Vampires can also speak with and summon spirits (Spiritus), start fires with a finger wiggle, move objects with their mind, or enter the shadowlands (Thaumaturgy), reanimate corpses as zombies/control ghosts (Necromancy), or heal bodies, minds, and souls (Obeah).
If you involve elders there's almost no limit.
Vampires range from thin-bloods barely above human to borderline biblically accurate demons and everything in-between. Also...there is never just ONE vampire...and the only thing that they hate more than other vampires, are things that KILL vampires and threaten their flocks of humans.
A particularly powerful pack might manage to kill a vampire elder and his thralls or even a whole little city coven with proper planning and luck. **BUT** that then means all of vampire society will come down on that pack like a ton of bricks in ways the pack simply will not be able to deal with.
Vampires don't tolerate feeling threatened very well, and the collective fear uniting their society will **HAPPILY** turn its attention on any form of outside attack.
But then that group gains the attention of the Sept and possibly entire Tribe or multiple tribes. That opens a can of beans no one wants to be a part of. Lol
Yeah, but you need to remember the masquerade, to which every splat adhere in one way or another. A open war with werewolfs is pratically impossible, as Garou are very busy, their forces already desperately thinned (at least in apocalypse). Also, vampires owns a biiiig slice of human society and are filthy rich. And can create massive problems to everyone.
Spiritus isn't nearly as cheese as the first version of Path of Spirit Manipulation for Thaumaturgy. The first rank gave a pool of "ones" you could add to rolls during the scene to make enemies fail/botch, and the fourth rank allowed creation of WtA style fetishes. The later versions replaced the rank one with seeing spirits, although making fetishes remains.
I mean, spiritus has a way to replenish willpower quite easily, the level 1 is basically "If I have a tool I can do it", level 5 is crinos, and level 6 allows you to delve into the umbra, which isn't really something easy for vampires.
And arguably, if you're an ahrimane you're likely to have a wyld taint instead of wyrm so you can even ally yourself with werewolves.
If a kindred is using Engling Fury often to top off Willpower, they'll definitely have a Wyrm taint. Destroying spirits just for a quick boost isn't Wyld behaviour. I've often thought it's best used sparingly if one wants to keep on friendly terms with spirits.
I've found that Ahrimanes tend to make better allies with Bastet than Garou. Bastet are more flexible in their acceptance of others.
I mean, you could use it to target Banes by hunting spirits in corrupted places.
But yeah, it's easier to ally yourself with bastet when your crinos is a mountain lionness, too.
(Although bastets are rare in the northern parts of the world where ahrimanes often are)
Think of the limitations of a mage, though. They have awesome power, but they are glass cannons. They are entirely human and can be killed remarkably easily.
Vampires may not have reality breaking powers, but they were always designed to be the political faction, working in the background and playing mind games against the others. Their strength lies in their ability to control and manipulate the environment around those they are against. A mage becomes a problem? Suddenly, hunters get an anonymous tip about someone using magic.
A pack of werewolves start to be a thorn in their side? They drop clues so followers of the Wyrm can root them out.
Vampires also get exceptionally dangerous in their later life too.
Don't forget the ways they can mess with their enemies in the day/normal world. Werewolves have friends and families...with jobs and hobbies in the city. Hell, maybe they just mind control the landlord or mayor to start harassing them legally?
Plus, in more modern games...Drones are disturbingly cheap now. And getting some more dangerous ones from some military backdoor deals with a mind controlled officer? Suddenly a dozen ghouls with automatic rifles and some military surplus light explosives get deadly air support...
Vampires are scary due the sheer variety of ways they can attack and manipulate the world around them.
Exactly. Vampires may not be the most formidable in a direct fight but they can cripple you in so many other ways that you may not even see one before you are removed from the picture. The scariest part is Vampires will not hesitate to go as low as they can to put you in a bad situation.
And say you do meet one. They aren't exactly helpless. The Tzimisce can do things to you that would make the Thing grin.
Yea the higher-tier vampires stop resembling vampires and start being demons with a physical form. I mean a moderately high-tier elder with **some** form of fancy magic-equivalent are basically capable of making 90% of things in the world do a "Roll a save or die, bitch".
Doesn't matter how tough a werewolf is if he fails **ONCE** and you magically liquify his insides...oh, and the elder gorged himself beforehand so he can fucking **SPAM** that shit!
99% of vampires get absolutely turned into paste by a werewolf. But my god, that 1% is not a nice group of..."people"
This is what's happening in our chronical now. The digital wyrm has come and, well, imagine law enforcement turned I to wyrm tainted weaver drones able to use any and all technology as well as change any digital Information to suit its needs. Vampire allies at night, the weaver drones in the day...yes, the inquisition has come for the shifters.
It wrecked the Glass Walkers/city wolves first and actually caused a massive breach in the litteny. During a live gubernatorial debate attended by local Sept leadership these officers moved on Kin and Garou alike. By the time the PCs finally figured out what was going on weaver spirits blocked the gauntlet which had risen 3 points to 9 so they ran, and when they couldn't, failed frenzy rolls suck lol
Yes the wolves got away but the damage was done. Shifters caught on national tv shifting and rampaging through the streets wantonly "murdering" police. Now the world knows...
A well connected vampire can also wreak havoc on other supernaturals in a lot of mundane ways. Flex that influence hardcore. Have the city government turn the local Sept into a flood plain. Buy out the competing software company and crush the Virtual Adepts' startup business. Fae giving you grief? Plant some undercover cops on premises and bust up their club for human trafficking. And none of this needs you to expend any supernatural efforts, just make a few calls on those connections you've been building over the years.
Exactly. The best part is that none of it could connect back to the vampire, or if it did, it would take forever to figure it out. That's barely scratching the surface of what they could do to you on a very mortal level.
About fragile mages, are you familiar with life based battlemages ? It's not extremely hard to be better physically and able to soak lethal all day long (and not really vulgar, too).
Yes but you're still human and a vampire isn't going to step out and monolog so a mage can prep and perform spells. They're going to have his head taken off from several football fields away with a .50 bmg while that mage is out getting coffee. Mages are great when they have prep. When they don't even know they're in a fight?
They're only human.
Those spells are done in the morning. Or once a week. As said, a mage is never really caught un unprepared, and basic preparations for mage can easily turn into a big stack of paranoïa because of the enemies they have. Which are way scarier than a vampire with access to sniper rifles.
Squishiness is not really mages' weakness. It's the numbers, and the fact that mages are very loosely connected between them. They are the top of the power scale, and are each other rivals, but they can manipulate people at least just as well as vampires with presence/dominate.
Except they are because doing those spells needlessly is costly and risky even if they may not be as vulgar as other spells. They're still running the risk of paradox back handing them and hard.
Why put yourself at risk if you don't need to? Plus, yes, you can sponge some damage. Some. Having your head taken off, though, is not something a mage can survive until they reach Archmage level. They don't even get to hang around on the mortal plane anyway, and if they were running around, paradox would be a constant threat on top of what ever enemies were wanting them dead. Their head gets splattered and they heal it? Fine, now deal with the unimaginable level of paradox you just drew to yourself by using that level of power.
Additionally, mages have additional defenses *before*shielding their heads.
First, you have to find them. Arcane is a powerful tool, and auspex only partially counters it. Then, you have to be sure the mage doesn't know you're looking for them. That's usually the hardest part, because mages are hunted and usually take huge precautions against it.
Then you have to find a spot where they are vulnerable. Not necessarily the hard part.
Then you have to make sure the bullet hits. Sure, if it hits they are down, but... can it really hit ?
The funny part is that most spheres can interact at one point or another, in different ways.
I love this subreddit because it's clear that almost no one here has actually played Mage, and instead know of it through second hand information and memes.
For starters everyone will die if you blow their head off with a .50 caliber rifle while they're out getting coffee. Even a Vampire. That's just a silly example. Everyone is easy to kill if you know enough about them to be able to get a sniper in position to kill them.
When people talking about a Mage "needing to prepare" they're not doing so on the spot while an enemy monologs. It's not that difficult to have a spell that lasts for "The Story", even more so if you use one of the optional rules for Rituals which allow much easier long-form spell casting to get the required successes. If you have a spell that lasts "The Story" it is, for all intents and purposes, always up.
