when the vamp comes a-callin'.
Yah..."there he is walking out his door, getting in his car,
driving over...hey! that looks like my neighbourhood! Fast forward!
Ohh, shiii.........!!!!"
<grin>
Eric Tolle
ag...@mail.utexas.edu (Anne Gwin) wrote:
>reality is composed of it). This is what Mages manipulate. According to
>Mage, the Gangrel spends a point of quintessence (tass) to activate/create
>a magickal effect (Wolf's Claws). Therefore Unweaving can be used to
>counter this effect (it specifically states tranformations in the text on
>pg 174 of Mage). Anti-magic could be concievably employed to counter this
>effect as well.
Please cite the page reference for this please. I've read nothing of
the sort. MtA states (pp. 232, Col. 2, Par. 10):
(underlining mine)
_These_powers_are_not_magickal_. for reasons the Awakened don't
entirely understand, the vampiric embrace destroys a vampires ability
to use True Magick, and he cannot carry it over beyond his death.
(.....) Some Kindred employ a _form_of_static_magic_ called
Disciplines by some.
Following, it clearly states (pp. 232, Col. 1, par. 2):
Mages with the right spheres canoppose some disciplines.
...(Dominate, Presence, Thautamurgy)..._powers which alter the
Kindred (Potence, Obfuscate, Celerity, Fortitude, Auspex and Protean)
or others (Animalism, or Presence or Dominate used against someone
other then the mage) cannot be countered this way.
On page 174, it is also quite clear in context that unweaving is for
_MAGICK_ only. (par. 6)
"Many _magicks_ are continuous....to attempt unweaving a magie must
have at least some basic knowledge (at least one dot) of each of the
_Spheres_ involved."
This makes it clear that uweaving is intended to soley be used as a
counter to Spheric magick.
> You are right. A discipline is not Mage magick. But it is a
>form/manifestation of magick. And its execution closely resembles a
>dynamic effect. Therefore it can be unweaved. The final word is located in
>aforementioned page reference.
No it is not. It is clear from a very brief reading of the rules,
that countermagick is supposed vs. disciplines are clearly designed to
defend the mage _only_ against direct assaults to his pattern.
Nothing I've read has stated anything to the contrary.
Dammit, this whole thread could have been avoided by simply paying
attention when reading. The rules make it very clear what unweaving
is, what the requirements are for it, and what will affect vampires.
This is not only a case of Mage twinkyness, but of ignoring the rules
to make mages even more powerful then they allready are.
Eric Tolle unde...@rain.org
"And then there was Cespinarve Rogue, who ate
cities..." Thieves and Kings, #13
Eric Tolle
Jens Hage <jh...@io.com> wrote:
>In alt.games.whitewolf Jeffryes Joshua M <jmj...@nic.smsu.edu> wrote:
>: Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
>: than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
>: machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
>You've said this before and people have said the same thing I'm about to:
>tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension War.
Well then- do you in your games allow a person with Matter 1 to
unweave a soda machine or airplane? Will you allow Forces 1 to
unweave a radio signal? How about allowing Life 1 to 'unweave a tree
or human, if they were grown in anursery, or a test tube infant?
The others have stated that technology is magick- they are wrong.
Magick is a direct altering of reality in response to the mage's will.
Technology, aside from the reality altering 'technomagick' is an
artifact of the dominat paradigm. As are vampiric disciplines.
And if you really think that's the whole idea of the Ascension
war...well, you're mistaking the packaging for the contents.
Eric Tolle
James McPherson <kil...@ntr.net> wrote:
>Does this mean I agree with the "unweaving claws" bit? No, because while
>Quintessence=Gnosis=Blood=Spirt Power I don't think Sphere=Gift=
>Discipline=Charm. What works on one doesn't work on another. Both
>manipulate the same kind of energy but do it different ways.
Now this is a nice compromise position. Mine is a bit more
conservative- I state that Vitae/Gnosis/Glamour can be _converted_
into Tass- just as any pattern can be. your position also agrees with
what the books say....frankly, I think certain people are doing
selective reading of the rules simply to support the "Mages are the
major Twinks of the WoD" idea. It's something I've seen before with
Vampires, Garou, etc...and that is one of the nice things about Wraith
and Changeling- their players haven't claimed ultimate power.
Yet.
Eric Tolle
dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
>And the annoying thing is that in 2nd edition, things have been made even
>harder to pull off. While I love the cohesiveness of 2nd edition, the
>simple fact is that starting mage characters aren't people who perform
>magick, they are people who every now and then get a bit lucky. A starting
Nonsense. I have run starting mages using second edition, andI have
had no problem at all with their performing magical effects. The only
limits I've seen have been a) the limits on what the mage's spheres
can do, and b) the occasional need for extended rolls on some effects.
In none of the games I've been in have any of the players complained
about the lack of ability to perform magick, nor have I seen any
player complain of their mage not being able to 'keep up'- even in the
game that had an akashic brother teamed up with a Garou.
Then again, we simply haven't been playing in a very 'my mage is
better then your fill-in-the-blank' mode.
Eric Tolle
jbr...@aol.com (JBRocky) wrote:
>If you use the official rules you're faced with a blatant
>contradiction: On the one hand Vamps don't get Paradox because their
>magick is 'Static' on the other, those supposedly static effects can't
>be used as coincidences.
Or,. you can simply come to the conclusion that mages, despite what
some people think, do _not_ know everything there is to know about the
universe. The simple solution is that Paradox is simply a result of
_Mages_ screwing with the universe. Something that the Mges do
attracts paradox to them. Probably it's simply a result of the mages
having the presumption to mess with reality directly.
> The question is why don't vampires get paradox? Basicly vamps do not
>change reality becase they DO NOT use Magick. Also Vampire came 2 years
That's what it boils down to. Or, as John Doe said once: "...because
you're a geeky mage and I'm a cool vampire. Reality _likes_ cool."
Myself, I like the idea of leaving the "whys" of vampires a mystery.
Gods know we need a bit more mystery in the WoD...
Mark A Hagley
In a previous article, jmj...@nic.smsu.edu (Jeffryes Joshua M) says:
>:|a wild/free form of Quintessence. Vampiric blood is a source of Tass.
>:|Quintessence is, according to Mage, the stuff of Magick (and all of
>:|reality is composed of it). This is what Mages manipulate. According to
>
>Nope. Mages can use Vampire blood *as* Tass. That does not mean it *is*
Tass - a bit of the prime stuff of the universe (tm). It seems a
spurious concept that things can go around masquerading as the genuine
item, or even hope to replicate the effects of it.
