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I'm pretty sure the social penalty built into low Humanity already doesn't hit Intimidate. I think the Nosferatu and Mekhet weaknesses are cool, although I don't quite like the place individual banes have in the system otherwise. I think it's lame that the Daeva weakness gives you a free drink - promiscuous or nomadic Daeva shouldn't effectively have no weakness. The Ventrue weakness is probably good but I'm not excited about Touchstones in the first place, and the Gangrel weakness is bad. Maybe if Gangrel were uniquely vulnerable to anger frenzy rather than all frenzy? The way my group does the Gangrel weakness right now is this: as described in the VtR core, but the penalty doesn't apply to any mental roll you boost with a Willpower point (or any rolls to activate supernatural powers). Our Nosferatu weakness is similar, except the escape clause is for making social rolls directed at characters who consider you one of their Intimacies.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:16
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Actually, come to think of it, I can see something like a social version of Humanity degradation in the Nosferatu weakness. I'm imagining a fledgling Nosferatu who just keeps trying to interact with people and it's just not working- no matter what he says or does, everybody acts like he's making lewd remarks about their families. Finally, frustrated and alienated, he lashes out and starts making threats, only to discover that suddenly everybody's responding exactly the way he wants, and it only gets easier...
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Sep 4, 2013 22:17
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Ferrinus posted:I'm pretty sure the social penalty built into low Humanity already doesn't hit Intimidate. A nomad Daeva now can't risk feeding from the same person twice so still have to work around their weakness a lot A promiscuous Daeva actually sounds fun to play, really complex and detailed notes on who you have and haven't fed on so you avoid getting obsessed with anyone
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Sep 4, 2013 22:23
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Ferrinus posted:I'm pretty sure the social penalty built into low Humanity already doesn't hit Intimidate. Yes, but the Dramatic Failure rule just says "Presence or Manipulation rolls" with no reference to any exceptions for Intimidate. And Intimidate should have an exception there. The super-scary vampires shouldn't be more likely to drastically screw up their intimidation attempts. Ferrinus posted:I think the Nosferatu and Mekhet weaknesses are cool, although I don't quite like the place individual banes have in the system otherwise. The problems I have with the Mekhet weakness are: 1) this adds an additional step to character creation only for Mekhet players, 2) you just know that every player is either going to pick something that rarely comes up so they don't have to deal with it or something that comes up often so they get more Beats, 3) this means that unlike other Clans, Mekhets don't have a unique weakness; instead each one has a different unique weakness because they're weird. Having one and only one Clan pick from a list of weaknesses seems really inelegant to me. Ferrinus posted:I think it's lame that the Daeva weakness gives you a free drink - promiscuous or nomadic Daeva shouldn't effectively have no weakness. The Ventrue weakness is probably good but I'm not excited about Touchstones in the first place, and the Gangrel weakness is bad. Maybe if Gangrel were uniquely vulnerable to anger frenzy rather than all frenzy? Yeah, like I said, I think that restricting the Gangrel weakness just to anger frenzy and/or hunger frenzy would be better. And maybe it could be something more interesting than a simple penalty or dice pool cap, like special penalties to certain frenzy triggers or having additional things that could set them off? Little_wh0re posted:A nomad Daeva now can't risk feeding from the same person twice so still have to work around their weakness a lot A promiscuous Daeva actually sounds fun to play, really complex and detailed notes on who you have and haven't fed on so you avoid getting obsessed with anyone But wouldn't that run into the same problem of requiring GM enforcement? If you say "I don't feed from any named characters, I just use Majesty to hunt in nightclubs and such," does the Storyteller have to roll to see if you happen to run into someone you've fed from before, then roll to see if either of you remember each other? INH5 fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 22:30
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Little_wh0re posted:A nomad Daeva now can't risk feeding from the same person twice so still have to work around their weakness a lot A promiscuous Daeva actually sounds fun to play, really complex and detailed notes on who you have and haven't fed on so you avoid getting obsessed with anyone Daeva: the clan of complex, detailed note-takers. INH5 posted:The problems I have with the Mekhet weakness are: 1) this adds an additional step to character creation only for Mekhet players, 2) you just know that every player is either going to pick something that rarely comes up so they don't have to deal with it or something that comes up often so they get more Beats, 3) this means that unlike other Clans, Mekhets don't have a unique weakness; instead each one has a different unique weakness because they're weird. Having one and only one Clan pick from a list of weaknesses seems really inelegant to me. Yeah, it's iffy. I like that it effectively gives each Mekhet their own secret to keep, but at the end of the day I'd probably have preferred them to be missing reflections or something like that.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:40
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Make all Mekhet Hollow, maybe?
