Hey all! This is Eddy. So, for the past twelve months or so, I’ve been minding my own business, focusing on my new full-time day job working on the World of Darkness MMO at CCP, helping Rich out as liaison between CCP and Onyx Path, and doing a little freelance writing here and there. But with Hunters Hunted 2 up on Kickstarter and Anarchs Unbound being edited, Rich asked me to step up and help out with developing Rites of the Blood. So I’ve stepped up, spending some nights and weekends to help out, because I love Vampire: The Masquerade so much.
I’m running a touch behind, but I wanted to get some quick input on the outline before I farm it out to writers. Particularly, I have a slush pile of wordcount that I want to devote to converting bits from Blood Sorcery and other books, the blood magic stuff that people were asking about during V20 that I didn’t have the room for. If nothing else, I’d like people to add comments on what bits they’d like to see converted, along with book and page references. But comments should be open for anyone to post, if you have thoughts.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ItF7G8xXCAA_9We3c3AMa4uOy3kKVAVrfK7Qry0mYY/edit
Looking forward to being back in the saddle again! 🙂
EDIT: Closing down comments on this, so I can get it to the writers ASAP. Thanks for all the feedback!
Comments
56 responses to “Blood Ritual Rites of the Bloody Blood”
Glad to see you’re back. 🙂
Good to be back. 🙂
Looks like its shaping up to be a really great book. I will say I preferred Blood Sacrifice over Blood Magic in terms of books. Blood Sacrifice dealt more sociological and religious themes. I felt that really helped make Blood Magic, especially those in that book, more of a role-playing tool than simply just another discipline.
So I kinda hope this book follows a similar line. I also like that you guys are covering more Sabbat Ritae and expanding them (and referenced the Sabbat factions. Meat and Potatoes of the sect’s politics if you ask me). If I would make only one suggestion to the section it would be to also expand upon the “Native American Magic” that is referenced in the older books the Sabbat supposedly took from the native Americans and melded it into their own beliefs. That whole Shamanistic Blood Magic thing that is mentioned a few times in Guide to the Sabbat and the Second Ed Sabbat books.
Oh and Inquisitor Thaumaturgy, than again they need their own book.
But looks awesome, and something I am definitely backing on kickstarter!
I’ll kick around those ideas. Thanks!
Really looking forward to this book. Have been wating for it to come since it was first announced. Im a great fan of Blood Magic and have been eagerly awaiting a complete Blood Magic compendium for V20 to use in my games, a thick leatherbound Grimoire to use in my chronicles with all the fluff and rules inside.
If possible Id like it to truelly be a COMPLETE Blood Magic compendium with all the paths and rituals ever released to Vampire second edition, Revised edition and some from the dark ages line as well as some completely new paths and rituals from the Inconnu and True Black Hand (In order to include some new material). A new system for how to cast improvised spells would be cool, if at all possible. A new system for how to learn and develop your own paths and rituals like the one in House of Tremere should also be included (Really liked this one over the old system found in Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy).
In order to fill this book with as many goodies as possible, please make a thick, deluxe edition with a really large sidecount. I think most of us fans prefer to have a large, solid book with lots of story and rules in. And if I understand this publishing thing, then it would be cheaper to increase the amounts of sides and truelly make a complete compendium instead of having to release a second book in deluxe format later in order to give the fans what they want. I know many who pledged for the V20 Companion was suprised by the small amount of pages and that might have scared some potential backers away. By releasing a thicker book with lots of content, not only do you keep publishing costs down but might also draw back fans who have yet to participate in a kickstarter project. Not to mention that all fans would be delighted and very happy to pay some extra in order to get a real Blood Magic Compendium.
Im sure you guys will make a really cool deluxe concept for the book, my own idea is to make it look like a skinnbound Grimoire with a magic circle and some runes on it. Just my own cents. Regardless of the deluxe-treatment, I will follow the development of this book and then pledge for it in the kickstarter. Afterall, I know this book is in good hands (Eddys and Co-writers).
Looking forward to see how this progresses.
I don’t think we’re going to have the room to be comprehensive — that’s a LOT of material, and I’d like this book to be a lot more than just reprinting existing material. But I’ll try to get as much as I can in there!
Thanks, it means a lot to hear that from a skilled developer that is currently working on one of your favorites on the waitinglist. Really hope this book gets “buffed up to 160-200+ pages since then most or even all the goodies would fit in it, old as well as new content and material.
