Breaking a GM. VtM questions

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 03:54pm

OK, so a friend and I have taken it upon ourselves to join the campaign of a complete dickhead that we know and break him and his game horribly.

The concept for the game is that we are playing Sabbat Inquisition members. Yeah, that's right. One of the 15 of them that there are in the world. That's how stupid this GM is.

Now, after a lot of careful thought, we've decided on taking a pair of Web of Knives Assamites who have been tasked with the infiltration and destruction of the Inquisition following the killings of several Alamut loyalist blood sorcerors who were wrongly accused of Infernalism. And the stupid bloody moron GM has allowed it.

So - aside from the obvious Alternate Identity *****, what else should we invest in? Just so you know, the build points for a Web of Knives is 10/7/5 for stats, 20/18/12 for skills, 10 backgrounds, 10 disciplines (with all Assamite disciplines considered clan and nearly every other discipline available), and 20 Freebies. There are some hardcore minimums required for all combat and mental stats, but I don't think that should be a problem.

So anyone got recommendation for scary combo disciplines or anything like that?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2005-11-15 04:07pm

What does "complete dickhead" mean?

Brian

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 04:10pm

Fuckwad. Moron. Arsehole. Dipshit. Idiot. Crapbag. Wanker. Shitwipe. Tosser. Hatfucker. Cretin.

And so on.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2005-11-15 04:23pm

My first reaction was that people who join games to ruin them are "complete dickheads". But after thinking about it, I don't know your guy and if you say he's an asshole he probably is and deserves what he gets.

If it was D20 I could help you, I would honestly help you if I could, sorry for the trolling.

Brian

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-11-15 04:34pm

You definetley want Iron Will to avoid any dominate, maybe unbondable to avoid blood bonds and pump up points in celerity. Nothing makes combat more ridiculous than some fucknut with 5 or more in Celerity splitting his dice pool further with extra actions and will power points for auto sucesses making it a Vampiric cuisinart in action.

It gets to the point where the GM is forced to create high celerity opposition to try and stop you. I mean how many kindred could have a 5 or higher in Celerity in one city?? I used to viciously restrict how high people could go in Celerity as it is IMHO one of the most unbalancing disciplines in combat.

Also Presence. A 5 in Presence means no one can fuck with you and on top of that IIRC it ignores Generation limitations so its better than DOminate on so many levels. Make your enemy lick your bootheels and love doing it.

And if you really want to mess with his carefully crafted NPC's just start diabolizing them all. I never allowed Sabbat games and one of the many many reasons was because of the simple reason that there just isn't a restriciton on Diablerie. In Camarilla campaigns you at least have humanity penatlies on top of Camarilla opposition to it meaning that if you indulge in a little Amaranth your character can be subjected to FInal Death at the Prince's Will. No such restrictions among the shovel heads. And that leads to the most awful aspect of a Sabbat game.

Paths of Enlightenment.

Ignore humanity - choose a path that allows you to do the most heinous things imagnable, in fact you would be penalized if you didn't become a monster. I believe there are even rules to making your own Path of Enlightenment. Do so. And make it something so grandly attrocious that you can do no wrong.

DM: "What do you mean you just used high explosives - you're under a school?!"

"My path of Fiery Revelations requires me to use HE anywhere near innocents. It would be a sin and thus a path penalty if I didn't."

Paths suck. And they were illegal in my games as well. There's no personal horror in a Sabbat campaign and alot of GM's and especially players forgot that the game was about personal horror, slipping in humanity and closer to the beast. Its not supposed to be superheroes with fangs.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-11-15 04:58pm

Potence, potence, potence. While celerity is nice for avoiding some things, autodamage is simply fucking scary. With a enough potence you could easily cripple someone using celerity on you with one good roll.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-11-15 05:05pm

General Zod wrote:Potence, potence, potence. While celerity is nice for avoiding some things, autodamage is simply fucking scary. With a enough potence you could easily cripple someone using celerity on you with one good roll.

See that's where I have to disagree. The Potence using kindred gets one strike against the Cleerity using kindred. Say each have a five in theri discipline. The Potence using kindred gets 5 auto sucesses on top of whatever damage he rolls on strength - once. The Celerity using kindred gets five hits on the Potence using kindred and if he decides to split his actions for even more hits you get the old one big hit or five or more smaller hits in one round. I prefer taking the five or more individual hits than one hit that could hurt.

Granted if you have a high celerity + high potence kindred then Jesus that's just insta-Final Death on feet.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-11-15 05:06pm

Seriously, what the fuck? What happened to just not playing in games like this? Why take things to an utterly retarded level and try to destroy everything? If the guy is a newb GM, this shit will put him off from trying to improve. If he's an asshole, here's a thought: Don't waste your time, and just don't play. If he asks why, TELL HIM WHAT YOU THINK HE'S DOING WRONG.