>Quintessence, does it? Ditto with Caerns not *really* being nodes.
>They're just close enough the differences don't matter.
see above.
>It also specifically states that no form of countermagick can be used
>against vampires using Protean. See the section on vampires in the
>section on othere denizens of the WoD.
unweaving is not countermagick.
>No no no. Disciplines are static REALITY, no magick involved.
there has been great debate over what is true, static reality and what is
not. most agree that not much is static, as static reality consists of
the basest forms and things which all others build upon. i'm not sure
protean fits that little criteria.
--
i need something to put it's hands on me... + .
give me stronger poison and then stronger. . +
+ icarus.
Mark A Hagley
In a previous article, grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) says:
>hm...@bgnet.bgsu.edu (Mark A Hagley) wrote:
>
>>escuse me? in the world in which -i- live, pekiniese do not have the
>>ability to shapeshift.
>
>>woof-woof.
>
>"Why not?" says the Progenitor. "Genetically they and wolves are the
>same species. A peke is just a highly-inbred domesticated Chinese
>wolf. I'm changing the wolf into a peke. I could also change it into
>an Irish wolfhound, but that would make it larger and far more
>dangerous. So I think I'll do pekes and pomeranians."
"Ahh," says Progenitor #2, "Lupines and canines may be closely related,
perhaps even of the same family (not species). However, just because a
Garou has the ability to assume the form of a wolf does not mean he -is-
a wolf... hmmm, perhaps I shall invent a rote that turns a shifting
Garou into a normal wolf..."
Mark A Hagley
In a previous article, unde...@rain.org (Eric Tolle) says:
>>Jens Hage <jh...@io.com> wrote:
>>
>>You've said this before and people have said the same thing I'm about to:
>>tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension War.
>
>Well then- do you in your games allow a person with Matter 1 to
>unweave a soda machine or airplane? Will you allow Forces 1 to
>unweave a radio signal?
and the answer is... yes, if the mage's paradigm can allow it, and if
the mage has the appropriate knowledge to do so.
>How about allowing Life 1 to 'unweave a tree
>or human, if they were grown in anursery, or a test tube infant?
those are a bit murkier topics - i would not allow it as such because
humans did not invent life to further a paradigm.
>The others have stated that technology is magick- they are wrong.
>Magick is a direct altering of reality in response to the mage's will.
Convention Mage - I would like to create an artifact that allows me to
fly within my paradigm. Viola! I have created an airplane/levitation
belt/transporter beam.
Tradition Mage - I would like to create an artifact that allows me to fly
within my paradigm. Viola! I have created a Ring of Flying/Aerial
Spirit Rug/etc.
>Technology, aside from the reality altering 'technomagick' is an
>artifact of the dominat paradigm. As are vampiric disciplines.
ok, slowly... dom-i-nant paradigm. note the word paradigm - it stays.
there is no difference between a phone and a telepathic mind meld, except
one has been embraced by the majority (certainly not all) of the people
on the planet.
Nyarlathotep
> _These_powers_are_not_magickal_. for reasons the Awakened don't
> entirely understand, the vampiric embrace destroys a vampires ability
> to use True Magick, and he cannot carry it over beyond his death.
> (.....) Some Kindred employ a _form_of_static_magic_ called
> Disciplines by some.
This section of text regers to the basic universal powers of the
Vampire (boosting physical stats and healing via the use of blood). The
later in the same paragraph, "Some Kindred do employ a a
form_of_static_magic, called disciplines by some.
> Mages with the right spheres can oppose some disciplines.
> ...(Dominate, Presence, Thautamurgy)..._powers which alter the
> Kindred (Potence, Obfuscate, Celerity, Fortitude, Auspex and Protean)
> or others (Animalism, or Presence or Dominate used against someone
> other then the mage) cannot be countered this way.
Again you omit the pertinent terms here "countermagick" and "basic
countermagick". No reference in the paragraph is made as to Anti-Magick or
Unweaving. The examples used refer to basic countermagick.
> On page 174, it is also quite clear in context that unweaving is for
> _MAGICK_ only. (par. 6)
Quite clear? Depends on interpretation. Saying something in context is
not the same as directly stating. Mummies and Lupines would have a field
day in your game.
> "Many _magicks_ are continuous....to attempt unweaving a magie must
> have at least some basic knowledge (at least one dot) of each of the
> _Spheres_ involved."
Magic and Magick are interchangeble terms in Mage (though one refers to
static/coincidental effects and the other to dynamic/vulgar). If you don't
believe me check the definitions in the lexicon. Now I can't believe that
Unweaving is only useful for Vulgar effects.
> This makes it clear that uweaving is intended to soley be used as a
> counter to Spheric magick.
Maybe in your mind.
> No it is not. It is clear from a very brief reading of the rules,
> that countermagick is supposed vs. disciplines are clearly designed to
> defend the mage _only_ against direct assaults to his pattern.
> Nothing I've read has stated anything to the contrary.
I don't know. I think magically-produced claws that cause aggravated
(pattern) damage is pretty direct. Besides, as I have answered before, if
disciplines are not magical then a mage could copy them with no fear of
paradox. "No, silly, that's not a vulgar Forces effect. I'm just creating
a coincidental imitation of the Lure of Flames Path of Thaumaturgy"
> Dammit, this whole thread could have been avoided by simply paying
> attention when reading. The rules make it very clear what unweaving
> is, what the requirements are for it, and what will affect vampires.
> This is not only a case of Mage twinkyness, but of ignoring the rules
> to make mages even more powerful then they allready are.
I did pay attention while reading. Interpretation (something WW leaves
wide berths for) is everything. And this is hardly twinkiness, considering
how LONG it takes to unweave (5-15 success on a continous/cumulative roll
taking several rounds) an effect. Mages are powerful, I agree (but their
only flesh and blood to a sniper). I have long lobbied for Vamps (I still
think they get the short end of the stick as starting characters), but
this unweaving thing, which interpreted from the rules, can happen.
Tob
Some part of gt8...@prism.gatech.edu (Bruno Panz-Jones)'s personality
cried out with:
<major snip, and the thread's starting to split off...>
>>3) Vamps do get Paradox, they just don't recognize it on a case-by case
>>basis the way mages do. They are so inanately Paradoxical, in fact,
>>that they are subject to Unbelief. Thus they are Thaumavores, feeding
>>on the blood of the living to maintain thier aberant existances.
<and snip>
The above's given me an idea... Tell me if someone's suggested this
before...
