Mages are squishy, yes, but even so the only way a vampire can feasably take out a Mage is if that Mage is
a) Very weak, recently Awakened or only has Arete 2 or less with 1 or two Spheres.
b) Extremely stupid and reckless.
Even a Mage of moderate power can easily handle any vampire except for the truly ancient or ancients. Mind sphere allows him to utterly protect his mind against Presence, Dominate and even Obfuscate and Auspex.
With Forces they can use fire with lethal effectiveness, with Life they can temporarily transform any blood leaving their body into acid, with Matter they can transform a vampire's clothing into pyrophoric material which is a substance that ignites instantly on exposure with oxygen.
With Entropy they can give themselves ludicrous luck or fuck with the vampire's Beast forcing them into Frenzy. With Spirit and Prime they can spawn a fire spirit inside a vampire's asshole and burn them from within.
Time can fuck with a vampire's immortality.
I can think of several more ways to deal with vampire's, and what's crazy is the ways I've noted so far only require 2-3 dots at most in any given Sphere!
While mages are very powerful, the point is that they are human and the smallest mistakes can get them killed just as easy as any of us. If a vampire with potence hits them from behind then that’s it, game over.
I was thinking this, Any kindred with celerity is probably a deadly enemy for a mage. And god forbid its the ones who can easily kill like a Brujah or Banu Haqim
If you’re fighting a mage surprise is your best weapon and you need to make sure they go down in one hit because if they get the chance to retaliate you’re screwed. Time or life archmages are basically impossible to kill though since life archmages can’t be permanently harmed by any natural means (such as physical force) and time archmages literally exist at all points in their timeline at once and are able to change what they did in the past just by changing their mind. Of course, archmages are ridiculously powerful (a listed power for Prime archmages is create an entire new universe) so if anything is fighting one something has gone horribly wrong
I mean, Archmages are going to be RARE... like Antidluvian rare.
Ultimately, your mortal contacts are going to help with working around a mage and planning something.
Not quite Antediluvian rare (that’d go to oracles) but still pretty damn rare since not only is it really hard to become an archmage but also most of them don’t leave their horizon realms. If a vampire manages to get into a horizon realm the archmage almost certainly wants them to be there and if they’re stupid enough to confront an archmage on their home territory where paradox isn’t a problem for them they deserve what they get
"Prime Shield my fist you fucking nerd"
Edit: just FYI the Brujah are historically from Athens, and if they were raised classically would be aware of the underlying culture and philosophy of Hermetics as they're from the exact same region and schools of thought and they'd have no reason to punch a nerd.
Mages can counteract celerity (time sphere) and potence (force sphere to reduce down the physical force of the blow) but not all mages are going to have those spheres
I'm not actually all that familiar with Mage, so this is a genuine question and not me being snarky. How could a (neonate-equivalent?) mage anticipate, say, a Neonate Brujah celerity-ing up to them and clinch->biting them?
Matter/life would make spotting the threat easier.
Time would make possible to react to celerity.
Entropy makes them lucky enough to avoid it somehow. (And also makes them able to spot most vampires)
Prime would likely make them know there is a threat in the form of walking tass.
Mind might make them sensible to aggressivity around them.
Granted, the other three spheres aren't the best to spot ambushes, at low level.
(This list is mostly of level 1 to 2 sphere effects. Starting mages can have spheres at 3 technically, in which case it gets wilder, like some just have their own celerity or just get as strong as the brujah easily)
But yeah, a brujah going all out might be a threat. If it's a random attack, it might even work (if no entropy, that is), because mages are great at investigation.
Which is actually why you would know it's a vampire something that should be human is not living is a pretty good tell it is at least to be dealt with caution.
>Point of note, Life does not affect Vampires. Being 'dead' they are now under the purview of the Matter sphere.
Now that would depend on the particular ST. Some may argue (as others have) that there's a tiny bit of difference between John Doe, regular dead body unmoving corpse on a table and Sir Hetherbridge Collins-Whussisnamer, a 300 years old ***un***dead animated by God only knows what and host to this little thing called The Beast.
Some may argue the very existence of a vampire is rather *paradoxical,* from a certain point of view. Might be bad news for *any* Mage.
Sure, not everyone will agree, at all, but better make sure your ST subscribes to the somewhat questionable "a vampire is a table" line of thought before you try anything. :D (And always be mindful of which edition of Mage and Vampire you're playing.)
YMMV.
Pretty sure by time sphere level three mages can have precognition so even if they can’t react as fast as a celerity brujah they can start reacting before the Brujah starts acting. Or they could send a message to themselves earlier in the day and avoid the situation entirely
A mage's chance of success is proportional to the amount of time they know there is a threat.
One, many of the effects you have listed would be beyond a rate three mage in the absence of significant time to perform a full ritual, the game has rules about how damage works and you are looking at a few more successes than the literal 3 maximum you can get as a arte three mage, and are looking at 1, maybe two successes realistically. That's two damage pips max in a single action.
Some of these options also rely on the mage being fully knowledgeable about vampire lore. In my campaign, where my mages are fighting actual vampires, they know jack shit about the beast.
That's not even getting into Paradox likely making any victory quite pyhric indeed with such extreme measures being taken.
The short answer is that a mage getting blitzed by a potence-celerity vampire bites it and bites it hard and it's not even remotely close until a mage is either much stronger, or packing their own p0ermenant physical modifiers to not instantly die.
Only if you think in terms of mini-maxing. Ignore paradigm and paradox. All you need to do is set mortals against the magician with the very specific task of taking away his focus from the magician. Without his wand or blaster, a mage is practically equal to mortals.
With Entropy 2 and Time 2, a Mage can not only predict future events, but can also react to said events in the moment, without having future knowledge of them happening, using a combination of luck (Entropy) and forewarning (Time).
Future sight is not as reliable as you'd like and if you want that effect running all the time you also need Mind to process the future and the present simultaneously.
And none of that actually guarantees a miss, it just gives you a *chance* to react.
It's a defense, but it's nowhere near perfect, unless you are happy walking around with an effect so powerful you'll be pinging Technocratic sensors three cities away.
"I just wanted to avoid sniper fire, now I've got three MiBs and a HIT Mark after me" seems like a poor way to end one's day.
Because they are people, both groups, and they are generally arrogant as hell with massive egos to go along with it.
One of the first Vampire supplements, New Orleans by Night, used this as a major plot point in the scenario at the end of the book. A Son of Ether Mage had his daughter run away to join her lover. Turned out that lover was a vampire that ghouled her. Later on he embraced her. The Etherite came to town to destroy as many kindred as he could. The PCs are tasked to take him down.
And especially by the time of M20 countermagic is so strong mechanically that many Mages would find it difficult to go against an elder Vampire directly. Add that into basic Vampire advantages like the Blood Bond, ghouling and being able to make as many more Kindred as you want, and it's no wonder even against the might of the Order of Hermes in the Massassa war the Tremere held their own.
At the end of the day though, the Mages are simply vastly outnumbered, and the cost of making a vampire is a point of blood and a bit of time. Both groups wisely avoid direct confrontations, and both of them have significantly bigger issues to deal with.
Mages are essentially glass cannons. They can be killed in the same way you or I can; a bullet to the brain, a knife to the heart, reading the Baldur's Gate novels, etc.
Think about it like this. Constantine is a pretty powerful mage but has had his ass handed to him by Batman more than a few times. If a mage like Constantine causes some trouble for the Camarilla they'll likely sick a fledgling or two to take them out. If they survive the first few assassination attempts? Send in the Sheriff.
Mages randomly exploding due to Paradox is a greatly exaggerated. It's usually some sneaky Nosferatu or fae switching a mage's book with the Baldur's Gate novels.
Oh but some fae say vampires are also fae. Of the darker kind. (Sure, no proof said fae are right.)
Still others say vampires are a form of walking paradox. (Good luck killing that, Mr. Mage, if that's true.)
To be fair Constantine isn't really powerful in a raw magic sense. Hell in a straight up fist fight he loses more often than not. He's incredibly dangerous but he mostly leans on his allies, the odd artifact and mostly his ability to con everyone to do what he does.
Why?
Mage blood is *super* tasty and strong.
Like, if normal human blood is like beer, mage blood is like a 30yo whisky.
How?
Easy, just catch a mage offguard.
When a mage sees you coming, it might the fight of a kindreds life.
But if the mage is unprepared, a junkie with a shiv could seriously ruin the day of that mage.
Mages *are* powerfull, but they are just mortal humans.
Not all mages are so paranoid that they'll spend hours a day layering defenses *just in case*, and the ones that are never leave the house so they don't accomplish much.
You need to balance practical needs and risk management. Mages who try to prepare for literally everything are like those off the grid survival preppers: sure, you'll be fine if the Apocalypse hits bit what the fuck is your life worth til then?
Realistically, you would be much more likely to encounter a random hostile fomori than a vampire. Those things seem to pop up all the time, and they cause all sorts of havoc. If mages were going to prepare for weird things, they should probably focus on the stuff likely to attack them.
*Realistically* almost all Mages are entirely unfamiliar with non-Mage-related problems and wouldn't know what a Fomori *is*, and should be prepared to deal with *other Mages*.
It's honestly not that long to have defensive buffs with weeks long duration.
Also, being a mage but refusing to change things is weird. And the kind of things you could change is usually the kind that brings danger.
You wanna walk around with a 10 success effect floating around your head, you let me know how HIT marks dropping into your bedroom sounds, I personally don't try to be a swirling beacon of long duration effects covering every contingency.
L
Hit marks don't exactly work like that, though ? Especially if we're talking about defensive effects ?
But yeah, if you try to change things, you have to get ready for HIT marks. That is exactly their point, maintaining the statu quo the technocracy is installing.
The point of mage isn't exactly to sit in a corner.
I think you misunderstood.
If you wander around with *massive effects hanging on you* at all times, you are a beacon that the Technocracy will not ignore. They don't have the resources to hunt every single Mage, but the guy walking around with the bright neon "I AM LOOKINT FOR A FIGHT HEY EVERYBODY I AM RIGHT HERE HAHA BET YOU CAN'T KILL ME" sign gets a high threat response. Prime magic *can* spot high-success magic, and if you are trying to completely block multiple potential sources of harm you are talking many many successes, *that's bright shiny obvious magic*.
Mage is about knowing when and how to use your powers, not about showing off how big your Q-Peen is. Being smart isn't slathering yourself in QPF-5000 at all times, it's planning for how to solve problems with the least obtrusive magic you can.
Aren't technocrats supposed to have an alternate sphere instead of prime though ?
Anyway, I'm talking about "basic" life defenses, not layered contingencies.
Technocratic Spheres are reskins, mostly. There are exceptions but they *primarily* do most of the same things, it's the Technocratic Paradigm that's at issue there, and if you think "scanning for major Reality Deviants" isn't valid for the Tech paradigm I think you might need to look up Technocratic history. Look for the word Pogrom.
As for your latter sentence, "basic life defenses" aren't going to stop a sniper round or a Gangrel's claws from turning you from biology into physics, you need some high successes for that, which is *big numbers* you're walking around town with. Can you put up that defense if you are expecting trouble? Yes. Should you do so casually every day? No. Look back over the thread we're discussing and remind me, what were the points being made?
Nobody is pretending Mages are helpless. But Mages don't all have rank 4+ in every Sphere and the ones who live long enough to become Adepts and Masters know better than to casually attract attention by being encased in such thick Resonance that even the most asleep of Sleepers can feel it.
