Strongest Character Supermage You Could Defeat

[Pendaran]

Is this New WoD? I thought in the old one 5 was as high as it went, so I was thinking "Godly super-power" too.

Went as high as 10 in the old one. Went above 5 in the new one too really.

With that said, and ironically so, despite being the purportedly lower power gameline overall, and though it took a near immediate swift, savage, stupid, pointless retcon through an edition change (that's right, the "new" world of darkness has a second edition now, called "Chronicles of Darkness"), archmages in the NWoD were insanely more powerful past a certain point. Just crazy more powerful.

[Sharpandpointies]

I suppose the answer to this thread is 'It depends on my Arete'.

In theory, I could have level 5 in all spheres and only have an Arete of 5. Which is...nice, but it's not exactly world-shaking with regards to easily tossing out powerful effects.

'Chronicles of Darkness'? Already? Do tell.

[Pendaran]

Ugh. So, okay. This is going to get convoluted as balls.

So, CCP, which had previously bought white wolf the rpg gaming company had basically seen their plans for a WoD MMO fizzle, and were basically at this point just holding onto the IP that they got by buying white wolf. So a bunch of white wolf's usual writers/developers/freelancers formed a company called Onyx Path, which basically licenced the rights to make white wolf rpg stuff from CCP. Which they then did. For the most part in the shape of wanting to make second editions for all the NWoD lines, along with some new NWoD lines. I've generally found the second editions to be pointless garbage, and the new gameline, Beast, to be outright repugnant in a way not even vampire at its worst could touch, but it is what it is.

While this is going on, the 20th anniversary of VtM is coming up in 2012, and Onyx Path decides they want to do a 20th anniversary edition of VtM that "celebrates all its incarnations" (I personally found it to mostly be just desperate apologizing for anything but early 2nd edition VtM while directly insulting you for daring to like anything but early second edition vampire, while pointlessly nerfing various powers and pointlessly wanking others, while basically masturbating all over how awesome the anarchs are and if you don't like anarchs, well screw you then, but whatever). This turns out to be successful beyond their wildest dreams, as if, I don't know, cancelling the living hell out of the OWoD had turned off a huge chunk of their audience, and they decide to do 20th anniversary editions of all the OWoD gamelines as they come up, and to do a formal 4th edition of VtM eventually.

This awakens the gaze of other companies to that hey, there's still juice in this IP. Enter Paradox gaming studios. They buy the white wolf IP from CCP with the intent of developing video games and whatever all stuff from it. But what to do about onyx path, who are licencing the rpg rights? Well basically to avoid confusion the tell them to change the name of the NWoD stuff they are doing to "Chronicles of Darkness", and otherwise let them keep doing that, publish NWoD stuff (and also Exalted, and Onyx path directly bought the rights for Scarred Lands and Aeon/Aberrant, so they'll be doing those as well). As for the Old World of Darkness? While Paradox are letting the currently published 20th anniversary lines (vampire, changeling, werewolf, theoretically wraith, mage) wrap themselves up, they intend to publish entirely new editions of all them OWoD games, with some "the time of judgement thing was just some events that happened off to the side or something that did not end the world" babble (which the 20th anniversary lines instead opted to just pretend never happened at all).

The truly unfortunate bit is that like CCP, Paradox mostly wanted white wolf for its intellectual property to do bigger things with, because that IP is useful and already contains tons of material to do bigger things with. The tabletop rpg side of things is basically an afterthought. As a result, the rpg side of things has been put under the authority of the worst white wolf gamer stereotype you could possibly imagine, then multiply that tenfold, who is hellbent on transforming the gameline to reflect the "hardcore Nordic Eurolarp scene", which includes things like, as a summary version, bragging about forcing someone with claustrophobia into a closet for an extend period as the least crappy and most publically describable thing I can note. Such previews/preview products as exist as a result are hysterically bad, and his interviews have been hysterically insulting. He's done things like hire developers for vampire who specifically on record hate the idea of people getting to play vampires in games. He's hired writers to put out products that go into loving detail about.. er.. severed anuses. And there's a really dark and unfortunate undercurrent to everything with accusations of harassment and products who have characters specifically named for real live people the writer has a vindictive harassment themed grudge against (to say the characters are deeply unfortunate as a blatant effort to mock said real life people is to put it mildly).

