World of Darkness Composites

[JonSetanta]

Celerity = your "return to base for backup" trump card when caught, which almost never happens to at least decent Mekhets. It's not just for combat, it also adds movement.

[NineInchNall]

Yeah, so I was just looking through the nWoD base book, specifically at the Retainer trait. I will quote:

Five dots indicate an extraordinary follower. He is exceptional in many ways (five dots in a couple of traits, and four in many others) or he may be capable of supernatural feats.

So what's stopping you from pulling the old infinite party trick? (Aside from DM, er, ST fiat, that is.)

[Username17]

1178586297[/unixtime]]Celerity = your "return to base for backup" trump card when caught, which almost never happens to at least decent Mekhets. It's not just for combat, it also adds movement.

Sort of. I mean yeah, a character with Celerity 3 can run at 65.45 miles per hour (described in the book as "almost 65 miles per hour!"). But he can do this for three seconds. To put that in perspective, he will cover almost a football field in those three seconds, and then it's over. He actually still loses a race across the stadium to a normal human on a motorcycle.

Celerity is an impressive amount of speed. In 3 seconds you can cover as much distance as you would fall in two and a half seconds. But seriously, a whole blood for that? A whole blood trait and a level 3 discipline for "3 seconds of having a bike?" What the fvck man? What the fvck?

So what's stopping you from pulling the old infinite party trick? (Aside from DM, er, ST fiat, that is.)

Nothing. Retainers = Win.

-Username17

[Brobdingnagian]

And here I thought the 'Resource + 5 = Throw money at it until it goes away' was a good strategy.

[Catharz]

1178646229[/unixtime]]
Nothing. Retainers = Win.

-Username17

Huh, I thought that retainers would be a huge problem for vampires. Then again, it's probably just as difficult wth crooked fangs.

[JonSetanta]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Elder or older vamps use less blood when activating Celerity?

It's worth it when in an urban or city environment, where there are multiple chances to break a chase unless the hunters are using supernatural means to track. That short burst of distance could spell the difference between free and bitin', or dead-again.

I don't have the book on me and it's been a few years since I played...

[NineInchNall]

Is it just me, or are Contacts and Resources (by the letter of the rules) strictly inferior to and subsumed by Allies and Status?

[Brobdingnagian]

Not necessarily. An Ally may have shitloads of cash, and Status may make it so that other vampires will give you money just because, but there's a limit defined by the ST. And we all know that ST's like to screw over their players as much as possible.

Seriously. WoD is like an arms race between the ST and the Players. The players do everything they can to take power away from the ST, and the ST does everything possible (short of killing characters regularly) to keep that power. Resources are something you can always rely on (because they're yours), and with any dots in Contacts, you always have someone who can tell you something.

[NineInchNall]

WoD has always used the ST as the rules giver. The players have little to no say, as the rules are totally not set in stone and are totally unclear to boot.

In any case, Status (Corp.) 5 gives you control of a corporation and specifically lists expense accounts and huge salaries. Allies is knowledge, and is made without checks.

Stupid WoD.

[Username17]

Contacts are just like Allies except not as good. The one genuine advantage they have is that they are even less clear than Allies are, so you are on slightly better grounds when you suddenly need someone to talk to in Japan or something.

Resources are flat smaller than what you can pull out of Status, save that they are explicit and more than you need. Status implies that you can walk out of there with millions of dollars, but Resources flat out gives you a trust fund that pays you $50,000 of disposable monies every month.

Yes, 50 grand is less by far than any reasonable interpretation of "larger salaries, expense accounts, and hiring and firing powers" for a corporate executive. But it's not subject to performance reviews and it's explicit.

Still dumb, but I could see wanting it if you didn't want your haracter to actually go to work or file taxes. In some games it might be worth it for the extra layer of secrecy.

You've gotta be kidding. If not why hasn't PETA started protesting WW for abusing retarded monkeys?

Here's how it works: if you join the Melissidae bloodline of Ventrue, you get extra powers for free if you have Dominate and Animalism (which you do, because you're a Ventrue and that's the entire fvcking point). For example, you can use all of your Animalism powers on insects in addition to small furry things, you don't need eye contact with animals to do your thing, and if you get to Animalism 4 you can move your spirit into a swarm of ants or bees. But the really cool thing is that if you have animalism and dominate you simply get the ability to treat people in your vicinty as if they were a single entity that you don't need to make eye contact with for purposes of Dominate.

And then on top of that you get the exclusive rights to purchase a set of Devotions that actually cost XP and are almost all worthless. But the important part - the part where if you have Animalism 3 and Dominate 3 (which you do), you simply get the ability to Mesmerize everyone in the room simultaneously by spending an extra Blood - that part is free.

-Username17

[Modesitt]

I have finally found something that tops the Melissidae bloodline for brokenness: The spells Gain Skill and Skill Mastery from Free Council. You need Gnosis 3, Mind 3, and 32 experience(24 for Mind 4, 8 for the Skill Mastery rote).

In Mage, you can cast any Instant-action spell as an extended spell. As with any extended action, you can only make as many rolls as you have dice in your base dice pool. So if you have 10 dice, you can roll them 10 times. All spells are attribute+skill+Arcana rating.

Skill Mastery is an Adept-level spell that works like this: For every success you assign to potency, you can add one dot to -ANY- skill. You can do this for as many skills as you can roll successes. This includes the skill you use to cast Skill Mastery. Since you have Mind 4, you can also cast Augment the Mind or Supreme Augmentation as you see fit which lets you boost any social or mental attribute.

First, you cast Gain Skill to boost Persuasion for Skill Mastery if it wasn't already a 5. Then you cast Augment the Mind to boost your Wits to 5 assuming it was at least 2 before, which takes another 3-7 successes. You don't care about duration as long as it's at least 48 hours. Now can you roll 16 dice(14+2 for chanting in high speech) whenever you cast Skill Mastery. Those two spells took part of a day, so you go to sleep.

The next day you wake up and spend(Taking the least charitable interpretation of how High Speech works) 21 hours chanting in strange tongues. You roll a total of 224 dice or ~75 successes. You can get even more successes with trivial effort, e.g. having a friend cast Fate spells on you, but let's ignore that for now. You spend 20 on duration to make it last a month and 55 on potency. If you ignore the worthless skills this gives you 3/4 of all possible skill points.

Even without all of that extended spell nonsense, Gain Skil and Skill Mastery STILL instantly invalidate the skills of all other players BECAUSE IT'S ALL FUCKING COVERT. All it 'costs' you is a mana point for each casting. You can get all the mana you could ever want by convincing your Storyteller life begins at conception and performing free/cheap late-term abortions on hookers or working as a veterinarian at an animal shelter.

Edit: I almost forgot about Temporal Lifeline, also from Free Council. It's Quick Save. Seriously. You cast a spell at Time A, then at any point in the future you can spend an instant action and jump back to that point in time. The spell is vulgar and costs one mana, but who the fuck cares? You can save the game and go back any time something doesn't go your way.