From a magocentric point of view, the vampiric race could be just one
mage punished with a huge paradox flaw...... ripping up his avatar,
making it viral (as suggested by the mage book), keeping some
mage-like powers... and the capability to pass it on....
Of course, that's only if you want to follow that view... there's many
other possibilities, like posession, Infernal investments,
materialized spirits, who knows?
----------
Tob, aka t.h.j.op...@student.utwente.nl
Homepage at: http://cam031205.student.utwente.nl/~brouw/
Also, Rick's Cafe Americain Pages now at:
http://cam031205.student.utwente.nl/~brouw/rick's/rframes.htm
Tob
Some part of joh...@physics20.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)'s
personality cried out with:
>Personally, I've always wondered how to keep the mage with
>Correspondence 2 and Time 2 from finding out everything. If a vampire
>or anyone else does anything to attract this guy's attention, the mage
>can just sit back in his sanctum and listen in on every important
>meeting the vampire/werewolf/whatever has been involved in for the past
>month. Then, if he decides that the vampire/werewolf/whatever is a
>problem, hand grenades start appearing in inconvenient places. Or
>poison. Or incriminating evidence.
It's called warding or reinforcing anti correspondence and time
effects, if you're a mage. If you're another supernatural, you're
pretty much Tarfu-d. Of course, with entropy to filter out the
improbable possible timelines, you might see something that won't help
at all.
And I agree, it's a problem... I thank god my players haven't done
this to me yet...
Tech Manager account
: >tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension War.
: Well then- do you in your games allow a person with Matter 1 to
: unweave a soda machine or airplane? Will you allow Forces 1 to
: unweave a radio signal? How about allowing Life 1 to 'unweave a tree
: or human, if they were grown in anursery, or a test tube infant?
Examples Unweaving of TechnoMagick that has been adopted by the dominant
paradigm (a treatise by me)
Any TechnoMagick that has been adopted by the dominant paradigm becomes
static/coincidental reality. They cease to be magick. Unweaving is
possible, but it requires more than the standard levels involved because
there is no DYNAMIC Magick involved. It's all static.
To Dynamically Unweave a static effect requires a higher level effect
compared to dynamically unweaving a dynamic effect.
Or you can just use a static unweaving. Examples to follow.
Soda machine: use a hammer.
Airplane: a *BIG* hammer.
Radio signal: jamming signal. Raw static. Use a walkie talkie or a CB
when appropriate.
Tree: chainsaw.
Person: chainsaw.
--Enjoy
Kevin Andrew Murphy
unde...@rain.org (Eric Tolle) wrote:
>Dammit, this whole thread could have been avoided by simply paying
>attention when reading. The rules make it very clear what unweaving
>is, what the requirements are for it, and what will affect vampires.
>This is not only a case of Mage twinkyness, but of ignoring the rules
>to make mages even more powerful then they allready are.
Listen--
As one of the people who lobbied Phil for the the Unweaving section,
let me explain how it it works.
Unweaving is taking a basic understanding of how a magick--or
magic--is put together, and then using that understanding to take it
apart. If you do not understand the nature of the magick, then you
will not be able to take it apart, or at least not quite so neatly or
easily. And yes, you can unweave portions of static reality, just so
long as you know how.
Take, for example, a toaster. A toaster is a Technocratic forces
talisman which is used to toast bread. Toasters have been around long
enough that they are part of static reality, but they are still
Technocratic devices. As such, they can be unwoven by even five year
old Sleepers, so long as they know how to use a screwdriver.
Dr. Whoopie's Time Machine, on the other hand, is not part of static
reality, but this doesn't change the fact that a Son of Ether, armed
with a screwdriver and some wire cutters, couldn't unweave it in
Technocratic fashion. Why? Because he understands the gears, levers,
knobs and wires used by Ether Science.
If Fade-Out the Cultist of Ecstasy tried to Unweave the time
machine--even if he has multiple dots in Time--he'd be lost, since
while he understands the metaphysics of Time, he doesn't understand
the physic or rationale of Ether Science. Just the same as it's hard
for a mage to study a sphere from a mentor of a wildly different
Tradition. If Ping Wa the Akashic Sister goes to Dr. Woopie, she'll
be thinking, "Who is this crazy man and what in the Hell of Babbling
Idiots is he talking about?"
Same thing when the Verbena tries to make sense of the Akashic's
trigrams and magick post-it notes. Well, she KNOWS it's magick, but
not what sort. If you're unfamiliar with the style of weaving, you
won't know what thread to pull to undo the whole thing.
This, in part, is the power of the Hollowers. As a highly eclectic
group, they have more insight into the other Traditions than the
Traditions do to each other. Show a Hollower the post-it note with
Akashic trigrams and he'll have hung-out in Chinatown enough to know
what it is and have a good idea of how to break the spell without any
backlash. Not as good as an Akashic Brother, but a lot better than
the Virtual Adept or even the Hermetic.
This is, as I call it, the crochet-hook method of Unweaving--the
careful application of the knowledge of how a spell is put together
allowing a mage to then take it apart.
The other method is the brute force, or hammer, method. For example,
Dr. Whoopie's time machine may be incomprehensible to the
Dreamspeaker. However, he may be reasonably certain that if he beats
on it enough with his club, it'll stop working. This of course runs
the risk of electrical shocks, or a final backlash which sends him
forward into the Buck Rogers future, but it'll still work.
The Hammer method, however, only works if you've got something
physical to smash. The Pentagram chalked into the floor can be
erased, and this will dispel a good bit of the magick. However, if
the Verbena has just turned your best friend into a pig, and you're a
Virtual Adept, what are you going to do? Stick the phone jack into
his butt and try to hack in with your laptop? Sorry, no. You're
computer will flash "Unknown peripheral device" and the pig will be
even less happy. Even if you manage to scan the Ether with Prime 1,
all you'll see around him is an aura of gobbledygook with a bunch of
strange hex signs. You are, in effect, trying to hack a program
written in a language you don't understand. Even if you would
understand the program (Read: have the appropriate Spheres), if it's
not written in a language you can understand, you won't be able to
comprehend it.
THAT's how you do Unweaving. To Unweave a vampire, or a werewolf, or
any form of hedge magick, you need an understanding of that subject.
If you've got 4 or 5 points in vampire lore, it should be easy. If
you don't, it'll be much more difficult, if not impossible.
Kevin Andrew Murphy
unde...@rain.org (Eric Tolle) wrote:
>Jens Hage <jh...@io.com> wrote:
>>In alt.games.whitewolf Jeffryes Joshua M <jmj...@nic.smsu.edu> wrote:
>>: Vampires are part of the dominant paradigm. Protean is no more magickal
>>: than microwave popcorn. If you want to allow your Mages to unweave soda
>>: machines and Macintoshes, then fine. Otherwise, get off it.