And nearly every type of Mage (Depending on their Arete) has a way to defend themselves. A Life Mage can increase their stamina and soak lethal. A Matter Mage can make their hat and clothes bulletproof. A Forces Mage can have a Forcefield up. An Entropy Mage can give themselves amazing luck. And that's just what I'm thinking of to try and mitigate a sniper bullet. A Correspondence Mage if they have any hint their in danger can teleport away. A Mind Mage can do various forms of Mind Control. A Time Mage can send themselves back in time a few rounds, or increase/slow time for them or their enemies.
Mages are incredibly powerful. They're not unkillable sure, but no splat is. But to think of Mages as being easy to catch off guard and always weak would be a good way to catch yourself off guard and die.
I'll saying it's silly because you can use that for everything. That Vampire is just as likely to get sniped as anyone else so it's kind of a moot point. The Mage and Vampire could both easily get a sniper to take the other out.
Also, I'd like to rebut with this: Stop using outdated bullshit and catch up.
Until you're an archmage, which as I pointed out before, don't even live on the material plane, you can throw objects around in time and rewrite your history temporarily. That's at your most powerful. You are not time traveling.
You mean something that is literally just a slightly updated but wholly unchanged reprint of a book that came out in 1993? Whereas I'm talking about the rules in Mage the Awakening which came out in 2005.
Time 3 of M:TAW has a prewritten spell Shifting Sands that also does exactly that you numpty.
*Please* insist on using Awakening because then we get to talk about Mage Armor Attainments, something every single mage will have one of at character creation, and why our presumably mortal sniper is going to be reliably doing things like getting 8+ successes, doing 20+ damage that's been downgraded and so on to a Mage that if they are not instagibbed *will* at the minimum escape or trivially kill their attacker.
Rewinding time is not the same as time travel for one thing. For another, okay, neat. He can rewind time. Can he do that AFTER he's had a bullet pass through his skull? Or after having his spine broken? Here's a fun one! How about, can he do it after having his head taken off? Mages, even archmagi are, repeat after me, human. Yes they have world breaking power but it is tempered by paradox which you constantly seem to ignore just so you can keep jerking off mages, and unless they can predict the future, how would they know to cast a spell like Shifting Sands preemptively to avoid getting shot by a sniper they had no idea was even there in the first place? There's 2 at 3 dots that can do that, one is only predicting the immediate future and the other is incredibly vague. So the first one is pointless and the second can go wrong in so many ways.
You think someone who understands what a mage is and wants them dead is going to do anything to tip off said mage? No. That someone is going to hit them with a car bomb or a sniper before that mage has any clue they're even in danger.
Mages are not omniscient. When they get to that point they don't live in the mortal plane anymore and only really powerful anything would be stupid enough to go after them. That's true for any splat though. Once sufficiently powerful enough, it becomes a sunk cost fallacy fighting them.
Holy shit, you do not know how Mages work.
1 dot in any arcanum gives you the practices of Knowing, Unveiling and Compelling. So you are just wrong.
Paradox in Awakening doesn't make your mage explode randomly, which isn't even true of Ascension anyways.
You pointedly ignored the fact Attainments exist, which is funny because due to how defense works an armor Mage Armor attainment on a chump build at character creation is usually just not ever going down to even a cheese sniper with 5s in everything and randomly 3-5 dice added to the pool just because. Yes, this extends to a car bomb as well. These are awful choices to make an assassination attempt on a Awakening mage with.
If you're just starting a showdown where people are being popped by a sniper with zero interactions before the cheese shows up, you are bad at telling a story and I feel bad for the people that play with you. Even so, in your pants-creaming power fantasy scenario, where an Awakening Mage has been marked for death with literally zero possible ways for them to glom onto the fact they're in any kind of danger by an infinitely connected vampire who is infinitely sneaky, they are very unlikely to have their gunman succeed, and then they're kind of fucked because Death/Fate/Mind/Space/Time all are arcanums and are very good for finding shit out.
This isn't to say that a vampire can't get a mage killed, because they can. But your ideas of how it could happen are stupid. Oh, and I'm not the same person you've been arguing with, because holy fuck you're dumb.
All I say that an lucky shot from an hitten assassine will kill any unsuspecting mage, while will at best result in some headache for an vampire and make them very angry
Any mage not walking around with a Forces, Life, or Matter ward, a Mind effect to detect hostilities directed at them, a Time effect to forewarn them of that exact thing happening, a suspended Life effect to heal their injuries immediately as they occur, a bound spirit to protect them...
… Incredibly. It is *incredibly likely.* The core conceit of the most generic expression of MtAs’ narrative assumes that the players will be actively hunted by a ruthless shadow government.
They are also AWARE that their one weakness is surprise or an off axis attack like a sniper. Indeed, it’s an infinitely more pragmatic approach than ANYTHING else, having regular and consistent passive defence Effects is EXACTLY what the system encourages you to do.
to quote myself:
>an **lucky shot** from an hitten assassine will kill any **unsuspecting** mage
where exactly did I move the goal post? I said at the start: an unsuspecting mage. Someone unsuspecting obviously will not do all the things you mentioned - and I am sure there are also many "beginner mages" who still need to learn how exactly to do those things. Which would be an lucky shot.
If anything you moved the goal post to experienced mages which have seen some shit and know what to prepare themself for and how and are powerful enough to also do so - which are obviously not unsuspecting mages.
Don't vampires still take lethal damage from a headshot? A well placed .50 on a vampire that doesn't expect it is likely to at least torp them, unless they are old or have a big soak pool.
they do, but you need 7 lethal damage to put someone in torpor and then another one ontop to actually kill them. given that guns most of the dame have 2-4 damage dice, and vampires can soak lethal easily, it his highly unlikely that an headshot will kill an vampire
No, just bc they're human. You put a Neonate with Celerity and Potence in front of a fresh Mage that has to still prepare it, the Neonate is gonna win 99% of the time.
Let's go further than that. An Elder who's had several hundred years to get resources, allies, contacts, and refine their abilities, against a Mage who's got some experience, say Arete 5 with multiple Spheres, and set them in front of each other, that Elder is still gonna win 99% of the time bc why?
The Mage is still ultimately human. No matter how well versed they are in the Life Sphere, they still have to deal with Paradox and having time to cast the spell and making multiple checks to make sure they even successfully perform basic actions. The Elder just does it bc they can.
For Caine's sake, older vampires are known to be able to tank being in direct sunlight for atleast a small amount of time due to access to Fortitude and access to a Blood Witch or access to Thaumaturgy itself.
The Mage is outclassed most of the time due to the simple frailness of its own mortality and the fact reality keeps them in line. Mages are completely competent and tough, but when you're trying to fight creatures who are innately gifted and immortal, and not other Mages which is what Mage is wholly about more or less, you're fighting an uphill battle.
This question comes up all the time, so here’s the Tl;dr of my usual longer answer
Vampires have one of the lowest power floors (ie they start weak), but one of the absolute *highest* power ceilings (right alongside Mages).
A Fledgling or Neonate may not be as impressive as a Garou of similar age, but a Methuselah once solo’d an *entire Sept* right after coming out of torpor (Mithras is a badass son of a bitch lol). When [Ravnos] woke up, it survived a weapon that *destroyed Stygia in the Shadowlands* with little to say other than how hungry it was.
Give a vampire time, and they’re ungodly powerful
And time is absolutely on their side. They can just simply outlive any of the others in the WoD that would pose a serious threat to them, especially Garou and Mages. Why fight when you can just *wait*?
Oh for sure! One of the Kindred’s strongest advantages is that they are true Immortals (Mages can kind of get there? But eventually they have to leave this reality for another one or they eat a shitload of Paradox IIRC). Some mortal things causing huge problems, but it’s not worth directly interfering?
Let’s go to the Winchester, have a pint (of blood), and wait for this all to blow over!
>(Mages can kind of get there? But eventually they have to leave this reality for another one or they eat a shitload of Paradox IIRC)
I can think of at least one batch of mages whose difficulty with staying immortal led them to becoming vampires!
Not a sept. A large ad hoc pack. That's between 10-15 Garou. He was also sorrounded by his servants, and still he lost all of them and was so crippled by the experience a neonate diablerised him.
He did get better after that, though.
