Any advice on stuff to do with Thaumatrgy in V:tM? [Tremere

[Judging__Eagle]

Ok, our Werewolf game got scrapped b/c like Frank said, any of the girls we wanted to have play, would rather play vampire. Oh well.

Also, I don't think any of us could really roleplay the stuff that werewolf is al about. Mostly b/c there's no cultural background material to show have a new player compare the game's world to.

I'm not even so sure we'll all be able to be egotistical bastards in our Vampire game either. The game's all about that, right?


My questions centre on the following:

I'm a Tremere vampire, I've read the players book and roughly know where this clan stands with others.

1. "Is there anything really wierd that isn't talked about or barely mentioned that is imporant for, against or related to Tremere vampires?"

I'm not really sure on concept; being the doddering old proffesor could be funny.

"Bad news everybody! You're not good enough to go on your next assignment"

Yeah, Prof. Hugo Farnsworth. No one else in the group knows the show that well and I can thank my brother who's a huge fan for having all of the DvDs to watch for the.. third or fourth time now.

2. Does that concept work? Or is saying "well I am in my pajamas" before we go to do something too ridiculous?

Other players include: Malkavian rich-kid "Guy who does crap at Will and shows up whenever he feels like"; Ventrue Old-Money Elder "Captain Balding"; a Gengrel who acts first and seldom talks "first officer handsome"; a brujah bruiser "security officer gruff".

Then whatever the girls who will play will write up (honestly, it's hard to pin a peson down to any one clan imo; someone mentiond one of them playing a toreador, but they're not really what the clan is about).

(yeah, there's a ST:tNG theme going here; I'm not gonna play)

3. How well does a Tremere fit in such a group and is such a group pretty much damned to implosion from conflicting agendas?


Disciplines. I'm probably going to have to invest in Auspex and Thaumatergy; since the Malk is going Obfuscte/ Dementation.

4. Should I go for certain disciplines, should I focus on Auspex or Thaumatergy, or go one or the other, or what?

Also

5. What Thaumatergical path should I go? The 'creation' level 3 one seems hilarious. I can print money at that point, can't I? As well as make custom guns?

I'm also going to something really dumb and dump a pile of points into my Generation (going for 8th gen; yeah, that would be a bit odd, but the wierder thing is that the malkavian and the ventrue both are gonna be 8th gen vampires).

[Crissa]

I think Hugo Farnsworth was based off of Frank.

-Crissa

[Brobdingnagian]

I really don't think it'd be that ridiculous. You could play a senile character... maybe get some freebie points if that's an available flaw somewhere...

[Username17]

How much of the ass-crazy metaplot are you guys using? Because the Tremere have more secret socieites than they have members - which is surprising because they actually have a big telepathic mind meld every year so I don't even know how any of them keep secrets from any of the others - thus giving a basic believability problem to the entire Paranoia-like structure of the clan.

Anyway, the Tremere clan is inherently and obviously a problem with the entire Generational concept. Suspiciously, the entire Inner Circle is composed of seven 4th generation vampires who sit around researching blood magic and - here's the important part - give a blood sample to every new recruit to drink. Yes, really, every single prospective Tremere vampire is required by clan law to be given a vial of 4th generation blood P.O. - thus making it a serious question as to why or hw there are any Tremere who are worse than 6th generation or so.

Honestly, the only good thing that nWoD did was get rid of "Generations" because it sure as fvck didn't even work as long as the Tremere existed at all anywhere in the world.

---

Regardless, Tremere have full access to the most powerful discipline ever devised: Thaumaturgy. Each path of Thaum is essentially as powerful as any other randomly chosen discipline. Sure, there are some rockstars like Presence that are as or more powerful than most paths of Thaum (but Path of Corruption sures gives it a run for the vitae). Nevertheless, the Path of Fire is a hell of a lot better than Daimonia or whatever, and the Path of Neptune's Might is very much on par with Auspex. But here's the fun part - once you have Thaum you can buy new Paths really cheap. It's like having 15+ disciplines that are triply "in clan". Better yet, every time they print anything they have to come up with a special branch of Thaumaturgy that some fvcking clan has secret access to. No, it aint enough that Setites have Obfuscation, Presence, and Serpentis - they have to have a horrendously powerful sideline of Thaumaturgy as well.