>>You've said this before and people have said the same thing I'm about to:
>>tech -is- magick. That's the whole point of the f*&#ing Ascension War.
>Well then- do you in your games allow a person with Matter 1 to
>unweave a soda machine or airplane? Will you allow Forces 1 to
>unweave a radio signal? How about allowing Life 1 to 'unweave a tree
>or human, if they were grown in anursery, or a test tube infant?
So long as you understand the paradigm they were created under, and
use it's tools, you'll do just fine. You unweave a soda machine with
a screwdriver and a lot of time. You unweave a radio signal by
holding up an antenae tuned to a different frequency and thereby
disrupting the reception of the first. You unweave a tree or an
infant by killing them, via any of the obvious methods, and Life 1
tells you that they're dead (and the police then come and arrest the
fantacal Chorister who decided that test-tube babies were a sin
against God).
>The others have stated that technology is magick- they are wrong.
No. Tech is a type of magick. Go to any good university library and
check out a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's "On the Vanity of the Arts and
Sciences" and his "Three Books of Occult Philosophy."
Tech is merely what used to be called "Natural Philosophy," which was
formerly the province of occultists.
>Magick is a direct altering of reality in response to the mage's will.
Part of magick is. If you study metaphysics, you'll find that there
are other philosophies above and behond natural philosophy.
>Technology, aside from the reality altering 'technomagick' is an
>artifact of the dominat paradigm. As are vampiric disciplines.
But tech is magick, depending on your philosophy. And by many
beliefs--particularly spiritual beliefs--magick is all around you.
Take your average WOD psychic or medium. Other mages are screaming
that the Technocracy has done away with all the creatures of wonder
and the world is dull, boring and lifeless. Except this mage talks
with ghosts and spirits every day, and doesn't think matters have
changed much at all.
Donald Bachman
Eric Tolle (unde...@rain.org) wrote:
: dbac...@ionet.net (Donald Bachman) wrote:
: >And the annoying thing is that in 2nd edition, things have been made even
: >harder to pull off. While I love the cohesiveness of 2nd edition, the
: >simple fact is that starting mage characters aren't people who perform
: >magick, they are people who every now and then get a bit lucky. A starting
: Nonsense. I have run starting mages using second edition, andI have
: had no problem at all with their performing magical effects. The only
: limits I've seen have been a) the limits on what the mage's spheres
: can do, and b) the occasional need for extended rolls on some effects.
Let's just say that again. 'b) the [more than] occasional need for extended
rolls on some effects.' Ahhh. . . .
Version 1: The Fall
ST: The leader of the three thugs reaches beneath his jacket and
starts to pull something out. You catch the glint of metal and
think it is a gun. As he does so, you see the other two start
to do the same thing.
Mage: I leap over the edge of the building, using Forces to control
the strength of gravity. Since I think i could survive a two
story drop, and we are on the fifth story, I'll reduce it to
two-fifths its normal value.
ST: Okay, vulgar effect, but as your plummet will be unobserved
we'll say it is without witnesses. Base difficulty two plus
four for the vulgar without witnesses and let's see what you
get against difficulty 6. I'll let you negate a story's fall
for each success, so you need three successes.
Mage: (Rolling the dice) Uh. . .8, 5, 2. Hmmm. . .only 1 success.
Willpower?
ST: (Wincing) Ouch. Well, sensing your effect failing, in
desperation, and out of sheer will for survival, you will just
enough successes to make the fall equivalent to three stories.
As you hit the ground, you experience the oh so common flash
of light before one's eyes from sudden impact. Let's see how
much damage you take and if you remain concious.
Sometimes, extended rolls just aren't going to fit into the immeadiate needs
of the mage. I detailed somewhere along the way the things a mage could
sanely expect to get away with and they were far from gross (which was the
point of this thread).
: In none of the games I've been in have any of the players complained
: about the lack of ability to perform magick, nor have I seen any
: player complain of their mage not being able to 'keep up'- even in the
: game that had an akashic brother teamed up with a Garou.
As I said, its not bad in a straight Mage game, where you primary probelms
will come from sleepers and other mages. It isn't bad in crossover, depending
on what you expect to do. But to say that mages are 'overpowering' the other
characters in a crossover situation means to me that something very strange
is going on. I've yet to have demonstration of the uber-mage. If anything,
the need for multiple round actions to perform their supernatural ability
is demonstration of what I've said.
: Then again, we simply haven't been playing in a very 'my mage is
: better then your fill-in-the-blank' mode.
One never knows when an insult has been intended or not. Uncharacteristically
for this medium, I'm going to assume not, and simply state, 'Good'.
: Eric Tolle unde...@rain.org
: "And then there was Cespinarve Rogue, who ate
: cities..." Thieves and Kings, #13
Donald
LEONARD Daniel
---------->And God cursed Caine (thus made the vampires......)
>
> Eric Tolle unde...@rain.org
> "And then there was Cespinarve Rogue, who ate
> cities..." Thieves and Kings, #13
>
>
>
*******************************************************
* *
*Daniel Leonard *
* *
* www : http://www.jsp.umontreal.ca/~leonard *
* *
*******************************************************
"Total freedom means total responsability"
-Dominique, Children of the Inquisition
Alik Widge
In article <5e27fa$6...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>, grim...@ix.netcom.com
(Kevin Andrew Murphy) wrote:
> Do they believe this is magick? Not as such. Some will state
> Clarke's Law and its tranverse. Science=Magick, Magick=Science. The
> difference between the two is the degree of inquiry and the Scientific
> method. Scientists question and experiment. Mages don't.
Mages do too experiment, especially Hermetics. It takes quite a bit of
time scribbling on paper and burning strange compounds to work out the
formula for Love Potion #9, whether you intend to synthesize it via
cauldron, crucible, or Erlenmeyer flask. Admittedly, some Traditions don't
focus as much on playing around in mystical laboratories; Dreamspeakers
and Ecstatics seem more likely to just "wing it." But for every neat new
Rote you see, someone spent a lot of time figuring out just what to do.
Alik
James Bardin
> A mage can unweave a lightbulb so long as the unweaving is being
> performed by a Technomancer. The same as a Hermetic knows how to
> unweave another Hermetic's cabalistic spells, but a Virtual Adept
> won't have a clue how to go about it.