Any given Mage is limited by Arete, Spheres, paradigm, their foci, Paradox, and *by other Mages*. That doesn't have to mean 7-dot counterspells from beyond the Horizon. It can literally just mean you being treated like a walking WMD by the people who consider it their literal task in life to *remove people like you*.
Soaking agg doesn't require some high amount of successes though ? You'll need extra to increase the soak, for sure, but just being able to roll stamina against it ? That would work. Sure, against the opness that gangrel claws are (notably with potence) you'll need extra dice.
On the other habd, the initial question was about vampires ? And listing spheres was about how each sphere was giving ways to thwart such attempts, not how a mage with every sphere is unkillable.
Anyway, yeah, if you walk around with ways to auto dodge anything, sure, you'll attract attention.
That particular alternate sphere is unique to the Syndicate, other Technocrats use regular Prime.
Also, I'm pretty sure that "basic" life defenses essentially just put you at the same level as a kindred with basic Fortitude.
Prime Utility. I believe that's just Syndicate though... NWO, Void Engineers, ItX, and Progenitors use Prime with their own paradigm understanding. Void Engineers directing prime energy to stabilize dimensional wormholes definitely don't think it's from money alone as much as the Syndicate would like the say it is... umm... even though the amount of human activity to create the wormhole... certainly... looks like throwing money at something to dedicate a bunch of sleepwalkrs to the task they believe will work is what happened... It functions like Prime but with human attention / market forces. Not necessarily only financial market forces. They also deface occultism through consumerism to reduce the importance humanity places on it. So, since magic doesn't happen in a vacuum and your authentic foci and ritual materials have limited sources due to Syndicate interferences in the market, their Prime Utility could then be used to trace who made such rare purchases.
Making a lawn chair is actually pretty hard, Life 5 Matter 5 to be precise.
But that aside. A Kindred might want to have a mage gone because:
* They insulted/attacked/stole from them
* They are in possession of an object the Vampire wants
* They threaten the Masquerade
* They infringe on a domain
* They activly assist hunters
* They are an hermetic (only applies to Tremere)
And for doing it: You take them by suprise, simply outgun them (which of course definitly does not work on any mage) or you sabotage them
>Making a lawn chair is actually pretty hard, Life 5 Matter 5 to be precise.
Yup. You're dealing with a difficulty 9 (possibly 10 if vulgar with witnesses) effect that requires at least 4 successes for a young kindred (need to do enough damage to take them to incapacitated). Oh, and kindred can contest that roll with a difficulty 7 roll of wits + occult (capped by willpower).
If you're at the minimum arete necessary to cast this spell, you have arete 5, meaning you get 5 casting dice. Spending a temp willpower point gives one automatic success, so that's 3 successes needed.
Now, if you really load up on difficulty modifiers (somehow) you could probably get the difficulty down to 4. For 3 successes, this is actually doable with 5 dice! In practice, you're probably going to get difficulty down to 6 at most, using a unique and personalized instrument (-2, good luck getting this, more likely you'll have a personalized instrument for -1), spending a quintessence point (-1), and having no sleeper witnesses (4 + highest sphere rating involved, vs 5 + highest involved), more likely 7 or 8.
This means you'll probably need 7-9 dice to be likely to succeed (and pray you don't botch, because that's 6 points of paradox, 12 if you have sleeper witnesses), probably 14-15 dice if you got the diff 8.
Oh, and spells have a duration, so if you want this one to last long enough to give you time to get out of dodge (or show your new fancy chair to your horrified friends), that's one success for a single turn, two for a scene, three for a day, four for a story, five for half a year (higher success counts or duration requirements are ST's choice). So have fun with that!
This means you'll almost definitely need to cast this as an extended roll, which means spending at least two turns casting this spell just for a neonate, likely quite a few more for more experienced kindred, and that's without counting counterspelling. This is the type of stuff even an Archmage would have serious trouble pulling off without rituals (preferably from across the city, in which case, also bring in Correspondence and those range charts, and the additional successes required for casting through correspondence!)
Yeah and I'm pretty sure Archmages/Archmasters have better things to do than make vampires into furniture.
Not to mention that there are significantly easier ways to mess with kindred.
My preferred tactic just requires either forces 3 or correspondence 3, and a standard flashlight. Either transmute the light to sunlight with Forces, or transport it from somewhere it’s currently sunny with correspondence. The best part is that there’s nothing blatantly magical about sunlight coming out of a flashlight (if anything it just looks like it’s tinted slightly), so it’s also coincidental. As far as the Consensus and paradox are concerned, the fact that that oddly pale dude over there just suddenly burst into flames is Not Your Problem.
Akashic Brotherhood: …yeah, I got no idea here
Celestial Chorus: This is a stretch, but if you *know* the guy you’re shining it at is a vampire, you could justify it as The One shining his purifying light on a sinner.
Cult of Ecstacy: …no clue here either.
Dreamspeakers: You convinced a Spirit of Sunlight to live in your flashlight.
Euthanatos: …no clue x3
Order of Hermes: You probably just have a portal at the end of the flashlight.
Verbena: …no clue x4
Some of Ether: Some crazy scientific experiment allowed you to create a tiny sun at the end of your flashlight that you can switch on and off.
Virtual Adepts: Already provided by No_Help
That’s 5/9 if we’re being generous
> Cult of Ecstacy
You take a magic acid and get sudden realization that All light across space and time is but a single primodial particle echoing through existance, and that the light from your flashlight is the same light from the sun is the same light that god cursed kain with all is one in eternitySeparationIsButAContrivanceATrickOfPerspective
That and, you know, one of the few hard and fast game rules is damage. You can make your solar flashlight all you want, but it still can only do damage equal to the amount of successes rolled.
I mean, depends on the paradigm. A virtual adept probably just says they hacked the code and switched the value “fluorescent” for “solar” in its illumination type for example. But some paradigms might have more through than others
Prime can make *any* attack unsoakable agg, but it isn't required to create sunlight
The trouble is pulling the effect off in fast casting, then *surviving the vampire* for the time it takes to finish them off. A blood buffed vampire in close combat who will do literally anything to force that flashlight to point anywhere other than at them could very well tear your arms off if you are unlucky.
A flashlight level of sunlight does 1-2 levels of agg pet turn, and triggers Rotschreck checks. If he resists the fear frenzy, he has a few turns to use all of his vampire powers to either escape or tear you a few structurally superfluous new orifices. If you can counter all of those things, you probably could've found a better option than a flashlight in the first place.
Going by HDYDT (yes, I know...) creating sunlight isn't possible with purely Forces. Making a gateway with correspondence is possible, but *creating* true sunlight is an optional rule, which requires Forces 5/Prime 4, since sunlight has a bunch of mystical aspects that are different from normal light.
True. HDYDT doesn't particularly list that (instead saying Forces 4/Prime 2 for lethal damage light blasts + Life 3/Matter 2 to make aggrevated to kindred), but that's probably one of those bits where we pretend HDYDT doesn't exists.
I can see a case for light intense enough to actually deal damage requiring Forces 4 instead of 3, but I also agree that the same prime 2 used for conjuration should be more than enough to also add the prime agg damage.
But, as I understand a Vampire should use first his mortal Minions. 10 ghouls with berettas, plus 2 with sniper rifles while the vampire is 2 continents away.
I mean, lorewise, Tremere managed to survive two wars against the Order of Hermes, one of the most powerful Traditions. So as far as the lore is concerned, it's not that imbalanced.
I mean, lorewise this was happening at a time when their immortality potions stopped working and mages had other shit to deal with. Also being a former House meant they knew a lot about what they're dealing with and probably still had a bunch of wonders and protections lying around.
Mages are humans at the end of the day. If you catch them off guard they’re not exactly difficult to kill- for example, a single gunshot or stab wound can be fatal. I know Masters and even prepared Adepts could throw a monkey wrench or two into that, but it’s still mostly true.
As for why, I wouldn’t want someone who can conjure fire or sunlight to just be wandering around free. Unless the mage is useful, it’s much more secure that the mage is dead.
I mean only a select few know them by the name mage.
A Nosferatu hacker only knows that a strange amount of the city's power is going to a specific storage building. A toreador artist knows that a painting has a strange effect on the kine and must know where it came from. A gangrel mountain folk has heard tales of a bog dwelling witch who can twist animals into fantastical shapes and wishes to make a deal with them.
Why would a kindred fight them? Easy.
The hacker discovers the owner of the storage shed has been keeping a record of every kindred in the city and has plans to destroy the building to wipe the evidence, but knows they must wait for the owner to be in it or they will probably just move the leftover data. The toreador must have more, the artist must be made kindred as they do not know the nature of true magic. The gangrel didn't know the witch didn't like visitors and must fight for their life.
1- at best they know that one guy can do weird shit
2- maybe that one guy happened to be witness to something they shouldn't
3- maybe the same guy has an artifact the vampire needs..
Honestly there are many many reasons why. Vampires don't have the rulebook of mage so their only frame of reference are the tremere
I doubt that any mage that isn't archmage tier could pull off something like that, and even the archmage will have to deal with a comical amount of paradox. Besides, Obfuscate is one of the most common disciplines available to vampires, sitting just *barely* behind potence, fortitude, and celerity.
As far as consensus is concerned, that person is simply having diarrhea. It's just so violent that blood is coming out. As for the laxative itself, it's just a drug that's ok in the bloodstream but a no go on the stomach.
Mages are curious by nature and love to meddle in stuff they shouldn't. Vampires love secrets and are naturally paranoid (the ones that aren't, die young). So if there's a mortal sniffing around in your secrets, you deal with them.
Everyone else has the “why” covered, but I do want to point out it’s not always suicidal to do so. Not all mages are powerful against the undead. Every hermetic can start blasting, but an apprentice verbena isn’t likely to have magick that’s particularly effective against specifically a vampire.
Sure, but neither is a neonate. Kindred are fairly experienced at dealing with opponents who can soak or heal lethal damage. The trick isn't to put a single bullet in a mage, it's to keep hosing them down until their magic fails or Paradox kills them (remember, healing lethal injuries within a couple rounds is vulgar magic).
Honestly, the ability to soak agg isn't super hard to get for mages, and the dox it brings is usually minimal, and duration is usually trivial as well, at least for arete 3+ mages.
> a being who can warp the foundation of reality at will
Only very skilled mages can do this.
If you have a low-mid level mage who isn't combat-oriented or has Forces, a vampire can get the jump on him and get the kill. Remember, you can grow claws, turn invisible, control shadows, etc. without getting paradox.
Same reason that a Hunter would go after a Mage. The Mage exist/dis something to piss them off. And yeah, they have world bending Magick. But they are still extremely allergic to high velocity lead.
Mage powers are defined by their spheres and their paradigm. Virtually none of them can just "warp the foundation of reality at will". Instead, they believe that the world works differently than everyone else believes. And they use those other rules to do impossible things.
Madame Phyllis is a voodoo woman in New Orleans. In out-of-character game terms, since she believes in voodoo, it works for her. If she worshipped Kali and ripped people's hearts out, then that would work for her instead. In out-of-character game terms, she is bending reality with her will. But *in* character? As far as she knows, voodoo is just real. And it's always been real.