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Sep 4, 2013 22:42
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Yeah, there being one clan that gets to write their own weakness is dumb, and it'd be dumb even if the list of Banes wasn't also, itself, kind of dumb.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:43
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Another thing: the part of the Daeva weakness description that mentions that they can deal with this by having "massive harems or Herds" doesn't make any sense. The quasi-blood bond limit doesn't expire, ever, so it doesn't matter how big your Herd is. Unless they constantly recruit new members, you're going to run out of people to feed from sooner or later. And again, I have to ask: what happens if you don't feed the traditional way? What if the Herd members draw straws and put a random person's blood into a bag or bowl while you're in another room? If you never know which bit of blood came from which person, who do you get obsessed over?
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Sep 4, 2013 22:45
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The idea is that you build up a huge harem of people to feed from because that way you can feed infrequently enough from any given person that you won't overcome their ability to replenish their blood.
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Sep 4, 2013 22:58
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I know, but I'm talking specifically about the Daeva weakness. If a Daeva feeds from someone that they've fed from before, ever, then they have to roll to avoid getting the equivalent of a stage 2 blood bond towards that person. There's no mention of any expiration date on this, so it presumably means that even if you haven't fed from a particular person in 30 years, if you get a drink from that guy, you have to roll. This means that a Herd for a Daeva that wanted to avoid this would have to recruit new members at the same rate that the vampire feeds from people. I highly doubt that would be sustainable. Granted, it's possible that this detail has been changed in editing, but I'm going off of what we know for sure.
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Sep 4, 2013 23:02
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Daeva should just risk being blood bonded to humans same as to vampires, but blood bonds to humans can't advance past stage two and degrade by one step/year. It might be interesting to make it look like a miniature version of vampire blood bonds, where you can only have a single stage two bond to any human and that bond eclipses all your other bonds to humans only. Heck, maybe they go up to three, but with some provision that overwhelming obsession doesn't translate to servility in that particular case.
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Sep 4, 2013 23:06
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I think I've weighed in on this one before but I'm not a huge fan of the Ventrue weakness and I absolutely dislike the Daeva weakness. The Ventrue curse boils down to, "Ventrue lose Humanity faster", which is fine, but it goes about it in like the most mechanically obtuse way possible. It's much more complicated than simple, 'Ventrue lose Humanity faster' because presumably a Ventrue trying to maintain Humanity has to funnel more XP into Touchstones. It's sort of clunky. I think it accomplishes a few additional design goals that a Humanity penalty would not (Touchstones cap out at Humanity 2 for Ventrue, there's a Languid thing thrown in, etc) but at what cost. The Daeva one is meh at best. In-universe it's a huge deal; in-play, it's a non-issue. I could contrive scenarios where it's a big deal, but I don't have to contrive a case where failing a frenzy check or a social roll is important. Consider; the Nosferatu weakness is in play every time a Nosferatu has to deal with another person socially. The Gangrel weakness is in play every time she rolls for frenzy. The Daeva weakness is in play... sometimes, when they feed. But not all the time. Rarely, in fact. It prohibits far too little. What I would prefer to see is if the Daeva has some kind of unnatural fascination with mortals tied to some Humanity-based variable. ED: I guess in a sense that's what the Daeva weakness does; what I'm referring to is a fascination with mortals more akin to interest with humanity as a whole, rather than devoted love for a single, specific mortal. Maybe if Daeva could only feed from mortals with whom they've cultivated an existing 'relationship', with 'relationship' being somewhat flexible? Mendrian fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 23:29
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The most significant practical effect of that would be to prevent Daeva from "refueling" after combat by feeding on his defeated enemies, unless a brief fight counts as a "relationship." In general, I don't know if feeding restrictions are a good idea for a core Clan weakness. It seems like they would either only affect how the character feeds off-screen or make things harder for them when they need blood fast. Either way, they're not terribly interesting in play.
