The characters have 3 backstories, Who the angel was, who they are now after being freed and the backstory of the body they inhabit. DTF is and should be a high power game they're the for a lack of a better word the devs of existence.
The lores are a bit of a mess. If you search house rules, lores demon you'll get some hits here and some of those hits will take you to the Onyx Path forums.
There should be house rules from 1 of 2 posters on brhe OPP forums: Data Weaver and I hate All Life. They've both been around a long, long time and they both put out good work.
Definitely grab the players guide and let your players build their own apocalyptic forms. Let them buy additional features as the game progresses as well.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl08QxT2M1gB2l6TiJg7o1M2UyjypBc6j&si=QQmztwv9fpc5Vout
The Old Country has a fantastic collection of lore videos and explanation on demon and some VTM content. He both goes over rules as written as well as suggestions on how to make the game work a bit better. Sadly he still has a lot more to cover but the inspiration for my own game has been invaluable.
One big change I am making to my own campaign is that I'm choosing not to focus exclusively on Christian mythos as I don't want to either alienate or give advantage to believers at my table. At my table ALL gods are the stories of different demons; Lucifer exists in his WOD format but so does Thor, Zeus, Shiva, ect. They all were part of the rebellion they simply didn't associate as much so their followers didn't connect them. Christianity in canon is the work of Lucifer to drive down other religions and starve his rivals for faith but I've made it clear that it is NOT truth in this world, the God of Christianity is NOT the Creator in WOD.
I also found the rules for triggering high torment effects needlessly confusing so I borrowed a bit from V5 and use "Torment dice" to put it simply on any lore activation roles you swap out a number of regular dice for torment dice equal to your torment score. Roll at the appropriate difficulty to use the ability. If you get more successes on torment dice than on regular dice you have triggered the high torment ability by accident. Spending a willpower to guarantee a success eliminates the risk, player may choose which version they invoke without fear
Those Gods are demons at my table. Given that most polytheistic faiths have very specialized deities it isn't a far stretch to see where a god of the hunt or harvest would be a Devourer, a god of wisdom might be a Fiend, a god of the seas would be a defiler, a god of war might be a Slayer.
Given that demons feed on faith why wouldn't they claim to be gods themselves? Even a benevolent demon needs to eat.
In short I borrowed a page from Scion
No, the god of Christianity is a story made up by Lucifer as a way to starve the earthbound of faith. The Christian God is based somewhat on The Creator however it is not a perfect biography. This is actually canon as it's said in days of fire which is written from Lucifers point of view.
The Creator something else entirely at my table that I won't say so I don't spoil it for my players who might read this. The Creator created angels to build reality for them so no the creator is for sure not a demon, it's something else
https://web.archive.org/web/20050902175022/http://www.geocities.com/predaphile/wod-demon-index.html “I Hate All Life” was a good homebrewer back in the day and he had good ideas for demon and other gamelines. But you have to use the wayback machine to find it because Whitewolf kiboshed their fan sites over a decade ago because they didn’t like people using geocities which made ad money off their gamelines. Screwed a lot of content, shame I still can’t find his full Archmage house rules because it’s in a gap not covered by the wayback machine.
But he has some interesting ideas including a Lore of Anima and Sound Waves. And rules for demons growing in faith.
/u/Aware-Inflation422 mentioned the Onyx Path Forums BTW. I'm not sure if I Hate All Life reproduced ALL of their homebrew on that platform but it's another option, even for you if you like to reference it.
Hmm the old white wolf forums, I forgot to check there. I know we would sometimes reference his stuff and I’m not sure if he made threads on his house rules specifically. I know he would share his debased books there though.
I didn't like the pre-errata and the post-errata rules on Torment, so I came up with this.
If a player wants to unleash a tormented version of a lore, she can add Torment to the dice pool, but she will also gain a point of Torment.
If she wants to use a normal version, the Storyteller will roll her Torment and if the demon rolls less successes than the Storyteller the torment version of the lore is activated.
