- Aug 27, 2020
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While this is for the most part true, my esteemed colleague neglected some of the basics. With no prep whatsoever, a battlemage type with a few dots in time will simply suspend time, and all becomes moot. No fight, just slaughter. The games were never mean to be put in the same campaign. That said, the gas main can also have been lined with silver plating and the junction that blew was particularly laden with silver... Ash and spatch filled room.True Magic spheres are the single most flexible "magical power" in the inspirational material. Beginner mages with only 1 dot and 2 dot spheres are chum for vamps and shifters, but mid to high level mages can combine multiple mid to high level spheres into conjunctional effects that are pretty OP. A mage adept or experienced disciple could from the safety of his own home scry on a vampire remotely and "blow up the gas main" that is coincidentally under the vamp's feet. The vampire would never even know what hit him.
Werewolves are naturally geared for close quarters combat. For mages and vamps, the typical character isn't a close combat specialist. Even the combat oriented vampire clans don't get all of the combat abilities that werewolves do automatically.* And for mages in particular, close combat requires both a great deal of investment and prior preparation. Their powers aren't innate, and even an Akashic Brotherhood master doesn't have time to cast half a dozen combat rotes to level the field against a werewolf opponent after combat has started. But as you've noted, preparation for mages is key, as mages can use rituals to cast permanent or semi-permanent effects long before combat even starts.
That said, despite what the fluffy parts of some of the books say (these people didn't read the rules in their own books), an experienced Akashic Brotherhood disciple (not a starting character) with the right spheres and a few permanent or semi-permanent rote effects prepared in advance can take apart an ahroun werewolf elder or 8th gen Brujah or Gangrel elder in close combat. Crunch>>Fluff
*OTOH werewolves are highly vulnerable to vamp mindfuckery.
Note the last line BST put in his post, even a 13th gen vamp with the right mindfuckery could beat a werewolf.
There is a reason that the werewolves are becoming extinct and all the other changers are happy to see them go. A little reading in this regard will point out one of the most annoying non chronologically correct fuckups in the "games" namely the Impergium.
Note that there are some changers in the world that make a werewolf look like a puppy. And they could, for the most part, not give a fucking shit that the flea bags are getting wasted nightly by normal humans with silver or silver nitrate bullets.
Personally I really like running a werewolf game, and I will mix in a few oddities like vampires, gypsies, sorcery, and what not. Werewolves have two different mindframes which predominate. One is similar to the Nordic tales of the gods with Ragnorok, very fatalistic. The others, generally Children of Gaia or Glasswalkers think that it can all work out.
V5 is totally fucked up on the vamps. I do not consider it canon and since it is not owned by the same folks anymore, and they want to generate cash, I imagine many perfectly good materials will be thrown out to suit their game.
Fuck them and I hope they die.... but financially that is tied to a number of things I would like to succeed, so I still say fuck THEM and I hope THEY die, but the other folks don't!
on that note!
Peace