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Sep 5, 2013 00:52
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Yeah, I don't think there should be feeding restrictions. I really like the idea of the B&S Daeva weakness because what happens is you end up with a bloodsucking devil of the night who just absolutely can't get over you. They just find you so interesting! They keep coming back, even though they know it's bad for you, because, well, they just can't help it! It's a very fitting rendition of the premise of Twilight, actually, where there's just something ~about~ the protagonist that causes them to become an object of obsession for the vampire - except, who would ever want to become the object of obsession for a vampire? Of course, it's undercut directly by the fact that the first drink is a freebie, since that gives Daeva and their victims a reliable out.
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Sep 5, 2013 00:57
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Maybe Daeva could have some kind of special social modifier or condition (capitalized or not) towards people that they've fed from or maybe just interact with. It doesn't have to be the same as a blood bond, and probably shouldn't, since the point of a blood bond is to make someone else loyal to you. But a little something that makes them feel and behave differently around their "food," which can often inconvenience them. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything specific at the moment.
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Sep 5, 2013 01:04
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That is the blood bond - just, stopping shy of level 3. This might have changed, but I'm pretty sure the "dependent" Condition mentioned in the rules text above actually just is what happens with a level 2 vinculum - its effects are like, the person you're dependent on has bonuses on social rolls made to influence you, and you treat hurting that person as a breaking point, or something like that. It's only at level 3 that you get slavish obedience.
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Sep 5, 2013 01:07
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Pope Guilty posted:Make all Mekhet Hollow, maybe? You know, it's funny. Every time this idea is bought up, it sounds stupider than before. Yeah, yeah, Hollows are cool and all, hell, I love them. Creating an entire loving clan of them makes disbelief go out the window (hell, it's mentioned right there that in the modern world, not having a reflection of any kind is a Masquerade breach in progress), and it's even worse for the player and or the ST, who has to create their own personal nemesis for every freaking Mekhet character, with their own abilities and everything. This also brings up the question of how the Shadows/Hawks (the latter is the B&S nickname, since Onyx Path wants to emphasize the "stealthy, cautious, and cunning predator" side) ever get anything done, because of said personal nemesis. I'm fine with it being an optional alternate weakness, but there's a reason the Mekhet mutated it into extra flammability/Bane dependence in the first place.
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Sep 5, 2013 02:30
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Yeah, in today's world having no reflection or image in cameras at all means that you basically have to live like VtM Nosferatu. Well, maybe not quite, but you get the point. Plus there's the fact that when it isn't a masquerade breach, it's a strength instead of a weakness. The building has cameras that will record someone there even if they have Obfuscate 3 on? How convenient that they won't record me. Speaking of which, I was glad to read a dev post that mentioned that they would be tweaking the Lost Visage. No details yet, but I really hope they do away with the stupid thing that even if you suppress, the recording/picture/whatever will change back later unless you give up a permanent Willpower dot. Whatever they decide to do with it, recorded media should stay the way it was recorded because, you know, it's recorded media. Also, it might not be a bad idea to make suppressing it free or at least low cost due to, again, how cameras are everywhere nowadays.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:19
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The new weaknesses are more balanced than the old weaknesses. Compare the Mekhet's "take 1 more agg" to the Nosferatu's "can't use social skills" or the Venture's "you're more likely to go insane." Am I the only one who finds evil owl spirits not a compelling antagonist for vampires? They might sell them better in the new book but I feel like compelling NPC antagonists for vampires should be something visceral and immediately dangerous to the Masquerade, like the mutants in Blade 2.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:29
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It would be cool if B&S added some kind of transformation for frenzy, especially since they're making it more powerful. Minor transformations for angry vampires are pretty common in the lore.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:31
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Don't think of them as owl spirits. Think of them as body snatchers.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:32
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Speaking of Daeva in B&S do they seem a bit too good to anyone else? Without having had a chance to play it they seem like the best clan in combat with a good backup social discipline and a weakness that won't show up often. Daeva Supremacy? Gangrel are a bit better then before but they seem like they are now the 3rd best combat clan after Daeva and Nosferatu and the worst at social.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:33
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Currently, Protean 4 is the only way to do lethal damage to vampires with a normal attack (Vigor can do lethal if you use it to hit them with something really big, but that has obvious limitations). I'd say that that's a major point in Gangrel's favor. But yeah, Daeva would probably be better with a weakness that comes up at least as often as those of the other clans. Whereas in the last draft we saw, it's pretty easy to avoid unless the Storyteller specifically sets up a situation where it's an issue. INH5 fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 03:47
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Daeva have always been The Best Vampires in terms of getting their way and partying down - they're strong, fast, and have the only social power you'll ever really need. I've never felt like they were unfair from a game-mechanical perspective, though; the other clans do different kinds of stuff.