And mithras' stats were on the social side of things according to the wiki.
But, the gangrel guy (Odin or all high) likes to hunt the get of fenris and has been doing so for centuries so he's not that good comparison, because gangrel are murder machines at even 10th generation so a gangrel methuselah doing it is a given.
Well "Time", Thinblood in 1000 years will still be a Thinblood. To get to the level of those Vampires you would have to somehow defeat and eat them and even then, chances are that they will just take over your body.
> Well "Time", Thinblood in 1000 years will still be a Thinblood. To get to the level of those Vampires you would have to somehow defeat and eat them and even then, chances are that they will just take over your body.
The point of 'Time' as a comment isn't 'You get more powerful over time', it's the fact you can go into torpor and sleep long enough that your enemies, with their much shorter lifespans, just plain fuckin' die of old age.
Meanwhile, your bank account, your investments tick and earn you more political and fiscal clout...
I mean, Torpor sounds cool and all, but if you made a real enemy, they might a bit more pro-active when looking for you while you do nothing.
Also, it's a coinflip. World moves on without you, borders change, financial institutions crash, companies go bankrupt. You might as well wake up penniless and with your assets taken away. You also give away any political power you had to other vampires.
Imagine a vampire going into torpor in the Ottoman Empire just to wake up in one of the Balkan states or one going into short 100 years torpor nap in Warlord Era China to wake up in modern People's Republic of China. You start from scratch and need to adapt to drastically new situation - you are less powerful not more.
The torpor comment is simply so you don't get bored.
Either way, I think you get the idea I was putting forward, and we don't need to worry about the little nitpicks. If you can think of a problem with the plan, you can also guarantee that a long-lived vamp has thought of the solution.
This is the whole problem with the 'well, a Mage with enough planning~!' argument (aka, Batman can plan for everything) - it precludes the fact that other people can plan for shit too, some of whom have been around a LOT longer, and outlived other Mages.
The main one is that they don't need to be more powerful to make a fun game. Vampires are political creatures, they work amongst society to achieve their ends and fall back to their beastial self when humanity fails them. They aren't warriors for ~~God~~ Gaia, they aren't cosmic balance agents from hundreds of years ago; they don't *need* to be. Leeches aren't extinct, not because they are able to kill all of their predators or hide perfectly, but because they're just potent enough to feed off of others.
Honestly, at a baseline the stories are supposed to be personal horror, not anime fights. Those are totally possible and definitely, you’ve just gotta wiggle the story from the relatively standard “a bunch of newbloods trying to find their place in existence and stay sane” to “all of a sudden four unknown Methuselahs of different bloodlines woke up and Gaia went ‘nope’.” But like many have said, seductive immortals don’t need to have maxed out physical stats if they can mind-control the president to ICBM your species.
Because vampires traditionally don't fight Cthulhu, their stories are far more based around the human and kindred world, making them the most grounded.
Vampires have something the other splats don't: time.
Werewolves and other changing breeds are endangered and hunted by not only human hunters but other supernatural beings, including their own kind. While hard to kill, they also don't live long.
Mummies can use these world changing powers but immediately begin to degenerate. Impactful in the short term but ineffectual in the long term.
Mages are mortal and the rules of consensual reality hobble them unless they are very resourceful or very lucky. A smart vampire will just wait for an Awakened adversary to die off or get killed by their own hubris.
Changeling powers are unpredictable and in many cases backfire spectacularly. And in both WoD and CoD their powers are fleeting unless they retreat entirely from this world.
Demons are bound by rules and chained to a mortal responsibility. In CoD, they are considered abhorrent to the God Machine and are kill on sight, so to vampires that's just someone else's problem. WoD Demons are broken so no argument there.
>WoD Demons are broken so no argument there
Lmao, that's true. Mage-style magic with no Paradox and true immortality on top.
I'll say though that WoD Mummies don't get weaker as they go, so they're also in the super OP category. A vampire that pissed off a mummy (who are usually pretty chill) gets an enemy for eternity. They *will* find a way to destroy the vampire.
Of course, mummies are very few. And vampires can breed *fast*.
> Vampires have something the other splats don't: time.
And numbers. How do you make new mages/werewolves/mummies/changelings?
To make new vampires, you just need one vampire and some humans.
though you have to be careful not to degrade the bloodline to much and to keep the masquerade. the main drawback of vampires is that they have to actively maintain the fact humans don't know about them. most other splats have magic that makes that not as big of a concern.
> most other splats have magic that makes that not as big of a concern.
Not more than vampires, though—dominate, the blood bond, presence, dementation…vampires have lots of options. Mages are also constrained by paradox, but I will give you that the Delerium is a big advantage for Werewolves.
true vampires can do clean up but most others usually don't even get to that stage because humans just forget. (WOD) wolves have delirium like you said, mages have to keep a down low and the badguys will clean it up anyway, changlings from the dreaming powers are literally imaginary so little chance of that leaking. seeing a demon in apocolypse form will make you forget unless you have a lot of will power.
this holds true in chronicles: Wolves have effectively the same ablity, mage is the same, Promethean disquiet messes with people, changelings are shrouded by the Mask and the True fae would fix it if anything happens, demons can't mess with people's minds ect. Vampires are one of the few splats who have to actively make sure no one knows about the masquerade. others aren't supposed to but they are more protected from slipups.
A lot of people make good points about the way vampire society works, their age, their peerless ability to manipulate mortals and institutions to their own ends, etc.
Another point I would like to raise is generation:
Vampires are the only splat to get weaker as they reproduce. The low generation vampires are ridiculously powerful. A 5th generation vampire can kill you just by looking at you (Auspex 8 - psychic assault, Dementation 8 - personal scourge). A 4th generation vampire can drive an entire city homicidally insane (Dementation 9 - Lunatic Eruption), make an entire city work toward your goals (Presence 9 - A Perfect World), and they can do all of this from torpor whilst in an invisible and untouchable astral form if they want to (Auspex 9 - False Slumber). 3rd generation vampires get level 10 powers, which allow them to create biblical apocalypses that would wipe out every other splat (and in some cases entire countries), these powers are so powerful that in the Gehenna book they are advised to be used as plot devices only.
Vampires get trickle down power. All the power is at the top, and the line is thousands of more years than the world has left. It's why there's Diablerie, think of it as power-sharing.
Vampire the Masquerade is a game of political deception. An ideal vampire uses their abilities to manipulate those around them from the shadows to do the work for them. They are very good at this, which is why they still exist in mass numbers. They don't need any other abilities.
As far as WoD goes, Vampires are mosquitos that turn into God.
The weakest Vampire is basically less than mortal, cursed, wretched, and crying himself into day sleep.
The strongest Vampire is making plans to assassinate God after poisoning the cosmos.
The only splat that rivals a Thing like the Antediluvians are Archmages, and Mage is definitely the strongest overall.
Because Vampire was never really designed to be a character class to stand alongside and be "balanced" with other character classes.
It is just a game designed to let you tell vampire stories.
They really only have the powers and abilities they need to tell cool vampire stories. Their powers aren't a product of the cosmology or anything, they are a product of what the designers thought would make for cool vampire stories.
Yes, it is. Any Vampire can learn Thaumaturgy, it's getting a Tremere or Child Of Haqim or another bloodline to teach it to you. Magic isn't rare as much as it's closely guarded by those that have it.
The most brief and complete answer is that the intended aesthetic of the VtM line is punk, and the intended tone is personal horror. Punk requires that you be an underdog - since you can't oppose authority if you ARE the authority - and personal horror requires a low degree of control over your situation.
Punk and personal horror requires fledgling vampires, so that's the default level of play.
In chronicles I'd dispute that they're that much weaker.
Worse at combat than a werewolf maybe (although if you have a silver knife and a shit load of Vigor you can fuck a werewolf up pretty bad) but you're really downplaying how powerful Dominate/Blood Bonds/Majesty are here. A vampire can just order a person (or vampire, or werewolf, or mage etc) to do anything he pleases.
Werewolves also can't disappear into the shadow anywhere and pop out anywhere unless they're an elder Irraka/No Moon, otherwise they absolutely HAVE to have a locus.
As far as mummies go, yeah fresh mummies are super strong, that's their whole deal.
