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PHIZ KALIFA posted:If you aren't using blood magic forged to defeat an antediluvian to roll up at Elysium with a ridiculously opaque fog bank why EVEN be undead. I think it honestly might be this. What's the point of being a powerful vampire if you can't brood on your balcony with a goblet of blood while a thunderstorm rages? Related to thamauturgy chat: I really like Blood Sorcery in nWoD. Seems like a really nice halfway between mage style "it's magic! make poo poo up!" and vampire style "here's the creepy stuff you can do." Strict limitations that are constantly tied to creepy vampire poo poo, which keeps the theme, but room for a lot of improvisation and outside-the-box thinking that keeps the D&D wizard theme.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:19
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What's the verdict on the 5th edition?
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Oct 13, 2018 06:59
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NutritiousSnack posted:What's the verdict on the 5th edition? It's a mediocre throwback to the 90's but with a bigger art budget and almost three decades of hindsight to make it all the more embarrassing, especially the stuff that's trying to be progressive but is still stuck in the comfortable straight liberal 90's. Hunger dice are kind of cool, and use of Loresheets is okay.
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Oct 13, 2018 08:58
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Zak S. is a psychopath. One of his most recent blog posts cites grognard.txt as some milestone in hatespeech on the internet, and later says SA is worse than Stormfront as far as tolerance.
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Oct 13, 2018 14:19
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Firstborn posted:Zak S. is a psychopath. One of his most recent blog posts cites grognard.txt as some milestone in hatespeech on the internet, and later says SA is worse than Stormfront as far as tolerance. It's Tipper Gores all the way down.
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Oct 13, 2018 15:11
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I mean I know there's a lot more about Zak S that's much, much shittier than this, but my kneejerk reaction was "Of course a guy who thinks that what the world needs is yet another Dungeons and Dragons 1st/2nd edition clone would think Grognards.txt is hatespeech." E: Upon closer inspection, a 1st/2nd edition DnD clone that looks even more unfun than most other DnD 1st/2nd clones, which is an impressive feat FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Oct 13, 2018 |
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Oct 13, 2018 15:50
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So, for shits and giggles, let's consider the blood needs of a vampire with a few possible case profiles. Your standard, non-special BP is about a pint, and a vampire needs that much to rise nightly. Per V20, 20%/2BP is a safe drain, half will require hospitalization, more is critical leading into straight dead territory, so every standard human bloodbag offers us a ratio of 2/5/10 potential BP. Animals are less valuable - so our animal feeders can only gain 5 max from a cow, 1 from a cat, and 1/2 a BP from a bird while only 1/4 from a rat. A mortal vessel is able to regenerate 1BP a day if properly fed, which is at odds with reality where it takes 24 hours for plasma but up to 6 weeks for red cells to fully regenerate after a 1-pint donation. Ghouls require a minimum of 1 blood a month but will probably actually need more. Case 1: Standard vampire guy who just exists, watches reruns all night, and orders takeout so he can drink up from a pizza delivery guy. 1a uses only animal blood. Case 2: Same guy, only he also uses a little extra blood from time to time so his use averages out at 2BP a night. 2a uses only animal blood. Case 3: Ghoul-haver, with 2 ghouls he needs to maintain, but otherwise zero blood use. 3a uses only animal blood. Case 4: Discipline junkie, burning a total of 3BP a night to heal, do cool poo poo, etc. 4a uses only animal blood. Case 5: Bloodsucker extraordinaire, burning through 5BP a night. 5a, for some loving reason, uses only animal blood. Case 6: Ghoul overlord! 10 ghouls, no other BP use, etc. 6a, you get it. C1 requires 365 pints of blood a year; C2 730, c3 389, c4 1460, c5 1825, and c6 605. Feedings required 1BP taken|2BP taken|5BP taken|10BP taken (murderous bastard!) C1: 365|183|73|37 C2: 730|366|146|74 C3: 389|195|78|39 C4: 1450|730|292|145 C5: 1825|913|365|183 C6: 605|303|121|61 So, your bog standard vampire who does nothing can by game rules survive solely off a single victim a night, and in theory, on the same victim again and again - but the second he burns another vitae, the situation gets bad without transfusions etc. So, what does this all actually mean? First, herds are loving great to have. The standard range of a herd is from 3 to 60, so a 1 dot herd will allow a vampire to confidently rise nightly with a little extra in the tank if needed. Second, any kind of major blood use is going to necessitate a lot of dispersed feedings, donor blood, or hospitalizations - while C5 is probably pretty rare sustained year round outside of some Tremere and Sabbat areas, plenty of vampires are going to fit into the C2 classification. Third, if we move from the game line BP regen to the 'real', poo poo gets real hosed real fast. As it stands, a simple 1 dot herd permits you to comfortably exist. Night 1, you feed on Victim A for 1 BP. Night 2, while victim A is recovering, you feed on Victim B. Night 3, Victim A is recovered but you feed on Victim C to keep any one of them from getting too run down too fast, in the event you need to drain more from them sooner than expected. But if we swap it to the requisite six weeks for