Btw: Eddy, could you answer a quick question? I was wondering how you guys decide on the pagecount on a coming book and if we fans have any chance of increasing the number of pages dedicated to the book by showing our support for an upcoming title. I know some add ons might be kickstarter unlocks but if a title is almost garanteed to get many backers then wouldnt increasing the pagelimit on the book itself be a way of ensuring all fans, new as old, are happy and content with the amount of content/material printed in the book and thus stay loyal and participate in futher kickstarters. Afterall, just as you say theres a lot of material that could be printed and im sure you guys have made some new exiting stuff to add in there so why not make the book a little larger then mere 120 pages? Im sure most fans would be glad and willing to pay extra in order to increase the pagecount and make this book what it could be, and what some might say, should be. Please dont take this the wrong way, im not in any way demanding anything, im just curious on why V20 was 450-500+ pages and this one which im sure will be very popular, only 120 pages when theres a lot of content that could go into this book, both old and new.
Heres also some feedback: I also would like to see Abyssal Mysticism included in this book as well as Koldunic Sorcery and Sadhana. The paths of Sihr, Islamic Blood Magic, might also be interesting to publish since theres so little material that it could be easly added to the book without taking up much space and new paths could be devised in order to expand on the school. Ohh, and the path of the focused mind really needs to be in the book. Really love that path :).
As always, looking forward to your excellent work and will be following this thread with anticipation.
The wordcount was chosen by Rich in this case, and is largely a budget concern: writers and artist need to be paid, and the most pages, the more that needs to be paid. It currently is 50% more than V20 Companion is, but I highly doubt it’ll expand to the “massive tome” size you’re looking for. 🙁
I have no idea if Kickstarter makes sense for expanding a book. I’m inclined to say “no” because the books are pretty far along when we start the Kickstarter process, but that’s a Rich question.
If you could post your wishes on actual paths on the outline itself, I’d really appreciate it! 🙂
Although it would be great if Abyss Mysticism makes it to this book, I believe it is entirely something else than blood sorcery. It does have systematic rituals like those in blood magic but it lacks the “magic”. Its more of an extension of a discipline.
I’m really excited about this book, specially regarding the proposed section on Sabbat’s Ritae, as well as the non-Thaumaturgy magics.
As a fan of the Lasombra I’d love to see some more of the Abyss Mysticism (or Shadow Occultism) that was introduced in the Revised Clanbook Lasombra (p. 63, 72-73) and expanded in Dark Ages: Players’ Guide to High Clans (p. 175-182). I saw you are already considering revising this and I just can’t wait for this book to come out.
Additionally, I think that it is worth spending some more words in Koldunic Sorcery, since after all it is probably the oldest organized form of blood magic. Some great sources would be the aforementioned Dark Ages: Players’ Guide to High Clans (p. 182-193) specially for both rituals and the Way of the Spirit (which was left out of V20), the Revised Clanbook Tzimisce (p. 64-65, 66) for the Way of Sorrow (also left out of V20), and Libellus Sanguinis 1 (p. 62-63).
Looking forward to this book.
If you could put these on the outline itself (with those page references), I’d really appreciate it! I’m trying to keep the conversation all in one place.
Never mind — I’m in the outline now, and I’ll incorporate it. 🙂
One of the things I enjoyed from the previous additions was the explanation of the underlying principles by which the blood magic worked. Though I might be in a minority, having the review or “rehashing” of this type of information in the front instead of in the back as is currently indicated in the outline, and then going on to describe the differences between the sects/styles makes more sense.
Jeff, could you put a comment to this effect on the outline?
Also, if you have specific references for these underlying principle discussions, please add those as well!
Never mind — I’ll make a note of that. I’m in the outline now.
Ok, sorry. I just came back to this just now.
No worries. I made the executive decision to wrap this up, because I’m excited to get it to the writers. 🙂
Gotta say that closing the comments after a very short period is disappointing for the ‘open development’ ethos of V20. Still, I know that time is not anything that can be manufactured…
Unfortunately the book is already behind schedule, but I will be tossing up material as I can.
I truly understand about project schedules and one late project affecting the next. Is there some way that future open dev books can have their open comment period announced ahead of time?
I’m extremely disheartened about missing out on this. Unless I’ve completely misunderstood what Onyx Path is all about, I’m not expecting another blood magic book. Still excited to see this one!