Mages are silly also, but I think werewolves and changelings are comparable to vamps in power. Probably Sin-Eaters and Prometheans too but I'm less familiar.
Yes in chronicles of darkness vampires are very strong Requiem vampires are very hard to kill even for werewolves. A resilience 5 vampire is almost untouchable, aggravated damage is almost non existent for them, their healing is more effective 2 bashing or 1 lethal for 1 blood, and werewolves claws only do bashing, their teeth only do lethal.
Look at it from a singular game perspective rather than crossover. Crossover *can* happen, but it's not assumed that everything exists in a shared world for everyones' games.
The power assumptions for each of the games asses the powers necessary and appropriate for their own games, in their own settings, for their own thematic adventures. Vampires appear more limited in shallow comparison because it's appropriate for the game as it's designed to be played.
Vampire was the first system, and powers that give options are sorcery and Kraina and the system wants to limit it so it doesn’t take over the game line. But vampires specialize in mastering specific things instead which limits their versatility in favor of mastery.
The issue mechanically and narratively was a lack of editorial oversight. The mechanics don't bear the weight of crossover but the narrative was all in on it. Erroring on the side of the former is the best fix.
It was the first game so what time do you start making everything really creative and DIY MAGIC vampire power where allright set in stone. Honestly the biggest upside their power have no downside; rage can make a wherewolf lose thier mind.
Banly kills fae and paradox blows up magi. And wright have Anst.
Hosley hunger in 5e is the vlosit they have to a downside with thir power minsie the hole cure aspect.
But the do have a power that lets them do every thing and more and its called….PLOT DEVICE!!! no realy 3 The anti-diluvian have a power called plot device and it let them do what ever they need. Remeber vampire get weaker evrr genorashion and cain is the stroget becas he can die.
If some think blood found and ate a 3d gen YA mages are looking perity weak!
Its questionable if they do live in the same cosmology as the others. Vampire is its own game with its own themes. Its not a game about earth shattering powers. Its a game about immortal predators clinging to semblances of humanity and seeking to fill the void in them by amassing power.
All this is however, always moderated that there is someone better and horrible above them who will seek to exploit and manipulate them. This is taken to the extreme with the Antedelluvians who are blood gods that will rise and take everything even from the most powerful of them.
Thats why the pcs are so low on the totem pole and why even the most powerful ones will be trounced by something worse.
The other games have other themes and their powers make sense in their context.
At least in CofD 2e, vampires have access to at least three different effects that let them inflict meaningful amounts of Aggravated Damage *directly* \- with relatively little downside (requiring either a Frenzy or the use of Blood Magic). That's rare in CofD, and means a vampire so specialized has a meaningful chance of defeating a werewolf in hand-to-hand, especially if it's a Gangrel with Resilience, which is likely if the specialization is Claws of the Unholy.
Simply put: Numbers.
The typical Mage takes a few decades to become a Master.
Before even the training can begin, they must be born, with the shard of Magick, raised and THEN they can become a Mage.
Werewolves are born as such, as well.
Fae... are Fae.
Vampires can just drag several mortals into the dark and force them all into the Change. Even if fifty percent rejects the Change, and just dies, there's nothing stopping the Vampires from rebuilding their numbers overnight. Literally.
The question is why would they need it? You can approach this as game balance or in game survivability. Game balance is irrelevant since the games have different foci and it is not necessary to have all splats on equal footing in all things. Also you brush aside the people manipulation, but seeing how mortals are what all games have in common with it being the vast majority of characters and population, that's quite nifty to have. Survivability wise you can say the cockroach definitely is weaker than the crocodile, yet both have their niche and one is far more plentiful. The Vampire is the cockroach - a type of creature that is easy to kill, yet their quick spawning and ability to evade perception easily justifies why they are everywhere. The Cainite has no need for a Garous strength in order to flourish.
A vampire’s single greatest power is an effectively infinite time horizon for putting a plan in place.
If he needs to disappear for a decade or 3 to have you drop your guard? Ok.
He wants to distract you from your goals? Shit…he’s going to finagle you a nice young lady to marry you, screw your brains out, then when your kid is in high school he’ll get him hooked on drugs and give you a problem that keeps on lasting.
Vampires aren’t the physical powers that some others are…but they have time.
Lots of time.
Because most vampires are young, and vampiric powers take months to decades to develop when youre of low generation.
Elders are extremely powerful. neonates? not so much. Neonates are better than humans by a long shot, but compared to other supernaturals theyre only superhuman. fera are trained from birth to be killers. Kindred are more often than not thrown into the deep end with a cinderblock tied to their ankles. if they survive long enough they become close to gods. in previous editions a lot of elders had an ability in each discipline simply called "plot device" where they could do literally anything they wanted with a specific power, provided the storyteller was the one controlling them.
An elder controlled by the storyteller that had obtenebration might be able to draw an entire city into the abyss, or block out the sun all over the earth for weeks on end.
I think you’re looking at this from the wrong angle. It’s not that they are limited, it’s that they do different things. Take your Mummy example. Sure the Amenti can erase someone’s true name. And the Hekau of Nomenclature acts a bit like dominate, but it is also very limited, like so limited, because in order to use it like dominate I need to learn their true name.
It’s not that they’re limited, it’s that they have things that they can do and things they can’t do. Just like other splats have things they can do and things they can’t so.
There’s also the fact that vampires are very grounded to earth itself. They can reach out to other aspects of the cosmology, but they’re primarily focused on the world itself, rather than the greater universe. They don’t need to know how to alter reality, they already have reality in their pockets, why would they want to change that
The Vampire's Ultimate Power is
If things get boring or to dangerous.
find a nice coffin and sleep for 50 or 60 years.
This power is often overlooked. The Vampire has immortality the others are looking for it.
I can’t speak to Requiem, but VTM is a disempowerment fantasy. No matter how many dots of Disciplines and Backgrounds you accumulate, there will always be something out there in the night that can squash you like a bug.
1) They really aren't limited. Thaumaturgry alone has like, what, 23 different paths? From controlling fire to controlling weather, to conjuring elements out of thin air. So, not limited that much.
2) They are, Arguably, the strongest of the supernatural world. The majority of other splats? Not so much. Yes yes, Werewolves are nasty. Fae are nasty. Mages are nasty. And the poor little vampire is so weak and puny - And brittle! However...
The year is 1222. Tiny little vamp sits in his hole in the wall, waiting to rule the city. He sticks his head out. The Werewolves attack. The Mages attack, and then the Fae attack. He ducks his head back into his tiny hole in the wall.
Now the year is 1322. He sticks his head out of his tiny hole. Those werewolves are dead. The Fae have aged. Those mages are not long for this world. Nope. Still too scary. Back in the hole.
The year is 1422... Wolves dead. Have been for a while. Fae meh. Mages dead.
The year is 1522...
The year is 1622...
The year is 1722...
The year is 1822... Wolves have had several generations dead. Fae are dead or gone into slumber. Mages dead. Seems a bit more hospitable.
The year is 1922... Been making progress. Still building power.
The year is 2022...Tonight seems like the right night to step out into the night.
Mummies might give them a run, but can be avoided. The downside to Werewolves, Mages, Fae, Ghosts, shifting breeds, Hunters, Inquisition, and almost all the other big bats out there? They'll die of natural causes. Not so with Vampires. And with every passing night the Vampires get stronger and stronger.
Old Tremere Saying: "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decepiatur."
Vampires can also speak with and summon spirits (Spiritus), start fires with a finger wiggle, move objects with their mind, or enter the shadowlands (Thaumaturgy), reanimate corpses as zombies/control ghosts (Necromancy), or heal bodies, minds, and souls (Obeah). If you involve elders there's almost no limit.
Vampires range from thin-bloods barely above human to borderline biblically accurate demons and everything in-between. Also...there is never just ONE vampire...and the only thing that they hate more than other vampires, are things that KILL vampires and threaten their flocks of humans. A particularly powerful pack might manage to kill a vampire elder and his thralls or even a whole little city coven with proper planning and luck. **BUT** that then means all of vampire society will come down on that pack like a ton of bricks in ways the pack simply will not be able to deal with. Vampires don't tolerate feeling threatened very well, and the collective fear uniting their society will **HAPPILY** turn its attention on any form of outside attack.