Sooo.. yeah. I'm so looking forward to going to be released this year VtM 5th ed, let me tell you (they consider the 20th lines to be the 4th edition of these games). *lie*

Anyway, the NWoD is Chronicles of Darkness now!

[Sharpandpointies]

Ugh. So, okay. This is going to get convoluted as balls.

It's WoD - old, new, convoluted is the norm.

So, CCP, which had previously bought white wolf the rpg gaming company had basically seen their plans for a WoD MMO fizzle, and were basically at this point just holding onto the IP that they got by buying white wolf. So a bunch of white wolf's usual writers/developers/freelancers formed a company called Onyx Path, which basically licenced the rights to make white wolf rpg stuff from CCP. Which they then did. For the most part in the shape of wanting to make second editions for all the NWoD lines, along with some new NWoD lines. I've generally found the second editions to be pointless garbage, and the new gameline, Beast, to be outright repugnant in a way not even vampire at its worst could touch, but it is what it is.

*looks up Beast*

...why? Another 'monster you are' game, but without much of the chains on behavior except 'oh, something might come hunt you' from the look of it, with characters like 'dragons'. Ugh, ugh.

While this is going on, the 20th anniversary of VtM is coming up in 2012, and Onyx Path decides they want to do a 20th anniversary edition of VtM that "celebrates all its incarnations" (I personally found it to mostly be just desperate apologizing for anything but early 2nd edition VtM while directly insulting you for daring to like anything but early second edition vampire, while pointlessly nerfing various powers and pointlessly wanking others, while basically masturbating all over how awesome the anarchs are and if you don't like anarchs, well screw you then, but whatever). This turns out to be successful beyond their wildest dreams, as if, I don't know, cancelling the living hell out of the OWoD had turned off a huge chunk of their audience, and they decide to do 20th anniversary editions of all the OWoD gamelines as they come up, and to do a formal 4th edition of VtM eventually.

...kaaaay...

I'm still trying to get over the idea of anarchs being 'awesome', but whatever. I get you.

This awakens the gaze of other companies to that hey, there's still juice in this IP. Enter Paradox gaming studios. They buy the white wolf IP from CCP with the intent of developing video games and whatever all stuff from it. But what to do about onyx path, who are licencing the rpg rights? Well basically to avoid confusion the tell them to change the name of the NWoD stuff they are doing to "Chronicles of Darkness", and otherwise let them keep doing that, publish NWoD stuff (and also Exalted, and Onyx path directly bought the rights for Scarred Lands and Aeon/Aberrant, so they'll be doing those as well). As for the Old World of Darkness? While Paradox are letting the currently published 20th anniversary lines (vampire, changeling, werewolf, theoretically wraith, mage) wrap themselves up, they intend to publish entirely new editions of all them OWoD games, with some "the time of judgement thing was just some events that happened off to the side or something that did not end the world" babble (which the 20th anniversary lines instead opted to just pretend never happened at all).

Really, the 'pretend it never happened at all or yet or whatever' makes more sense than 'oh, just a side story'.

The truly unfortunate bit is that like CCP, Paradox mostly wanted white wolf for its intellectual property to do bigger things with, because that IP is useful and already contains tons of material to do bigger things with. The tabletop rpg side of things is basically an afterthought. As a result, the rpg side of things has been put under the authority of the worst white wolf gamer stereotype you could possibly imagine, then multiply that tenfold, who is hellbent on transforming the gameline to reflect the "hardcore Nordic Eurolarp scene", which includes things like, as a summary version, bragging about forcing someone with claustrophobia into a closet for an extend period as the least crappy and most publically describable thing I can note. Such previews/preview products as exist as a result are hysterically bad, and his interviews have been hysterically insulting. He's done things like hire developers for vampire who specifically on record hate the idea of people getting to play vampires in games. He's hired writers to put out products that go into loving detail about.. er.. severed anuses. And there's a really dark and unfortunate undercurrent to everything with accusations of harassment and products who have characters specifically named for real live people the writer has a vindictive harassment themed grudge against (to say the characters are deeply unfortunate as a blatant effort to mock said real life people is to put it mildly).

This is like the Black Dog garbage taken to a new low (though, occasionally, Black Dog had something useful) coupled with a really crappy person in charge.

