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Also, in regards to the 'shovelhead' comment from Jack. The Sabbat recruits new blood very simply. They blindside the unfortunate victim, Embrace him/her, and bury them. The ones strong enough to claw their way out are strong enough to act as cannon fodder, and maybe even become True Sabbat and partake in the sect's rites and rituals. Only after they've survived and been embraced (lowercase E) as a brother or sister in arms, THEN they get the full lowdown. Beforehand, they're usually told, in their traumatized state, that they're pretty much invincible and they can kill anything. Bottom line: cracked in the head with a shovel and fed the blood of the damned.
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Nov 18, 2013 04:31
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Vicissitude posted:Also, in regards to the 'shovelhead' comment from Jack. Lets not leave out the fun details. Often times this is done en masse, with the shovelheads all clawing their way out of a mass grave and turning on each other in a blood frenzy. This process is designed to remove inhibitions and devastate their Humanity. While most Sabbat don't adhere to the path of Humanity, it'd be a mistake to think they're all in thrall to the Beast. There are alternative philosophies that Vampires follow to retain control of the Beast other than Humanity. Humanity is simply the easiest one. We all have experience being human.
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Nov 18, 2013 05:35
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Captain Oblivious posted:While most Sabbat don't adhere to the path of Humanity, it'd be a mistake to think they're all in thrall to the Beast. There are alternative philosophies that Vampires follow to retain control of the Beast other than Humanity. Humanity is simply the easiest one. We all have experience being human. Care to elaborate? Also, and this question goes to anyone, how do Sabbat handle vampires that defect from the Camarilla and try to join the Sabbat?
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Nov 18, 2013 05:52
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gatz posted:Care to elaborate? The Paths tend towards excuses to do absolutely terrible things to people under some pretense of "it's deep roleplaying, guys!" - they do a much better job of handling it via the Roads system in the Dark Ages version though... Anyway, you have such delightful things as * The Path of Night - a Lasombra specific Path that centers around the notion that you're damned and thus should act like it; the idea is that you're part of God's plan to challenge the faithful. Most Sabbat see people on this Path as nihilistic idiots, with only the really ancient blood-monsters really following through on the "challenge the faithful" aspect and the rest using it as an excuse to be huge flaming assholes. * The Path of Metamorphosis - A Tzimisce Path centered around trying to become something more than just human or vampire; it focuses on their ability to warp flesh and has them trying to evolve beyond petty concerns such as morals and even feeding. Most people see them as huge flaming creepy assholes. * The Path of Paradox - a Ravnos specific Path that centers around you basically doing whatever the gently caress you want. It was really poorly written basically up through Revised, where they tried to go more towards an Indian Dharmic mysticism with it but then they killed off basically the entire clan. Most people saw them as huge flaming assholes. * The Path of Honorable Accord - a path that wasn't devoted to any particular clan (and is basically a revamped version of the Road of Kings, specifically the subpath The Path of Chivalry), which had you acting according to something that mixed together Bushido and the knightly codes of the Dark Ages. They were actually seen as halfway okay - they might kill you for breaking an oath, but they'd expect the same from you. * The Path of Power and the Inner Voice - aka Path of the Bastard. It's another Road of Kings offshoot, this one specifically built around the subpath The Path of the Tyrant. It's basically Machiavelli on steroids. Most people saw them as assholes. * The Path of Typhon - a Follower of Set specific path that centers around being a huge flaming douchebag. The general notion is that you're out there trying to reawaken Set the Dark Father and become a god yourself, and this is a good thing because it meant breaking the chains put in place by the other gods to keep people under their control. The /problem/ is that those chains included things that, well, keep us from turning in to something from The Road or straight out of the Caligula movie. It dealt with corrupting people and bringing them under your sway so that you could control them and yadda yadda yadda. Rinse and repeat. As the game line went on you had more and more people wanting to play assholes and it got to the point that basically every clan had its own path and/or blood magic. And if I recall, turncoats tend to be treated with paranoia but thanks to the communal sharing of blood there's some controls in place to keep your double-agent from turning in to a triple-agent.
