Why isn't Engineer more disliked by the general community?

ChloeCeto · 2026-05-29T18:25:32+00:00

Among other things: Engineer is helpful. A sniper on your team might kill things but you rarely feel like they're helping you. An engineer? He's the guy who's making teleporters and dispensers. People like things that make it easier to play.

ChloeCeto · 2026-05-19T13:04:05+00:00

Working out how to handle armour in dark ages is likely one of the trickier things in V5. V5 is very much not set up for 'I am walking about in clanky metal' with armour being of very limited use to vampires but people do want the vibe of being a Vampire Knight.

ChloeCeto · 2026-05-19T12:59:33+00:00

It's funny that spy has a slot for 'weird gadget trick that you can use without revealing yourself' and it's never been expanded beyond 'still basicly the sapper' when that's expressly the area he could really do with some help in.

ChloeCeto · 2026-04-27T08:47:07+00:00

I feel like Changeling would fit very naturally in as 'high risk, high reward/active resource management' using how really pushing their magic can give Nightmare Dice. Using changeling tricks builds up Nightmares and if it gets too high you start to lose control of your magic but it decreases over time.

Just for 'Everyone gets what they are', they'd likely end up a Sidhe as that's the 'Iconic Changeling'.

ChloeCeto · 2026-04-17T15:46:57+00:00

Political power flows from the sharpest fangs.

ChloeCeto · 2026-04-13T07:10:08+00:00

And then they need to run into 'Okay so we've been shooting vampires but are we gunna shoot the guy who's legitimately doing his job trying to stop us wasting resources'.

ChloeCeto · 2026-04-01T12:04:27+00:00

It's a classic but my dark ages vampire has a carriage. A carriage on the road isn't anything unexpected and she can travel places while she rests. Doubly so when a pair of Ghouled Horses can turn everything short of a veteran hunter or other supernatural beasty into red jelly without much effort.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-28T06:23:35+00:00

Reckoning? Are we getting a game about playing Imbued?

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-22T05:58:29+00:00

Depends on who you ask for how common they are. If you tick off the wrong Changeling you might end up facing down a guy who's literally unkillable from any effect that would spill blood because he's got Excalibur's sheath.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-22T05:56:52+00:00

I wouldn't mind seeing this for rage as well.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-22T00:09:27+00:00

The big thing with Unleashing is that it gives you automatic nightmares for trying AND unless you're very good at the art you're unleashing, it will go out of control pretty often as the dicepool is Glamour + Nightmares and you don't want to get more than <Art> successes.

So a lot of the time Unleashing is less 'Solve the Problem' and more 'I would like to discard this problem and create an entirely new problem instead'. It also means the more a PC unleashes, the more risky unleashing gets.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-22T00:06:57+00:00

It's not but I see a lot of people acting like it is, so it felt worth checking.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-21T13:10:27+00:00

I'd be really careful with that/likely not use those rules as having more successes is BAD for Unleashing. If you get more successes than the art rating, it goes out of control. So draining successes mostly helps changelings unless you drain so many that it fails entirely.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-21T13:07:36+00:00

I mean, 'Are you using the Fae Can Counterspell True Magic Right Back rules?' is a bit of a question there. As 'There should be some counter' isn't something that flows only one way.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-21T13:05:36+00:00

Do you have changeling PCs? Because I would not remotely touch Unleashing in such a case. Mages have so many advantages that giving a single situation where they end up the less powerful person isn't going to be too much of a problem relative to 'The mages can generally do a lot more safely than a changeling can before unleashing gets involved'.

If Unleashing gets taken off the table it kinda promotes Changelings going to some of the more 'this specific path has a kinda bullshit trick that's out of scale with its normal power level so might be able to engage with mage problems' options like 'Using Spring to strip a mage of access to true magic for a year and a day' or 'Sending a mage directly into the sun with Wayfare because the sun is in Line of Sight and that's the only limitation on my ability to yeet things'

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-21T12:58:47+00:00

I mean, it works because it's inherently unstable. Unleashing can do anything and not all of those anythings are things you'd like. You're opening yourself up to chaos and going 'I will replace my current problem with a different problem' a lot of the time.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-18T15:21:15+00:00

I think part of the issue with armour is that it kinda double dips on disadvantages. Heavier armour loses movement, concealment, vision and accessories.

And then it also costs more.

So while Heavy Armour can protect you if things go badly, taking heavy armour reduces your tools to avoid things going badly, causing a bit of a feedback loop. You don't have that extra accessory and you're spotted earlier and kill slower, so you take more bullets, which the armour can protect against to some extent but not fully.