Maybe there's more to this than what I'm seeing, but I always get a bit prickly when this subject comes up, being a GM myself, and having gone through several of the many stages of development.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-11-15 05:18pm

Stravo wrote:
General Zod wrote:Potence, potence, potence. While celerity is nice for avoiding some things, autodamage is simply fucking scary. With a enough potence you could easily cripple someone using celerity on you with one good roll.
See that's where I have to disagree. The Potence using kindred gets one strike against the Cleerity using kindred. Say each have a five in theri discipline. The Potence using kindred gets 5 auto sucesses on top of whatever damage he rolls on strength - once. The Celerity using kindred gets five hits on the Potence using kindred and if he decides to split his actions for even more hits you get the old one big hit or five or more smaller hits in one round. I prefer taking the five or more individual hits than one hit that could hurt.

Granted if you have a high celerity + high potence kindred then Jesus that's just insta-Final Death on feet.

Possibly, but outside of Toreador and Brujah, you just aren't going to find that many skilled celerity users (short of horribly twinking the system). Up against most all other vampires, Potence is going to be more than enough. Especially if you happen to have one or two levels of celerity (which with potence 4 and up is all you need for the most part).

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-11-15 05:25pm

General Zod wrote: Possibly, but outside of Toreador and Brujah, you just aren't going to find that many skilled celerity users (short of horribly twinking the system). Up against most all other vampires, Potence is going to be more than enough. Especially if you happen to have one or two levels of celerity (which with potence 4 and up is all you need for the most part).

I think one of the Assamite clan disciplines is Celerity so it works for Ando on that level. But yeah the Celerity abusing players tended to play Brujah in my games.

On another issue regaridng disciplines and game play Auspex was annoying on a plot point level where you had to account for the fact that a Torreador or Malkavian player could simply read auras or get psychic impressions from some of your carefully crafted clues. Early on I had some real issues accounting for Auspex in my early games.

I have nearly zero experience with Thaumaturgy as none of my players ever wanted to play Tremere and whenever I used Tremere NPC I just made the shit up as I went along. I have a feeling though that high level Thaumaturgy can be a bitch to GM.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-11-15 06:00pm

Stravo wrote: I think one of the Assamite clan disciplines is Celerity so it works for Ando on that level. But yeah the Celerity abusing players tended to play Brujah in my games.

On another issue regaridng disciplines and game play Auspex was annoying on a plot point level where you had to account for the fact that a Torreador or Malkavian player could simply read auras or get psychic impressions from some of your carefully crafted clues. Early on I had some real issues accounting for Auspex in my early games.

I have nearly zero experience with Thaumaturgy as none of my players ever wanted to play Tremere and whenever I used Tremere NPC I just made the shit up as I went along. I have a feeling though that high level Thaumaturgy can be a bitch to GM.

Having played tremere a number of times, Thaum isn't all that problematic. Just like most other disciplines, but with a few more stats to work with, and more stuff you can do with it. Though probably the biggest key is not to let players grow too quickly or you run into the "Superman" problem of creating storylines, from what I've seen. Also the problem with running high-level campaigns, oddly enough.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 06:02pm

Hotfoot wrote:Seriously, what the fuck? What happened to just not playing in games like this? Why take things to an utterly retarded level and try to destroy everything? If the guy is a newb GM, this shit will put him off from trying to improve. If he's an asshole, here's a thought: Don't waste your time, and just don't play. If he asks why, TELL HIM WHAT YOU THINK HE'S DOING WRONG.

Maybe there's more to this than what I'm seeing, but I always get a bit prickly when this subject comes up, being a GM myself, and having gone through several of the many stages of development.

This GM is a dickhead who believes that they are highly intelligent and better than most. I've been forced to game with them for a great many years due to the limited size of the gaming community down here.

You tell him he's doing something wrong, either as a player or a GM and he'll give you a list of 100 reasons (all wrong) as to why he isn't.

He's an experienced GM with a history of making stupid decisions...
example: WW2 era Werewolf game. SOE run pack infiltrates Czechoslovakia and encounters a Tzimisce. Tzimisce begins monologuing. 3 puppies burn a lot of rage and rip him apart before he finishes the first sentence.

example: Starting assamite and a gangrel infiltrate a Tremere chantry and take out a 7th gen aged Tremere. Who doesn't even have a defensive ritual in place.

example: Allowing a Prince, along with his archon and goons who should know far better to walk right into a blatant ambush.

example: TAKING THE SAME FUCKING CHARACTER IN EVERY FUCKIGN GAME EVER. "Its like Indiana Jones crossed with James Bond, but in [DnD, WHFRP, VtM, CoC, ConX etc]..." but lacking even a tiny percentage of the wit and intelligence to carry such a character.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-11-15 06:04pm

That sounds like quite possibly one of the twinkiest GMs i've seen in awhile. Ever consider resorting to strictly online gaming since it seems he's so bad?