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Nov 18, 2013 06:29
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citybeatnik posted:* The Path of Metamorphosis - OR - "Why is your entire Haven made of living people?"  Oh Tzimisce. Never stop changing.
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Nov 18, 2013 07:14
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gatz posted:Care to elaborate? citybeatnik touched on it, and to be sure a lot of the Paths are just some flavor of EEEEEEEEEEVIL. But the underlying principle is sound and quite a few of the paths are genuinely fun and interesting. The basic premise of the Paths is a rejection of the notion of Humanity. They view trying to hold onto ones humanity as a sad lie and a doomed effort. It is far better to find a new touchstone, something less directly opposed to your very state of being, to control the Beast with. The Path of Honorable Accord is a good example. It's your word, it's internal consistency that keeps you from the Beast, not pretending to be something you're not.
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Nov 18, 2013 07:23
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Additionally, in Bloodlines, humanity is heavily simplified - it's just a score from one to ten and you get humanity for doing good things and lose it for doing bad things. In the tabletop, there's a 'hierarchy of sin' where someone on Humanity 10 would get dinged for something as petty as selfish thoughts, whereas someone on Humanity 2 would have to murder someone for no particular reason to get dinged. The average person hovers around 7 or so. Apart from being a buffer against the Beast and frenzying, humanity is also used to pass as, well, human. Vampires are normally pretty easy to pick out as such if you know what you're looking for (waxy skin, no body heat, not breathing, unable to eat, etc) but a vampire can spend blood points equal to 8 minus their humanity (so, IIRC, free for vampires at or above humanity 8) to temporarily simulate the usual bodily functions. Yes, this includes boners, though polite vampire society frowns upon that sort of thing.
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Nov 18, 2013 08:01
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The best part about the fact that the Followers of Set are working so hard as a clan to try and bring old Set back is that I seem to recall every single Gehenna scenario where the Antediluvians are a thing has them getting extremely negative results from their efforts. I'm pretty sure one option is that he basically decides there's no real hope of actually coming back and he calls them all to mass suicide, and in another he shows up and is like 'yeah you all suck fyi' and again most of them die.
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Nov 18, 2013 08:21
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Feinne posted:The best part about the fact that the Followers of Set are working so hard as a clan to try and bring old Set back is that I seem to recall every single Gehenna scenario where the Antediluvians are a thing has them getting extremely negative results from their efforts. I'm pretty sure one option is that he basically decides there's no real hope of actually coming back and he calls them all to mass suicide, and in another he shows up and is like 'yeah you all suck fyi' and again most of them die. Gehenna: most of them die.
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Nov 18, 2013 08:41
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Tehan posted:Additionally, in Bloodlines, humanity is heavily simplified - it's just a score from one to ten and you get humanity for doing good things and lose it for doing bad things. In the tabletop, there's a 'hierarchy of sin' where someone on Humanity 10 would get dinged for something as petty as selfish thoughts, whereas someone on Humanity 2 would have to murder someone for no particular reason to get dinged. The average person hovers around 7 or so. Actually, Humanity 2 is even more than casual murder, it's serial murder or torture. To be evil enough to get below 1, you have to get creative (combining rape and torture, that sorta stuff) I find the example the wiki I checked used for Humanity 9 amusing, though; Cheating on taxes. But, yes, Humanity 10 is 'Selfish Thoughts', such as hurting someone's feelings. There is, however, something to be said about the viewpoint that the crime at your 'level' will always feel the same to you; In other words, a Humanity-10 individual cares as much about hurting people's feelings as a Humanity-4 individual cares about someone running in front of their car (as in, manslaughter) So, a Humanity 10 wouldn't actually have any of the selfish thoughts, normally. Problem is, you've still got a Humanity-7 or -6 Player behind it (If you never steal, but occasionally cause accidental injury, you stop at -7. If you sometimes steal small stuff, you stop at -6. I would advice not playing with people with Humanity 5 or lower) So, there's a limit to how well you can play a Humanity-10 vampire and keep true to the character.