Oh, why for gods sake did i miss this? I really hope it’s not to late to give you my input.While i appriciate that you will include the revised material from CB Tremere etc. I was hoping that you would consider 2nd edition paths and rituals more. For example, there are alot of nice rituals in Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. While some of them should be reintroduced as Necromancy Rituals. Also i would really like it if you would explore Abyss Mysticism and Koldunic Sorcery more. With new rituals.And, before i forget. Take a look at the Paths found in the old DA Companion, especially Path of Warding. I would be extremely happy if that path was published in this upcoming book. So, to summerize, i prefere republishing 2nd edition and old DA paths and rituals before republishing revised material and dig deeper into Abyss mysticism and Koldunic Sorcery.
And rewrite some of the rituals from Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand into Necromancy rather than Thaumaturgy.
I’m really trying to keep previously published material to a minimum, but we are looking at some 2nd Ed stuff.
I know it sounds silly, but… how keen are you on “linguistic accuracy”? I mean, I remember someone on the boards saying that “koldun” is, like, sorcerer in Russian and Ukrainian, so it might sound a bit silly to a Tzimisce to talk about “Sorcerous Sorcery”… er, Koldunic Sorcery. Now, I want to be clear: I’m not pushing for the correct Russian name for sorcery which, if I remember correctly, should be something like Koldovstvo and would probably sound “too far off” to most fans. Nevertheless I think that it would be nice to hear a statement from you here on the blogs or possibly even a sidebar in the book about where to draw the boundaries with naming and linguistic accuracy (dunno… make it so that “Koldunic Sorcery” is how the uneducated Fledglings call it? Maybe real Kolduns call it “Koldunism” just like the secondary ability or whatever?).
It is extremely accurate to call it “Koldunic Sorcery,” in the fact that English sucks and is rife with contradictions and redundancies when it steals from other languages. 🙂
Since, as you might have guessed, English is not my first language, I had never thought of it like that. I now see most Kindred jargon and parliance in a new light, as in “European Kindred have another reason to feel superior to American Kindred” and stuff like that. “You can’t even pronounce Inconnu right, Neonate. Come talk to me after you have learned what speech truly is.” 😀
Oh absolutely. I think that’s a perfectly accurate way to play Vampire. 🙂
Seriously Blood Sacrifices was better then Blood Sorcery for a number of reasons, for one it seemed less rushed and another it was innovative and was over all more useful with adding the Blood Magics of Mesopotamia, Carribean, Egypt and India.
It would be a failure to ignore the book all together.
I hope Koldunic sorcery turns out good and useable.
It was never my intention to ignore the book, but looking back at the outline I noticed that somehow my references to that book have fallen off (probably because the titles are so similar that my brain confused them). I’ve added that book back into the reference list.
Well darn. This is what focusing on graduating this semester gets me, a missed chance. Oh well, can’t hurt to post a comment here and maybe good ol’ Eddy will extend his gaming-god graces down upon me =P.
I have been thinking forever upon the strife of the Caitiff and also their sheer flexibility in the face of adversity. As the thoughts have been spun around for years, the V20 Companion made them explode by bringing to the light just how close the pot is to boiling over with the Caitiff and their status among any Sect. Then I remembered the lore of the Stoneman, a rumored ancient of intense low generation and a slew of unique disciplines all his own that goes around teaching them to Caitiff he sees worthy of them.
Thinking upon this idea, I was struck with the thought of what if he or his disciples, if you want to call them that, started sowing even more decent among the Caitiff’s situation with the spreading of unique Blood Magics that did not appear any where else to give them an advantage when they finally openly rebel on all sides? I believe it was the original Hunters Hunted that even discussed unique Disciplines that seem to come up intuitively among some of the younger Caitiff, so it might not be too far of a stretch to see some Blood Magics that have nothing to do with Stoneman either. I would suggest these ideas follow normal rules for Thaumaturgy with the except of being at +1 Difficulty due to nonstandardization, uniqueness, and rarity. Ideas are as follows:
Path of Survival:
O Hunter’s Senses:
The Kindred’s supernatural senses extend mundane senses like vision or scent to locate sources of blood, both human and animal. the more successes = the larger a field of perception and longer a duration, max of the night. have no effect on locating vampiric vitae. It doesn’t identify what the blood belongs to, just that it is present. Ex: a cluster of rats might feel to be a larger body to the supernatural senses because of the concentration of blood in the area.