red blood cells (vampires should seek out people suffering from polycythemia vera, which creates an overabundance of RBCs and is treated by blood draining anyway - it's a win win) then suddenly those 3 people can't sustain you for poo poo. They can let you get away from hunting for just 3 nights out of ~45. I think the best approach is to take a middle ground - you can drain a bloodbag for 1BP nightly without killing them over a period of weeks or months, but they'll steadily fade away because they'll run quickly out of the parts of blood that they need to live, feed on them only once every six weeks to keep them in tip top shape, or feed on them, say, fortnightly for a slightly sicklier, anemic herd. In that case, it goes up to 3 'safe' nights out of 14. As it stands, herd dots are 3/7/15/30/60. Feeding wise, that comes out to something along these lines, broken up into the 3 models above (baseline|compromise|red cross standard): 1-dot: 1.5BP/day | .2BP/day | 0.06BP/day 2-dot: 3.5/day | .5/day | .15/day 3-dot: 7.5/day | 1/day | .33/day 4-dot: 15/day | 2.1/day | .66/day 5-dot: 30/day | 4.2/day | 1.33/day The obvious flaw is that this assumes total access to the herd, ability to set it up in a roster, etc. As it stands, it becomes very obvious that the 1BP/day regen capacity assumed by default strongly undercuts the hunting aspect once you invest 2 or more dots into herd, and if you've invested 5 dots, you are literally drowning in blood, so either you're a Ventrue who needs food security or you're a goddamn psychopath. It also, I think, shows that the compromise model is probably the thematically intended one, as RAW allows for a very small investment to almost completely buy off the hunt element, and in doing so renders racks, feeding grounds, etc totally irrelevant. What I lack the mathematical capability to do is then model these recovery time models onto non-herd feedings, taking into account incidence of recurring contact versus no recurring contact with the same mortal (e.g. Vampire Ted Dansen never feeds on the same person twice while Vampire Mickey Rooney hits them up as often as possible without them constituting a herd). If anyone knows how to figure that out, PM me, as I want to staple it on to the Vampire demographics to establish the total human health drain of vampiric activity.
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Oct 13, 2018 16:13
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That Old Tree posted:It's a mediocre throwback to the 90's but with a bigger art budget and almost three decades of hindsight to make it all the more embarrassing, especially the stuff that's trying to be progressive but is still stuck in the comfortable straight liberal 90's. Hunger dice are kind of cool, and use of Loresheets is okay. What is it about fifth editions that makes them turn out as throwback editions? DnD 5 was a throwback to 3.5, Shadowrun 5 is a throwback to 3rd...
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Oct 13, 2018 20:37
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NutritiousSnack posted:What's the verdict on the 5th edition? There is none? Some people like it. Some people hate it. Some people like some things about it and don't like other things about it. It's like all games, there will never be a consensus. Crasical posted:What is it about fifth editions that makes them turn out as throwback editions? DnD 5 was a throwback to 3.5, Shadowrun 5 is a throwback to 3rd... V5 is a deliberate throwback to 1e in order to allow new people an easier in to the setting and setup, at least as far as the devs stated. It does over-reference lore to an extent (which anyone bog new to VtM would go look up on the intertubes), but it doesn't present overwhelming options, and it seems more likely to ease players into the 'base mode' and then build from there.
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Oct 13, 2018 21:22
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MoonKnight posted:
What are the odds of Paradox noticing the piddly return on investment on V5 and just pull the plug on all the rpg stuff developed in house? They are clearly willing to outsource to Onyx Path if they want to keep the brand alive.
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Oct 13, 2018 21:30
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Lord_Hambrose posted:What are the odds of Paradox noticing the piddly return on investment on V5 and just pull the plug on all the rpg stuff developed in house? They are clearly willing to outsource to Onyx Path if they want to keep the brand alive. Probably nil, considering we have no real numbers anywhere about how V5 is selling and won't til early next year at least through ICv2. At least with V5 we can get sales numbers in that manner since there is a physical release. They also said initially that only the core books would be developed in house and everything else would be licensed out, anyway. It's not 'outsourcing to keep the brand alive' its the business model that they built: as a licenser, who can be pitched to, since it doesn't seem like the plan was for any exclusive licenses. Besides, even licensing to Onyx Path, OPP still has to follow the setting docs and bibles for V5 and WW has to approval all text. It's not like OPP can just go and do another corebook with their license without WW approval to significantly rewrite V5.
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Oct 13, 2018 21:42
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Kindred being leaky as gently caress probably accentuates the personal horror of the setting but seems to go against both a lot of vampire fiction and the problems with eating quite so many loving people.
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Oct 14, 2018 00:21
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The important question is how important that math is your particular narrative.