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Nov 18, 2013 11:48
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We're forgetting the silliest/funnest part of humanity though: derangements. Everytime you drop in humanity you have a change to pick up a derangement. It's usually stuff like OCD, or paranoia, or something. It could be tons of fun to roleplay but the way you acquire them has always struck me as very problematic. I've read but never actually played oWoD so someone correct me if I'm wrong but it kind of means that a 10 humanity vampire can develop a permanent psychiatric condition from telling a lie (and then miserably failing the resulting roll.) (Also this thread is making me lament the fact that all my Vampire books are at my parents' house  )
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Nov 18, 2013 15:50
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aerion111 posted:So, there's a limit to how well you can play a Humanity-10 vampire and keep true to the character. This is a nice crossover with the schadenfreude thread, but I recall in my tabletop game the insufferably smug 'Buddhist' working for months to justify buying higher Humanity and scraping together XP for said purchase so he could be ~*better than all of us*~ and be as insufferable in-game as out. He failed a Humanity check and lost it the first game after his purchase, due to his own stupidity.
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Nov 18, 2013 16:01
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How does the whole 'monster who takes life force from others against their will' jive with Humanity? Especially how would it work with humanity 10? I understand a mass murderer, a thief wouldn't much bat an eye at that, but a living saint I'd imagine would have to act like a Salubri (who only take blood from willing vessels IIRC).
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Nov 18, 2013 16:25
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At least in Bloodlines, there's no humanity loss if you kill in self-defense, no matter how you do it. So be a paladin seeking out evil wherever you can find it? Shouldn't be hard in WoD.Feinne posted:I'm pretty sure one option is that he basically decides there's no real hope of actually coming back and he calls them all to mass suicide, and in another he shows up and is like 'yeah you all suck fyi' and again most of them die. He turns into a invulnerable snake and starts swallowing vampires whole. And everyone's locked in for the summoning ceremony. Hilariously, the GM is completely encouraged to party wipe if the PCs had really, honestly dedicated themselves to Set and belieeeeved in the whole kumbayah act from an Antediluvian.
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Nov 18, 2013 16:50
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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insanityv2 posted:We're forgetting the silliest/funnest part of humanity though: derangements. To be fair, I've literally never heard of anyone actually following these rules to the letter on account of them being retarded.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:07
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LeJackal posted:This is a nice crossover with the schadenfreude thread, but I recall in my tabletop game the insufferably smug 'Buddhist' working for months to justify buying higher Humanity and scraping together XP for said purchase so he could be ~*better than all of us*~ and be as insufferable in-game as out. Not to derail the thread, but ... what thread?
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Nov 18, 2013 17:15
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double nine posted:Not to derail the thread, but ... what thread? This thread.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:17
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Thanks
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Nov 18, 2013 17:22
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mortons stork posted:How does the whole 'monster who takes life force from others against their will' jive with Humanity? Especially how would it work with humanity 10? I understand a mass murderer, a thief wouldn't much bat an eye at that, but a living saint I'd imagine would have to act like a Salubri (who only take blood from willing vessels IIRC). If I recall, higher humanity means that you need less blood overall, you can feed off animals more easily, or even potentially give up blood all together in favor of some other ritual.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:25
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Added Space posted:If I recall, higher humanity means that you need less blood overall, you can feed off animals more easily, or even potentially give up blood all together in favor of some other ritual. Eh...then you're getting into the whole vampire enlightenment/golconda herring that was a big focus of the earlier editions. They downplayed it heavily in revised. It's largely mythical and largely regarded to be as legitimate as the whole breatharian thing by most vamps. Humanity has a few other effects: if you get sent into torpor (basically a coma) it controls how long it lasts; a humanity/path 10 guy is knocked out for an hour or so. A Humanity 1 beast gets sent under for centuries or millennia. Hope you have friends/loyal retainers! Ultimately it's irrelevant to Bloodlines--as mentioned, Humanity is the only game in town and it's been simplified to "kill people outside of combat area/do bad things = lose, do good things = gain" and its sole effect is to game-over you if you start with the wanton slaughter.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:38
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There's an argument to be made about whether or not a vampire drinking someone's blood is actually theft or even selfish, considering that apart from the Giovanni and some of the minor clans it's a good time for whoever's being fed upon and there's no harm done. If someone on the pull goes home with a vampire and wakes up with vague memories of a good time but no solid details, are they any worse off? Since it's all about internal consistency instead of actual morality, as long as the vampire believes it it'd probably work for them, though your ST may vary.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:41
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mortons stork posted:How does the whole 'monster who takes life force from others against their will' jive with Humanity? Especially how would it work with humanity 10? I understand a mass murderer, a thief wouldn't much bat an eye at that, but a living saint I'd imagine would have to act like a Salubri (who only take blood from willing vessels IIRC). Would a living saint really have that much difficulty finding willing donors? At that point they've basically got to be impressing even people who only meet them briefly with how incredibly good they are. They'd have to have admirers who would be more than willing to help out.