OO Glass Half Full:
Costs an additional blood point to be fed to the victim (human or animal). Successful activation of this power keeps a victim’s vitals stable down to half their blood pool, instead of 20%. The victim will need instant medical treatment if taken past this new threshold. A victim who survives this loss of blood is still 1 point blood-bound as per normal ingestion of vitae. Ex: Jeremy the new Caitiff in town just got done with a minor turf dispute with another, but more ingrained, Caitiff and is rather hungry after healing. He needs a good amount of blood to finish healing and be full, but hasn’t established a large Herd yet. He risks the extra cost of Glass Half Full to safely take as much blood as he needs from his small Herd. They are a bit more wobbly than normal, however there is no clean up from hunting and Jeremy is fit as a fiddle.
OOO Blood Work:
Lay hands on the target and spend a temporary Willpower Point. Successfully activating this power suppresses any blood diseases or other blood transferable ailments from feeding for the scene. This power stops working if you take enough blood from the target to kill them. In such a circumstance, the ST makes the appropriate rolls as normal for any and all ailments transferable from feeding.
[I really have not been able to decide which one of these will be lvl 4 or 5 of the Blood Magic, so put them in whichever order you see fit dear readers.]
Feeding Time:
Spend an additional Blood Point at activation. For the scene, you may partake blood from any animal as if it were human blood, i.e. you receive full value of their blood pool instead of half. Ex: Jeremy the new Caitiff in town has just arrived with 2 Blood Points down and is need of a blood boost before presenting himself before the Prince just in case of unforeseen circumstances. He doesn’t want to risk hunting a human meal in case he treads upon someone’s Domain, but sees a pair of aging street dogs by a dumpster. He easily charms the animals and activates Feeding Time. He decides to take all 4 points he needs from 1 dog, feed 1 Blood Point to the next to start the process of having at least some sort of ghoul for protection in this new town, and then takes 1 from the same dog to get himself back up to max.
Blood Call:
This power has 2 parts. 1)Spend 2 extra Blood Points during activation of this power. You draw a sign of your own design upon any surface with the 2 extra Blood Points spent. As long as the activation is successful, and the sign is not exposed to fire or sunlight at some point, the sign is permanently applied to that surface. You may only have maximum number of Blood Call signs = to your permanent Willpower. 2) Any time after a sign’s completion, its creator touch it and spend a Blood Point to activate its true power. Roll Willpower, standard difficulty. Each success plants a suggestion through the blood of the closest creature (living, non-Kindred) that has fed on your vitae to come to the location of the sign (similar to Summon but more limited). If number of creatures affected is less than the number that can be affected, the lowest Willpower is affected first. The affected creature can spend a temporary Willpower Point to ignore this suggestion but will feel a sense of sadness for the scene imposing a +1 Difficulty to all Mental actions taken in that time.
[Sorry for it being wordy, I misplaced the notes that had these more clearly written out so I am doing these from memory.]
Rituals-
lvl 3 Potluck (inspired by the wonderful Bone Gnawers):
Normal roll for a lvl 3 ritual. Place any biomatter (muscles, moist bones, etc) from a once living creature ( i.e. roadkill dog, decayed hobo, fresh victim you just drained dry) into a large enough container such as an oil drum and light a fire under it. The biomatter boils down and converts to this ritual into additional blood that could not be harvested through the veins. For every 20lbs of biomatter (or whatever the final number is if this ritual is something inspiring enough for some ST to use), retrieve 1 Blood Point up to a maximum of the the number of successes for this ritual’s activation.
This about all I have at the moment as I just got off work and now need to get back to that aforementioned focus of graduating this semester. I would definitely like to be as involved as I can be in this sort of project, and welcome back to us, Mr. Webb. You have been missed =)!
[…] instead of just being a different choice. I guess we take the stuff we care about personally. http://whitewolfblogs.com/v20/2013/01/29/blood-ritual-rites-of-the-bloody-blood/ Nevertheless, some great ideas in there, and Eddy is already tweaking the outline and a couple of […]
Regarding the Telyavelic Tremere, can you point me to any reference to the Lithuanian god of the dead they take their name from? I tried googling, but I only found stuff such as
Teliavelis (Televelis) was a powerful smith who made the sun and threw it to the sky. This myth survived in folk tales in the beginning of 20th century. Some scholars, like K. B?ga tried to prove that Televelis is incorrectly written Kalvelis (smith diminutive in Lithuanian). Teliavelis has connections with Finnish Ilmarinen.