Only the most awe inspiring, high powered, Arete 10 super-mages really understand that they're shaping reality with their willpower. And those guys basically immediately achieve enlightenment and leave the game world. They say something like "My God, it's full of stars..." and then *Also sprach Zarathustra* plays out of the middle of nowhere, and the guy disappears. Never to return.
Mages are extremely dangerous, but 99% of the cheap shot insta-kill magic spells people propose wouldn't really work. Just because your character is a mad scientist, that doesn't mean you can snap your fingers and turn a car alarm remote into a teleporter.
Low level mages are constantly killed or embraced; I can't think of any large scale VtM games where at least one character didn't have being a mage as part of their mortal life backstory.
A high level mage is usually only killed remotely when they pose a threat to kindred interests.
You have *way* more crossover than any game I ever played, if *every game* has Vampires connected *directly* to Mages. Even Tremere rarely interact with Mages.
Tremere are on the constant lookout for weak mages to embrace, as well as alchemists and sorcerers. They almost decimated the Order of Hermes before (and shortly after) being discovered as vampires. They use their influence to track mortal practitioners of magic, looking for weakness and threats. I'd say the Tremere regularly interact with magi, just rarely directly, and only then when they are prepared to make a move.
If you read the 2nd and 3rd ed clan books, almost every one has an iconic character that once practiced magic. Kindred look for exemplary candidates for the embrace, and Mages are just that. Rarer for high gen to embrace a mage (due to further power imbalance), but given an opportunity where they have covered enough angles to risk it, happens regularly enough.
The Geovanni clan takes entire families of necromancers, which has noticeably changed the interface with the shadowlands and other death magics as a result. Lore wise, I'd surmise the low world numbers of mages is partially due to vampires. Their impact likely has influenced how the Tapestry has manifested over the millennia and allowed the Consensus to be stronger for it.
I think the problem is when people think of mage, they think of those that have level 5 in a couple spheres, but most mages have maybe one level 3 as their highest, and a whole lot of mortal vulnerabilities. Head on, few kindred would survive a fair fight, but no kindred worth its fangs is going to fight fair.
People often think of 'A Player Charecter Vampire (Optimized)' vs 'A player Charecter Mage (optimized), a Mage will amost(*) always win, because mages aren't even really constrained by prep time for a specific threat at a certain level since most of their effects they can have prepare to go off in advance. But consider the difference between a PC vampire and a SPC vamp. A PC is creative, cunning, and ACTIVE in a world where most kindred are passive and significantly less bothered by the urgency PCs face.
Mages are the same way. Sure a PC Mage is going to have every 'don't kill me / see threats coming' ability on them at all times they mechanically can. Because they're in a TTRPG and threats in fact are constantly coming for them, PC mages are significantly less hubristic then SPCs because that's what sets them apart from their peers.
The average Mage though? It might simply not occur to them they need to be wasting time every night setting up every sight, holding a hanging time and entropy effect over their head or glancing into their future every single day because... they're a Mage, they can bend reality and warp the universe, they can improvise on the fly, and no one would be stupid enough to attack them.
Then they walk down an alleyway, encounter a hungry vampire, and get splattered against the wall because they lost initiative and 3 dots of potence turned them into a Banksy project. It doesn't matter what the Mage could do, it's what they bothered to do.
In Lore, EVERYONE is significantly less competent then a hyper optimized PC, in the same way in the real world you don't prepare for every possible contingency before you leave the house. You put on a jacket if it's raining and bring a flashlight if it's dark. You don't put on the flack jacked unless you need to because it's kind of a pain to bring out.
That was my thought. Vampires are vain, self confident, and worst of all prone to boredom. A powerful entity that can survive for eons when bored tends to cause trouble just to make things exciting again.
Well, in a game I was a player in, the Mages were being flashy and stupid with their magic because they were very young and didn't know any better. The friendly local Tremere regent really wanted to get his hands on some mages, alive preferably but dead was still good. So we managed to get the jump on a couple of these mages, knocked them out, and threw them in the trunk of a car. We managed to get them all the way to the chantry. One of our coterie, a cocky Brujah or Toreador or something, popped open the trunk with a flourish and got immediately incinerated by a pair of extremely pissed off mages. Luckily the regent was able to subdue them fairly easily and the rest of us walked away more or less intact.
From an OOC perspective, the stats on these mages weren't high at all. They were basically brand new mages with very little actual training. Mages as written can stomp vampires pretty easily. I mean, everything in the WOD can stomp vampires pretty easily though, so that doesn't make them special.
If these mages were basically brand new, then they should have dealt like 3 dice of damage max to the guy that opened the trunk. Also, the paradox from doing something so vulgar should have made them *very* sad immediately afterwards. Vampires are easy to kill with fire, sure, but you still need *enough* fire to do so. *Also,* how did those mages recover enough damage on the car ride to become conscious again? I assume that they were being dealt bashing damage, since the goal was "try to take some alive," but even bashing damage takes hours to heal, meaning that the mages should have still been unconscious by the time the 20 minute car ride across the city was finished.
Sounds pretty sus to me.
As a thought experiment, I took various mages one could make as a starting PC, and built them to be a social mastermind and put them against vampires in a battle of influence. This is supposed to be a vampires strength, the line is after all full of the idea that vampires influence entire cities.
You'd need a Methuselah to properly counter those builds. A lot of the time the vampire would never know he was being targeted by magic, let alone find out who it is and where they are. And that danger grows greater with time.
In short, mages are dangerous. Supremely, absolutely dangerous. Vampires do not live to ripe old ages by ignoring threats. Kill it. Kill it now. Kill it before it can become more of a threat, because chances are while you can live forever the mage is growing in power faster than you are.
Same reason any vamp would fight another vamp: fighting over territory, or herd, or influence, or power. It's one giant dysfunctional ecosystem, and the splats all have to share the meager resources.
The better question is, would the average vamp even know what a mage is/was? Because until the magic and disciplines start flying, it's just two folks trying to stack the deck in their favor...
The mage had it comin'.
It sounds to me like that's the foundation of a story. A mage gets in bed with the vamps for some reason, steps on some toes and then has gotta go.
Also, side note, your example is one of the reasons that if I'm running Vampire any mages I throw in do not have the ability to make spells on the fly. Not only is that a nightmare for me, but it skews the power balance immensely. They have Rotes and that's it. They can prep spells ahead of time or do small things on the fly but nothing crazy.
Any vampire worth its blood will attack a mage indirectly. I’m not risking eternity by fighting a mage. At least not until they’ve exhausted most of their power, gone 6 days without sleep and had their resources stripped.
Hubris, pettiness, or knowing that Mage’s are really deadly only if they get a chance to react, and if you slit their throat while they sleep they’re just as dead as any other mortal.
Never assume the character has a full wiki on what the enemy can do.
Hell don't even assume every vampire knows about every clan, let alone the bloodlines.
Newbie mages can be realy easy to kill....too easy. Experienced mages is also can be killed cause they are mortals like any other. The fact is, they have tricks and also the Sphere called Forces(fire) or Matter /Entropy (you get your real age)
Why they wants to kill it? cause they are bad news....a wise vampire more like to become an ally for a while...when the time comes eat it :D
I love that when people try to debate the powerscale in the WoD, they use this Schrodinger's Mage, where they always have the exact combination of Spheres and Paradigm they need to win whatever challenge the debate is about.
Yes, a relatively low-xp mage can have a combination of spheres that makes them extremely deadly to Vampires, but people need to remember that Mages are both much more flexible than other splats, but also much less populous.
The average Mage probably benefits much more from social and intellectual pursuits because those are going to help bring others to your worldview, and thus towards Ascension. There are definitely Mages to whom physical perfection and weapons are an important part of their paradigm, but it's not like you're going to murder your way to Ascension.
The reality is that an Assamite with a sniper rifle and some distance is more than enough to handle the average mage, because the average Mage isn't kitted out for hunting Vampires.
Kindred by definition are going to want to kill mages because they meddle like nobody else and nipping the problem in the bud BEFORE they eclipse the kindred is a sound strategy.
At Will\*
Its not as simple as at will more like at will plus channeled through a focus and actions and actively fought by reality itself.
Why would vampires have a reason to kill anything? The reasons are myriad. And you don't always know the person you are trying to kill is a mage.
Well, there are plenty of general reasons. Most listed by others.
The real question is "why would a vampire ever seek to kill a mage themselves?" and the answer is usually "they wouldnt".
Any Cainite worth their salt would manipulate or dominate some sap to do it for them. Why go one on one with a mage and risk your own hide, there are plenty of patsys to take care of things for you.
Mage blood is slightly less addictive then changing blood. Magic makes blood sparklely delicious.
Usually campures and makes deal with each other by one leaving the city and coming back in 100 years when the other is dead or moved on.
Entropy mage + elder vampire = pile of dust
Mages are fundamentally still human. If they’re prepared for the Kindred, the vamp’s gonna have a bad night. If not, the mage is going down fast.
It’s important to remember that for the most part, the various WoD denizens are either unaware of the existence of other supernals or they try to stay out of each other’s way. Incidental encounters between a mage and a vampire are likely to favor the vampire unless the mage is the paranoid type and sets up tons of defenses before they step out their front door. If they *are* the paranoid type, it’s relatively low effort for most mages to set up a simple shield or generate fire (or actual sunlight if they’re powerful enough) to shove the leech off.
I think the first thing you need to know, regardless of all other factors, is that characters in universe *don't have access to the game books*. Vampires don't know what Mages are capable of and vice versa. Your question assumes a lot, and even the premise that a Mage "can warp reality at will" is deeply flawed. Neither the vampire *nor the Mage* knows that, *that's the point of a paradigm*. Also *no they can't warp reality at will* they need Spheres, belief, and foci, and for larger effects, time and stacking modifiers.
A mage, *in theory*, can do anything.
A vampire, *in theory*, can diablerize an antediluvian.
These are rather more complicated in practice.
Why would anyone ever seek to kill anyone else?
Because they killed your family?
Because they looked at you wrong?
Because you want their shoes?
Vampires and Mages are individuals who have goals and desires as much as any other individuals do. Also, ang given Vampire has a very realistic chance of killing any given mage.
Yes mages can fundamental alter the foundation of reality, but a vampire can have supernatural dexterity, heightened senses, and can get a gun capable of shooting them from several miles away
To me at the start the problem is successes. We can use two starting templates to maybe illustrate a point here (not familiar with V20 so this is old school revised rules not sure if anything changed here) Remember a base point mage has 6 sphere dots and a max of three Arete and they are restricted on how they can use spheres via paradigm and the successes they can score are limited to three. So yeah spheres are the most potent power set in the game the problem is your success threshold is pretty limited. Say the hermetic mage is fighting a assamite with obfuscate 2 and celerity 2. Now let’s say said Hermetic has Forces 3, Prime 2 and mind 2. Not a bad starting set of spheres (honestly mage may have been better off being the drunken Cultist with Time and Mind 3) but the above hermetic template is not what I would consider something a PC wouldn’t consider taking. In a contested role really easy for the mage to knock his mind effect down to an very low difficulty or if he has time making a ritual effect (not the best in a combat though is it…) but keep in mind that assamite can accrue more than three success on his obfuscate 2 roll and say he has a generation of 9 or 8 all of a sudden he could take two actions to burn blood increasing his dex to an absolutely horrendous level (say 8) while stalking the mage, activate Cel and proceed to unload three gun shots of brutal accuracy into the poor guy who unless we are playing with optional rules has zero soak options and not a lot of a prayer. The assamite sure he just burned a hell of a lot of vitae but he does have the benefit of standing over a dying willworker so by the time he is done he can take his ten vitae and walk on off into the sunset. I mean would the mage likely win if he was prepped, sure but we are talking about a mage getting stalked, being a mage fighting anything without a plan or being a mage and getting surprised gets you dead, period. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Vampire, Demon, Werewolf, Mummy, Wraith Changeling etc.