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Nov 18, 2013 17:47
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Tehan posted:There's an argument to be made about whether or not a vampire drinking someone's blood is actually theft or even selfish, considering that apart from the Giovanni and some of the minor clans it's a good time for whoever's being fed upon and there's no harm done. If someone on the pull goes home with a vampire and wakes up with vague memories of a good time but no solid details, are they any worse off? Since it's all about internal consistency instead of actual morality, as long as the vampire believes it it'd probably work for them, though your ST may vary. The way I'd play it, and the way White Wolf seems to want you to play it, is that taking blood without consent is that it's rape, and thus a pretty low-Humanity crime. On the other hand, like I said, I'm a mage guy whose thing is all about people doing terrible things and trying to justify them after the fact with noble deeds, and when mechanical consequences exist for doing terrible things that might be less fun. I mean I'm playing a Euthanatos in a mage game where he's having to reconcile the fact that he wants to make the world a better place and how has very few tools to do that save murder and terrorism. This concept would be much harder to do in Vampire where he'd end up at Humanity 3 or so pretty much immediately without a Path. :p (As contrasts the mage game I'm in, where a lot of more 'human' characters who commit premeditated murder a lot less are actually less moral than he is).
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Nov 18, 2013 18:03
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Yes, all vampires have a Beast within them, the feral Id that just wants to indulge itself and go nuts. The more affirmed in your Humanity you are, the better you can compose yourself and keep the Beast at bay. Humanity is your base starting point, as you would imagine. It's the general idea of being decent to fellow people, the moral path that we all follow. You know, don't steal, don't kill, and pretty much don't be a dick. The followers of the Paths of Enlightenment abandon the tenets of being human for another ideal that doesn't necessarily share the same beliefs. In doing so they become both more and less human. Overall, the goal is to transcend the vampiric state and reach a mystical enlightenment called Golconda. Upon reaching it, you remain undead but the curse of Caine is largely reduced. You need to spend blood to awaken, but only once every week or two, you can bear the light of the sun, if for a little while, and the Beast is effectively silenced. Every Path tries to reach a pinnacle of this kind. The Ravnos strive for Mayaparasatya through the path of Paradox, and the Tzimisce keep on altering themselves and studying the change to try and achieve Metamorphosis like a horrible butterfly climbing out of a flesh cocoon. To even try to start on a path of enlightenment has a few requirements. First, you need to have a Willpower score of at least 5. Second, you can't create a character with a Path score of higher than 5, even if you would ordinarily start higher based on your Virtues. Next, you need to shed your Humanity. Now, you could just go out and wantonly slaughter until you drop down to a miserable sack of Bestial crap. But ideally, you'll just begin by adhering to the tenets of your new Path and dropping naturally as you follow a course of action that would be an anathema to Humanity. At each point, it's typical for a vampire to spend Willpower points to drive home his/her conviction to follow something so alien to everything they've known. It's up to the Storyteller to determine how much Willpower needs to be spent over how long. At some point, it all comes to a head for the vampire. Either their new Path 'clicks' for them, or the slide further into depravity. This takes the form of a Willpower roll dependent on your remaining Humanity, starting at 3. The lower the Humanity is, the easier it is to abandon in favor of the new Path. If the roll succeeds, the vampire switches over to the new path with a rating of 1 in the relevant Virtues. The default virtues for Humanity are Conscience and Self-Control. Other paths rely on Conviction instead of Conscience, and/or Instinct over Self-Control. From there, the vampire can spend XP to raise their new Virtues and Path rating as normal. Some of the paths were touched on earlier, but I can elaborate if anyone likes.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:05