Sooo.. yeah. I'm so looking forward to going to be released this year VtM 5th ed, let me tell you (they consider the 20th lines to be the 4th edition of these games). *lie*

Anyway, the NWoD is Chronicles of Darkness now!

Thank you for the update. I'm so glad I stopped at 2nd edition - had I gone to 3rd, I might have been tempted to continue and been subjected to...this. At least my WoD stuff went out on a high note.

[Pendaran]

Hey, I liked the 3rd editions of a lot of the OWoD games. Or "revised" as they were called at the time, in the ancient misty days of 1998.

Werewolf the Apocalypse got like 10% less racist!

[Sharpandpointies]

Hey, I liked the 3rd editions of a lot of the OWoD games. Or "revised" as they were called at the time, in the ancient misty days of 1998.

Werewolf the Apocalypse got like 10% less racist!

I did hear good things about 3rd.

But if I had have gotten 3rd, I probably would have tried NWoD, etc...

Instead, I moved away from WoD onto other things. ^_^

[The Chou Lives]

No Ascension is old world Munch pal. Awakening is new I thought.

[The MunchKING]

No Ascension is old world Munch pal. Awakening is new I thought.

No, I knew Ascension was OWOD I just thought Pen was wrong about 10 being the cap. It has been a while since I read the book.

Went as high as 10 in the old one. Went above 5 in the new one too really.

Ah well I've got the book right here. I'll have to read it again.

I suppose the answer to this thread is 'It depends on my Arete'.

And your Paradigm. A MunchKING style guy trying to go with FF-Style magic will look a lot different (and probably have a different cap on who he can fight) then a Son of Ether that has all his power tied up in gizmoes.

and otherwise let them keep doing that, publish NWoD stuff (and also Exalted, and Onyx path directly bought the rights for Scarred Lands and Aeon/Aberrant, so they'll be doing those as well).

From what I heard on their forums, they managed to totally purchase Scion too, so they're doing a new edition with that, and they get all the money. :P

[Pendaran]

No, I knew Ascension was OWOD I just thought Pen was wrong about 10 being the cap. It has been a while since I read the book.

Even the Mage 20th anniversary interminably endless core book notes higher ratings are possible, just that they're treating such as optional to said book and thus not going to describe them in the mage 20th anniversary core.

Plenty of page space to advance some really dumb metaplot suggestions though!

(I did not like the 20th line, can you tell? 689 pages for a corebook and what do they use it for? "lol the Technocracy has been corrupted by the Nephandi lololol")

edit: To be fair, 2 of those pages in the pdf are the front and back cover. A mere 687 pages! Did you know in said 687 pages they straight up refer people to later books that will be published to get more information on how to do things with magic? Not advanced things either. Basic stuff. Wards. You'd think in 687 pages, they'd figure out where to put that in when "what you can do with magic and how you can do it" has been one of the big fandom consuming and confusing fights of mage throughout every single edition but naaaahhh. We need to know about crap like separate reality zones!

I hate this book man.

[The MunchKING]

OK, so I skimmed over the spheres in my book from Mage: the Ascension. they only go up to 5 dots in the core book, so the godly powers I thought of when I said that are accurate to 5 dots. I'll get into who I could beat more after I do some looking and paradigm defining.

[Pendaran]

OK, so I skimmed over the spheres in my book from Mage: the Ascension. they only go up to 5 dots in the core book, so the godly powers I thought of when I said that are accurate to 5 dots. I'll get into who I could beat more after I do some looking and paradigm defining.

According to the OP, this:

If the effect is described in the link, you can use it at will.

The stuff in the link tops out at city scale things for forces, for instance.

[Pendaran]

they only go up to 5 dots in the core book

They go further in other books:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...t_epoch=0&it=1

[wjowski]

...Personally I didn't think Awakening's 2nd edition was too terribly bad.

[Pendaran]

...Personally I didn't think Awakening's 2nd edition was too terribly bad.

I disliked the idea that apparently if you bought imperial mysteries you were a big ol sucker because all of that was fake ascending and all the archmages are actually monsters on a false path. Especially when that was one of the last books to come out before 2nd.

Also I kinda disliked that a lot of 2nd was like an apology for 1st. Honestly I enjoyed a fair chunk of the Atlantis stuff.

That and just generally the mechanics that Chronicles of Darkness uses across its lines are something of my uncanny valley of rpg mechanics.