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Sep 5, 2013 03:52
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Tezzor posted:Am I the only one who finds evil owl spirits not a compelling antagonist for vampires? They might sell them better in the new book but I feel like compelling NPC antagonists for vampires should be something visceral and immediately dangerous to the Masquerade, like the mutants in Blade 2. My big problem with them is that they (based on previous information) directly undercut the things I like about Vampire as a game. Vampires distrust one another inherently - they don't need the additional possibility of the person you're talking to being possessed to enhance that. Furthermore, once the Stryx are outed, they make the political stuff far less compelling. Fighting with the Sanctum over territory makes sense when you have small changes to the status quo from night to night. When the whole city is in danger of being subverted by the Stryx, every body has a good reason to band together and find a mutual solution to the problem. But then it's optional, so I'm fine either way!
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Sep 5, 2013 04:41
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Ferrinus posted:Daeva: the clan of complex, detailed note-takers. What Clan writes the social pages if not Daeva?
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Sep 5, 2013 06:09
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:What Clan writes the social pages if not Daeva? The Mekhet write them about the Daeva.
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Sep 5, 2013 06:11
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The Daeva may be socializing, but the Mekhet are the ones actually keeping track of what's going on. e: 
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Sep 5, 2013 06:11
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Don't think of it as taking notes, think of it like updating your little black book.
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Sep 5, 2013 06:18
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INH5 posted:I know, but I'm talking specifically about the Daeva weakness. If a Daeva feeds from someone that they've fed from before, ever, then they have to roll to avoid getting the equivalent of a stage 2 blood bond towards that person. There's no mention of any expiration date on this, so it presumably means that even if you haven't fed from a particular person in 30 years, if you get a drink from that guy, you have to roll. How many Daeva understand the game mechanics of their existence and how many don't give a gently caress.
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Sep 5, 2013 14:40
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Mexcillent posted:How many Daeva understand the game mechanics of their existence and how many don't give a gently caress. How come none of the other clan weaknesses produce uncharacteristic behavior unless they're kept secret from the vampires who suffer them? (the new Gangrel weakness doesn't count since it produces uncharacteristic behavior either way)
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Sep 5, 2013 15:01
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Tezzor posted:Am I the only one who finds evil owl spirits not a compelling antagonist for vampires? They might sell them better in the new book but I feel like compelling NPC antagonists for vampires should be something visceral and immediately dangerous to the Masquerade, like the mutants in Blade 2. Eh, "Owl spirit" isn't really a good descriptor of the Strix. My favourite fluff piece about them is that Horror Recognition Guide story that has them in. They were loving terrifying in that. Imagine shooting a guy to death and then the weird black smoke from Supernatural flies outta nowhere, shoves itself down his throat and then his twitching body gets back up for round two, but this time with glowy red eyes and magic powers. Honestly, barring the whole 'they can possess vampires' thing, the Strix would still be a terrifying antagonist for vamps. Whether they like it or not, vampires tend to find themselves around dead bodies a whole lot and when there are corpse possessing monsters with a hate-on for your species around, that sucks. If every time you hosed up while feeding and killed someone the corpse immediately revived and tried to kill you you'd want to get the gently caress out of the city.