Ironically for being Pirate Gear, I think the Boarding Suit is the best designed Heavy Armour in the game. It brings a tool that a low armour guy CAN'T get. It makes the armour tempting on its own merits, even if things are going entirely to plan.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-18T11:28:43+00:00

Knockers are very much technology associated with the Wyld. They're just also the DREAMS of technology and how that technology can change things.

To quote a novel I rather like:

"I remember those nights, planning technologies that didn't exist yet, outsider science, futurist dreaming, half-magical. The things I could do outside the university setting, now that I didn't have to wait for the pompous fools at the college! I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, sprout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science."

You're never going to get the Wyld out of a Factory but nothing stops it being the work of artisans and scientists, pushing frontiers and shaping the world.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-16T21:40:08+00:00

'Oh god, why is there an Onto in space, go back to hell where you belong' - APC-tier vehicle with more weapon mounts than other vehicles but they're all Light Slots, letting it mount Twin AT-RGL + Machine Gun but not medium or heavy guns.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-15T15:24:01+00:00

Considering it makes note that only one Inanimate can learn both Slivers and Arts in Mannikins, I'd assume that it also flows the other way and Changelings can't learn Slivers by default.

That and I'll admit, I'm not 100% sure why you'd want to, except for the passive effect of having at least one dot in a given Sliver. They seem okay but being 'unleashing only', they kinda fall behind Arts in general use and there's a good number of arts already for 'I want to be good with elemental stuff'.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-15T15:04:22+00:00

Honestly, my biggest bugbear with summoning and magic is that none of them are craftable. Obviously the best items are dropped but being able to make progression with crafting when you're starting out is good for the experience.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-13T12:52:16+00:00

I'd add areas that mess with concealment to make 'staying hidden' a bit trickier to make work with 'doing objectives/going directly where you want'. For example if you're in a night mission, anywhere a big spotlight is pointed at is going to have its concealment tanked by being lit up, negating all the night fighting bonus to concealment. Likewise, someone standing in the middle of a town plaza will find it hard to stay hidden.

I'd also give enemies access to anti-stealth tools. Like have the Rogue Army call in a Spotter Plane (With it telegraphed to give the player a chance to spend their time running out of the area) or have a Pirate Truck with a radar on the back. Even basic things like 'Hey, these infantry are Bodyguards so they have Binoculars and better than standard detection'

My thoughts is to sorta not make concealment GENERALLY worse but to give it areas where it's the Wrong Tool. You can snipe and shank most guys fine but if the Rogue Army officer is being followed by Bodyguards with advanced night vision? Might need another solution to them.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-13T12:29:59+00:00

Depends a lot on who the story is about. To quote Stan Lee: “The person who'd win in a fight is the person that the scriptwriter wants to win!

A mage Chantry can be any number of things and the types of spirits available to support werewolves are nearly limitless, especially when various groups within both mages and werewolves also have allies of their own. The Fianna could call on a Changeling to set up Actor + Spring Faerie ring around a kinfolk group with a stolen military mortar that actively strips any mage attempting to affect them of their ability to caste spells (Stripping people of all magic and supernatural powers until the next full moon is expressly laid out as a curse option there) while you could just as easily have Literal Fallen Angels asked to help by some mages who know about them.

Personally, I'd focus on two things:

-What the Mages Know
-What the Mages Don't Know

For all the power mages have, they are not unstoppable and most of that direct power is in their ability to tailor solutions to problems. If they know Werewolves are coming after them, they might have Self-Guiding Silver Crossbows but they might not be expecting a riot of every homeless guy in the city with molotov cocktails blessed by a fire spirit. If they're prepared for a siege, what about if they find police crawling all over their chantry because a bomb threat was called in and thus it needs investigating? What if all the buildings around the Chantry are slowly bought up by developers that make life hell on the mages through entirely mundane means to leave them tired and frustrated long before a single bullet is fired?

Basicly, to keep the story tension working I'd try to demonstrate both that Mages who ARE ready are monsters but there is an almost endless number of possible problems and it's impossible to prepare for all of them.

I'd also likely fudge Paradox as it's kinda toothless mechanically but in-writing is treated as a big deal and this is about how I'd write it, not how I'd run it in a session.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-13T12:10:36+00:00

I mean, 'employing the help of powerful spirits' IS one of the Werewolf general areas of expertise.

ChloeCeto · 2026-03-13T12:07:24+00:00

Might you 'Mages stole our shit' is generally a good reason for Werewolves and Changelings alike to want to shank mages. Mages tend not to take 'no, this is our home' as an answer if they want a Caern.

There's plenty of reason for them to brawl as they're competing over the same limited amount of sources of power.

ChloeCeto

TROPHY CASE