I think the issue with Goetia (and the Astral in general) is that they're too cut from the mundane world compared to other entities. True Fae actively come to kidnap people; Goblins occasionally step out of the Hedge. Ghosts start out in the physical world and can haunt people, Spirits actively try to get in the physical world so they can cause trouble, and Angels are built with the world to handle Infrastructures. Meanwhile, Goetia have by default no ability to travel in the physical world, and they are basically near-powerless if they succeed in doing so. That leaves less option.
I play 1st Edition Mage, but really the big appeal of Abyssal entities is that each one is rather distinct. Sure, they sorta function like spirits and goetia on a surface level, but there's always a catch, things about them that aren't right. And it means that even if you defeat one, you aren't necessarily at an advantage to defeat another. If you want a terrifying Abyssal entity, start off with a spirit or goetia and just... break a couple of rules. Take a few of their traits and, in line with the entity's themes, completely twist them. Until you're left with a creature with a veneer of normal game mechanics (a form it's forced to take by entering our reality), but occasionally is just deeply wrong. And make it stronger if anyone is foolish enough to Paradox in its presence.
Really happy to see someone rating Pandorans so highly! And I get what you mean with Qashmalim, they can be a bit... Anything. I think they work better as a "wheels within wheels" type of antagonist -- the goal of the Prometheans is one thing, as in their story/mission, the pilgrimage as a whole is another, but they're trying to keep all the wheels turning at once and things rarely go to plan for anyone, imagine how that would affect a quasi-angelic agent of the secret fire! Desperation forces them to drop the "BE NOT AFRAID" gimmick and actually start acting, perhaps even against the Prometheans it's tasked to help it.
My take on abyssal intrusion: If the supernal is True and the Abyss is untrue, than any person, place, concept, or perspective that isn't in either has the potential to become untrue. Abyssal intruders are any aspect of the Fallen World that has become untrue enough to negate the potential of other aspects to become true. They seem broad because any thing can be warped in such a way but not the whole of said thing, just very specific aspects of it. E.G. The Nemesis Continuum, is a specific sequence of logical deductions that taints the mind of those who conceive it. Not all forms of the equation are tainted, but each part in each victim's memory of the step by step process of comprehending the work would need to be erased before the "conceptual spirit" could be exorcised from the fallen world.
Correction: Huntsmen innately lack a weakness to cold iron, which is why True Fae replace a Huntsman's heart with a Title to have one do their bidding.
The Stryx are the thing I like the least in Requiem, I understand what they represent but they are more of a plot device rather than something you can actually fight, I mean, I played in mage games where we were at our wits end with them because the damn things are almost completely immune to magic too, I don't know what the big idea was but they definitely needed to get a second look, it's just not feasible for most splats to handle them, especially vampires who are the ones less equipped to deal with them. My personal ones are the huntsmen and the Kerberoi/Cthonic gods, I like the first one because they are powerful enough to be a menace yet not invincible and possible to take down, while the Kerberoi/Cthnonic gods really help when I want to go a bit lovecraftian on my players or when I want to really scare werewolf players.
Strix are, I think, meant to make Vampires paranoid. They aren't meant to be fought, they are written to be extremely dangerous, but most of the actual danger comes from the paranoia and vampiric infighting. One Strix bringing a domain to ruin... It is an excellent horror device to add to a story.
@@orathaic I get it and there are things I like about them but then again, they should have had more weaknesses, I mean, mages having trouble with them is enough of an indicator that they needed a nerf.
Strix work well for paranoia inducement. I think a lot of the best antagonists in general are not meant to be combat antagonists. Like Strix infiltrate Princedoms and can cause political conflict issues via false flag operations. But like Huntsmen I like because they don’t want to kill Changelings. They want to capture them.
I don't mind Stryx being hard to kill, they are supposed to be horror monsters, so it makes sense they don't have a lot of weakness, if they were easier to fight it, a lot of the horror would be lost. That said, I don't think they are hard to kill at all for mages (but I don't believe mages are as broken as most people usually put it either). For some paths it may be harder than others, but I don't see it as something bad. But just from the top of my head, forces should be really easy to kill it. Death you can probably shape it directly, they are just shadows. That said, I may be biased, I like Stryx hahaha
@@vxprado yes, Mages with enough death can literally transform themselves into living shadows, which is the closest thing to a Strix for any player splatt So Death would be my go to solution
I really enjoy the Night Horror books from CoFD, wish we could have gotten some more of those with the 2nd editions. The Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd ed book had the fiction with Hosts and made it seem a really daunting foe, truly terrible also. I feel The Idigam are more of a, end of game/chronicle threat personally, along with the True Fae.
The purpose of goetia is just to be a standard ruleset for the various demons you can summon up from your psyche & for players to interact with in the astral. I'd say the key thing they really need is more wordcount on the different types of goetia in one easy to access place, since it can be easy to see them as 1 sorta unthematic entity rather than thousands of different varieties of entity. The chthonic powers are very different to an archetype which is also different to a walker which is very different to the embodiment of your regrets.
Thank you! I holy agree about the Abyss just being...nothing. It's not a threat. There are no mechanics. It's kind of awful. Same with Goetia, they really, really needed to update The Astral Realms books and Intruders! Encounters with the Abyss and Left-Hand Path for 2e because that entirely fills in the gaps we're missing, but is outdated mechanically so you have to Homebrew it.
Yeah the lack of mechanics for Abyssal entities frustrates me too. I struggle to understand what they're meant to be like and I had to improvise when I made some. So far I only used them once or twice.
Abyssals definitely suffer from lack of page count in 2e, though for context they feed on paradox & sleepers having breaking points just in the same way a spirit feeds on resonance and they don't have Influence (Paradox) but just generally have their numen and influences be weird. I feel all of the ephemerals could really use a bigger set of example numen to play with. The official list is so tiny.
Can't believe you rank Spirits so highly and Goetia so meh. They are almost mirrors in many ways, except the astral doesn't really have a way for goetia to leave so they aren't as widely usable. But you have very powerful goetia, like the collective human subconscious idea of Death (a rank 7 entity in 1st ed) and beyond the human subconsciousness you get goetia of aspect of the world soul, going up presumably to mirror the highest level of spirit-Gods. The most interesting goetia to play aroind with are likely the aspect of an individual, like summoning the goetia of a person's vice (which might be rank 1 or 2). Would be much more fun if there was some generic rules for mortals to summon thinks (maybe a merit for a psychic power/meditative practice). Because as written, only Mages (and maybe Primordials) have any access.
I think in a Mage game Goetia are more likely to come up. Because none of the other splats interact with Astral (except Beasts). If an antagonist type is too similar to another and it doesn’t differentiate itself it’s hard for them to break out.
@@AwkwardGMCorbin They made Shades as an alternative to ghosts inspired to a different folklorist origin. Not being bound to one place (just avoiding direct sunlight) does give them a lot of freedom as an antagonist which anchored ghosts (like the typical poltergeist haunting a house) are limited by.