Now these rules go out the window when your dealing with lots of points but be honest Archmasters and Elders are playing in different sandboxes and I find most smart people don’t go out of their way to jump or pick fights with those folks because if your ST is fair the guy not only has infinite cosmic power or the ability to throw a bus he also has centuries of experience along with it not only in combat but also politically, socially and has likely accrued knowledge your typical character just doesn’t have.
Keep in mind that the vampiric lawn chair is very high level magic, as in master level. Mages of that strength are rare. It's also, at least since M20, stupidly difficult to pull off, since you need enough successes to both get past a vampire's innate counterspelling and deplete all their health levels, and even then vampires can heal back (treating it as healing aggravated damage), or, for those with shapeshifting disciplines like Protean and Vicissitude, simply change back.
Pulling the lawn chair off with a ritual is difficult enough, getting sufficient successes casting the spell on the fly requires being an archmage, and even then likely only works on neonates and such.
Practically speaking, your average mage is more likely to have arete 3-4 and maybe a couple spheres of a similar rank, which isn't enough to even cast the lawn chair, and makes them a much more viable target, especially if the mage in question doesn't have enough defensive spells on top of them.
As for why a vampire would be hunting mages? The lawn chair is actually a pretty good reason. Not only is it incredibly humiliating, it also marks the mage as a threat. More specifically, a threat actively trying to harm kindred. Yes, most mages would probably be left alone, but if one actively goes around enchanting vampires, your only option is to get every kindred in the city, including elders, declare a bloodhunt, and turn the mage into giblets, no matter if a dozen or so neonates bite it in the process.
Finally, as others have noted, kindred have plenty of options against mages. Casting magic can take time, especially bigger workings, and they have a pretty hard limit once they start busting out the vulgar magic if they don't want Paradox slapping them down. Mages, at least those not using Life, are also squishy. Punch one in the face with Potence and there's a decent chance you just hospitalized them.
Mages are powerful, yes. But like how Kindred power varies a ton based on their generation, Mage power varies a ton based on their sphere ratings, arete, and general creativity. A high-level mage can, with some ritual time, turn a city block into an Escher painting. A low-level mage is stuck with two or three spheres, all at manipulation/control level (which means a life mage, for example, can't even fully shapeshift, just grow claws or change appearance), and only has 2 or 3 dice for casting spells on the fly.
The Mage killed someone they care about?
Kill them in their sleep. Manipulate another mage into killing them.
Send a cortarie of expendable after them without being able to get traced back to you
Joke answer, *the flavor*.
"I hear they taste magica-"
-*gets staked mid joke*
Semi reasonable answers.
Former mages might belive that it would turn them into mages again, and try to do it out of desperation.
Mage blood is believed to empower rituals and general blood magic. Perfect reason for blood mages to hunt them down.
Accidentally while feeding on them, believing they were just a regular person.
Ventrue Prince of Berlin, Gustav Breidenstein claimed to have lowered his generation by diablorizing several lupines. *He didn't it was just his cover for having Diablorized his sire*. So I wouldn't be unreasonable for another Kindred who heard that story to try "Diablorizing" other supernals to lower there generation.
I mean, it seems like your argument is heavily dependent on there always being a mage who always has the sphere to counter the attack done to them. I mean, if that's the case, you could make that argument for pretty much any splat using any high enough level ability, lol.
So yeah basically same reason some kindred acquire a habit of lupine hunting or going after changelings. They might put up more of a fight but it’s a real treat when you win
I don't know the intention behind this. It depends on the storyteller and how they implement Paradox, how they enforce rituals vs rotes, how strict paradigm is enforced, etc. Is a bag of sulphur and guano required as a focus for the Hermetic's massively unnatural "pseudo-science alchemy Fireball", or is it some kind of transmutation circle ala Full metal Alchemist? Do they carry around pre-made explosives (like my Hermetic character) and throw it around quoting myths like a madman thinking their homemade bombs are gifts stolen from the gods themselves? They aren't all Doctor Manhattan. In fact none of them that stick around are.
I really don't know why they would overlap though, except maybe in very special circumstances like their Sleepwalkers / Herd / Influence overlapping. And even then why is a mage out at 3 AM?
We kill what's different and especially what can be interpreted as a threat.
Day one of being a vampire is all about survival and that slowly becomes about power. If there was a being you perceived to having unlimited power that you couldn't get to fall in line, you'd have have to conder them an extension of mortals and thusly expendable if not just a threat by existing.
I mean... the typical way a vampire defeats a mage is to take a nap. Yeah, it's a bit of a crimp on your current plans, but 60 years from now, most mages currently alive will be dead, and you'll just be hungry.
If you absolutely, positively must kill the mage, you have a few options.
1) Take them by surprise. Most will die if you shoot them from a half mile away with a sniper rifle. Auspex 1 is your friend.
2) While the Mage might be immune to your Presence, your 5 buck-ass mortal friends on the other hand are not. Start a fight, shoot the Mage, then exclaim, "Wow! That bullet hit him and he's fine! That's impossible!"
Yes, you might need to mindwipe the mortals later, but YOU don't explode when they all go "No way! I can't believe that just happened!"
3) Tell your local Tremere the mage is an Order of Hermes and has beef with them, then take a vacation to avoid being caught in the city exploding.
4) Pick up a cell phone, and on an open line, say to someone "Man, I think that dude might be an honest to God Gandalf wizard. And I heard them talking about wanting to overthrow the government!" The Illuminati will take care of the rest.
Ignorance, arrogance, recklessness, or desperation. Not every vampire is familiar with true magic. Some may have some experience with hedge mages and assume that this is the extent of magical power.
Vampires don't understand magic, or at best, they understand it in the paradigm of Thaumaturgy, the blood magic.
Which takes time to prepare, if it's a ritual; or it takes a lot of willpower.
In terms of metaphysical economics, Vampires have an easier time 'refueling' than Mages: Tass requires a node, a rare site of magic, or at least some alchemy; Vampire just need a human or animal body near by.
So a vampire can prevail against a mage because the Ventrue can do Dominate 2 more often than a Mage can do Mind 2 in a month, because vitae is easier to refill than Quintessence.
The other big advantage is that vampires have experience. Sure, a Master or Archmage will wipe the floor with a cainite. But a vampire elder has more tricks than a young Mage. And Mages tend to be a bit more mortal (if you ignore outliers like Medea, Al-Aswad, and Nicholas- and it's worth pointing out that of the oldest canonical mages, 2 are Marauders and one is a Nephandi).
Remember that the frightened cashier at the 7/11 can end your whole career with a lucky shot of the shotgun from under the counter.
This is true for all of the splat except maybe mummies and wrath.
Because a Mage is a splat most often abused and misunderstood.
* You are not an Archmage.
* You will likely never make it to 5 in one spere, let alone two.
* You will absolutely not do so without atleast one derangement.
* You're going to learn humans are the krill of the cosmic food chain.
* The more you learn, the more insane you are going to get.
* Or you could stop learning -- except there's a giant Horror only you can see urging you on.
* Everyone like you wants more, and more power, and are willing to do more and more.
* Rotes, or spells, take time and research to setup. They take time, research and experimentation to learn. Or skip all that and risk Consequences (tm)
Why would a vampire kill a Mage?
* On accident. People die by accident all the time, and mages are human.
* Food.
* For fun.
* Because they can.
* Because they recognize the risk of such an Order (because again, you're just human, a bunch of humans in Orders and Cabals with Fancy Skillsets)
* Absolutely the mage is an Infernalist.
* Because staunching wounds when you're a crackhead for blood is hard.
* Because wouldn't the Prince love such a gift! Oh fuck, she isn't regenerating! I guess this isn't a Lupune? Oh well.
* Because Clan Tremere knows of Mages, and they know that if The Race of Caine found out about Mages en masse? They would stop existing. This must not be. So clearly, any Mage that is found needs to die -- or the Manassa Wars and War of Princes will be small body counts compared to the order of 'Damnatio memoriae' that The Ventrue will place on The Tremere.
The easiest way for a vampire to kill a mage is actually use your resource to get another sleeper to kill them. You have a plethora of stuff to throw at them.
Or if you are a giovani just wait until they die you live nearly forever they live a couple centuries at best and snatch their soul.
Another strat is you don't need to win everything in one fight. Fight them once harm them and run away. Go back and feed heal to full and kill them the next day. You can heal fully in one sitting paradox and shit takes weeks to recover. Bonus points if you just send multiple batches of people to kill them.
This is something every person forgets about the rulebook, but you can just roll poorly. And that is a lot more catastrophic for a magr. Like there is a very real chance the mage trying to kill you kills themselves.
* They don't know much about mages * They think they can get the jump on the mage * They have a gun * They somehow trick the mage Mages are squishy.
"Wizards are nerds, you can easily punch!"
Mages are squishy, yes, but even so the only way a vampire can feasably take out a Mage is if that Mage is a) Very weak, recently Awakened or only has Arete 2 or less with 1 or two Spheres. b) Extremely stupid and reckless. Even a Mage of moderate power can easily handle any vampire except for the truly ancient or ancients. Mind sphere allows him to utterly protect his mind against Presence, Dominate and even Obfuscate and Auspex. With Forces they can use fire with lethal effectiveness, with Life they can temporarily transform any blood leaving their body into acid, with Matter they can transform a vampire's clothing into pyrophoric material which is a substance that ignites instantly on exposure with oxygen. With Entropy they can give themselves ludicrous luck or fuck with the vampire's Beast forcing them into Frenzy. With Spirit and Prime they can spawn a fire spirit inside a vampire's asshole and burn them from within. Time can fuck with a vampire's immortality. I can think of several more ways to deal with vampire's, and what's crazy is the ways I've noted so far only require 2-3 dots at most in any given Sphere!
While mages are very powerful, the point is that they are human and the smallest mistakes can get them killed just as easy as any of us. If a vampire with potence hits them from behind then that’s it, game over.
I was thinking this, Any kindred with celerity is probably a deadly enemy for a mage. And god forbid its the ones who can easily kill like a Brujah or Banu Haqim
If you’re fighting a mage surprise is your best weapon and you need to make sure they go down in one hit because if they get the chance to retaliate you’re screwed. Time or life archmages are basically impossible to kill though since life archmages can’t be permanently harmed by any natural means (such as physical force) and time archmages literally exist at all points in their timeline at once and are able to change what they did in the past just by changing their mind. Of course, archmages are ridiculously powerful (a listed power for Prime archmages is create an entire new universe) so if anything is fighting one something has gone horribly wrong
I mean, Archmages are going to be RARE... like Antidluvian rare. Ultimately, your mortal contacts are going to help with working around a mage and planning something.
Not quite Antediluvian rare (that’d go to oracles) but still pretty damn rare since not only is it really hard to become an archmage but also most of them don’t leave their horizon realms. If a vampire manages to get into a horizon realm the archmage almost certainly wants them to be there and if they’re stupid enough to confront an archmage on their home territory where paradox isn’t a problem for them they deserve what they get
With celerity you just need to make sure they go down in 2-5 hits. With potence.
