Rules Questions

I've got a question regarding a specific lore and thought I'd rather start a generic thread for us to check in on rules questions.

I feel like the system part of Forsee (the third level of the Lore of Patterns) doesn't really live up to the description.
Predict events and actions sound's very solid and also fitting to the two prior stages in my opinion, but the system part reduces it to combat situations... Does Demon allow to defer actions, if so, Foresee would basically be equivalent to always being the first - right?

I know this is not really a question yet, more a what do you think?

I run into the same problem with Lore of the Beast's Possess Animals. I can control the animals from miles away, but it only lasts Faith score turns. So it would be useless to try and use it as a means of, say, spying on someone. And in combat, how does that even work? "I am in my apartment and I possess the 5 animals closest to Billy Badguy, who I can't see and is 2 miles away"?

Demon the Fallen just has the disadvantage of being White Wolf's last system before they went under. They never got around to patching stuff like this up. And it's odd really. Lore of the Beast really comes close to Vampire's Animalism and they got it right there long before this version was even written.

Unfortunately, White Wolf had a habit of giving some of their powers very poetic or florid descriptions that didn’t always fit the mechanics. It’s something they improved upon but never really stopped doing.

Because this is pbp, I do initiative as a group (my experience with pbp is that individual initiative takes too long, and the Storyteller System already involves a lot of rolling). So during combat, either all the PCs go first or all the opponents. If you use this Lore, however, I’d let you act at any point during the opponent’s turn, whether they go before or after you. Yep, you could essentially use it to automatically give yourself the initiative every time.

And yes, you can delay your actions. It’s called a Yielding maneuver.

Actually, I feel like we should align and figure out use of many of the powers of the Lore of Patterns to get a nice story and not suffer too much from pbp restrictions.

Like, if I am not mistaken, while the system part seems to constrain to combat - in theory initiative is everywhere, isn't it? Sounds like I should, in theory, always be able to retrofit a post of my own to another... As in "Before the Tyrant says X, I do Y" as a response to X already being written down.
Do you agree? If you agree I would pledge to try hard not to misuse this and especially avoid making pbp any more difficult just because I can. I however believe, that we can indeed enrich the story while not over complicating things. It goes without saying that the storyteller can always decide otherwise in any given situation. What do you think?

I don't think a Fallen would keep any Lore power running constantly. Evoking a Lore is a serious act that channels Celestial energy, even if it does not expend temporary faith points. The act can also trigger Revelation in nearby mortals (at difficulty 10 if no faith points are spent, but if you do it constantly it's just a matter of time).

You are right, I'd need to have some idea something meaningful is about to happen within a matter of seconds - so that I activate it ahead of time (which is a must). This indeed is more likely to happen in combat, but the other powers of the Lore might just give me that kind of timing... As I said, I am not looking out for major misuse of powers, but rather on telling a story together. It just happens that he is an angel (a fallen one) that had insights and limited control over fate - that is going to be a part of the story.

The good (or bad) part of this - depending of how you see it - is that our storyteller should make sure that we need the power to see and control fate. ;)

But seeing that the power only works for a few seconds into the future it's hardly potent enough to steer a conversation. You can't even pronounce your last post in that time.

Casual Influence (Patterns 4) seems better suited for the purpose (also from a system perspective).

Yeah, might be, either way - the Lore of Patterns will lead to situations that need good handling on both my and the storyteller's side imho.

How do we determine the group initiative? Asking, because Ninsun, The Visage of Patterns has Improved Initiative, ...
Does that mean we do need to separate action announcements from any rolls being made? If I knew the result of actions (not only the intended results; i.e. I knew dice results before I decide where to hook into initiative) this would be well in the description of the power, but it does sound rather imbalancing for combat...

Is Linguistics only about speaking or does it cover reading and writing?

FWIW turn is more flexible than thought. In combat it's seconds, but can be minutes if not combat.

I have some house rules pertaining to combat, though I haven’t posted them yet.

The gist is that each person rolls initiative for combat. The PCs goes with whichever PC rolls the best initiative; that serves as the init for the entire PC group (so it’s still beneficial as an individual player to have Improved Initiative).

I also do the same thing for NPC opponents. An especially important NPC (such as an enemy boss) may get a separate initiative roll, as well.

Once initiative is determined, each group goes in order. When it’s the players’ turn, PCs will go in whoever order they post; no set init within the group. That allows people to post when they can and not have to wait for someone ahead of them to post (which can really hold up combat). After everyone in a single group has posted, then the next group goes, etc.

The second house rule is that initiative does NOT need to be re-rolled each round. Only once at the beginning of combat. That’ saves on rolling.

The third house rule is that actions do not need to be declared at the beginning of combat. You simply do what you want when it’s your time to act. No Abort maneuvers needed. From past experience, having to deal with declared actions and Abort maneuversjust caused headaches and led to additional rolling. That’s fine in a face to face game, but something I’d like to avoid for pbp.

It applies to reading and writing, as well.

@eldarin,
I’ll get back to you about the Lore question. I’m at work right now so I can only respond on breaks.

Sure thing @Tequila_Mockingbird. It won't have much influence on my character creation anyway. Lore of Patterns is going to be at three unless I can find the freebies to make it four. I am sure we'll find a way to handle this lore for the best of the story.

I would just throw it out there that there are certain problems that tend to arise with any game that gives the players foreseeing abilities.

I've ran into it myself as a GM with the Star Wars RPG most recently.

And that problem is, ofc, the GM can't actually see the future, and railroading the story toward any single future is anathema to the whole experience anyway.

And so what you tend to arrive at with such powers is it requires 1. a high degree of collaboration between the player and the GM (and even the other players), 2. a high degree of understanding/accommodating these shortcomings on the players part (i.e. not expecting the GM to really actually be able to give them certainties), and 3. probably a lot of "flashbacks" to the foreseeing: "You remember from your visions that THIS THING comes into play here and now."

Such powers can be really difficult and annoying to have to try to play to, as a GM and even as other players, if the player using them doesn't understand and accept and willingly work within these limitations.

Mechanizing the implications for combat is the easy part.

It's the narrative patterns that make that Lore difficult to use.

From a cursory read of the book, it seems Lore of Longing and Lore of Transfiguration are redundant. Uhm.

I think that I am well aware of and able to work with limitations that arise.

On the flip side this is a Demon game where the power levels can edge on the absurd. So you are free to get creative with the implications of such powers. Meddling with fate and the future opens pandora's box on all the time travel tropes. Except you can't go back to fix it and you have to live with the implications of the changed future. This is also implied in the power of Casual Influence. It shows you the most likely fate of a person, place or event barring outside influence. But it doesn't show the wider picture of what meddling with said fate does. Now it doesn't have to be bad (far from it, it should be a useful power, not a punishment), but sometimes the best of intentions have the worst results. And this is a World of Darkness game, so we're not expected to win....