Actually, I *think* that if said Hermetic or other non-Technomancer
type mage had gone out and actually got some Technology skill or Science
knowledge, they could make a roll to understand the lightbulb's molecular
composition or whatever. Then, it MIGHT be possible to unweave something.
> How do you unweave a lightbulb? You unscrew it from the socket or
> smash it.
Unweaving is NOT the same. When you unweave, you are ripping apart
the strands of Prime that fuel the pattern. This is a very vulgar effect,
and should not be considered static. If you were to use Matter, however,
to cause the bulb to shatter unexpectantly, this IS static, and so will
not draw Paradox.
> Of couse, since it's static magick that any Sleeper can use, it's
> static magick that even a child can unweave.
That is a contradiction. Magick (with the "k") cannot be used by
Sleepers without going through tecknology proceedures. Unscrewing the
light bulb simply removes the Forces effect of light. It's moot HOW the
thing works, just that Sleepers can't just do magick on the fly, even
static magick. By your above argument, said Sleeper could also stop a
lightning bolt by making it ground into something which is inherintly
nonconductive, especially if the Sleeper didn't know about the material in
advance.
I didn't mean to try and spam on you; I just thought it important to
remember that no Sleeper can EVER use real magick...
James Bardin
> Two leap to mind. First, their supernatural power can kill them (or in the
> words of Charlie X, 'Make them go away') when they botch--something that
> simply doesn't occur with Potence, or Scent of Man. Second, some situations
> simply require brute, non-subtle effectiveness, and with the mage this
> means going from not very likely to straight out impossible rather
> quickly.
Actually, if you botch while using Potence to lift a truck, you are a
hurt puppy...As far as brute force goes, any beginning mage can match most
of the Disciplines. Celerity? Go with Time 3. Potence, Fortitude, or
Protean? Life Sphere handles all of that. Presence or Dominate? Mind,
and maybe one or two Life effects (Physiological Emotional Control effect
comes to mind on Life). The point is this: everything has basically the
same sort of stuff, just different ways of doing it.
The problems mages have are Paradox and other mages. Sure, you may
not be fighting the NWO, but who says they aren't going to get you too?
And Time 3 may not require Blood Pool, but that Paradox tends to get a tad
out of hand. Of course, since the Masquarade *usually* prevents a battle
in front of Sleepers, the vamp ISN'T restricted like that (he just needs
to clean the mess up afterwards...).
> Telekinetic, eh? So when the mage is being faced down by a thug with a
> gun, and assuming he spent his one remaining dot of Spheres on Time, so
> he can react quickly enough to intervene with the bullet that is flying
> at him from the thug's gun, we are looking needing 2 successes on 3 dice
> with difficulty between 5 and 7--depending on the precise details of the
> situation. On average, the mage gets shot.
The beautiful thing about telekinetics is that with just Mind 1, for
each success on the Multitasking rote roll, you gain an extra mental
action. This means that you could shoot a gun in each hand, while using
the rest of the actions for magick effects. Your thug could easily get
turned into lunchmeat before he even thinks about shooting the mage...
> With the way some people run Mage, being a teleporter is always being vulgar.
> I'm sure such individuals hit the 10 paradox barrier and then conveniently
> explode in a backwash of paradox.
Not neccessarily. Familiars are very nice for that sort of thing,
and Sleepers who are tripping on drugs at the time ignore that disbelief
thing ("Whoa! Cool, he disappeared, man! Get me another hit of that
stuff!"). Blatancy and Misdirection fill in the gaps. Also, you forgot
something. The mage has to actually botch in order to get fucked up by
Paradox. Not an overly common thing...
> The Hulk would probably qualify as being within the realm of the vulgar, so
> you get a combination of the above waiting paradox explosion combined with
> pattern leaking.
Yes, IF the mage wanted to look like that. He COULD just make the
muscles more dense and wiry, and look the same.
> Plus, all of these examples have fallen into the trap that those who argue
> about mages being powerful tend to. They assume that because it can be done
> it is likely to occur. Well, a young German named Mattias Rust proved that
> it was possible to fly a civilian aircraft through Russian air defenses
> and land in Red Square--I defy you to do so.
Your argument is illogical. ANYTHING with supernatural powers in the
WoD can do what any vamp, wolf, mage, or changeling can do. These same
powers all have a nice price on them. Vamps must spend precious vitae,
werewolves their Gnosis or Rage, mages gain Paradox, and Changelings
Banality, or lose Glamour.
In the end, the argument becomes not, "How bad do want to kill
them?", but "What price will you pay to kill them?". To which the logical
answer is "I'd rather not pay. Thank you very much." It's usually
easier on your PCs social standing with his kind to take care of things
the old fashioned way. I never met any creature, vamp or mage or wolf,
that really liked getting buckshot blown up their asses...
> Remember, mages state the number of successes they have to recieve before
> they make the roll, and with 3 dice at difficulty 6, that average is in
> the general neighborhood of 2. What does 2 successes get you? Some examples
> are:
>
> * Changing your own shape.
> * Influencing (not radically altering) someone else's mood.
> * Conjuring a ball of flame.
> * Cause an oil lamp to explode.
> * Breach the Gauntlet in a rural area.
> * Forecast/Precognate an event within 5 years.
> * Deal 0 damage with Mind, 6 with Forces, 2 with any other Sphere.
> * Manipulate an object/location with which you are very familiar.
> * Improve his appearance or physical traits by 2 dots for a scene.
> * Hit a point of weaknesses to deal 2 extra levels of damage.
> * Learn that poison is affecting something's respiratory system
> (without determining exactly what type of poison).
> * Heal 2 levels of damage to a living thing (no repititions allowed).
> * Blank one sense in a target.
> * Completely and utterly fail to gain even a single extra action via
> the Time Sphere (requires successes over 2).
>
> Truthfully, this isn't a bad little list. And so long as the mage interacts
> with mundanes, a far better list to have than not have. But people here have
> been speaking of mages overpowering their crossover campaigns. Somehow I
> have a hard time believing that any of the above items is going to mean
> much to a neonate vampire or werewolf.
Agreed. I think mages actually underestimate their options with some
of these beings. I actually had one mage try to give a deadly neurotoxin
to a Garou with Resist Toxin. The mage was very upset when the Garou
proceeded to gut him while laughing at the poor fool. Not a pleasant
demise at all...
> Pardon me? I still have my copy of 1st edition. It states quite clearly
> that the materials to be created must be stable in the environment in
> which they are created under Matter 2. Plutonium fails this check in
> every environment I can think of. Nuclear forces are quite specifically
> listed under Forces 4.