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Yeah, I think a big part of the popularity of the oWoD games is you're free to take or leave the morality sideshow. It's completely possible and can be quite fun to dump the angst entirely and just play soap opera with vampires or Captain Planet with werewolves, but for people who are in to that sort of thing some of the moral dilemmas baked in to the games can be quite juicy.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:19
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insanityv2 posted:We're forgetting the silliest/funnest part of humanity though: derangements. The version I remember, at least, wasn't about gaining derangements as a failure chance, but something you picked up at every failure once you hit a certain threshold. So once you hit 5 humanity or so, you gain a derangement every time you drop another level. I believe you also get to pick your derangements so that they fit with your character. It also needs to be said that losing humanity as a vampire is not quite the same as losing humanity as a human. For the latter it can be traumatic since there is a hard-coded revulsion to killing other people, but for vampires, the more humanity they lose the more the Beast takes over. So a vampire gaining derangements is not only their minds trying to come to grips with their failing morality, it's also the mind breaking down in the face of an unquenchable, all-consuming hunger.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:19
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Vicissitude posted:
Please do. On a side note about Golconda: wasn't Saulot the only one who ever reached it? I kind of remember him being retconned from being a saint to a much darker figure and making some very long schemes, even one involving Tremere, though I may be wrong about it.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:31
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There are some clans that also definitely have the expectation that eventually all members will get over this whole 'humanity' thing and switch to the Path that they're notable for. EDIT: Saulot is the best Antediluvian, for what that's worth (maybe not much since while the Salubri were his clan so were the Baali). At that point you have the long fall to Tremere and the Giovanni founder whose name I can't recall off the top of my head, because they aren't so old as to be basically semi-lovecraftian vampire gods like everyone else. Oh, funny story on the Giovanni, I seem to recall he meets a rather amusing and well deserved end as a result of usurping his original clan. Feinne fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Nov 18, 2013 |
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Nov 18, 2013 18:35
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mortons stork posted:Please do. Darker, anyways. Most of the bad word against Saulot was spread by the Tremere to justify diablerizing him, and the rest was left ambiguous so that the Storyteller could be the final arbiter; that's pretty standard procedure for White Wolf. In the Wormwood scenario (where the players are literally being judged by God), Saulot is one of the prime candidates to be included in the small group considered for being spared God's judgment on the rest of the vampires, and he at least has a better-than-average chance of making it. If he's not, he's one of the few vampires out there to face their end with dignity.
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Nov 18, 2013 18:41
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Re: Antediluvians, one thing I like about them is the original impression that new players get is that there's thirteen monolithic clans that have been around forever, each with their own original ancestor, then you find out that there's been a lot of schisms, coups and diablerie over the years. The modern Brujah are the descendants of Troile, childe and diablerist of the original Brujah, and there's True Brujah knocking around out there hopping into bed with the Tel'Mahe'Ra ( ) and the Setites with none of the fiery passion so characteristic of the mainstream Brujah clan. Tremere were born of magic and Saulot, and Giovanni were a successful coup within the ranks of the now-mostly-extinct Cappadocian. The modern Nosferatu are descendants of an unknown Nosferatu (theorized to be Baba Yaga) who was the only one to escape when Absimiliard tried to hit undo on the whole 'having childer' thing, and are hunted by the Nictuku, blood-bound childer of Absimiliard. And those are just the ones that hijacked the position in the Main 13 - every clan has more rebels, schismatics and offshoots than you can shake a stick at. Vampires have been around since year dot and they're probably the ones that invented closets just to have somewhere to keep all their skeletons.We've already met a vampire of an offshoot bloodline this LP - the executioner of our PC's sire is most likely of the Nagloper Legacy, an African offshoot of Clan Tzimisce.