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 06:05pm

My current lineup for Disciplines:

Celerity ****
Potence **
Obfuscate **
Protean **
Quietous (to be bought)
Fortitude (to be bought)

That means 4 unmodified brawl actions a round, dealing 2 auto Aggravated damage, in addition to whatever else...

That's without playing with Freebies (or putting AGE into the character, which I'm tempted to do).

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2005-11-15 06:08pm

If you have access to the clanbook you can also find some twinky combo displines too. I always wanted to know just what was wrong with the standard discpline fair. I mean how many vampires in myth had diamond hard skin or could change into a fucking mythic animal -- Yes, the Gangrel clanbook had a high level Protean ability for a kindred to become a mythic animal of his culture so an Egyptian Gangrel could become a Sphinx, etc. Except Americans. We have no cultural mythical animal so none were allowed. A little ingenuity on the WW writing staff could have given Americans Big Foot for fuck's sake.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 06:26pm

General Zod wrote:That sounds like quite possibly one of the twinkiest GMs i've seen in awhile. Ever consider resorting to strictly online gaming since it seems he's so bad?

Thankfully we excised him from our group a while ago when we merged with another one. But a recent recruit (with a shitload of gaming experience) wants to "experience" his GM stylem, and seeing as this fuckwad has been pissing me off as late I decided to join in too.

Just as a note, the greatest line to do with this guy:

Stargate game, the team has met a culture that seems similar to a Polynesian one. Dickhead (aka Cookie) is playing an "Indiana Jones type archaeologist, like Dr Jackson but less geeky"... Yeah. Uhuh. Anyhow - their first encounter with them, before even determining allegiance or really introducting themselves...

Chieftain of village: "So, who are you visitors if you are not emissarys of K'Tala?"
Cookie: "We're members of a program called Stargate Command, from the planet Earth, home of the Taurii [continues on for about a minute]."
Chris (CO of the team): "Just because they asked you a question, doesn't mean you give them classified information."

That about sums up the stupidity of this guy.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-11-15 06:32pm

Stravo wrote:If you have access to the clanbook you can also find some twinky combo displines too. I always wanted to know just what was wrong with the standard discpline fair. I mean how many vampires in myth had diamond hard skin or could change into a fucking mythic animal -- Yes, the Gangrel clanbook had a high level Protean ability for a kindred to become a mythic animal of his culture so an Egyptian Gangrel could become a Sphinx, etc. Except Americans. We have no cultural mythical animal so none were allowed. A little ingenuity on the WW writing staff could have given Americans Big Foot for fuck's sake.

The guy I'm teaming up with (we're both taking Web of Knives) has EVERY Vampire book except for Assamite clanbook, which we've borrowed from someone else in our gaming group. We're going to be going through all of them to twink these babies out something horrific. Not to mention taking supernatural allies from Mummy, Wraith, Demon etc (which he also owns all of - not to mention the really obscure stuff like Orpheus).

Our efforts to break this GM are going to be truly impressive. And if he doesn't like the Web of Knives chars when we present them, we're building a pair of Daughters of Cacophony as a backup.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-11-15 06:46pm

Have it be a crossover game, and have someone play as a Maurader from Mage. That should be fun.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-11-15 07:55pm

Want to fuck with someone's head? Take a Changeling. Yes. The Bitches of WoD.

Redcap Kith.

5 Manipulate, 3 Intimidate. With an 8 dice pool, with a difficulty of your opponent's Willpower - 1, you can duplicate Dominate without expending anything. Bully Browbeat power.

You also have a Strength + 2 Bite for Agg damage. To remove the restriction on paying to use it, pick up the Seeming's Blessing and Regeneration merits.

To round it off, Wayfare 2(Wits + Actor(Should be put at 5)), each success is +1 action per round until end of scene, and Pyretics 1, to be raised(Or raise it yourself; you want Pyretics 4, AKA, generate fire on a whim).

Invest background points in Remembrance and have a fairly high Glamour and low Banality.

Enter combat. Activate Dragon's Ire and Wayfare 2 for between 2 and 10 additional attacks. Use Bite each round. Throw in some Swallow Whole attempts to consume your opponent's outright in one hit, if you like, or just Remove Limb.(Swallow Whole: 3 successes on a Diff 8 roll to swallow a human size foe while grappled. Remove Limb: 3 successes on a Diff 6 while grappled, or 5 successes while not)

Chomp chomp chomp.