You could make the stuff with Prime 2, Matter 4, and Forces 4, but as
you said, it still usually kills you with Paradox before you even see it.
> I'm sorry, but it was simply failing to read and apply the rules that got
> 1st edition labelled as being overly powerful, in much the same way that
> 2nd edition is being labelled now by some.
It is typical for anyone not running a Mage Chronicle. Why they
think this is logical, though: running something other than JUST Mage
causes you to not concentrate on the metaphysics and things that only
mages need worry about.
> If you have 5 Arete you are far from a starting mage. In fact, you have
> spent 56 experience at a minimum. Moreover, to transform me into a toad
> you'd need, according to the chart on page 170, 4 successes. This is
> not subject to interpretation. That is, 4 successes on 5 dice on an action
> that is likely vulgar with me as the witness, thus meaning difficulty
> 9. If somehow you can interpret this to be easy, then we probably shouldn't
> even begin to discuss this as my notions of easy and yours don't share
> anything in common.
What you are leaving out about that Arete of 5 is that the mage in
question had to undergo at least 2 Seekings, which get harder the higher
the Arete you are striving for. I'd like to know how anyone "just got" an
Arete of 5. This is my main argument about mage; no one seems to remember
that all this power requires an unerring devotion to it that goes above
just taking out the NWO or cyborgs you meet. Way above it...
> Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
> the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
> even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
> partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
> would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
> Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
> the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
You have forgotten the golden rule of Mage...
NOTHING IS SUPPOSED TO WORK THE SAME WAY TWICE.
A ST should remember this in order to make the mages in his game
sweat and get an adrenaline surge each time they cast magick. Makes for a
fun evening of adventure <G>.
> Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
> But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
> achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
> partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
> thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
> completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
> reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
Hey, if ANY beginning mage is taking on any werewolf head on in a
brawl, he should die horribly, in the most painful way a ST can devise...
> I'm sorry, but multiple turns necessary to perform action is not a sign of
> being overpowering.
Agreed. With Multitasking (Mind 1) and Time 3 effects (used on both
the mage and his opponent), extra actions is not a big issue.
> Yes, abilities are allowed to augment Arete. Again, it is a multiple turn
> process. At best, assuming the ability to be used may be used in a round,
> it takes 2 rounds to go this way. And some abilities by their very nature
> are going to take far longer to perform. Creating a masterful work of art
> in a gun battle simply isn't going to occur.
Yep. But, some rules rapist out there will no doubt figure out a way
to do this, so be on your toes...
> Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
Also, your esteemed colleage forgot something. You ALWAYS have to
roll Arete to cast magick. It's just a fact...
> I never said they couldn't be dangerous, I said that they'd be foolish to
> rely on their ability. What you have outlined is that with preparation a
> mage is dangerous, but this is true for anyone. It doesn't meet my criteria
> of being universally reliable if I have to go through all sorts of careful
> preparation well in advance to make sure that it works. As example, if I
> can talk my friend Jones into allowing me to get a good position I might
> be able to restrain him, but just walking up to him and grabbing him probably
> means serious pain in my future if he chooses to deal it as he was a college
> wrestler and I have avoided physical activity rather successfully throughout
> my life. So, would you say that because I might be able to talk him into
> allowing me time that I can rely on my ability to hold him?
Well, that's what it's all about, really: manipulation. If any
vampire is idiot enough to believe a mage, and vice versa, well then, he's
screwed himself up. At least they're off the food chain...
James Bardin
> Who says blood is tass (whatever that is)? It takes energy from the
> vampire to work a disipline, big deal. Are you saying that you can
> make a Garou go back to human from Crinos? Or even make a Vampire
> who's in the form of a Bat into human? No, you can't do it.
Ah, huh-huh, yes you can. With Life 4, Matter 4 (since his body
is undead), and Prime 2, I can turn that bat into a freaking cat if I
wished. Blood is not Tass, per se. Tass CAN, however, be extracted from
it. A mage with Prime 3 can turn it into Tass without really changing it
much, and therefore do what is needed.
John H
grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) spit out some electrons
that said:
<SNIP>
>Tech is merely what used to be called "Natural Philosophy," which was
>formerly the province of occultists.
Philosophy" is now Physics.
John -
Don't confuse comfort with happiness.
Don't confuse wealth with success.
Don't confuse polyester with Dacron.
Ekisya
On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, James Bardin wrote:
> > Two leap to mind. First, their supernatural power can kill them (or in the
> > words of Charlie X, 'Make them go away') when they botch--something that
> > simply doesn't occur with Potence, or Scent of Man. Second, some situations
> > simply require brute, non-subtle effectiveness, and with the mage this
> > means going from not very likely to straight out impossible rather
> > quickly.
> Actually, if you botch while using Potence to lift a truck, you are a
> hurt puppy...As far as brute force goes, any beginning mage can match most
> of the Disciplines. Celerity? Go with Time 3. Potence, Fortitude, or
> Protean? Life Sphere handles all of that. Presence or Dominate? Mind,
> and maybe one or two Life effects (Physiological Emotional Control effect
> comes to mind on Life). The point is this: everything has basically the
> same sort of stuff, just different ways of doing it.
Problem is, with this example you have a mage starting with 7 or 8 spheres
focused mainly in fighting vampires. What are the odds a mage will even
know enough about vampires to prepare to counter their powers during
and before their training?
> > Telekinetic, eh? So when the mage is being faced down by a thug with a
> > gun, and assuming he spent his one remaining dot of Spheres on Time, so
> > he can react quickly enough to intervene with the bullet that is flying
> > at him from the thug's gun, we are looking needing 2 successes on 3 dice
> > with difficulty between 5 and 7--depending on the precise details of the
> > situation. On average, the mage gets shot.
> The beautiful thing about telekinetics is that with just Mind 1, for
> each success on the Multitasking rote roll, you gain an extra mental
> action. This means that you could shoot a gun in each hand, while using
> the rest of the actions for magick effects. Your thug could easily get
> turned into lunchmeat before he even thinks about shooting the mage...
>
Only one magick effect per turn though, remimber that.
> > With the way some people run Mage, being a teleporter is always being vulgar.
> > I'm sure such individuals hit the 10 paradox barrier and then conveniently
> > explode in a backwash of paradox.
> Not neccessarily. Familiars are very nice for that sort of thing,
> and Sleepers who are tripping on drugs at the time ignore that disbelief
> thing ("Whoa! Cool, he disappeared, man! Get me another hit of that
> stuff!"). Blatancy and Misdirection fill in the gaps. Also, you forgot
> something. The mage has to actually botch in order to get fucked up by
> Paradox. Not an overly common thing...