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Nov 18, 2013 19:31
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mortons stork posted:Please do. No. No he didn't. He kind of got to a lesser step of Enlightenment, and was a pretty chill dude, but apparently that's why the Kuei Jin are so pissed at him. He ran off before his understanding of their ways was complete, and began to spread imperfect teachings to his clan. Bobbin Threadbare posted:Darker, anyways. Most of the bad word against Saulot was spread by the Tremere to justify diablerizing him, and the rest was left ambiguous so that the Storyteller could be the final arbiter;. Again, Saulot was a pretty chill dude, but the part about the Salubri being able to pull your soul out was completely true. It's actually part of a Kuei Jin vampiric Discipline. As with Valeren/Obeah, there are two 'paths' to it. The idea is that you can draw out the soul of a spiritually damaged person and you could spend your Willpower to heal them, removing derangements and such. Or, you could throw it to your own personal demons as a chew toy. So back to Paths. Which path you want to hear about first? 
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Nov 18, 2013 21:54
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Darker, anyways. Most of the bad word against Saulot was spread by the Tremere to justify diablerizing him, and the rest was left ambiguous so that the Storyteller could be the final arbiter; that's pretty standard procedure for White Wolf. In the Wormwood scenario (where the players are literally being judged by God), Saulot is one of the prime candidates to be included in the small group considered for being spared God's judgment on the rest of the vampires, and he at least has a better-than-average chance of making it. If he's not, he's one of the few vampires out there to face their end with dignity. He also created the Baali clan/bloodline.
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Nov 19, 2013 00:43
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OAquinas posted:Ultimately it's irrelevant to Bloodlines--as mentioned, Humanity is the only game in town and it's been simplified to "kill people outside of combat area/do bad things = lose, do good things = gain" and its sole effect is to game-over you if you start with the wanton slaughter. Actually, you can hit 0 Humanity in Bloodlines with absolutely zero negative effects, other than entering Frenzy far more easily. I did this on a Gangrel playthrough and it was absolutely hilarious what with the ridiculous buffs they get while frenzying in this game. Well, OK, having super-low Humanity also locks you into some fairly nasty dialogue choices at a few points, but if you've never tried a low-Humanity run I'd highly recommend it for the different experience. Playing a monster also means you can do stuff you know is a bad idea and not feel bad about how it turns out for your character. Vicissitude posted:So back to Paths. Which path you want to hear about first? My absolute favourite is the Path of the Feral Heart.
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Nov 19, 2013 03:28
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Path of Caine, Path of the Feral Heart, and Path of Honorable Accord are where it's at.
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Nov 19, 2013 03:29
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Wasn't there a path based around Lilith? If you know anything about that Vicissitude, that'd be cool to hear about.