[…]
Tavalas (Tavvals) – deity of physical strength. Gintaras Beresnevi?ius noted that this deity could be the same medieval Teliavelis.
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lithuanian_mythological_figures)
This does not sound like a god of the dead kind of thing… Perhaps there is some kind of bibliography I’ve failed to find? Dunno.
Thanks for your time!
I found several discussions on the matter of the origin of their name and such for you. Hope they help.
http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=54958
http://books.google.com/books?id=LzIVaNGrY4AC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=telyavel&source=bl&ots=O8vyyaoNNx&sig=A_xCNKTu_udnZFVvzA0uxeu7jLU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NUUVUaCGOIWS9QTOw4HoCA&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=telyavel&f=false
I’m checking them out and they are probably going to be quite helpful, so thanks! 😀
Any chance we could see it go over Sadhana, the outline doesn’t seem to touch it much and i thought it was pretty interesting especially with how it develops the factions of Indian Kindred
I’m trying to keep to the magic of the sects, since one of the books covered regional magic quite well and I don’t see much need to repeat that material.
Sadhana is a personal favorite of mine, and you’re right — Blood Sacrifice does go over it very well.
Does it make sense for RotB to have something in it that explains its relationship to other sourcebooks, such as Blood Magic and Blood Sacrifice?
(Note: I’m not the OP)
Are you really going to put liches in here? They were cut from Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand for a reason. Abominations (and the Mage version) were never a good idea.
Allow me to politely disagree: their status as “never a good idea” stems from their potential for abuse, mostly, but I think this is an issue which needs to be addressed by Storytellers and troupes on a small scale. At least in my humble opinion, this sort of crossover contributes a lot thematically, when used correctly.
Maybe what you should really look for is a “Beware!” sidebar in which everybody is advised to be quite responsible in their use of stuff which is “more broken than most broken things”.
Actually WOD Liches are not Kindred/Mages…in fact they are mages who have achieved undead(not vampire) zombie like status. and no they do not eat people. I believe they are featured in a mage sourcebook. Mages who become vampries lose all their sphere powers however a Mage can be a ghoul who use Kindred powers along with their spheres.
The reference to liches was not that they are Kindred nor necessarily characters that will appear in a meaningful way, but rather to illustrate the level of strange resources available to the Tal’Mahe’Ra.
I just want to point out a historical fact on the origin of the Path of Shadowcrafting. On DA Novel: Brujah by Myranda Kalis, Goratrix was the first to manage some rituals to prevent Bishop de Navarre shadow creatures to spy on him and on his entourage. It was with the aid of Dame Mnemach’s special candles that he fully obliterated de Navarre’s spies. Most probably it was Goratrix who devised the tenets of the Path of Shadowcrafting.
-Saga
Any chance on seeing the Caitiff besides the Thin blooded creating new disciplines. I would like to see the Caitiff legend Stoneman make an appearance here. BTW, Stoneman appeared in the Outcasts sourcebook.
Also I would like to suggest, the Panders who are technically Sabbat Caitiff molded into their own clan are a lot less flexible than their non sabbat brethren since being molded into a clan probably resulted in the loss of their discipline making powers. Some weird ritual turing them into a semi clan.
Question to the vampire developers:
Are we going to see an Inconnu sourcebook in the future?
We don’t currently have plans for one, but anything’s possible. 🙂
Yah, the Inconnu provides the perfect counterpoint to its dark reflection the Talmahehah.
Another suggestion:
I just read up on the Children of teh Revolution character Willoughby, yeah the Tremere who is locked up by the Sao Paolo Sabbat and has a powerful thaumaturgical secret which could destroy the Tzimisce.
I suggest a followup to this write up, those demonus nagloper mutants in that Andean village which houses the buried Thaumaturgical anti Tzimisce weapon would be a great entry for the book.
On chapter 5 of the draft:
Don`t forget the Blood brothers.
Question:
Will there be new magical creations using blood magic ala the Gargoyles and the Blood Brothers in book.