Wrong, you get one point paradox for just casting vulgar effects. Teleport
3 or 4 times a day and after a couple days *poof*.
Eric Tolle
grim...@ix.netcom.com (Kevin Andrew Murphy) wrote:
>
>As one of the people who lobbied Phil for the the Unweaving section,
>let me explain how it it works.
>Unweaving is taking a basic understanding of how a magick--or
>magic--is put together, and then using that understanding to take it
>apart. If you do not understand the nature of the magick, then you
>will not be able to take it apart, or at least not quite so neatly or
>easily. And yes, you can unweave portions of static reality, just so
>long as you know how.
No it is not. Unweaving is the dismantling of a _spheric_ effect.
Period. End of Story. Anything that is part of static reality is not
unweavable. This is not simply stated _directly_ in the rules, it is
a matter of good sense.
I mean, you come up with a nice justification, but lets face it- the
upshot of your theory is that a mage can unweave _anything_ as long as
they have the proper lore and a level 1 sphere knowledge. I haven't
seen anyone give a good reason why this is not so- and you had better
come up with one if you claim that mages can unweave static magic and
disciplines.
And please don't come up with some nonsense about "technology being
ingrained in the paradigm" as an excuse- vampires have been around a
_hell_ of a lot loger then airplaines, and more people understand and
accept the idea of vampires and ghosts then understand those black
boxes called computers.
See, it's not just a matter of rules interpretation, I simply disagree
with your view of magick and static reality. The book makes it very
clear that the effects mages create are different_ from static
reality- even Coincidental effects lack a degree of realness. It is
possible however, for the Technomancers at least to first create an
item through Magick as a 'prototype', and then after the paradigm is
adjusted, have follow-up devices be manufactured using mundane
methods. The secondary devices may perform exactly the same as the
original, yet they cannot be unweaved, as as they simply are not
magick.
Eric Tolle
Tech Manager account <tech...@ntr.net> wrote:
>Or you can just use a static unweaving. Examples to follow.
>Soda machine: use a hammer.
>Airplane: a *BIG* hammer.
(etc....deleated)
No, that is not unweaving. That is altering the form of the item.
And yes, there is_ a difference. You were probably joking, but still
this point has to be made as there seems to be some confusion on the
matter with some people.
Unweaving is not simply smashing something, it is not even destrying
something. Take that soda machine, grind it into metal dust, place it
into a plasma furnace and blast it into disassociated atoms, and you
_still_ haven't unwoven the pattern- merely altered it.
Unweaving goes beyond the molecular, atomic, even the quantum foam
scales. It is directly causing something to cease to exist
_completely_. No residue, no messy aftertaste,no evidence that the
item ever existed. This is not affecting something on the physical,
but the metaphysical level, on the level of ideas and concepts.
This in fact, is my conceptual arguement against munchkinizing
Unweaving and Countermagick. An item or effect created via magick is
in essence an artificial concept, created via the will of the mage.
No matter whether it is created by coincidental or vulger magick, it
is still an imposition on static reality- on a fundamental, conceptual
level it is Magick. That is why any magickal effect or creation can
be unwoven. Conversely,any item that is a part of static reality,
whether hedge magic, discipline, or machine, cannot be unwoven. One
could think of it as static items being more "real" then the mage can
handle- a mage cannot fundamentally destroy anything "real", sans
vulger Prime magicks.
The principle is based on the idea of "as above, so below". Anything
created by magick can be eliminated by magick. The obverse is that
anything _not_ created by magick, cannot be destroyed by magick-
unless of course one is an adept or master of Prime. That is the
true strength of the sphere of Prime- and those who allow unweaving of
nonmagickal items basically render Prime 4 pointless.
Donald Bachman
James Bardin (jab@JAB) wrote:
: > Two leap to mind. First, their supernatural power can kill them (or in the
: > words of Charlie X, 'Make them go away') when they botch--something that
: > simply doesn't occur with Potence, or Scent of Man. Second, some situations
: > simply require brute, non-subtle effectiveness, and with the mage this
: > means going from not very likely to straight out impossible rather
: > quickly.
: Actually, if you botch while using Potence to lift a truck, you are a
: hurt puppy...As far as brute force goes, any beginning mage can match most
: of the Disciplines. Celerity? Go with Time 3. Potence, Fortitude, or
: Protean? Life Sphere handles all of that. Presence or Dominate? Mind,
: and maybe one or two Life effects (Physiological Emotional Control effect
: comes to mind on Life). The point is this: everything has basically the
: same sort of stuff, just different ways of doing it.
How do you botch using automatic successes?
As to your other points, you are quite mistaken. Celerity and Time 3 are
far from comparable. It requires successes in excess of 2 to gain actions
with Time 3, and given the vulgarity of such, it isn't going to be an
easy feat to accomplish. Potence is automatic strength successes, Life
will get you extra dots with which to roll. You have completely missed
the import of the statement above.
: The problems mages have are Paradox and other mages. Sure, you may
: not be fighting the NWO, but who says they aren't going to get you too?
: And Time 3 may not require Blood Pool, but that Paradox tends to get a tad
: out of hand. Of course, since the Masquarade *usually* prevents a battle
: in front of Sleepers, the vamp ISN'T restricted like that (he just needs
: to clean the mess up afterwards...).
These are just extra 'benefits' to being a mage.
: > Telekinetic, eh? So when the mage is being faced down by a thug with a
: > gun, and assuming he spent his one remaining dot of Spheres on Time, so
: > he can react quickly enough to intervene with the bullet that is flying
: > at him from the thug's gun, we are looking needing 2 successes on 3 dice
: > with difficulty between 5 and 7--depending on the precise details of the
: > situation. On average, the mage gets shot.
: The beautiful thing about telekinetics is that with just Mind 1, for
: each success on the Multitasking rote roll, you gain an extra mental
: action. This means that you could shoot a gun in each hand, while using
: the rest of the actions for magick effects. Your thug could easily get
: turned into lunchmeat before he even thinks about shooting the mage...
Read your copy of 2nd edition closely? Allow me to quote:
A mage can cast only one Effect per turn, even if she
has used Time magicks to speed herself up (reality is
already "preoccupied" when it's in a different time
frame). -- M:tA, 2nd ed., p. 161
I assume that you are shooting the same target with each gun too. Or does
the fact that you can think on both hands allow you to indepedently focus
each eyes at different focal lengths in two directions at once?
: > With the way some people run Mage, being a teleporter is always being vulgar.