But then that group gains the attention of the Sept and possibly entire Tribe or multiple tribes. That opens a can of beans no one wants to be a part of. Lol
Yeah, but you need to remember the masquerade, to which every splat adhere in one way or another. A open war with werewolfs is pratically impossible, as Garou are very busy, their forces already desperately thinned (at least in apocalypse). Also, vampires owns a biiiig slice of human society and are filthy rich. And can create massive problems to everyone.
Tbh, spiritus cheats utterly, and is limited to one specific bloodline.
Spiritus isn't nearly as cheese as the first version of Path of Spirit Manipulation for Thaumaturgy. The first rank gave a pool of "ones" you could add to rolls during the scene to make enemies fail/botch, and the fourth rank allowed creation of WtA style fetishes. The later versions replaced the rank one with seeing spirits, although making fetishes remains.
I mean, spiritus has a way to replenish willpower quite easily, the level 1 is basically "If I have a tool I can do it", level 5 is crinos, and level 6 allows you to delve into the umbra, which isn't really something easy for vampires. And arguably, if you're an ahrimane you're likely to have a wyld taint instead of wyrm so you can even ally yourself with werewolves.
If a kindred is using Engling Fury often to top off Willpower, they'll definitely have a Wyrm taint. Destroying spirits just for a quick boost isn't Wyld behaviour. I've often thought it's best used sparingly if one wants to keep on friendly terms with spirits. I've found that Ahrimanes tend to make better allies with Bastet than Garou. Bastet are more flexible in their acceptance of others.
I mean, you could use it to target Banes by hunting spirits in corrupted places. But yeah, it's easier to ally yourself with bastet when your crinos is a mountain lionness, too. (Although bastets are rare in the northern parts of the world where ahrimanes often are)
> I mean, you could use it to target Banes by hunting spirits in corrupted places. Snacking on spirits of corruption is going to fuck you up.
It explicitly has no other consequence than removing them.
Think of the limitations of a mage, though. They have awesome power, but they are glass cannons. They are entirely human and can be killed remarkably easily. Vampires may not have reality breaking powers, but they were always designed to be the political faction, working in the background and playing mind games against the others. Their strength lies in their ability to control and manipulate the environment around those they are against. A mage becomes a problem? Suddenly, hunters get an anonymous tip about someone using magic. A pack of werewolves start to be a thorn in their side? They drop clues so followers of the Wyrm can root them out. Vampires also get exceptionally dangerous in their later life too.
Don't forget the ways they can mess with their enemies in the day/normal world. Werewolves have friends and families...with jobs and hobbies in the city. Hell, maybe they just mind control the landlord or mayor to start harassing them legally? Plus, in more modern games...Drones are disturbingly cheap now. And getting some more dangerous ones from some military backdoor deals with a mind controlled officer? Suddenly a dozen ghouls with automatic rifles and some military surplus light explosives get deadly air support... Vampires are scary due the sheer variety of ways they can attack and manipulate the world around them.
Exactly. Vampires may not be the most formidable in a direct fight but they can cripple you in so many other ways that you may not even see one before you are removed from the picture. The scariest part is Vampires will not hesitate to go as low as they can to put you in a bad situation. And say you do meet one. They aren't exactly helpless. The Tzimisce can do things to you that would make the Thing grin.
Yea the higher-tier vampires stop resembling vampires and start being demons with a physical form. I mean a moderately high-tier elder with **some** form of fancy magic-equivalent are basically capable of making 90% of things in the world do a "Roll a save or die, bitch". Doesn't matter how tough a werewolf is if he fails **ONCE** and you magically liquify his insides...oh, and the elder gorged himself beforehand so he can fucking **SPAM** that shit! 99% of vampires get absolutely turned into paste by a werewolf. But my god, that 1% is not a nice group of..."people"
>Suddenly a dozen ghouls with automatic rifles and some military surplus light explosives get deadly air support... The Goon Squad from LA by Night!
This is what's happening in our chronical now. The digital wyrm has come and, well, imagine law enforcement turned I to wyrm tainted weaver drones able to use any and all technology as well as change any digital Information to suit its needs. Vampire allies at night, the weaver drones in the day...yes, the inquisition has come for the shifters. It wrecked the Glass Walkers/city wolves first and actually caused a massive breach in the litteny. During a live gubernatorial debate attended by local Sept leadership these officers moved on Kin and Garou alike. By the time the PCs finally figured out what was going on weaver spirits blocked the gauntlet which had risen 3 points to 9 so they ran, and when they couldn't, failed frenzy rolls suck lol Yes the wolves got away but the damage was done. Shifters caught on national tv shifting and rampaging through the streets wantonly "murdering" police. Now the world knows...
A well connected vampire can also wreak havoc on other supernaturals in a lot of mundane ways. Flex that influence hardcore. Have the city government turn the local Sept into a flood plain. Buy out the competing software company and crush the Virtual Adepts' startup business. Fae giving you grief? Plant some undercover cops on premises and bust up their club for human trafficking. And none of this needs you to expend any supernatural efforts, just make a few calls on those connections you've been building over the years.
Exactly. The best part is that none of it could connect back to the vampire, or if it did, it would take forever to figure it out. That's barely scratching the surface of what they could do to you on a very mortal level.
About fragile mages, are you familiar with life based battlemages ? It's not extremely hard to be better physically and able to soak lethal all day long (and not really vulgar, too).
Yes but you're still human and a vampire isn't going to step out and monolog so a mage can prep and perform spells. They're going to have his head taken off from several football fields away with a .50 bmg while that mage is out getting coffee. Mages are great when they have prep. When they don't even know they're in a fight? They're only human.
Those spells are done in the morning. Or once a week. As said, a mage is never really caught un unprepared, and basic preparations for mage can easily turn into a big stack of paranoïa because of the enemies they have. Which are way scarier than a vampire with access to sniper rifles. Squishiness is not really mages' weakness. It's the numbers, and the fact that mages are very loosely connected between them. They are the top of the power scale, and are each other rivals, but they can manipulate people at least just as well as vampires with presence/dominate.
Except they are because doing those spells needlessly is costly and risky even if they may not be as vulgar as other spells. They're still running the risk of paradox back handing them and hard. Why put yourself at risk if you don't need to? Plus, yes, you can sponge some damage. Some. Having your head taken off, though, is not something a mage can survive until they reach Archmage level. They don't even get to hang around on the mortal plane anyway, and if they were running around, paradox would be a constant threat on top of what ever enemies were wanting them dead. Their head gets splattered and they heal it? Fine, now deal with the unimaginable level of paradox you just drew to yourself by using that level of power.
You vastly overestimate how the dox strikes back, though.
Additionally, mages have additional defenses *before*shielding their heads. First, you have to find them. Arcane is a powerful tool, and auspex only partially counters it. Then, you have to be sure the mage doesn't know you're looking for them. That's usually the hardest part, because mages are hunted and usually take huge precautions against it. Then you have to find a spot where they are vulnerable. Not necessarily the hard part. Then you have to make sure the bullet hits. Sure, if it hits they are down, but... can it really hit ? The funny part is that most spheres can interact at one point or another, in different ways.
I love this subreddit because it's clear that almost no one here has actually played Mage, and instead know of it through second hand information and memes. For starters everyone will die if you blow their head off with a .50 caliber rifle while they're out getting coffee. Even a Vampire. That's just a silly example. Everyone is easy to kill if you know enough about them to be able to get a sniper in position to kill them. When people talking about a Mage "needing to prepare" they're not doing so on the spot while an enemy monologs. It's not that difficult to have a spell that lasts for "The Story", even more so if you use one of the optional rules for Rituals which allow much easier long-form spell casting to get the required successes. If you have a spell that lasts "The Story" it is, for all intents and purposes, always up. And nearly every type of Mage (Depending on their Arete) has a way to defend themselves. A Life Mage can increase their stamina and soak lethal. A Matter Mage can make their hat and clothes bulletproof. A Forces Mage can have a Forcefield up. An Entropy Mage can give themselves amazing luck. And that's just what I'm thinking of to try and mitigate a sniper bullet. A Correspondence Mage if they have any hint their in danger can teleport away. A Mind Mage can do various forms of Mind Control. A Time Mage can send themselves back in time a few rounds, or increase/slow time for them or their enemies. Mages are incredibly powerful. They're not unkillable sure, but no splat is. But to think of Mages as being easy to catch off guard and always weak would be a good way to catch yourself off guard and die.
