Some 1e MtAw questions:
- Is there anywhere that they actually said what degree of Wisdom sin it is to summon a Gulmoth? I know the Summoners book calls it an act of "direst hubris", but it never actually gives a number and it specifically notes that sacrificing humans to pay a summoned Gulmoth is Wisdom 1 which kinda implies summoning one without human sacrifice is not quite as bad (and, of course, if summoning a Gulmoth is Wisdom 1, then it doesn't make sense for non-Mad frequent Gulmoth summoners to exist).
- Did they ever clarify Phantasmal Weapon's limits? (i.e. can you make a gun or suit of armour that has +30 equipment bonus, or is it limited to whatever a nonmagical item of those dimensions gets?)
- Was there any kind of definitive word one way or another on whether non-Banishers can use the spells in Banishers? Some of them are hilariously OP, and one of them was called out elsewhere in the text as something normal mages can't do.
- Is it just me, or are Mastigos a bit too good? Mind can do a very-large number of things quite well - buffs (Euphoria, Supreme Augmentation and Skill Mastery are all crazily good), attacks (Psychic Assault/Sword are covert making them spammable, and Assault's also three-dot so you can do an extended sympathetic cast pre-archmastery which only Celestial Fire shares, plus straight-up combat mind control - I know Mental Shield is a thing, but that's
also Mind and only Prime can substitute), and minionmancy (Goetic Evocation - yes, it's a Wisdom ding, but only one worse than spirit summoning - as well as just mind-controlling people to help you) - and Space is obviously great as a conjunctional but also has the kinda-WTF Apportation and Ban (and in all cases you again kind of need either Space or Prime yourself to not get hardstopped, with even Prime having trouble against some of Apportation's more serious abuses like bombing and item theft).
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.
Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?
It doesn't improve all aspects of the skill. It gives you a +1 in a foot chase or when shadowing someone. Makes sense to me; running shoes are better at running and at avoiding making noise than dress shoes or sandals. Sure, most people will get the bonus most of the time, but that's not really a big deal.
I think the main thing complained about in 1e nWoD (and don't correct me on that name; it was renamed after the start of 2e) is rocket tag, particularly via Fighting Styles. Fighting Styles are Merits (basically nWoD's version of D&D feats; to give a comparison, it's 2/6/12/20/30 XP to buy a Merit rated 1/2/3/4/5, while increasing an attribute by 1 is 5x(new rating) and increasing a skill by 1 is 3x(new rating)), which represent specific training with a weapon (to continue the analogy, fighter feats). Most of the abilities from Fighting Styles are pretty balanced, but a few of them let you attack multiple times per turn (nWoD's combat turns are 3 seconds, and you normally only get one attack). The ones that let you attack twice and make you lose your Defence (in D&D terms, Dex to AC, except it's a bigger deal), those are pretty reasonable. The ones that let you attack twice and
don't make you lose your Defence are smelly. The ones that let you attack (N-1) times per turn where N is one of your attributes (max for mortals is 5, max for supernaturals is typically somewhat over 10), those are pure rocket tag - if someone gets it off you're reasonably likely to be dropped in one round (the worst, by far, being Fighting Style: Combat Marksmanship 5 - guns ignore Defence, can ignore a lot of armour, and are ranged, so a
legal mortal starting character can often drop the actual maxed-out mortal durability against guns in one turn; when you get into supernatural boosts on each side, you're talking about "when this goes off, instant TPK" because the ludicrous amounts of shots don't even all have to be at the same target).
I'm not especially familiar with 2e CoD, mostly because a lot of the mechanics changes are stupid; from what I understand they fixed the XP-versus-starting-stat-cost issue the wrong way (should have aligned starting stat costs to XP rather than XP to starting stat costs), they let skill specialties stack (specialties are cheaper than more points in the skill, but this means you just pick one method to use the skill and then take a billion specialties that all apply to that method instead of buying more points - Firearms 1 (Assault Rifles, Autofire, Laser Sight) and then just use autofire from an assault rifle with a laser sight, much cheaper than Firearms 4 or even Firearms 3 (Assault Rifles)), and XP for stunting (different strokes, yes, but I'd wind up strangling the GM after about three or four sessions of this because my idea of "cool" is very different to most).
EDIT: Okay, the most literal reading of Skill Mastery isn't as crazy as I thought; if total dots granted by the spell are limited to Mind dots (as opposed to dots-per-skill being limited to Mind dots) then you can't just go full crazy with extended-cast the way I thought you could.