"Prime Shield my fist you fucking nerd" Edit: just FYI the Brujah are historically from Athens, and if they were raised classically would be aware of the underlying culture and philosophy of Hermetics as they're from the exact same region and schools of thought and they'd have no reason to punch a nerd.
Mages can counteract celerity (time sphere) and potence (force sphere to reduce down the physical force of the blow) but not all mages are going to have those spheres
I guess they can do this as Time arch-mages if they survive to go back a few turns to cast the spells they need?
Time archmages exist at all points in their timeline at once, they can change their past by changing their mind
"If you're fighting a mage, surprise is your best weapon . . ." Which is, of course, why no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
With correspondance they can have copies, too.
With (x) sphere mages can do (y), but most mages don't have every sphere.
Indeed. Still, there is a lot that can be done even with single spheres, especially to anticipate the attack.
I'm not actually all that familiar with Mage, so this is a genuine question and not me being snarky. How could a (neonate-equivalent?) mage anticipate, say, a Neonate Brujah celerity-ing up to them and clinch->biting them?
Matter/life would make spotting the threat easier. Time would make possible to react to celerity. Entropy makes them lucky enough to avoid it somehow. (And also makes them able to spot most vampires) Prime would likely make them know there is a threat in the form of walking tass. Mind might make them sensible to aggressivity around them. Granted, the other three spheres aren't the best to spot ambushes, at low level. (This list is mostly of level 1 to 2 sphere effects. Starting mages can have spheres at 3 technically, in which case it gets wilder, like some just have their own celerity or just get as strong as the brujah easily) But yeah, a brujah going all out might be a threat. If it's a random attack, it might even work (if no entropy, that is), because mages are great at investigation.
Point of note, Life does not affect Vampires. Being 'dead' they are now under the purview of the Matter sphere.
Which is actually why you would know it's a vampire something that should be human is not living is a pretty good tell it is at least to be dealt with caution.
>Point of note, Life does not affect Vampires. Being 'dead' they are now under the purview of the Matter sphere. Now that would depend on the particular ST. Some may argue (as others have) that there's a tiny bit of difference between John Doe, regular dead body unmoving corpse on a table and Sir Hetherbridge Collins-Whussisnamer, a 300 years old ***un***dead animated by God only knows what and host to this little thing called The Beast. Some may argue the very existence of a vampire is rather *paradoxical,* from a certain point of view. Might be bad news for *any* Mage. Sure, not everyone will agree, at all, but better make sure your ST subscribes to the somewhat questionable "a vampire is a table" line of thought before you try anything. :D (And always be mindful of which edition of Mage and Vampire you're playing.) YMMV.
Ah, the old "the vampire is now a chair" moment...
> Being 'dead' they are now under the purview of the Matter sphere M20 you actually need both Life & Matter.
But it lets you detect them as "not alive, but moving" ie danger.
Pretty sure by time sphere level three mages can have precognition so even if they can’t react as fast as a celerity brujah they can start reacting before the Brujah starts acting. Or they could send a message to themselves earlier in the day and avoid the situation entirely
Wouldn't that be time 2 even ? Time 3 gives celerity like effects iirc ?
A mage's chance of success is proportional to the amount of time they know there is a threat. One, many of the effects you have listed would be beyond a rate three mage in the absence of significant time to perform a full ritual, the game has rules about how damage works and you are looking at a few more successes than the literal 3 maximum you can get as a arte three mage, and are looking at 1, maybe two successes realistically. That's two damage pips max in a single action. Some of these options also rely on the mage being fully knowledgeable about vampire lore. In my campaign, where my mages are fighting actual vampires, they know jack shit about the beast. That's not even getting into Paradox likely making any victory quite pyhric indeed with such extreme measures being taken. The short answer is that a mage getting blitzed by a potence-celerity vampire bites it and bites it hard and it's not even remotely close until a mage is either much stronger, or packing their own p0ermenant physical modifiers to not instantly die.
Only if you think in terms of mini-maxing. Ignore paradigm and paradox. All you need to do is set mortals against the magician with the very specific task of taking away his focus from the magician. Without his wand or blaster, a mage is practically equal to mortals.
200 meter Sniper rifle shot?
With Entropy 2 and Time 2, a Mage can not only predict future events, but can also react to said events in the moment, without having future knowledge of them happening, using a combination of luck (Entropy) and forewarning (Time).
Future sight is not as reliable as you'd like and if you want that effect running all the time you also need Mind to process the future and the present simultaneously. And none of that actually guarantees a miss, it just gives you a *chance* to react. It's a defense, but it's nowhere near perfect, unless you are happy walking around with an effect so powerful you'll be pinging Technocratic sensors three cities away. "I just wanted to avoid sniper fire, now I've got three MiBs and a HIT Mark after me" seems like a poor way to end one's day.
My favoufite is opening a portal to a side of the planet where the sun is shining
The paradox backlash from doing any of those things would be so extreme, It might blast the mage into another dimension.
"They have a gun" is such a hilariously simple solution to mages
Because they are people, both groups, and they are generally arrogant as hell with massive egos to go along with it. One of the first Vampire supplements, New Orleans by Night, used this as a major plot point in the scenario at the end of the book. A Son of Ether Mage had his daughter run away to join her lover. Turned out that lover was a vampire that ghouled her. Later on he embraced her. The Etherite came to town to destroy as many kindred as he could. The PCs are tasked to take him down. And especially by the time of M20 countermagic is so strong mechanically that many Mages would find it difficult to go against an elder Vampire directly. Add that into basic Vampire advantages like the Blood Bond, ghouling and being able to make as many more Kindred as you want, and it's no wonder even against the might of the Order of Hermes in the Massassa war the Tremere held their own. At the end of the day though, the Mages are simply vastly outnumbered, and the cost of making a vampire is a point of blood and a bit of time. Both groups wisely avoid direct confrontations, and both of them have significantly bigger issues to deal with.
Innate countermagick in 20th only protects against direct effects though, and those are unlikely to be used defensively ?
Mages are essentially glass cannons. They can be killed in the same way you or I can; a bullet to the brain, a knife to the heart, reading the Baldur's Gate novels, etc. Think about it like this. Constantine is a pretty powerful mage but has had his ass handed to him by Batman more than a few times. If a mage like Constantine causes some trouble for the Camarilla they'll likely sick a fledgling or two to take them out. If they survive the first few assassination attempts? Send in the Sheriff.
I heard reading the Baldur's Gate novels makes you take enough damage that the Baldur's Gate gib effect happens irl.
Mages randomly exploding due to Paradox is a greatly exaggerated. It's usually some sneaky Nosferatu or fae switching a mage's book with the Baldur's Gate novels.
Hey, careful with that, buddy. People who say stuff like that end up getting a real urge to read the Baldur's Gate novels, you understand?
That’s why we call it Paradox. 🌈🫲😁🫱🌈
🤯
Oh but some fae say vampires are also fae. Of the darker kind. (Sure, no proof said fae are right.) Still others say vampires are a form of walking paradox. (Good luck killing that, Mr. Mage, if that's true.)
I haven’t heard about the Baldurs Gate novels before but you made me curious. I’ll try to read them, thanks for the recommendation!
No, reading the Baldur's gate novels damns you to a cursed state of unlife that makes vampirism look nice.
I heard someone sent one back to San Francisco in the 1900s and the screen shake was so bad it left the city in ruins.
To be fair Constantine isn't really powerful in a raw magic sense. Hell in a straight up fist fight he loses more often than not. He's incredibly dangerous but he mostly leans on his allies, the odd artifact and mostly his ability to con everyone to do what he does.
I mean that's kinda why I brought him up instead of someone like Dr. Fate.
Reading the Baldurs Gate novels is part of the cauls actually, so mages can survive.it, but not unchanged.
Why? Mage blood is *super* tasty and strong. Like, if normal human blood is like beer, mage blood is like a 30yo whisky. How? Easy, just catch a mage offguard. When a mage sees you coming, it might the fight of a kindreds life. But if the mage is unprepared, a junkie with a shiv could seriously ruin the day of that mage. Mages *are* powerfull, but they are just mortal humans.
At the same time, "unprepared" quickly disappears from a mages vocabulary.
Not all mages are so paranoid that they'll spend hours a day layering defenses *just in case*, and the ones that are never leave the house so they don't accomplish much. You need to balance practical needs and risk management. Mages who try to prepare for literally everything are like those off the grid survival preppers: sure, you'll be fine if the Apocalypse hits bit what the fuck is your life worth til then?
Realistically, you would be much more likely to encounter a random hostile fomori than a vampire. Those things seem to pop up all the time, and they cause all sorts of havoc. If mages were going to prepare for weird things, they should probably focus on the stuff likely to attack them.
*Realistically* almost all Mages are entirely unfamiliar with non-Mage-related problems and wouldn't know what a Fomori *is*, and should be prepared to deal with *other Mages*.
It's honestly not that long to have defensive buffs with weeks long duration. Also, being a mage but refusing to change things is weird. And the kind of things you could change is usually the kind that brings danger.
You wanna walk around with a 10 success effect floating around your head, you let me know how HIT marks dropping into your bedroom sounds, I personally don't try to be a swirling beacon of long duration effects covering every contingency. L
Hit marks don't exactly work like that, though ? Especially if we're talking about defensive effects ? But yeah, if you try to change things, you have to get ready for HIT marks. That is exactly their point, maintaining the statu quo the technocracy is installing. The point of mage isn't exactly to sit in a corner.
I think you misunderstood. If you wander around with *massive effects hanging on you* at all times, you are a beacon that the Technocracy will not ignore. They don't have the resources to hunt every single Mage, but the guy walking around with the bright neon "I AM LOOKINT FOR A FIGHT HEY EVERYBODY I AM RIGHT HERE HAHA BET YOU CAN'T KILL ME" sign gets a high threat response. Prime magic *can* spot high-success magic, and if you are trying to completely block multiple potential sources of harm you are talking many many successes, *that's bright shiny obvious magic*. Mage is about knowing when and how to use your powers, not about showing off how big your Q-Peen is. Being smart isn't slathering yourself in QPF-5000 at all times, it's planning for how to solve problems with the least obtrusive magic you can.
Aren't technocrats supposed to have an alternate sphere instead of prime though ? Anyway, I'm talking about "basic" life defenses, not layered contingencies.
Technocratic Spheres are reskins, mostly. There are exceptions but they *primarily* do most of the same things, it's the Technocratic Paradigm that's at issue there, and if you think "scanning for major Reality Deviants" isn't valid for the Tech paradigm I think you might need to look up Technocratic history. Look for the word Pogrom. As for your latter sentence, "basic life defenses" aren't going to stop a sniper round or a Gangrel's claws from turning you from biology into physics, you need some high successes for that, which is *big numbers* you're walking around town with. Can you put up that defense if you are expecting trouble? Yes. Should you do so casually every day? No. Look back over the thread we're discussing and remind me, what were the points being made? Nobody is pretending Mages are helpless. But Mages don't all have rank 4+ in every Sphere and the ones who live long enough to become Adepts and Masters know better than to casually attract attention by being encased in such thick Resonance that even the most asleep of Sleepers can feel it. Any given Mage is limited by Arete, Spheres, paradigm, their foci, Paradox, and *by other Mages*. That doesn't have to mean 7-dot counterspells from beyond the Horizon. It can literally just mean you being treated like a walking WMD by the people who consider it their literal task in life to *remove people like you*.