: > I'm sure such individuals hit the 10 paradox barrier and then conveniently
: > explode in a backwash of paradox.
: Not neccessarily. Familiars are very nice for that sort of thing,
: and Sleepers who are tripping on drugs at the time ignore that disbelief
: thing ("Whoa! Cool, he disappeared, man! Get me another hit of that
: stuff!"). Blatancy and Misdirection fill in the gaps. Also, you forgot
: something. The mage has to actually botch in order to get fucked up by
: Paradox. Not an overly common thing...
Any point(s) gained which put you at 10 or more, or a botched roll risks
backlash. Given you may drop one point per week if you haven't gained any
more paradox in the preceding week, if you are prone to being flashy you
are likely going to get to the 10 barrier quickly. Sure, Familiar may help,
but then not every mage has one of those, and Prime 2, and Forces 2, and
Correspondence 3, and . . . .
Throw in that you may botch a magick roll, which for a starting mage with
3 dice isn't uncommon, and remains far from a rare occurrence when dealing
with 4, 5, and 6 dice, and I wonder about the accurracy of the above
statement. Admittedly, you may spend willpower to avoid the effects (once)
in a bit of extended rolling, but you only have so much of that to be
tossing around too.
: > The Hulk would probably qualify as being within the realm of the vulgar, so
: > you get a combination of the above waiting paradox explosion combined with
: > pattern leaking.
: Yes, IF the mage wanted to look like that. He COULD just make the
: muscles more dense and wiry, and look the same.
This doesn't change the vulgarity of superhuman strength. Just how obvious it
is to sleepers.
: > Plus, all of these examples have fallen into the trap that those who argue
: > about mages being powerful tend to. They assume that because it can be done
: > it is likely to occur. Well, a young German named Mattias Rust proved that
: > it was possible to fly a civilian aircraft through Russian air defenses
: > and land in Red Square--I defy you to do so.
: Your argument is illogical. ANYTHING with supernatural powers in the
: WoD can do what any vamp, wolf, mage, or changeling can do. These same
: powers all have a nice price on them. Vamps must spend precious vitae,
: werewolves their Gnosis or Rage, mages gain Paradox, and Changelings
: Banality, or lose Glamour.
Illogical, or is comprehension a problem for you? (I should comment on how
you haven't even bothered to support your insulting assertion, but as that
is obvious to the reading public, we'll just skip onto more important
dissection of you spurious claims.)
Potence, Celerity, gaining dots of strength by going to Crinos, gaining
extra actions by spending Rage, are all guaranteed things, given you have
the requisiste abilities. Magick is not. This is not subject to debate.
Add in the fact that mages effects require a threshold number of successes,
and you are directly dealing with a scale of probabilities for a mage with
a given Arete attempting an effect with a specified difficulty requiring
a certain number of successes. A mage with an Arete of 5, rolling against
a difficulty of 8, attempting an effect that requires 4 successes has
a quantifiable probability of achieving his goals. It is far less likely
that he will be successful in such than the mage with Arete 3, rolling at
difficulty 4 for an effect that requires 1 success. So, sensing that the
girl sitting at the bar with a frown on her face is angry is much more
likely than one-shot transforming the pissed Prince of the city into a
lawn chair. Yes, a mage 'could' do either. Which would you bet on?
: In the end, the argument becomes not, "How bad do want to kill
I was simply assuming that the experience came with the appropriate story
arcs, including seekings.
: > Ahh, so people are saying mages are overpowered after they have changed
: > the printed rules? No! We are talking about what is published here, and
: > even the most generous reading of the rules would get that for you to
: > partially succeed you'd need to have gotten 2 successes, which presumably
: > would mean transforming me into a man-toad mix for no longer than a scene.
: > Duration is not arbitrarily up to the mage to set by willingly reducing
: > the effectiveness of his magick in other areas.
: You have forgotten the golden rule of Mage...
: NOTHING IS SUPPOSED TO WORK THE SAME WAY TWICE.
This is printed somewhere?
: A ST should remember this in order to make the mages in his game
: sweat and get an adrenaline surge each time they cast magick. Makes for a
: fun evening of adventure <G>.
I find the system as written does this well enough without me making
modifications.
: > Yes, with an extended roll you could gradually change a man into a toad.
: > But this can hardly be thought to be overpowering. You start to do this,
: > achieving 2 successes on the werewolf who is advancing on you. Fine, he
: > partially transforms into a . . .ughh. . .half toad, half Crinosed man
: > thing. With Rage, he kills you well before you spend the remaining rounds
: > completing your transformation, and as that will likely end the scene, then
: > reverts to his normal, lovable, furry self.
: Hey, if ANY beginning mage is taking on any werewolf head on in a
: brawl, he should die horribly, in the most painful way a ST can devise...
We were talking about an Arete 5 mage here, not a beginner. Puts a bit of
an end to the talk of Supermage.
: > I'm sorry, but multiple turns necessary to perform action is not a sign of
: > being overpowering.
: Agreed. With Multitasking (Mind 1) and Time 3 effects (used on both
: the mage and his opponent), extra actions is not a big issue.
See above.
: > Yes, abilities are allowed to augment Arete. Again, it is a multiple turn
: > process. At best, assuming the ability to be used may be used in a round,
: > it takes 2 rounds to go this way. And some abilities by their very nature
: > are going to take far longer to perform. Creating a masterful work of art
: > in a gun battle simply isn't going to occur.
: Yep. But, some rules rapist out there will no doubt figure out a way
: to do this, so be on your toes...
: > Uh. . .2 successes at least to levitate anything other than yourself.
: Also, your esteemed colleage forgot something. You ALWAYS have to
: roll Arete to cast magick. It's just a fact...
: > I never said they couldn't be dangerous, I said that they'd be foolish to
: > rely on their ability. What you have outlined is that with preparation a
: > mage is dangerous, but this is true for anyone. It doesn't meet my criteria
: > of being universally reliable if I have to go through all sorts of careful
: > preparation well in advance to make sure that it works. As example, if I
: > can talk my friend Jones into allowing me to get a good position I might
: > be able to restrain him, but just walking up to him and grabbing him probably
: > means serious pain in my future if he chooses to deal it as he was a college
: > wrestler and I have avoided physical activity rather successfully throughout
: > my life. So, would you say that because I might be able to talk him into
: > allowing me time that I can rely on my ability to hold him?
: Well, that's what it's all about, really: manipulation. If any
: vampire is idiot enough to believe a mage, and vice versa, well then, he's
: screwed himself up. At least they're off the food chain...
Donald