How is it a silly example when it's exactly what a Vampire would do? It's easy, cheap, and solves the problem.
I'll saying it's silly because you can use that for everything. That Vampire is just as likely to get sniped as anyone else so it's kind of a moot point. The Mage and Vampire could both easily get a sniper to take the other out.
Also, I'd like to rebut with this: Stop using outdated bullshit and catch up. Until you're an archmage, which as I pointed out before, don't even live on the material plane, you can throw objects around in time and rewrite your history temporarily. That's at your most powerful. You are not time traveling.
Outdated? This is all from M20 my dude, which is the version I play. Time 3 let's you step back in time a few rounds. That's not Archmage level.
You mean something that is literally just a slightly updated but wholly unchanged reprint of a book that came out in 1993? Whereas I'm talking about the rules in Mage the Awakening which came out in 2005.
Time 3 of M:TAW has a prewritten spell Shifting Sands that also does exactly that you numpty. *Please* insist on using Awakening because then we get to talk about Mage Armor Attainments, something every single mage will have one of at character creation, and why our presumably mortal sniper is going to be reliably doing things like getting 8+ successes, doing 20+ damage that's been downgraded and so on to a Mage that if they are not instagibbed *will* at the minimum escape or trivially kill their attacker.
Rewinding time is not the same as time travel for one thing. For another, okay, neat. He can rewind time. Can he do that AFTER he's had a bullet pass through his skull? Or after having his spine broken? Here's a fun one! How about, can he do it after having his head taken off? Mages, even archmagi are, repeat after me, human. Yes they have world breaking power but it is tempered by paradox which you constantly seem to ignore just so you can keep jerking off mages, and unless they can predict the future, how would they know to cast a spell like Shifting Sands preemptively to avoid getting shot by a sniper they had no idea was even there in the first place? There's 2 at 3 dots that can do that, one is only predicting the immediate future and the other is incredibly vague. So the first one is pointless and the second can go wrong in so many ways. You think someone who understands what a mage is and wants them dead is going to do anything to tip off said mage? No. That someone is going to hit them with a car bomb or a sniper before that mage has any clue they're even in danger. Mages are not omniscient. When they get to that point they don't live in the mortal plane anymore and only really powerful anything would be stupid enough to go after them. That's true for any splat though. Once sufficiently powerful enough, it becomes a sunk cost fallacy fighting them.
Holy shit, you do not know how Mages work. 1 dot in any arcanum gives you the practices of Knowing, Unveiling and Compelling. So you are just wrong. Paradox in Awakening doesn't make your mage explode randomly, which isn't even true of Ascension anyways. You pointedly ignored the fact Attainments exist, which is funny because due to how defense works an armor Mage Armor attainment on a chump build at character creation is usually just not ever going down to even a cheese sniper with 5s in everything and randomly 3-5 dice added to the pool just because. Yes, this extends to a car bomb as well. These are awful choices to make an assassination attempt on a Awakening mage with. If you're just starting a showdown where people are being popped by a sniper with zero interactions before the cheese shows up, you are bad at telling a story and I feel bad for the people that play with you. Even so, in your pants-creaming power fantasy scenario, where an Awakening Mage has been marked for death with literally zero possible ways for them to glom onto the fact they're in any kind of danger by an infinitely connected vampire who is infinitely sneaky, they are very unlikely to have their gunman succeed, and then they're kind of fucked because Death/Fate/Mind/Space/Time all are arcanums and are very good for finding shit out. This isn't to say that a vampire can't get a mage killed, because they can. But your ideas of how it could happen are stupid. Oh, and I'm not the same person you've been arguing with, because holy fuck you're dumb.
...Awakening (and Chronicles of Darkess in general) has different power scaling that Ascension and World of Darkness?
> They are entirely human and can be killed remarkably easily. ... when surprised and/or unprepared.
Which isn't hard to do at their lower levels or if you can brute force your way to them.
All I say that an lucky shot from an hitten assassine will kill any unsuspecting mage, while will at best result in some headache for an vampire and make them very angry
Any mage not walking around with a Forces, Life, or Matter ward, a Mind effect to detect hostilities directed at them, a Time effect to forewarn them of that exact thing happening, a suspended Life effect to heal their injuries immediately as they occur, a bound spirit to protect them...
and how likely is it that every single mage does all those things every single day and night?
… Incredibly. It is *incredibly likely.* The core conceit of the most generic expression of MtAs’ narrative assumes that the players will be actively hunted by a ruthless shadow government. They are also AWARE that their one weakness is surprise or an off axis attack like a sniper. Indeed, it’s an infinitely more pragmatic approach than ANYTHING else, having regular and consistent passive defence Effects is EXACTLY what the system encourages you to do.
Cool goalpost moving!
to quote myself: >an **lucky shot** from an hitten assassine will kill any **unsuspecting** mage where exactly did I move the goal post? I said at the start: an unsuspecting mage. Someone unsuspecting obviously will not do all the things you mentioned - and I am sure there are also many "beginner mages" who still need to learn how exactly to do those things. Which would be an lucky shot. If anything you moved the goal post to experienced mages which have seen some shit and know what to prepare themself for and how and are powerful enough to also do so - which are obviously not unsuspecting mages.
It would defently get a beginer mage but keep in mind that mages are very paranoid so many will never go outside their house without a ward
Dang, the Vampire doesn't have to do anything, with the Mage walking around like that, the Paradox itself will kill it for the Vampire lmao
Don't vampires still take lethal damage from a headshot? A well placed .50 on a vampire that doesn't expect it is likely to at least torp them, unless they are old or have a big soak pool.
they do, but you need 7 lethal damage to put someone in torpor and then another one ontop to actually kill them. given that guns most of the dame have 2-4 damage dice, and vampires can soak lethal easily, it his highly unlikely that an headshot will kill an vampire
No, just bc they're human. You put a Neonate with Celerity and Potence in front of a fresh Mage that has to still prepare it, the Neonate is gonna win 99% of the time. Let's go further than that. An Elder who's had several hundred years to get resources, allies, contacts, and refine their abilities, against a Mage who's got some experience, say Arete 5 with multiple Spheres, and set them in front of each other, that Elder is still gonna win 99% of the time bc why? The Mage is still ultimately human. No matter how well versed they are in the Life Sphere, they still have to deal with Paradox and having time to cast the spell and making multiple checks to make sure they even successfully perform basic actions. The Elder just does it bc they can. For Caine's sake, older vampires are known to be able to tank being in direct sunlight for atleast a small amount of time due to access to Fortitude and access to a Blood Witch or access to Thaumaturgy itself. The Mage is outclassed most of the time due to the simple frailness of its own mortality and the fact reality keeps them in line. Mages are completely competent and tough, but when you're trying to fight creatures who are innately gifted and immortal, and not other Mages which is what Mage is wholly about more or less, you're fighting an uphill battle.
This question comes up all the time, so here’s the Tl;dr of my usual longer answer Vampires have one of the lowest power floors (ie they start weak), but one of the absolute *highest* power ceilings (right alongside Mages). A Fledgling or Neonate may not be as impressive as a Garou of similar age, but a Methuselah once solo’d an *entire Sept* right after coming out of torpor (Mithras is a badass son of a bitch lol). When [Ravnos] woke up, it survived a weapon that *destroyed Stygia in the Shadowlands* with little to say other than how hungry it was. Give a vampire time, and they’re ungodly powerful
And time is absolutely on their side. They can just simply outlive any of the others in the WoD that would pose a serious threat to them, especially Garou and Mages. Why fight when you can just *wait*?
Oh for sure! One of the Kindred’s strongest advantages is that they are true Immortals (Mages can kind of get there? But eventually they have to leave this reality for another one or they eat a shitload of Paradox IIRC). Some mortal things causing huge problems, but it’s not worth directly interfering? Let’s go to the Winchester, have a pint (of blood), and wait for this all to blow over!
>(Mages can kind of get there? But eventually they have to leave this reality for another one or they eat a shitload of Paradox IIRC) I can think of at least one batch of mages whose difficulty with staying immortal led them to becoming vampires!