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Nov 19, 2013 03:50
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Alright, first come first serve. The Path of the Feral Heart This is a sub-path, actually. The Path of the Beast is the pinnacle of the phrase "a beast I am, lest a beast I become". A vampire is a predator, a hunter. Bestials forego the trappings of society for the purity of a stalking cat, or a lone wolf. The Beast Within is their true instincts coming to the forefront, so they feed it, they stoke it and help it come become as one with them. But they don't let it off the leash. You accept it as part of yourself, but you cannot let it take you. From it, you learn strength, resilience and survival. Hell, you might even find some sort of primal insights from what it teaches. But the core of the path is simple survival. Feed when hungry, but don't indulge. Hunt your prey, but don't let the rest of the herd see the body or they'll spook. Practitioners of the path are very straightforward and not easily swayed by promises of rewards to come. Words are just noise in the wind. Show them what IS, what's in the NOW. As such, you won't find many of them in the Camarilla. None of the angst and ennui of the rest of Kindred society. They exist, they hunt, and give no second thought to moral quandries and degeneration of their humanity. They are hunters, first and foremost. They simply exist. The Path of the Feral Heart is, along with the Path of Harmony, the result of a dogmatic schism among the followers of the Bestial Path. Ferals don't prioritize the lone wolf aspect of the primary Path, they focus on the pack. It's a very Sabbat slant on an old idea, all the better to stand against the Antediluvians. Where a single vampire might be easily killed, a pack might have a better chance.(No they won't.) The Path of Harmony just focuses on vampires as part of the food chain, with humans at the top of a smaller one. There's a good deal of respect for prey in this Path that is absent in the main and other sub-Path. Path of Caine This is a very simple path. By studying the vampiric history of Caine, one can understand their nature and transcend it. Learn Caine's teachings, his ways, and you can be at peace. They're called Noddists for a reason, as many of them search out and pore over copies and excerpts from the Book of Nod, essentially a collection of new books of a bible dealing with vampires. All are about Caine, but one is supposedly written BY him. He is the beginning and ending of all vampires. By studying him you come to understand him, and he must be understood for a student to understand why they have also been the dark gifts. The cornerstone of the Path is accepting your curse. Yes, you have strengths and weaknesses, but the student has to come to terms with them being a part of their new unlife. Diablerie is not just allowed, but encouraged. Anything to get you closer to Caine. If nothing else, their experiences, their knowledges, pass to you. All the more reason to do so, so as to increase your own wisdom in the process. Btu vampires are not evil, in the eyes of Noddists. Another path that simply states that you are what you are, now you have to understand what that is. More to come tomorrow. I need to get to sleep. Early day tomorrow
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Nov 19, 2013 05:14
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Vicissitude posted:More to come tomorrow. I need to get to sleep. Early day tomorrow Can we hear more about the Path of Metamorphosis? Sounds neato.
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Nov 19, 2013 05:20
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I've always gotten the impression that the Paths are fancy ways to get around the fact that humanity is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable for vampires. Like, take that Noddist stuff. 'You might be a soul-sucking monster who exists as a bane on humanity as punishment for the first murder but that's totally not evil I swear. Because reasons.' It just feels like it weakens the central conceit of the setting, which is that for all they tell themselves they're superior and can do what they want, there's this erosion of humanity from acting that way has a real consequence and actually makes them more of an insane monster and eventually leads to their destruction. Having a bunch of ways to control the Beast by being a jackass feels like it weakens it a lot.
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Nov 19, 2013 06:23
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Night10194 posted:I've always gotten the impression that the Paths are fancy ways to get around the fact that humanity is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable for vampires. Like, take that Noddist stuff. 'You might be a soul-sucking monster who exists as a bane on humanity as punishment for the first murder but that's totally not evil I swear. Because reasons.' Except one of the central ideas of the Paths that is hammered home repeatedly is that by following one you are necessary inhuman, alien, and monstrous. It solves a very real problem in the setting, which is to say if Humanity works as originally proposed it would be impossible for the Sabbat or Camarilla Elders to exist as they do. And lets be clear here, being on a Path is not convenient necessarily. Take the Path of Honorable Accord, just for starters. You have all the same things to fear at low adherence to your Path as you would at low Humanity, the difference is what constitutes losing control. Being bound to your word like a mythical Fey is not what I'd call convenient. At a Path score of 8, the Path of Honorable Accord doesn't even let you associate with the dishonorable. At a 10, followers of the Feral Heart can't use tools to hunt. They are the perfect predator and must use their natural abilities and guile alone. Even the more assholish Paths which I'm not fond of are by no means convenient and will stipulate that you must go out of your way to pursue certain ideological actions.
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Nov 19, 2013 06:35
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Yeah, I remember one of the splatbooks (probably in Revised) specifically spoke out against what it referred to as The Path Of What I Was Going To Do Anyway.
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Nov 19, 2013 06:49
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