You'd think that would trample on the Tremere way of life in the way that printing the Giovani or Lasambra made Ventrue feel small in the pants. But the way Thaumaturgy is structured, having more people who can get into Thaum is some crazy ass backwards fashion is all good for you - it just means there are even more Paths and Rituals for you to cherry pick off of.

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Special Shout-out to The Path of Spirit Thaumaturgy if you happen to be using Werewolf in your campaign. Turning a Werewolf into a regenerating zombie nazi werewolf vampire of destruction with robot katanas for eyes is entirely lethal unless the character in question botches a Gnosis test (which is highly unlikely). Spirit Thaumaturgy gives you the "Evil Eye" which is normally a stupid curse where you can make someone autmatically Botch a test of your choice. Did I just say "automatically botch" oh snap!

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Auspex and Thaumaturgy are indeed rockstars. Dominate is also cray awesome, but only if you invest a bunch of dots in it and only if you intend to ever deal with non-vampire opposition. A Tremere does not need or want to get his hands on the power of any other clan because you already get fvcking weather control and time stop!

For a combat heavy game, throwing down the fire path isn't a bad option. It's kind of an afterthought in how much it costs, and it does satisfyingly huge amounts of aggravated damage. The Path of Corruption seriously allows you to reverse what people are going to do in response to stimuli, which is different from straight up dominate in terms of semantics. Neptune's Might allows you to basically kill anyone who isn't a vampire (blood to water is straight up lethal), as well as giving you Scrying. There's even a path of making hideous crossbreeds in your basement which essentially obviates Viscisitude.

Rituals often eliminate the need for entire disciplines. Transforming your skin into stone is basically better than Fortitude ever gets even at level 5. Transforming yourself into an incorporeal shadow neatly bypasses the top end of Protean.

The Treme exist on a power level that is so dramatically different from the rest of the vampire clans that I would seriously consider simply mandating that all player characters must be Tremere. I mean seriously, they don't even have a clan disadvantage unless you count "must having at least a little bit of loyalty to the party and the clan organization" as a fvcking drawback. Hell, it even goes both ways and other members of the Tremer clan organization will come over to help you move furniture.

-Username17

[Brobdingnagian]

But they're not fun like Malkavians!

...

Yeah, I took the test. I'm Malkavian. I also found one that gives the second clan you'd be, and that was Tremere.

[User3]

The only thing a Vampire with Thaum wants is highly unlikely to exist in the game. If your ST is crazy enough to allow True Brujah, you want to sell your soul for their clan discipline, which, at 5 dots lets you (among other things) use 2 powers/turn... Double up the Thaum goodness! (This is of course a really-high power or lategame option, since it requires 5 dots in a non-clan discipline and feeds off the crazy-ass power of Thaum).

I can't even remember what the discipline is called. But its the unique one for the True Brujah (who are so far into ST plot device its not even funny).

[Brobdingnagian]

Potence.

[Username17]

1176093206[/unixtime]]Potence.

No. He's talking about Temporis. It's like Celerity, except it stacks and it works by making everyone else slower so that it allows you to use Magic Powers more often.

-Username17

[Brobdingnagian]

Sorry, I was thinking about the one that adds auto-successes to Strength rolls (including damage rolls). My head's just not there tonight.

[tzor]

1176068781[/unixtime]]Ok, our Werewolf game got scrapped b/c like Frank said, any of the girls we wanted to have play, would rather play vampire. Oh well.

Actually vanilla Werewolf (at least the old editions) was a serious "what's my motivation" problem. The Old West variation had a whole lot of potential. (And the faux bullet hole through the hardcover book.) You got the American Indian angle, the wild fonteer angle, the civil war veteran angle and a whole lot of other things you could easily incorporate.

Actually the more I think of it, vampire is really parinoia where people take it way to seriously.