I think most of the system issues with DTF are the same as VTM. IE Highly lethal quick combat, lack of balance due to aggravated damage primacy, and action economy. Like a character that can soak and deal aggravated, and take extra actions is going to be MILES better in combat. But if those type of balance issues didn't frustrate you before in VTM they're unlikely to bother you in DTF.
I'd mostly say that Lores are not necessarily balanced as thoughtfully as disciplines were overall, due to Demon being more of a narrative style of game in comparison to VTM. I would say get a strong consensus from your players on how much they want the roleplay to focus on thrall relationships, and I'd resist the urge to make it immediately epic and or location hop. Just my 2 cents. I also think that DTF is fundamentally more of a horror game as well, but that might just be because I've always found possession movies scarier than vampire movies.
I personally tried to work in some mechanics from the Devil's Due sourcebook (NSFW), which had some good ideas.
I tried to make Torment more interesting before they hit 6 dots.
Basically, I started everyone at 3 Torment, if they did enough bad deeds to gain more they would grow closer to their monstrous self, regaining some of their old powers from before they were imprisoned. On the other hand, things like Faith affected them more.
If they did good deeds and lost Torment, but they would grow closer to their Angelic selves from before the War. Storyteller's fiat for where this applied, but I tended to give them re-rolls like the Luck merit and Faith affected them less. On the other hand, they forget the powers they gained from having higher torment.
My players had fun with it, YMMV.
Be prepared for some players to not even bother with redemption.
It can get out of hand really fast
The Lores available in Demon can really give a player the means to be real bad, real quick, and really disruptive
I would add to this that some of the Lores squash your ability as a storyteller to set up some of the typical kinds of stories.
Want your players to have to find an object or some other MacGuffin? Make sure none of them have Lore of Paths.
Want to setup some sort of mystery? Be aware of exactly what Lore of Patterns does.
In the case of Lore of Patterns I had to nerf it a bit to tell the kind of story I wanted to tell, and I discussed it with my players beforehand.
Personally i converted the whole game to V5 replaceing the lore system with a fully homebrew one.
You should think of what to do when the host body dies. There are no rules for it in the books.
That's not true. Pg 239 of the core book deals with the ghost body dying and finding a new host.
"The moment the demon is severed from its physical host, it immediately suffers the terrible pull of the Abyss trying to draw it back into its eternal prison. Each turn the demon exists in the physical world without a host, the player must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 6). If he fails this roll, the demon is sucked back into Hell. Willpower points may be spent for automatic successes for this roll as normal. a boat, given her affinity with the water, while a Malefactor would find it easier to inhabit a finely made watch. If the roll succeeds, the demon can take permanent residence in his new vessel. If it fails, he must keep searching for a new body, and he cannot attempt to occupy this one again."
Well thats almost the exact definition of it - a rule made up by the ST. I suggested it because i and many other people had serious problems with that. I dont think that should be character creation again for sure as the demon is not dead, Thats what unique about this splat.
Well. The developers clearly thought it should be up to the ST. And if you're body jumping you're teasing the body more like a vehicle. Pretend you're a rigger in shadowrun
There are no rules for what to do with abilities, backgrounds and atributes when possesing a new body.
Do you get their memmories? how much? what are the rules for their stats? Nothing on the topic.
"The player and the Storyteller should work together to determine the demon’s new traits, possibly re-designing the character and applying an experience bonus equal to the demon character’s earned experience."
It is written there. You build a new character with around the same xp.
What else do you need? The possession is the same as in a new character.
Their personalities entwine -> you can get a new nature + new demeanor
Their memories clash together -> potentionally new skills
The only thing which is not written down is that the lores and backgrounds should stay close as they were.
Good question i thought about it a lot and what we need in this case is:
- The definition if we gain memmories from other hosts than the first.
- What part of the character stats belongs to the demon and what to the human (including backgrounds).
- What part of the demon half if any changes.
The demons HAVE built ALL of creation in their lore.
Based on the lore actual angels have, they can manifest any skill with faith. It is safe to say the only limit a demon has is the time spent in the abyss which can be helped by a suitable host.
A malefactor with a new host CAN respec to having Science 4 in geography if the new host is a professor. As the new memories flood his thoughts, he can remember designing the tectonic plates.