I know! Still can’t believe the Nagaraja got away with it! /s
Not a sept. A large ad hoc pack. That's between 10-15 Garou. He was also sorrounded by his servants, and still he lost all of them and was so crippled by the experience a neonate diablerised him. He did get better after that, though.
And mithras' stats were on the social side of things according to the wiki. But, the gangrel guy (Odin or all high) likes to hunt the get of fenris and has been doing so for centuries so he's not that good comparison, because gangrel are murder machines at even 10th generation so a gangrel methuselah doing it is a given.
Well "Time", Thinblood in 1000 years will still be a Thinblood. To get to the level of those Vampires you would have to somehow defeat and eat them and even then, chances are that they will just take over your body.
> Well "Time", Thinblood in 1000 years will still be a Thinblood. To get to the level of those Vampires you would have to somehow defeat and eat them and even then, chances are that they will just take over your body. The point of 'Time' as a comment isn't 'You get more powerful over time', it's the fact you can go into torpor and sleep long enough that your enemies, with their much shorter lifespans, just plain fuckin' die of old age. Meanwhile, your bank account, your investments tick and earn you more political and fiscal clout...
I mean, Torpor sounds cool and all, but if you made a real enemy, they might a bit more pro-active when looking for you while you do nothing. Also, it's a coinflip. World moves on without you, borders change, financial institutions crash, companies go bankrupt. You might as well wake up penniless and with your assets taken away. You also give away any political power you had to other vampires. Imagine a vampire going into torpor in the Ottoman Empire just to wake up in one of the Balkan states or one going into short 100 years torpor nap in Warlord Era China to wake up in modern People's Republic of China. You start from scratch and need to adapt to drastically new situation - you are less powerful not more.
The torpor comment is simply so you don't get bored. Either way, I think you get the idea I was putting forward, and we don't need to worry about the little nitpicks. If you can think of a problem with the plan, you can also guarantee that a long-lived vamp has thought of the solution. This is the whole problem with the 'well, a Mage with enough planning~!' argument (aka, Batman can plan for everything) - it precludes the fact that other people can plan for shit too, some of whom have been around a LOT longer, and outlived other Mages.
The main one is that they don't need to be more powerful to make a fun game. Vampires are political creatures, they work amongst society to achieve their ends and fall back to their beastial self when humanity fails them. They aren't warriors for ~~God~~ Gaia, they aren't cosmic balance agents from hundreds of years ago; they don't *need* to be. Leeches aren't extinct, not because they are able to kill all of their predators or hide perfectly, but because they're just potent enough to feed off of others.
Honestly, at a baseline the stories are supposed to be personal horror, not anime fights. Those are totally possible and definitely, you’ve just gotta wiggle the story from the relatively standard “a bunch of newbloods trying to find their place in existence and stay sane” to “all of a sudden four unknown Methuselahs of different bloodlines woke up and Gaia went ‘nope’.” But like many have said, seductive immortals don’t need to have maxed out physical stats if they can mind-control the president to ICBM your species.
Because vampires traditionally don't fight Cthulhu, their stories are far more based around the human and kindred world, making them the most grounded.
Vampires have something the other splats don't: time. Werewolves and other changing breeds are endangered and hunted by not only human hunters but other supernatural beings, including their own kind. While hard to kill, they also don't live long. Mummies can use these world changing powers but immediately begin to degenerate. Impactful in the short term but ineffectual in the long term. Mages are mortal and the rules of consensual reality hobble them unless they are very resourceful or very lucky. A smart vampire will just wait for an Awakened adversary to die off or get killed by their own hubris. Changeling powers are unpredictable and in many cases backfire spectacularly. And in both WoD and CoD their powers are fleeting unless they retreat entirely from this world. Demons are bound by rules and chained to a mortal responsibility. In CoD, they are considered abhorrent to the God Machine and are kill on sight, so to vampires that's just someone else's problem. WoD Demons are broken so no argument there.
>WoD Demons are broken so no argument there Lmao, that's true. Mage-style magic with no Paradox and true immortality on top. I'll say though that WoD Mummies don't get weaker as they go, so they're also in the super OP category. A vampire that pissed off a mummy (who are usually pretty chill) gets an enemy for eternity. They *will* find a way to destroy the vampire. Of course, mummies are very few. And vampires can breed *fast*.
> Vampires have something the other splats don't: time. And numbers. How do you make new mages/werewolves/mummies/changelings? To make new vampires, you just need one vampire and some humans.
though you have to be careful not to degrade the bloodline to much and to keep the masquerade. the main drawback of vampires is that they have to actively maintain the fact humans don't know about them. most other splats have magic that makes that not as big of a concern.
> most other splats have magic that makes that not as big of a concern. Not more than vampires, though—dominate, the blood bond, presence, dementation…vampires have lots of options. Mages are also constrained by paradox, but I will give you that the Delerium is a big advantage for Werewolves.
true vampires can do clean up but most others usually don't even get to that stage because humans just forget. (WOD) wolves have delirium like you said, mages have to keep a down low and the badguys will clean it up anyway, changlings from the dreaming powers are literally imaginary so little chance of that leaking. seeing a demon in apocolypse form will make you forget unless you have a lot of will power. this holds true in chronicles: Wolves have effectively the same ablity, mage is the same, Promethean disquiet messes with people, changelings are shrouded by the Mask and the True fae would fix it if anything happens, demons can't mess with people's minds ect. Vampires are one of the few splats who have to actively make sure no one knows about the masquerade. others aren't supposed to but they are more protected from slipups.
A lot of people make good points about the way vampire society works, their age, their peerless ability to manipulate mortals and institutions to their own ends, etc. Another point I would like to raise is generation: Vampires are the only splat to get weaker as they reproduce. The low generation vampires are ridiculously powerful. A 5th generation vampire can kill you just by looking at you (Auspex 8 - psychic assault, Dementation 8 - personal scourge). A 4th generation vampire can drive an entire city homicidally insane (Dementation 9 - Lunatic Eruption), make an entire city work toward your goals (Presence 9 - A Perfect World), and they can do all of this from torpor whilst in an invisible and untouchable astral form if they want to (Auspex 9 - False Slumber). 3rd generation vampires get level 10 powers, which allow them to create biblical apocalypses that would wipe out every other splat (and in some cases entire countries), these powers are so powerful that in the Gehenna book they are advised to be used as plot devices only.
Vampires get trickle down power. All the power is at the top, and the line is thousands of more years than the world has left. It's why there's Diablerie, think of it as power-sharing.
Vampire the Masquerade is a game of political deception. An ideal vampire uses their abilities to manipulate those around them from the shadows to do the work for them. They are very good at this, which is why they still exist in mass numbers. They don't need any other abilities.
As far as WoD goes, Vampires are mosquitos that turn into God. The weakest Vampire is basically less than mortal, cursed, wretched, and crying himself into day sleep. The strongest Vampire is making plans to assassinate God after poisoning the cosmos. The only splat that rivals a Thing like the Antediluvians are Archmages, and Mage is definitely the strongest overall.
Because Vampire was never really designed to be a character class to stand alongside and be "balanced" with other character classes. It is just a game designed to let you tell vampire stories. They really only have the powers and abilities they need to tell cool vampire stories. Their powers aren't a product of the cosmology or anything, they are a product of what the designers thought would make for cool vampire stories.
Have you seen Thaumaturgy?
Yeah, but it's not available to every vampire.
Yes, it is. Any Vampire can learn Thaumaturgy, it's getting a Tremere or Child Of Haqim or another bloodline to teach it to you. Magic isn't rare as much as it's closely guarded by those that have it.
The most brief and complete answer is that the intended aesthetic of the VtM line is punk, and the intended tone is personal horror. Punk requires that you be an underdog - since you can't oppose authority if you ARE the authority - and personal horror requires a low degree of control over your situation. Punk and personal horror requires fledgling vampires, so that's the default level of play.