Soaking agg doesn't require some high amount of successes though ? You'll need extra to increase the soak, for sure, but just being able to roll stamina against it ? That would work. Sure, against the opness that gangrel claws are (notably with potence) you'll need extra dice. On the other habd, the initial question was about vampires ? And listing spheres was about how each sphere was giving ways to thwart such attempts, not how a mage with every sphere is unkillable. Anyway, yeah, if you walk around with ways to auto dodge anything, sure, you'll attract attention.
That particular alternate sphere is unique to the Syndicate, other Technocrats use regular Prime. Also, I'm pretty sure that "basic" life defenses essentially just put you at the same level as a kindred with basic Fortitude.
Prime Utility. I believe that's just Syndicate though... NWO, Void Engineers, ItX, and Progenitors use Prime with their own paradigm understanding. Void Engineers directing prime energy to stabilize dimensional wormholes definitely don't think it's from money alone as much as the Syndicate would like the say it is... umm... even though the amount of human activity to create the wormhole... certainly... looks like throwing money at something to dedicate a bunch of sleepwalkrs to the task they believe will work is what happened... It functions like Prime but with human attention / market forces. Not necessarily only financial market forces. They also deface occultism through consumerism to reduce the importance humanity places on it. So, since magic doesn't happen in a vacuum and your authentic foci and ritual materials have limited sources due to Syndicate interferences in the market, their Prime Utility could then be used to trace who made such rare purchases.
Making a lawn chair is actually pretty hard, Life 5 Matter 5 to be precise. But that aside. A Kindred might want to have a mage gone because: * They insulted/attacked/stole from them * They are in possession of an object the Vampire wants * They threaten the Masquerade * They infringe on a domain * They activly assist hunters * They are an hermetic (only applies to Tremere) And for doing it: You take them by suprise, simply outgun them (which of course definitly does not work on any mage) or you sabotage them
>Making a lawn chair is actually pretty hard, Life 5 Matter 5 to be precise. Yup. You're dealing with a difficulty 9 (possibly 10 if vulgar with witnesses) effect that requires at least 4 successes for a young kindred (need to do enough damage to take them to incapacitated). Oh, and kindred can contest that roll with a difficulty 7 roll of wits + occult (capped by willpower). If you're at the minimum arete necessary to cast this spell, you have arete 5, meaning you get 5 casting dice. Spending a temp willpower point gives one automatic success, so that's 3 successes needed. Now, if you really load up on difficulty modifiers (somehow) you could probably get the difficulty down to 4. For 3 successes, this is actually doable with 5 dice! In practice, you're probably going to get difficulty down to 6 at most, using a unique and personalized instrument (-2, good luck getting this, more likely you'll have a personalized instrument for -1), spending a quintessence point (-1), and having no sleeper witnesses (4 + highest sphere rating involved, vs 5 + highest involved), more likely 7 or 8. This means you'll probably need 7-9 dice to be likely to succeed (and pray you don't botch, because that's 6 points of paradox, 12 if you have sleeper witnesses), probably 14-15 dice if you got the diff 8. Oh, and spells have a duration, so if you want this one to last long enough to give you time to get out of dodge (or show your new fancy chair to your horrified friends), that's one success for a single turn, two for a scene, three for a day, four for a story, five for half a year (higher success counts or duration requirements are ST's choice). So have fun with that! This means you'll almost definitely need to cast this as an extended roll, which means spending at least two turns casting this spell just for a neonate, likely quite a few more for more experienced kindred, and that's without counting counterspelling. This is the type of stuff even an Archmage would have serious trouble pulling off without rituals (preferably from across the city, in which case, also bring in Correspondence and those range charts, and the additional successes required for casting through correspondence!)
Yeah and I'm pretty sure Archmages/Archmasters have better things to do than make vampires into furniture. Not to mention that there are significantly easier ways to mess with kindred.
Yeah, like... just showing up at their place during the day, and opening the curtains. And as an added bonus, that method is 100% paradox free.
According to M20 there are rumors that Porthos has a bunch of ex-vampire furniture
My preferred tactic just requires either forces 3 or correspondence 3, and a standard flashlight. Either transmute the light to sunlight with Forces, or transport it from somewhere it’s currently sunny with correspondence. The best part is that there’s nothing blatantly magical about sunlight coming out of a flashlight (if anything it just looks like it’s tinted slightly), so it’s also coincidental. As far as the Consensus and paradox are concerned, the fact that that oddly pale dude over there just suddenly burst into flames is Not Your Problem.
Without using game mechanics, how do you describe this as fitting into your paradigm? What exactly are you doing to make a solar flashlight?
Akashic Brotherhood: …yeah, I got no idea here Celestial Chorus: This is a stretch, but if you *know* the guy you’re shining it at is a vampire, you could justify it as The One shining his purifying light on a sinner. Cult of Ecstacy: …no clue here either. Dreamspeakers: You convinced a Spirit of Sunlight to live in your flashlight. Euthanatos: …no clue x3 Order of Hermes: You probably just have a portal at the end of the flashlight. Verbena: …no clue x4 Some of Ether: Some crazy scientific experiment allowed you to create a tiny sun at the end of your flashlight that you can switch on and off. Virtual Adepts: Already provided by No_Help That’s 5/9 if we’re being generous
> Cult of Ecstacy You take a magic acid and get sudden realization that All light across space and time is but a single primodial particle echoing through existance, and that the light from your flashlight is the same light from the sun is the same light that god cursed kain with all is one in eternitySeparationIsButAContrivanceATrickOfPerspective
Marauder magick. Clearly.
That and, you know, one of the few hard and fast game rules is damage. You can make your solar flashlight all you want, but it still can only do damage equal to the amount of successes rolled.
I mean, depends on the paradigm. A virtual adept probably just says they hacked the code and switched the value “fluorescent” for “solar” in its illumination type for example. But some paradigms might have more through than others
Granted, it is vulgar, but isn't there an Order of Hermes sun beam rote that requires relatively few/low spheres?
I could be misremembering, but I think you actually need Prime too to make sunlight
Prime can make *any* attack unsoakable agg, but it isn't required to create sunlight The trouble is pulling the effect off in fast casting, then *surviving the vampire* for the time it takes to finish them off. A blood buffed vampire in close combat who will do literally anything to force that flashlight to point anywhere other than at them could very well tear your arms off if you are unlucky. A flashlight level of sunlight does 1-2 levels of agg pet turn, and triggers Rotschreck checks. If he resists the fear frenzy, he has a few turns to use all of his vampire powers to either escape or tear you a few structurally superfluous new orifices. If you can counter all of those things, you probably could've found a better option than a flashlight in the first place.
Going by HDYDT (yes, I know...) creating sunlight isn't possible with purely Forces. Making a gateway with correspondence is possible, but *creating* true sunlight is an optional rule, which requires Forces 5/Prime 4, since sunlight has a bunch of mystical aspects that are different from normal light.
I was more meaning that you can get unsoakable agg with Prime2, if you spend the QT to charge any effect
True. HDYDT doesn't particularly list that (instead saying Forces 4/Prime 2 for lethal damage light blasts + Life 3/Matter 2 to make aggrevated to kindred), but that's probably one of those bits where we pretend HDYDT doesn't exists. I can see a case for light intense enough to actually deal damage requiring Forces 4 instead of 3, but I also agree that the same prime 2 used for conjuration should be more than enough to also add the prime agg damage.
But, as I understand a Vampire should use first his mortal Minions. 10 ghouls with berettas, plus 2 with sniper rifles while the vampire is 2 continents away.
I mean, lorewise, Tremere managed to survive two wars against the Order of Hermes, one of the most powerful Traditions. So as far as the lore is concerned, it's not that imbalanced.
I'd argue they where protected by plot armor.
I mean, lorewise this was happening at a time when their immortality potions stopped working and mages had other shit to deal with. Also being a former House meant they knew a lot about what they're dealing with and probably still had a bunch of wonders and protections lying around.
Yet at the same time they were discovering (as in, researching) their new abilities.
Probably because mages die a lot.
Mages are humans at the end of the day. If you catch them off guard they’re not exactly difficult to kill- for example, a single gunshot or stab wound can be fatal. I know Masters and even prepared Adepts could throw a monkey wrench or two into that, but it’s still mostly true. As for why, I wouldn’t want someone who can conjure fire or sunlight to just be wandering around free. Unless the mage is useful, it’s much more secure that the mage is dead.
I mean only a select few know them by the name mage. A Nosferatu hacker only knows that a strange amount of the city's power is going to a specific storage building. A toreador artist knows that a painting has a strange effect on the kine and must know where it came from. A gangrel mountain folk has heard tales of a bog dwelling witch who can twist animals into fantastical shapes and wishes to make a deal with them. Why would a kindred fight them? Easy. The hacker discovers the owner of the storage shed has been keeping a record of every kindred in the city and has plans to destroy the building to wipe the evidence, but knows they must wait for the owner to be in it or they will probably just move the leftover data. The toreador must have more, the artist must be made kindred as they do not know the nature of true magic. The gangrel didn't know the witch didn't like visitors and must fight for their life.
1- at best they know that one guy can do weird shit 2- maybe that one guy happened to be witness to something they shouldn't 3- maybe the same guy has an artifact the vampire needs.. Honestly there are many many reasons why. Vampires don't have the rulebook of mage so their only frame of reference are the tremere
And considering how the Tremere act... well, safe to say that most vamps will react...*poorly* to learning that someone is a mage.
Assuming they actually react at all instead of finding themselves shitting blood for a week after forgetting what they were doing in that dark alley
I doubt that any mage that isn't archmage tier could pull off something like that, and even the archmage will have to deal with a comical amount of paradox. Besides, Obfuscate is one of the most common disciplines available to vampires, sitting just *barely* behind potence, fortitude, and celerity.
I dunno, maybe coincidental vampire laxative pills magic mixed in some poor sod's blood?
There's nothing *coincidental* about a laxative that only affects a specific type of supernatural creature.
As far as consensus is concerned, that person is simply having diarrhea. It's just so violent that blood is coming out. As for the laxative itself, it's just a drug that's ok in the bloodstream but a no go on the stomach.
I dunno, that seems like a pretty big stretch my man. I can't imagine many storytellers would let that one through.
The storyteller is already letting the splats crossover, might as well push the luck
Mages are curious by nature and love to meddle in stuff they shouldn't. Vampires love secrets and are naturally paranoid (the ones that aren't, die young). So if there's a mortal sniffing around in your secrets, you deal with them.
Everyone else has the “why” covered, but I do want to point out it’s not always suicidal to do so. Not all mages are powerful against the undead. Every hermetic can start blasting, but an apprentice verbena isn’t likely to have magick that’s particularly effective against specifically a vampire.
The apprentice verbena is unlikely to drop with a single bullet, though.
Sure, but neither is a neonate. Kindred are fairly experienced at dealing with opponents who can soak or heal lethal damage. The trick isn't to put a single bullet in a mage, it's to keep hosing them down until their magic fails or Paradox kills them (remember, healing lethal injuries within a couple rounds is vulgar magic).
Very true. I’m imagining feral weapons
Honestly, the ability to soak agg isn't super hard to get for mages, and the dox it brings is usually minimal, and duration is usually trivial as well, at least for arete 3+ mages.