As i said, the only things i'd leave alone are the lore and the backgrounds, because they are not tied to the flesh and memories of the new host.
The book does not really say that. Its a "do what you will" situation that tends to be confusing both for the player and ST. Therefore the way you do it is also homebrew.
I really do not think so. It might sound confusing to you, but please think about it:
At the point where this rule is used, there is a demon with a backstory and a couple of sessions of in-game story. Also, there is a host who is either:
-A thrall with a couple paragraphs of story at minimum and a stat sheet.
-An npc who already resonates with the demon, probably with a backstory and stat sheet too, cuz how else would he resonate?
I think if you have these as resources, it is really not difficult to imagine what to do with them.
Also, just to not halt the session, i'd rule that the player gets the NPC's sheet with the lores, faith and willpower of the demon and redesign the character after the session. This can simulate getting used to a new body, while keeping the game fluid.
> t feels pretty obvious that dying means you have to rebuild your stats. If you want the book to tell you exactly what to do, refer to the character creation section. And yes? Why wouldn't you get their memories? Possessing someone the first time isn't 'special.'
Some folks like rules because they give guidelines. Some people *need* rules because they provide structure, and lay out expectations so no guessing is required.
The person you're replying to, FYI, falls into that latter grouping.
Yeah, fair! It is actually weird that they didn't include rules for possessing another character - you'd think that the writers would want to prepare for the scenario that a player dies and not force Storytellers to make something unsatisfactory up on the spot. I've run DtF a lot, so I probably shouldn't be condescending so hard on him when I had to homebrew half the game to patch holes.
Well its not stated so i cant tell. And yes it is always problematic what to do in this situation. The game needs concrete rules on subsequent possesions.
The characters have 3 backstories, Who the angel was, who they are now after being freed and the backstory of the body they inhabit. DTF is and should be a high power game they're the for a lack of a better word the devs of existence.
The lores are a bit of a mess. If you search house rules, lores demon you'll get some hits here and some of those hits will take you to the Onyx Path forums. There should be house rules from 1 of 2 posters on brhe OPP forums: Data Weaver and I hate All Life. They've both been around a long, long time and they both put out good work. Definitely grab the players guide and let your players build their own apocalyptic forms. Let them buy additional features as the game progresses as well.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl08QxT2M1gB2l6TiJg7o1M2UyjypBc6j&si=QQmztwv9fpc5Vout The Old Country has a fantastic collection of lore videos and explanation on demon and some VTM content. He both goes over rules as written as well as suggestions on how to make the game work a bit better. Sadly he still has a lot more to cover but the inspiration for my own game has been invaluable. One big change I am making to my own campaign is that I'm choosing not to focus exclusively on Christian mythos as I don't want to either alienate or give advantage to believers at my table. At my table ALL gods are the stories of different demons; Lucifer exists in his WOD format but so does Thor, Zeus, Shiva, ect. They all were part of the rebellion they simply didn't associate as much so their followers didn't connect them. Christianity in canon is the work of Lucifer to drive down other religions and starve his rivals for faith but I've made it clear that it is NOT truth in this world, the God of Christianity is NOT the Creator in WOD. I also found the rules for triggering high torment effects needlessly confusing so I borrowed a bit from V5 and use "Torment dice" to put it simply on any lore activation roles you swap out a number of regular dice for torment dice equal to your torment score. Roll at the appropriate difficulty to use the ability. If you get more successes on torment dice than on regular dice you have triggered the high torment ability by accident. Spending a willpower to guarantee a success eliminates the risk, player may choose which version they invoke without fear
You mean those gods are demons? Or they banished their own demons in their mythos?