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Sep 5, 2013 16:12
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Ferrinus posted:How come none of the other clan weaknesses produce uncharacteristic behavior unless they're kept secret from the vampires who suffer them? Mekhet is the most obvious, i.e. not being able to cross running water or having to count dropped objects. But I'd also argue Ventrue since someone or something that a Ventrue was once close to will be destroyed (by their uncharacteristic behavior) immediately when the Ventrue mismanage their unlives. I get that you guys are all about some hilarious form of game balance but realistically only assholes roleplay the way you prep to/against.
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Sep 5, 2013 17:07
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Mexcillent posted:Mekhet is the most obvious, i.e. not being able to cross running water or having to count dropped objects. But I'd also argue Ventrue since someone or something that a Ventrue was once close to will be destroyed (by their uncharacteristic behavior) immediately when the Ventrue mismanage their unlives. Having a weird idiosyncratic weakness that you have to keep secret lest it be used against you is characteristic of the Mekhet. So is obsessive protection and micromanagement of What's Theirs for the Ventrue. I don't understand why you're going to bat over bad design here - it's trivially easy to give the Daeva a weakness that doesn't incentivize prudence and scrupulous record-keeping, they just didn't do it.
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Sep 5, 2013 17:21
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More generally, I don't think that the Daeva weakness should have a special roll or "escape clause" when other clan weaknesses are either passive or modify rolls that everyone has to make. If you really wanted to do the quasi blood bond thing, I think it should be something like "X social modifiers are applied when interacting with someone that you've fed from in the past month."
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Sep 5, 2013 17:36
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Ferrinus posted:Having a weird idiosyncratic weakness that you have to keep secret lest it be used against you is characteristic of the Mekhet. So is obsessive protection and micromanagement of What's Theirs for the Ventrue. I don't understand why you're going to bat over bad design here - it's trivially easy to give the Daeva a weakness that doesn't incentivize prudence and scrupulous record-keeping, they just didn't do it. Because your subjective opinion that something is bad does not objectively make it bad.
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Sep 5, 2013 17:42
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Mexcillent posted:Because your subjective opinion that something is bad does not objectively make it bad. gently caress - and there I was, arguing that something was bad purely because of my subjective opinion that it was bad, rather than for obvious reasons that I've explained several times and you've made no attempt to respond to! Just go away, dude. You know how you don't care that I think a particular rule is poor or whatever? I care even less that you don't care
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Sep 5, 2013 17:49
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What I hate about the Daeva weakness is how it doesn't produce the desired behavior, really. If it's meant to create a sense of fascination with mortals, it fails, because I should think most Daeva try to avoid firing it. If it's meant to provoke the Daeva proclivity for lusty feeding it fails, because Daeva feeding habits needen't be sufficiently different from other Clans. All it does is provoke a memorization mini-game. If we wanted to get that same feel there are a lot of better ways to go about it. What if Daeva Touchstones had to be mortals, and what if they had very strong emotional (rather than merely practical) connections to their Touchstones? You'd get a much more varied array of character concepts that still mostly boil down to, "the Daeva give a poo poo about mortal culture". Really, the current weakness is just going to be a non-weakness most of the time, and provoke very similar feeding habits from most Daeva players. It would provoke considerably more variety if you couldn't get around the weakness so easily. If the pseudo blood-bond were a foregone conclusion, Daeva players would define their characters based on who their fascinated with and what their relationship is like. As it stands now most players are just going to try to find ways to avoid it ever happening.
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Sep 5, 2013 18:18
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What about a weakness where Daeva gained less nourishment from mortals as a general rule with the exception of repeat feedings? Would that be on point or too easy to ignore?
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Sep 5, 2013 20:56
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That was one of my ideas for a Daeva weakness - you lose the first 1 (or first several, idk) points of Vitae you imbibe from humans each night, unless it's from a human you've fed from in the past week or month or whatever. It's a bit mathy, though, and doesn't have a lot of rhetorical punch - it influences Daeva behavior in the right direction, but does so via accounting and efficiency games. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking the given weakness and just striking the "first drink is free" thing.
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Sep 5, 2013 21:01
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