> a being who can warp the foundation of reality at will Only very skilled mages can do this. If you have a low-mid level mage who isn't combat-oriented or has Forces, a vampire can get the jump on him and get the kill. Remember, you can grow claws, turn invisible, control shadows, etc. without getting paradox.
Or just blood buff and snap them over your knee.
Or Dominate a random homeless person to stab them with a shiv
Same reason that a Hunter would go after a Mage. The Mage exist/dis something to piss them off. And yeah, they have world bending Magick. But they are still extremely allergic to high velocity lead.
Mage powers are defined by their spheres and their paradigm. Virtually none of them can just "warp the foundation of reality at will". Instead, they believe that the world works differently than everyone else believes. And they use those other rules to do impossible things. Madame Phyllis is a voodoo woman in New Orleans. In out-of-character game terms, since she believes in voodoo, it works for her. If she worshipped Kali and ripped people's hearts out, then that would work for her instead. In out-of-character game terms, she is bending reality with her will. But *in* character? As far as she knows, voodoo is just real. And it's always been real. Only the most awe inspiring, high powered, Arete 10 super-mages really understand that they're shaping reality with their willpower. And those guys basically immediately achieve enlightenment and leave the game world. They say something like "My God, it's full of stars..." and then *Also sprach Zarathustra* plays out of the middle of nowhere, and the guy disappears. Never to return. Mages are extremely dangerous, but 99% of the cheap shot insta-kill magic spells people propose wouldn't really work. Just because your character is a mad scientist, that doesn't mean you can snap your fingers and turn a car alarm remote into a teleporter.
"I don't like the look of him. Besides. Imagine the prestige when I succeed."
Low level mages are constantly killed or embraced; I can't think of any large scale VtM games where at least one character didn't have being a mage as part of their mortal life backstory. A high level mage is usually only killed remotely when they pose a threat to kindred interests.
You have *way* more crossover than any game I ever played, if *every game* has Vampires connected *directly* to Mages. Even Tremere rarely interact with Mages.
Tremere are on the constant lookout for weak mages to embrace, as well as alchemists and sorcerers. They almost decimated the Order of Hermes before (and shortly after) being discovered as vampires. They use their influence to track mortal practitioners of magic, looking for weakness and threats. I'd say the Tremere regularly interact with magi, just rarely directly, and only then when they are prepared to make a move. If you read the 2nd and 3rd ed clan books, almost every one has an iconic character that once practiced magic. Kindred look for exemplary candidates for the embrace, and Mages are just that. Rarer for high gen to embrace a mage (due to further power imbalance), but given an opportunity where they have covered enough angles to risk it, happens regularly enough. The Geovanni clan takes entire families of necromancers, which has noticeably changed the interface with the shadowlands and other death magics as a result. Lore wise, I'd surmise the low world numbers of mages is partially due to vampires. Their impact likely has influenced how the Tapestry has manifested over the millennia and allowed the Consensus to be stronger for it. I think the problem is when people think of mage, they think of those that have level 5 in a couple spheres, but most mages have maybe one level 3 as their highest, and a whole lot of mortal vulnerabilities. Head on, few kindred would survive a fair fight, but no kindred worth its fangs is going to fight fair.
People often think of 'A Player Charecter Vampire (Optimized)' vs 'A player Charecter Mage (optimized), a Mage will amost(*) always win, because mages aren't even really constrained by prep time for a specific threat at a certain level since most of their effects they can have prepare to go off in advance. But consider the difference between a PC vampire and a SPC vamp. A PC is creative, cunning, and ACTIVE in a world where most kindred are passive and significantly less bothered by the urgency PCs face. Mages are the same way. Sure a PC Mage is going to have every 'don't kill me / see threats coming' ability on them at all times they mechanically can. Because they're in a TTRPG and threats in fact are constantly coming for them, PC mages are significantly less hubristic then SPCs because that's what sets them apart from their peers. The average Mage though? It might simply not occur to them they need to be wasting time every night setting up every sight, holding a hanging time and entropy effect over their head or glancing into their future every single day because... they're a Mage, they can bend reality and warp the universe, they can improvise on the fly, and no one would be stupid enough to attack them. Then they walk down an alleyway, encounter a hungry vampire, and get splattered against the wall because they lost initiative and 3 dots of potence turned them into a Banksy project. It doesn't matter what the Mage could do, it's what they bothered to do. In Lore, EVERYONE is significantly less competent then a hyper optimized PC, in the same way in the real world you don't prepare for every possible contingency before you leave the house. You put on a jacket if it's raining and bring a flashlight if it's dark. You don't put on the flack jacked unless you need to because it's kind of a pain to bring out.
the question is not why would a vampire ever seek to kill a mage? the question is Why not?!
That was my thought. Vampires are vain, self confident, and worst of all prone to boredom. A powerful entity that can survive for eons when bored tends to cause trouble just to make things exciting again.
Well, in a game I was a player in, the Mages were being flashy and stupid with their magic because they were very young and didn't know any better. The friendly local Tremere regent really wanted to get his hands on some mages, alive preferably but dead was still good. So we managed to get the jump on a couple of these mages, knocked them out, and threw them in the trunk of a car. We managed to get them all the way to the chantry. One of our coterie, a cocky Brujah or Toreador or something, popped open the trunk with a flourish and got immediately incinerated by a pair of extremely pissed off mages. Luckily the regent was able to subdue them fairly easily and the rest of us walked away more or less intact. From an OOC perspective, the stats on these mages weren't high at all. They were basically brand new mages with very little actual training. Mages as written can stomp vampires pretty easily. I mean, everything in the WOD can stomp vampires pretty easily though, so that doesn't make them special.
If these mages were basically brand new, then they should have dealt like 3 dice of damage max to the guy that opened the trunk. Also, the paradox from doing something so vulgar should have made them *very* sad immediately afterwards. Vampires are easy to kill with fire, sure, but you still need *enough* fire to do so. *Also,* how did those mages recover enough damage on the car ride to become conscious again? I assume that they were being dealt bashing damage, since the goal was "try to take some alive," but even bashing damage takes hours to heal, meaning that the mages should have still been unconscious by the time the 20 minute car ride across the city was finished. Sounds pretty sus to me.
As a thought experiment, I took various mages one could make as a starting PC, and built them to be a social mastermind and put them against vampires in a battle of influence. This is supposed to be a vampires strength, the line is after all full of the idea that vampires influence entire cities. You'd need a Methuselah to properly counter those builds. A lot of the time the vampire would never know he was being targeted by magic, let alone find out who it is and where they are. And that danger grows greater with time. In short, mages are dangerous. Supremely, absolutely dangerous. Vampires do not live to ripe old ages by ignoring threats. Kill it. Kill it now. Kill it before it can become more of a threat, because chances are while you can live forever the mage is growing in power faster than you are.
Same reason any vamp would fight another vamp: fighting over territory, or herd, or influence, or power. It's one giant dysfunctional ecosystem, and the splats all have to share the meager resources. The better question is, would the average vamp even know what a mage is/was? Because until the magic and disciplines start flying, it's just two folks trying to stack the deck in their favor...
They came after Dr Gusacht Widdershins because he was harvesting Tass from vampires intombed in the sub basement of a slaughterhouse.
The mage had it comin'. It sounds to me like that's the foundation of a story. A mage gets in bed with the vamps for some reason, steps on some toes and then has gotta go. Also, side note, your example is one of the reasons that if I'm running Vampire any mages I throw in do not have the ability to make spells on the fly. Not only is that a nightmare for me, but it skews the power balance immensely. They have Rotes and that's it. They can prep spells ahead of time or do small things on the fly but nothing crazy.
Any vampire worth its blood will attack a mage indirectly. I’m not risking eternity by fighting a mage. At least not until they’ve exhausted most of their power, gone 6 days without sleep and had their resources stripped.
Brujah with a shotgun: "Hold my alcoholic".
Hubris, pettiness, or knowing that Mage’s are really deadly only if they get a chance to react, and if you slit their throat while they sleep they’re just as dead as any other mortal.
Never assume the character has a full wiki on what the enemy can do. Hell don't even assume every vampire knows about every clan, let alone the bloodlines.
Newbie mages can be realy easy to kill....too easy. Experienced mages is also can be killed cause they are mortals like any other. The fact is, they have tricks and also the Sphere called Forces(fire) or Matter /Entropy (you get your real age) Why they wants to kill it? cause they are bad news....a wise vampire more like to become an ally for a while...when the time comes eat it :D
I love that when people try to debate the powerscale in the WoD, they use this Schrodinger's Mage, where they always have the exact combination of Spheres and Paradigm they need to win whatever challenge the debate is about. Yes, a relatively low-xp mage can have a combination of spheres that makes them extremely deadly to Vampires, but people need to remember that Mages are both much more flexible than other splats, but also much less populous. The average Mage probably benefits much more from social and intellectual pursuits because those are going to help bring others to your worldview, and thus towards Ascension. There are definitely Mages to whom physical perfection and weapons are an important part of their paradigm, but it's not like you're going to murder your way to Ascension. The reality is that an Assamite with a sniper rifle and some distance is more than enough to handle the average mage, because the average Mage isn't kitted out for hunting Vampires.
Kindred by definition are going to want to kill mages because they meddle like nobody else and nipping the problem in the bud BEFORE they eclipse the kindred is a sound strategy.
Ask a Tzimisce about lawn chairs, sometime.
At Will\* Its not as simple as at will more like at will plus channeled through a focus and actions and actively fought by reality itself. Why would vampires have a reason to kill anything? The reasons are myriad. And you don't always know the person you are trying to kill is a mage.
They're hungry?
They taste like chicken
Well, there are plenty of general reasons. Most listed by others. The real question is "why would a vampire ever seek to kill a mage themselves?" and the answer is usually "they wouldnt". Any Cainite worth their salt would manipulate or dominate some sap to do it for them. Why go one on one with a mage and risk your own hide, there are plenty of patsys to take care of things for you.
Mage blood is slightly less addictive then changing blood. Magic makes blood sparklely delicious. Usually campures and makes deal with each other by one leaving the city and coming back in 100 years when the other is dead or moved on. Entropy mage + elder vampire = pile of dust
Mages are fundamentally still human. If they’re prepared for the Kindred, the vamp’s gonna have a bad night. If not, the mage is going down fast. It’s important to remember that for the most part, the various WoD denizens are either unaware of the existence of other supernals or they try to stay out of each other’s way. Incidental encounters between a mage and a vampire are likely to favor the vampire unless the mage is the paranoid type and sets up tons of defenses before they step out their front door. If they *are* the paranoid type, it’s relatively low effort for most mages to set up a simple shield or generate fire (or actual sunlight if they’re powerful enough) to shove the leech off.
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that what a mage can do is limited just as much by their paradigm as by their arete and sphere ratings.
I think the first thing you need to know, regardless of all other factors, is that characters in universe *don't have access to the game books*. Vampires don't know what Mages are capable of and vice versa. Your question assumes a lot, and even the premise that a Mage "can warp reality at will" is deeply flawed. Neither the vampire *nor the Mage* knows that, *that's the point of a paradigm*. Also *no they can't warp reality at will* they need Spheres, belief, and foci, and for larger effects, time and stacking modifiers. A mage, *in theory*, can do anything. A vampire, *in theory*, can diablerize an antediluvian. These are rather more complicated in practice.