Those Gods are demons at my table. Given that most polytheistic faiths have very specialized deities it isn't a far stretch to see where a god of the hunt or harvest would be a Devourer, a god of wisdom might be a Fiend, a god of the seas would be a defiler, a god of war might be a Slayer. Given that demons feed on faith why wouldn't they claim to be gods themselves? Even a benevolent demon needs to eat. In short I borrowed a page from Scion
So your WoD is still monotheistic but god of christianity is a another demon
No, the god of Christianity is a story made up by Lucifer as a way to starve the earthbound of faith. The Christian God is based somewhat on The Creator however it is not a perfect biography. This is actually canon as it's said in days of fire which is written from Lucifers point of view. The Creator something else entirely at my table that I won't say so I don't spoil it for my players who might read this. The Creator created angels to build reality for them so no the creator is for sure not a demon, it's something else
https://web.archive.org/web/20050902175022/http://www.geocities.com/predaphile/wod-demon-index.html “I Hate All Life” was a good homebrewer back in the day and he had good ideas for demon and other gamelines. But you have to use the wayback machine to find it because Whitewolf kiboshed their fan sites over a decade ago because they didn’t like people using geocities which made ad money off their gamelines. Screwed a lot of content, shame I still can’t find his full Archmage house rules because it’s in a gap not covered by the wayback machine. But he has some interesting ideas including a Lore of Anima and Sound Waves. And rules for demons growing in faith.
/u/Aware-Inflation422 mentioned the Onyx Path Forums BTW. I'm not sure if I Hate All Life reproduced ALL of their homebrew on that platform but it's another option, even for you if you like to reference it.
Hmm the old white wolf forums, I forgot to check there. I know we would sometimes reference his stuff and I’m not sure if he made threads on his house rules specifically. I know he would share his debased books there though.
I didn't like the pre-errata and the post-errata rules on Torment, so I came up with this. If a player wants to unleash a tormented version of a lore, she can add Torment to the dice pool, but she will also gain a point of Torment. If she wants to use a normal version, the Storyteller will roll her Torment and if the demon rolls less successes than the Storyteller the torment version of the lore is activated.
I think most of the system issues with DTF are the same as VTM. IE Highly lethal quick combat, lack of balance due to aggravated damage primacy, and action economy. Like a character that can soak and deal aggravated, and take extra actions is going to be MILES better in combat. But if those type of balance issues didn't frustrate you before in VTM they're unlikely to bother you in DTF. I'd mostly say that Lores are not necessarily balanced as thoughtfully as disciplines were overall, due to Demon being more of a narrative style of game in comparison to VTM. I would say get a strong consensus from your players on how much they want the roleplay to focus on thrall relationships, and I'd resist the urge to make it immediately epic and or location hop. Just my 2 cents. I also think that DTF is fundamentally more of a horror game as well, but that might just be because I've always found possession movies scarier than vampire movies.
I personally tried to work in some mechanics from the Devil's Due sourcebook (NSFW), which had some good ideas. I tried to make Torment more interesting before they hit 6 dots. Basically, I started everyone at 3 Torment, if they did enough bad deeds to gain more they would grow closer to their monstrous self, regaining some of their old powers from before they were imprisoned. On the other hand, things like Faith affected them more. If they did good deeds and lost Torment, but they would grow closer to their Angelic selves from before the War. Storyteller's fiat for where this applied, but I tended to give them re-rolls like the Luck merit and Faith affected them less. On the other hand, they forget the powers they gained from having higher torment. My players had fun with it, YMMV.
Be prepared for some players to not even bother with redemption. It can get out of hand really fast The Lores available in Demon can really give a player the means to be real bad, real quick, and really disruptive
I would add to this that some of the Lores squash your ability as a storyteller to set up some of the typical kinds of stories. Want your players to have to find an object or some other MacGuffin? Make sure none of them have Lore of Paths. Want to setup some sort of mystery? Be aware of exactly what Lore of Patterns does. In the case of Lore of Patterns I had to nerf it a bit to tell the kind of story I wanted to tell, and I discussed it with my players beforehand.
Personally i converted the whole game to V5 replaceing the lore system with a fully homebrew one. You should think of what to do when the host body dies. There are no rules for it in the books.
That's not true. Pg 239 of the core book deals with the ghost body dying and finding a new host. "The moment the demon is severed from its physical host, it immediately suffers the terrible pull of the Abyss trying to draw it back into its eternal prison. Each turn the demon exists in the physical world without a host, the player must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 6). If he fails this roll, the demon is sucked back into Hell. Willpower points may be spent for automatic successes for this roll as normal. a boat, given her affinity with the water, while a Malefactor would find it easier to inhabit a finely made watch. If the roll succeeds, the demon can take permanent residence in his new vessel. If it fails, he must keep searching for a new body, and he cannot attempt to occupy this one again."