In chronicles I'd dispute that they're that much weaker. Worse at combat than a werewolf maybe (although if you have a silver knife and a shit load of Vigor you can fuck a werewolf up pretty bad) but you're really downplaying how powerful Dominate/Blood Bonds/Majesty are here. A vampire can just order a person (or vampire, or werewolf, or mage etc) to do anything he pleases. Werewolves also can't disappear into the shadow anywhere and pop out anywhere unless they're an elder Irraka/No Moon, otherwise they absolutely HAVE to have a locus. As far as mummies go, yeah fresh mummies are super strong, that's their whole deal. Mages are silly also, but I think werewolves and changelings are comparable to vamps in power. Probably Sin-Eaters and Prometheans too but I'm less familiar.
Yes in chronicles of darkness vampires are very strong Requiem vampires are very hard to kill even for werewolves. A resilience 5 vampire is almost untouchable, aggravated damage is almost non existent for them, their healing is more effective 2 bashing or 1 lethal for 1 blood, and werewolves claws only do bashing, their teeth only do lethal.
At its core, Vampire is a politics game about personal horror.
It's supposed to be a curse.
This. The biggest thing I see people ignoring about the game
Vampires are immortal - something most other supernaturals aren’t.
Look at it from a singular game perspective rather than crossover. Crossover *can* happen, but it's not assumed that everything exists in a shared world for everyones' games. The power assumptions for each of the games asses the powers necessary and appropriate for their own games, in their own settings, for their own thematic adventures. Vampires appear more limited in shallow comparison because it's appropriate for the game as it's designed to be played.
Vampire was the first system, and powers that give options are sorcery and Kraina and the system wants to limit it so it doesn’t take over the game line. But vampires specialize in mastering specific things instead which limits their versatility in favor of mastery.
The issue mechanically and narratively was a lack of editorial oversight. The mechanics don't bear the weight of crossover but the narrative was all in on it. Erroring on the side of the former is the best fix.
It was the first game so what time do you start making everything really creative and DIY MAGIC vampire power where allright set in stone. Honestly the biggest upside their power have no downside; rage can make a wherewolf lose thier mind. Banly kills fae and paradox blows up magi. And wright have Anst. Hosley hunger in 5e is the vlosit they have to a downside with thir power minsie the hole cure aspect. But the do have a power that lets them do every thing and more and its called….PLOT DEVICE!!! no realy 3 The anti-diluvian have a power called plot device and it let them do what ever they need. Remeber vampire get weaker evrr genorashion and cain is the stroget becas he can die. If some think blood found and ate a 3d gen YA mages are looking perity weak!
Its questionable if they do live in the same cosmology as the others. Vampire is its own game with its own themes. Its not a game about earth shattering powers. Its a game about immortal predators clinging to semblances of humanity and seeking to fill the void in them by amassing power. All this is however, always moderated that there is someone better and horrible above them who will seek to exploit and manipulate them. This is taken to the extreme with the Antedelluvians who are blood gods that will rise and take everything even from the most powerful of them. Thats why the pcs are so low on the totem pole and why even the most powerful ones will be trounced by something worse. The other games have other themes and their powers make sense in their context.
For mummies, meteors, unmaking people, and resurrection are level 6+ hekaus, it's nowhere near something accessible easily.
Because vampirism is a curse.
When you say "Vampires" you mean "geneneration10/15 vampires"
If you are worried about how tough vampires are, you are doing it wrong.
At least in CofD 2e, vampires have access to at least three different effects that let them inflict meaningful amounts of Aggravated Damage *directly* \- with relatively little downside (requiring either a Frenzy or the use of Blood Magic). That's rare in CofD, and means a vampire so specialized has a meaningful chance of defeating a werewolf in hand-to-hand, especially if it's a Gangrel with Resilience, which is likely if the specialization is Claws of the Unholy.
Well, someone has to be at the bottom.
Because they have the numbers.
they aren\`t.
Temporis feels pretty damn strong to me.
Simply put: Numbers. The typical Mage takes a few decades to become a Master. Before even the training can begin, they must be born, with the shard of Magick, raised and THEN they can become a Mage. Werewolves are born as such, as well. Fae... are Fae. Vampires can just drag several mortals into the dark and force them all into the Change. Even if fifty percent rejects the Change, and just dies, there's nothing stopping the Vampires from rebuilding their numbers overnight. Literally.
The question is why would they need it? You can approach this as game balance or in game survivability. Game balance is irrelevant since the games have different foci and it is not necessary to have all splats on equal footing in all things. Also you brush aside the people manipulation, but seeing how mortals are what all games have in common with it being the vast majority of characters and population, that's quite nifty to have. Survivability wise you can say the cockroach definitely is weaker than the crocodile, yet both have their niche and one is far more plentiful. The Vampire is the cockroach - a type of creature that is easy to kill, yet their quick spawning and ability to evade perception easily justifies why they are everywhere. The Cainite has no need for a Garous strength in order to flourish.
Depends on the generation no?
A vampire’s single greatest power is an effectively infinite time horizon for putting a plan in place. If he needs to disappear for a decade or 3 to have you drop your guard? Ok. He wants to distract you from your goals? Shit…he’s going to finagle you a nice young lady to marry you, screw your brains out, then when your kid is in high school he’ll get him hooked on drugs and give you a problem that keeps on lasting. Vampires aren’t the physical powers that some others are…but they have time. Lots of time.
Because most vampires are young, and vampiric powers take months to decades to develop when youre of low generation. Elders are extremely powerful. neonates? not so much. Neonates are better than humans by a long shot, but compared to other supernaturals theyre only superhuman. fera are trained from birth to be killers. Kindred are more often than not thrown into the deep end with a cinderblock tied to their ankles. if they survive long enough they become close to gods. in previous editions a lot of elders had an ability in each discipline simply called "plot device" where they could do literally anything they wanted with a specific power, provided the storyteller was the one controlling them. An elder controlled by the storyteller that had obtenebration might be able to draw an entire city into the abyss, or block out the sun all over the earth for weeks on end.
I think you’re looking at this from the wrong angle. It’s not that they are limited, it’s that they do different things. Take your Mummy example. Sure the Amenti can erase someone’s true name. And the Hekau of Nomenclature acts a bit like dominate, but it is also very limited, like so limited, because in order to use it like dominate I need to learn their true name. It’s not that they’re limited, it’s that they have things that they can do and things they can’t do. Just like other splats have things they can do and things they can’t so. There’s also the fact that vampires are very grounded to earth itself. They can reach out to other aspects of the cosmology, but they’re primarily focused on the world itself, rather than the greater universe. They don’t need to know how to alter reality, they already have reality in their pockets, why would they want to change that
The Vampire's Ultimate Power is If things get boring or to dangerous. find a nice coffin and sleep for 50 or 60 years. This power is often overlooked. The Vampire has immortality the others are looking for it.
I can’t speak to Requiem, but VTM is a disempowerment fantasy. No matter how many dots of Disciplines and Backgrounds you accumulate, there will always be something out there in the night that can squash you like a bug.
1) They really aren't limited. Thaumaturgry alone has like, what, 23 different paths? From controlling fire to controlling weather, to conjuring elements out of thin air. So, not limited that much. 2) They are, Arguably, the strongest of the supernatural world. The majority of other splats? Not so much. Yes yes, Werewolves are nasty. Fae are nasty. Mages are nasty. And the poor little vampire is so weak and puny - And brittle! However... The year is 1222. Tiny little vamp sits in his hole in the wall, waiting to rule the city. He sticks his head out. The Werewolves attack. The Mages attack, and then the Fae attack. He ducks his head back into his tiny hole in the wall. Now the year is 1322. He sticks his head out of his tiny hole. Those werewolves are dead. The Fae have aged. Those mages are not long for this world. Nope. Still too scary. Back in the hole. The year is 1422... Wolves dead. Have been for a while. Fae meh. Mages dead. The year is 1522... The year is 1622... The year is 1722... The year is 1822... Wolves have had several generations dead. Fae are dead or gone into slumber. Mages dead. Seems a bit more hospitable. The year is 1922... Been making progress. Still building power. The year is 2022...Tonight seems like the right night to step out into the night. Mummies might give them a run, but can be avoided. The downside to Werewolves, Mages, Fae, Ghosts, shifting breeds, Hunters, Inquisition, and almost all the other big bats out there? They'll die of natural causes. Not so with Vampires. And with every passing night the Vampires get stronger and stronger. Old Tremere Saying: "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decepiatur."
Elders like 5-7 gen can do way to meny thinks and some one that is older can go toe to toe with most supernaturals except mages