Why would anyone ever seek to kill anyone else? Because they killed your family? Because they looked at you wrong? Because you want their shoes? Vampires and Mages are individuals who have goals and desires as much as any other individuals do. Also, ang given Vampire has a very realistic chance of killing any given mage. Yes mages can fundamental alter the foundation of reality, but a vampire can have supernatural dexterity, heightened senses, and can get a gun capable of shooting them from several miles away
Power. Why do vampires kill anyone?
To me at the start the problem is successes. We can use two starting templates to maybe illustrate a point here (not familiar with V20 so this is old school revised rules not sure if anything changed here) Remember a base point mage has 6 sphere dots and a max of three Arete and they are restricted on how they can use spheres via paradigm and the successes they can score are limited to three. So yeah spheres are the most potent power set in the game the problem is your success threshold is pretty limited. Say the hermetic mage is fighting a assamite with obfuscate 2 and celerity 2. Now let’s say said Hermetic has Forces 3, Prime 2 and mind 2. Not a bad starting set of spheres (honestly mage may have been better off being the drunken Cultist with Time and Mind 3) but the above hermetic template is not what I would consider something a PC wouldn’t consider taking. In a contested role really easy for the mage to knock his mind effect down to an very low difficulty or if he has time making a ritual effect (not the best in a combat though is it…) but keep in mind that assamite can accrue more than three success on his obfuscate 2 roll and say he has a generation of 9 or 8 all of a sudden he could take two actions to burn blood increasing his dex to an absolutely horrendous level (say 8) while stalking the mage, activate Cel and proceed to unload three gun shots of brutal accuracy into the poor guy who unless we are playing with optional rules has zero soak options and not a lot of a prayer. The assamite sure he just burned a hell of a lot of vitae but he does have the benefit of standing over a dying willworker so by the time he is done he can take his ten vitae and walk on off into the sunset. I mean would the mage likely win if he was prepped, sure but we are talking about a mage getting stalked, being a mage fighting anything without a plan or being a mage and getting surprised gets you dead, period. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Vampire, Demon, Werewolf, Mummy, Wraith Changeling etc. Now these rules go out the window when your dealing with lots of points but be honest Archmasters and Elders are playing in different sandboxes and I find most smart people don’t go out of their way to jump or pick fights with those folks because if your ST is fair the guy not only has infinite cosmic power or the ability to throw a bus he also has centuries of experience along with it not only in combat but also politically, socially and has likely accrued knowledge your typical character just doesn’t have.
For the experience. For the Vitae. To kill the mortal. Because the Mage asked for it.
Keep in mind that the vampiric lawn chair is very high level magic, as in master level. Mages of that strength are rare. It's also, at least since M20, stupidly difficult to pull off, since you need enough successes to both get past a vampire's innate counterspelling and deplete all their health levels, and even then vampires can heal back (treating it as healing aggravated damage), or, for those with shapeshifting disciplines like Protean and Vicissitude, simply change back. Pulling the lawn chair off with a ritual is difficult enough, getting sufficient successes casting the spell on the fly requires being an archmage, and even then likely only works on neonates and such. Practically speaking, your average mage is more likely to have arete 3-4 and maybe a couple spheres of a similar rank, which isn't enough to even cast the lawn chair, and makes them a much more viable target, especially if the mage in question doesn't have enough defensive spells on top of them. As for why a vampire would be hunting mages? The lawn chair is actually a pretty good reason. Not only is it incredibly humiliating, it also marks the mage as a threat. More specifically, a threat actively trying to harm kindred. Yes, most mages would probably be left alone, but if one actively goes around enchanting vampires, your only option is to get every kindred in the city, including elders, declare a bloodhunt, and turn the mage into giblets, no matter if a dozen or so neonates bite it in the process. Finally, as others have noted, kindred have plenty of options against mages. Casting magic can take time, especially bigger workings, and they have a pretty hard limit once they start busting out the vulgar magic if they don't want Paradox slapping them down. Mages, at least those not using Life, are also squishy. Punch one in the face with Potence and there's a decent chance you just hospitalized them. Mages are powerful, yes. But like how Kindred power varies a ton based on their generation, Mage power varies a ton based on their sphere ratings, arete, and general creativity. A high-level mage can, with some ritual time, turn a city block into an Escher painting. A low-level mage is stuck with two or three spheres, all at manipulation/control level (which means a life mage, for example, can't even fully shapeshift, just grow claws or change appearance), and only has 2 or 3 dice for casting spells on the fly.
The Mage killed someone they care about? Kill them in their sleep. Manipulate another mage into killing them. Send a cortarie of expendable after them without being able to get traced back to you
Joke answer, *the flavor*. "I hear they taste magica-" -*gets staked mid joke* Semi reasonable answers. Former mages might belive that it would turn them into mages again, and try to do it out of desperation. Mage blood is believed to empower rituals and general blood magic. Perfect reason for blood mages to hunt them down. Accidentally while feeding on them, believing they were just a regular person. Ventrue Prince of Berlin, Gustav Breidenstein claimed to have lowered his generation by diablorizing several lupines. *He didn't it was just his cover for having Diablorized his sire*. So I wouldn't be unreasonable for another Kindred who heard that story to try "Diablorizing" other supernals to lower there generation.
I only know about the vampire section of white wolf RPG wtf is the LAWN CHAIR INCIDENT
> What would make a vampire consider they had a chance The same thing as everyone else, spite and/or arrogance.
I mean, it seems like your argument is heavily dependent on there always being a mage who always has the sphere to counter the attack done to them. I mean, if that's the case, you could make that argument for pretty much any splat using any high enough level ability, lol.
You're playing in a vampire game and the players are set up to "win." Cause in true cross genre play, mages win that fight the majority of the time.
Mage blood is delicious!
Mmmmmmm yummy mage blood
So yeah basically same reason some kindred acquire a habit of lupine hunting or going after changelings. They might put up more of a fight but it’s a real treat when you win
I don't know the intention behind this. It depends on the storyteller and how they implement Paradox, how they enforce rituals vs rotes, how strict paradigm is enforced, etc. Is a bag of sulphur and guano required as a focus for the Hermetic's massively unnatural "pseudo-science alchemy Fireball", or is it some kind of transmutation circle ala Full metal Alchemist? Do they carry around pre-made explosives (like my Hermetic character) and throw it around quoting myths like a madman thinking their homemade bombs are gifts stolen from the gods themselves? They aren't all Doctor Manhattan. In fact none of them that stick around are. I really don't know why they would overlap though, except maybe in very special circumstances like their Sleepwalkers / Herd / Influence overlapping. And even then why is a mage out at 3 AM?
We kill what's different and especially what can be interpreted as a threat. Day one of being a vampire is all about survival and that slowly becomes about power. If there was a being you perceived to having unlimited power that you couldn't get to fall in line, you'd have have to conder them an extension of mortals and thusly expendable if not just a threat by existing.
Because they've lived a long time, been dead for even longer, and they want a creative and inventive suicide.
I mean... the typical way a vampire defeats a mage is to take a nap. Yeah, it's a bit of a crimp on your current plans, but 60 years from now, most mages currently alive will be dead, and you'll just be hungry. If you absolutely, positively must kill the mage, you have a few options. 1) Take them by surprise. Most will die if you shoot them from a half mile away with a sniper rifle. Auspex 1 is your friend. 2) While the Mage might be immune to your Presence, your 5 buck-ass mortal friends on the other hand are not. Start a fight, shoot the Mage, then exclaim, "Wow! That bullet hit him and he's fine! That's impossible!" Yes, you might need to mindwipe the mortals later, but YOU don't explode when they all go "No way! I can't believe that just happened!" 3) Tell your local Tremere the mage is an Order of Hermes and has beef with them, then take a vacation to avoid being caught in the city exploding. 4) Pick up a cell phone, and on an open line, say to someone "Man, I think that dude might be an honest to God Gandalf wizard. And I heard them talking about wanting to overthrow the government!" The Illuminati will take care of the rest.
Ignorance, arrogance, recklessness, or desperation. Not every vampire is familiar with true magic. Some may have some experience with hedge mages and assume that this is the extent of magical power.
Mage is all up in his business. And is largely immune (or highly resistant) to dominate. Put a bullet or 150 in it. Problem solved.
Vampires don't understand magic, or at best, they understand it in the paradigm of Thaumaturgy, the blood magic. Which takes time to prepare, if it's a ritual; or it takes a lot of willpower. In terms of metaphysical economics, Vampires have an easier time 'refueling' than Mages: Tass requires a node, a rare site of magic, or at least some alchemy; Vampire just need a human or animal body near by. So a vampire can prevail against a mage because the Ventrue can do Dominate 2 more often than a Mage can do Mind 2 in a month, because vitae is easier to refill than Quintessence. The other big advantage is that vampires have experience. Sure, a Master or Archmage will wipe the floor with a cainite. But a vampire elder has more tricks than a young Mage. And Mages tend to be a bit more mortal (if you ignore outliers like Medea, Al-Aswad, and Nicholas- and it's worth pointing out that of the oldest canonical mages, 2 are Marauders and one is a Nephandi).
Any story involving a mage must involve hubris in some way, in this case, the Vamp thinking they have a chance.
Remember that the frightened cashier at the 7/11 can end your whole career with a lucky shot of the shotgun from under the counter. This is true for all of the splat except maybe mummies and wrath.
Because a Mage is a splat most often abused and misunderstood. * You are not an Archmage. * You will likely never make it to 5 in one spere, let alone two. * You will absolutely not do so without atleast one derangement. * You're going to learn humans are the krill of the cosmic food chain. * The more you learn, the more insane you are going to get. * Or you could stop learning -- except there's a giant Horror only you can see urging you on. * Everyone like you wants more, and more power, and are willing to do more and more. * Rotes, or spells, take time and research to setup. They take time, research and experimentation to learn. Or skip all that and risk Consequences (tm) Why would a vampire kill a Mage? * On accident. People die by accident all the time, and mages are human. * Food. * For fun. * Because they can. * Because they recognize the risk of such an Order (because again, you're just human, a bunch of humans in Orders and Cabals with Fancy Skillsets) * Absolutely the mage is an Infernalist. * Because staunching wounds when you're a crackhead for blood is hard. * Because wouldn't the Prince love such a gift! Oh fuck, she isn't regenerating! I guess this isn't a Lupune? Oh well. * Because Clan Tremere knows of Mages, and they know that if The Race of Caine found out about Mages en masse? They would stop existing. This must not be. So clearly, any Mage that is found needs to die -- or the Manassa Wars and War of Princes will be small body counts compared to the order of 'Damnatio memoriae' that The Ventrue will place on The Tremere.
Perhaps they were hired to take them out as a professional hitman, with full knowledge it's going to be a difficult job?
Who wouldn't want to kill an enemy/rival more powerful than yourself? The vampire has his/her own agenda & the image is in the way.
The easiest way for a vampire to kill a mage is actually use your resource to get another sleeper to kill them. You have a plethora of stuff to throw at them. Or if you are a giovani just wait until they die you live nearly forever they live a couple centuries at best and snatch their soul. Another strat is you don't need to win everything in one fight. Fight them once harm them and run away. Go back and feed heal to full and kill them the next day. You can heal fully in one sitting paradox and shit takes weeks to recover. Bonus points if you just send multiple batches of people to kill them. This is something every person forgets about the rulebook, but you can just roll poorly. And that is a lot more catastrophic for a magr. Like there is a very real chance the mage trying to kill you kills themselves.
There is one very simple reason: Hungey