Random thought — It would be handy to be able to cast beneficial rituals on willing targets and I’m not aware of a mechanic that permits this to happen other than ST fiat. Deflection of the Wooden Doom for the night is worth at least a Minor Boon, right? 😉
That’s something I’ve already talked to the writers about. 🙂
Eddy, i dont know if you still around or if it’s too late to say but,
the book will say something about convert a ritual from one kind of blood magic to another? Regular Tremere thaumaturgy from assamite magic for example, and so on?
I know that, around revised Dark Ages there are some rules for do that if im not wrong. Im asking it because it’s a good freedom in the hand of the storyteller to pick rituals that fit better or well in a character concept but are from another blood magic type. With this we have another good side consideration that is the fact that a complete list of paths and rituals for all kind of blood magic is virtually impossible, so some freedom should be taken to give what the character need, even if it’s from somewhere else, and it will public give the storyteller the final word of what is available and how it’s available.
I know that one can say that this is already between the lines since day one and there is no need to say it louder, but im asking it, because even inside the game situations can happen and force some kind of system to convert one kind of blood magic to another, let’s say, a Tremere find the instructions for a assamite ritual, so since he dont know the elements of assamite sorcery he will try to figure out the basic principles to creat a regular thaumaturgy version of it, and so on.
as side notes,
Please, explain what is the blood way of Koldunic sorcery, there is a published charcter with it but not a single line about how it works or even if it’s the same systematically as blood path of thaumaturgy, like in the assamite’s case.
Second, give a hermetic version of iron body for the main body of Tremere clan and to the assamites. If something in this lines are possible using blood magic, there is no way that the Tremere or Assamites were never made something like that. it’s just hurt the logic, even if i understand that system balance is a major factor this days, and that will make this two clans even more powerfull, but life isn’t fair right?
The original ritual is presented in page 163 of the Guide to the anarchs from 2002, and with all the respect, it was random put in there just to be cool.
And as a final issue, as a reward to the incomming kickstater for the book, remember to put the possibility to have characters presented inside the book, this is the ultimate reward and if there is fiction in the opening or between the chapters, who knows? it would be perfect, presenting them as creators of some ritual or something.
And did you though about give as reward, the oportunite from the backers to work on a ritual or path with you guys and present it as if it was created by they character?! It would be great, maybe a 2 or 3 spots in this one. could be a high tier reward and would sell fast im sure, even if i dont think the book will have any problem in rise the money.
Stay well Eddy.
I’m curious, will there be any discussion on rites related to the various Paths of Enlightenment? In past books, there are numerous references to rites or the Path of Blood and Path of the Serpent, which seem to have an impact on their clans as a whole.
I’m not currently planning for it, but it may come up tangentially in the Sabbat or Independent sections.
I am super excited for this book. Blood Magic has always been one of the most fascinating parts of this game for me. So much so that I made that giant compendium book people were talking about of everything from every blood magic printed (final page count came to 588 pages including an index if anyone was curious). I am loving everything I’ve heard coming out for this book.
The one thing I would really look for though, are comprehensive rules for adapting and converting the things in one ritual to another. There’s all kinds of places where it talks about the Tremere taking magic from other clans and compiling it, making it sound a like a good 75% of Hermetic Thaumaturgy was just stuff they stole. I love that theme, but I would really like a way for Tremere characters in particular to be able to continue that legacy in games without the ST having to just make something up.
The other thing I’d really like to see is some definitive statements on what each magical paradigm’s strengths and weaknesses are. Hermetic Thaumaturgy seems to be the versatility, but that isn’t reflected in system in any way other than by having more rituals to start. Maybe have a way for them to incorporate and create rituals easier than normal because of the structured nature of the magic? Assamite Sorcery’s big cookie seems to be the ability to benefit others with things that normally can only be used on yourself. Koldunic Sorcery’s big thing was always the range advantage given by Way of Spirit. I think cutting that completely nerfed the magic so I would hope you are putting that back in.
Another really cool thing I hope to see is how each group feels about teaching their magic and what it takes to get magic within each group. Do the Tremere ever teach their magic outside the clan? What would it take to get them to? Same for each other group.
And one last thing, please answer one question definitively that has spawned huge explosive arguments in my group for a long time. Are Assamite Sorcery and Dur-An-Ki the same thing or are they different paradigms? I’ve always read them as different paradigms, with Dur-An-Ki being far more spiritual and Assamite Sorcery being about enlightenment through altered states of consciousness (druggie magic) but it seems to contradict itself alot.
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this book.