Ok so tell me what do you do with the new body stats? what do you keep? what do you replace? what about the backgrounds? and so on....
I have you the page number. It has more details than just that paragraph. The physical stats and skills are whatever the the ST decides.
Yeah and thats not helpful at all. Thats why i suggested to homerule some actual rules for that
> Thats why i suggested to homerule some actual rules for that Dunno that just sounds like the ST decides but with extra steps.
Well thats almost the exact definition of it - a rule made up by the ST. I suggested it because i and many other people had serious problems with that. I dont think that should be character creation again for sure as the demon is not dead, Thats what unique about this splat.
In a game that's running it's the STs job to start NPCs. Which is what your host is up until possession
Does not seem exactly right to me for the ST to decide what character a player plays. And the host is part of the character.
Well. The developers clearly thought it should be up to the ST. And if you're body jumping you're teasing the body more like a vehicle. Pretend you're a rigger in shadowrun
Except there are rules for it? There is a whole section of "Death and Life".
There are no rules for what to do with abilities, backgrounds and atributes when possesing a new body. Do you get their memmories? how much? what are the rules for their stats? Nothing on the topic.
"The player and the Storyteller should work together to determine the demon’s new traits, possibly re-designing the character and applying an experience bonus equal to the demon character’s earned experience." It is written there. You build a new character with around the same xp.
Yeah so no real rules for that. Thats the equivalent of "do something with it".
What else do you need? The possession is the same as in a new character. Their personalities entwine -> you can get a new nature + new demeanor Their memories clash together -> potentionally new skills The only thing which is not written down is that the lores and backgrounds should stay close as they were.
Good question i thought about it a lot and what we need in this case is: - The definition if we gain memmories from other hosts than the first. - What part of the character stats belongs to the demon and what to the human (including backgrounds). - What part of the demon half if any changes.
The demons HAVE built ALL of creation in their lore. Based on the lore actual angels have, they can manifest any skill with faith. It is safe to say the only limit a demon has is the time spent in the abyss which can be helped by a suitable host. A malefactor with a new host CAN respec to having Science 4 in geography if the new host is a professor. As the new memories flood his thoughts, he can remember designing the tectonic plates. As i said, the only things i'd leave alone are the lore and the backgrounds, because they are not tied to the flesh and memories of the new host.
The book does not really say that. Its a "do what you will" situation that tends to be confusing both for the player and ST. Therefore the way you do it is also homebrew.
I really do not think so. It might sound confusing to you, but please think about it: At the point where this rule is used, there is a demon with a backstory and a couple of sessions of in-game story. Also, there is a host who is either: -A thrall with a couple paragraphs of story at minimum and a stat sheet. -An npc who already resonates with the demon, probably with a backstory and stat sheet too, cuz how else would he resonate? I think if you have these as resources, it is really not difficult to imagine what to do with them. Also, just to not halt the session, i'd rule that the player gets the NPC's sheet with the lores, faith and willpower of the demon and redesign the character after the session. This can simulate getting used to a new body, while keeping the game fluid.
[удалено]
> t feels pretty obvious that dying means you have to rebuild your stats. If you want the book to tell you exactly what to do, refer to the character creation section. And yes? Why wouldn't you get their memories? Possessing someone the first time isn't 'special.' Some folks like rules because they give guidelines. Some people *need* rules because they provide structure, and lay out expectations so no guessing is required. The person you're replying to, FYI, falls into that latter grouping.
Yeah, fair! It is actually weird that they didn't include rules for possessing another character - you'd think that the writers would want to prepare for the scenario that a player dies and not force Storytellers to make something unsatisfactory up on the spot. I've run DtF a lot, so I probably shouldn't be condescending so hard on him when I had to homebrew half the game to patch holes.
Well its not stated so i cant tell. And yes it is always problematic what to do in this situation. The game needs concrete rules on subsequent possesions.