[User3]

Let's not forget the Path of Conjuring, a Path whose third level power allows you to conjure "objects composed of multiple materials" with "moving parts" -- the examples given include guns and cellular telephones. Your only size limit is that you can't conjure anything larger than yourself. While they don't actually say you can conjure below-the-neck adamantine cages full of molten lava, they don't actually say you can't, either. That's assuming that conjuring actual flamethrowers out of thin air isn't cool enough for you.

Even better, there's actually a whole book devoted to Thaumaturgy. As is typical for White Wolf, much of the book is devoted to flavor text nonsense. As is also typical, the part that isn't devoted to flavor text nonsense has some absolutely crazy stuff in it.

Take the Path of the Focused Mind, for instance -- where the level 2 power permits you to be "unaffected by any effect" that reduces your dice pool. Perhaps your GM will be swayed by the argument that taking multiple actions is "an effect that reduces your dice pool". The level four power gives you an extra action during your turn that can only be used for "mental" actions. Damn, I only get to use it for Dominate or Thaumaturgy? Well, I suppose I'll just have to press on despite that terrible setback.

Level 3 Path of the Mortal Shell permits you to slap down a 4-die penalty on all actions to anyone you can touch. Level 1 Path of the Blood's Curse permits you to force anyone to make a Frenzy roll -- fun when dealing with Brujah -- and level 2 lets you reduce any vampire's maximum dice pool to equal his humanity, an absolute blast if there are elders about.

Path of Curses 3 allows you to make everybody view your target as a hated enemy. Path of Transmutation gives you all kinds of crazy abilities like the ability to add up to 5 soak dice to your flak jacket or 5 damage dice to your favorite weapon, the power to melt bullets in midair (apparently without any roll other than getting one success on a Thaumaturgy check), or seal people in an indestructible block with no saving throw of any kind (though you do need 5 successes on a Willpower roll -- you can manage that, surely).

--d.

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah, I was taking a cursory glance at the Book of Thaumaturgy.

The "creation" core power is pretty nice, what with being able to conjure weapons with shit like, willie pete rounds (white phosphorous; a material that bones tank armour and burn without air and underwater).

So, aggrevated damage-dealing uzis. Shit, I've got one better.

Aggrevated damage-dealing Calicos.

I wish I could make up something like the Calico though.


I just want to be clear on how the Paths work; I can't have more than one, right?

My problem as a person is tha plethoras of choice tend to cripple my decision making ability. Since I can see the good and down sides of different options.

Conjuration looks good; always being able to make silver weapons, willie-pete loaded guns, having any cash that I want; fvck, any gem (okay.. diamond, since it's a pretty pure stone at the atomic/emelental level) that I feel like having.

[User3]

Not at all. You can have multiple paths (and you should).

The way it generally works (may vary with your GM) is, you get one path (generally Path of Blood, though this is often negotiable) free with every dot of Thaumaturgy you buy. You may then buy other paths, as long as you don't exceed your actual Thaumaturgy rating in any of them.

--d.

[Judging__Eagle]

Wait, so, say I have Thaumatergy 2 at the start of the campaign... (I'm debatig burning 7 freebie points on an other pip)

and say I pick up: Focused Mind and Conjuration

How do I raise those? Is that based on my pips in Thaumatergy or do I hav to spend extra points to raise those chosen paths past 1?

I'm gonna have to read the rule book again I guess.

Thaum pretty much hasit's own system that is nothing like the other disciplines, right?

[User3]

Here's how it works.

Say you have Thaumaturgy 2. This means that, unless you've previously negotiated otherwise with your GM, you already have Path of Blood 2.

Now, you can spend additional XP or freebie points -- I don't remember exactly how many, but it's substantially less than for Discipline raises -- to buy a "new" path, say, Conjuration. Now you have Thaumaturgy 2 (Path of Blood 2, Path of Conjuration 1.) From there you can spend additional points to raise Path of Conjuration to 2, but you can't raise it to 3 until you raise Thaumaturgy to 3.

(Actually, you might be limited to 1 less than your Thaumaturgy rating on "secondary" paths, but I don't think so -- I just don't have a book handy.)

It is actually very much like buying new Disciplines with XP.

--d.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm, most interesting.

Burning freebie points on more/better Thaum might be the thing to do.