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Oct 14, 2018 01:10
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Yeah. If you want a heavy focus on the persona and gothicl horror aspect, then slide straight into the Red Cross standard as being necessary to avoid doing harm, so that even a relatively conscientious vampire still sees the people in their hunting grounds gradually waning and sickening unless they make a genuine, and difficult, effort to space feedings on an individual out to a remarkable degree. Wanna go gently caress up a Vozhd and counter-Crusade down the East Coast? Probably go with the baseline. As a side note to this, the base carrying capacity for our vampires is further complicated by prey availability, which will tend to expose individuals within the available classes to higher predation. Only a relatively small portion of a city's population is available at any given time to hunt, even disregarding territorial claims etc, because large parts of the population (e.g. children, most of the elderly, many adults) aren't the type to go out at night except to 'safe' locations like a restaurant, movie, or sporting event. A city of a million might only possess a reliable core feeding stock of 200,000 homeless, club goers, streetwalkers, criminals, night watchmen, delivery guys, and people who leave their doors unlocked - maybe even less. So again, depending on the narrative, we can lean into this or away. You can have the need to limit your feeding run face first into the limited prey availability, and of course, the fact that (unless you've got Vampire Lenin in the joint) no one's keeping score so even if you don't feed on a mortal until they've fully recovered their blood, there's zero way to be sure other vampires aren't. While in theory a depleted bloodbag will stay home and rest, the reality is that a couple of days after losing a pint of blood people are usually bouncing around again with just a little less energy and a weaker system for a few weeks, and a lot of the available prey pool aren't the kind who let being a little sick keep them on the shelf, whether voluntarily (club kiddies who just do more molly and energy drinks to compensate until they collapse totally) or involuntarily (homeless, can't afford not to keep up the taxi route, etc.) Anemia beckons, as do a variety of blood disorders.
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Oct 14, 2018 02:04
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A vampire raises his lips from the prey's neck, fangs gleaming in dripping crimson of the sanguine lifeblood of the mortal who's life they have stolen. Now, they must mark this mortal to prevent further predation, to shield them from further assault until their blood has waxed to fullness once more. Their cold and dead hands slip into their own pocket, and with perverse tenderness apply the cheerful cartoon sticker to his victim's shirt. The beaming smiley face surrounded by white text reads: "Be nice to me, I gave blood today."
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Oct 14, 2018 04:27
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Loomer posted:While in theory a depleted bloodbag will stay home and rest, the reality is that a couple of days after losing a pint of blood people are usually bouncing around again with just a little less energy and a weaker system for a few weeks, and a lot of the available prey pool aren't the kind who let being a little sick keep them on the shelf, whether voluntarily (club kiddies who just do more molly and energy drinks to compensate until they collapse totally) or involuntarily (homeless, can't afford not to keep up the taxi route, etc.) Anemia beckons, as do a variety of blood disorders. Tying this back to Lodin and the like - one of the things brought up in Dust to Dust is that, due to how lovely a hunting spot Gary loving Indiana is you're basically dooming the folks that you "humainly" feed from to more and more desperation as they struggle to keep going to work while drained, eventually leaving some destitute. At what point do you just cut bait and start draining folks dry? Heck, the original scheme cooked up by the prince and juggler comes around when the two, after having a marathon brawl that drat near killed each other, proceeded to freak the gently caress out when they realized at the same time that not only had no one noticed them tearing rear end through the town but that the drat Rack was empty. I've always enjoyed the weirder situations like that in the game. Like the two gangrel in tGttA that basically kidnap hikers that get too close to their texas chainsaw massacure haven and shove them in to fridges alive for later. Or that one Camarilla town that's just three neonates rotating through being the prince, seneschal, and primogen depending on how everyone's feeling that night because, well, there's nothing else to do there. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Oct 14, 2018 |
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Oct 14, 2018 04:59
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FrostyPox posted:"Of course a guy who thinks that what the world needs is yet another Dungeons and Dragons 1st/2nd edition clone would think Grognards.txt is hatespeech." No, no, he writes scenarios for the most misogynistic of the D&D clones his friend thought the world needed. (The grogs.txt thing is directly related to his weird thing about holding grudges and someone five years ago saying something bad about the OSR meaning we're actually part of a vast cabal of nasty bad people.)
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Oct 14, 2018 05:24
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Dawgstar posted:And that fits in the fluff. Somebody not a Gangrel having Protean should be a Big Deal. They even called it such for Lodin who had Protean and some other stuff, but they didn't stick to that. Protean should be extremely common. Before the mid 19th century it would be necessary for any one hunting outside. Neccessary for anyone moving any distance whatsoever.
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Oct 14, 2018 05:38
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Only if moving in isolation. Prior to the Modern Nights there was a solid business of caravaneers catering to the Cainites, providing protected travel.
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Oct 14, 2018 05:46
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Loomer posted:Only if moving in isolation. Prior to the Modern Nights there was a solid business of caravaneers catering to the Cainites, providing protected travel. What vampire is dumb enough to trust other folks with their personal saftey?
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Oct 14, 2018 05:53
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Charlz Guybon posted:What vampire is dumb enough to trust other folks with their personal saftey? Every single vampire, like every human, is always reliant on others for personal safety to a greater or lesser extent.
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Oct 14, 2018 06:44
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Charlz Guybon posted:What vampire is dumb enough to trust other folks with their personal saftey?
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Oct 14, 2018 06:54
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Nessus posted:Every vampire can make a human their trustworthy buddy for a while by stuffing blood in their mouth three times. They can also do more effective things, like Dominate or Presence, in many cases. Or you could use one of the multitude of ways you could as a human; Only with the added bonus of extra carrots (Immortality, for starters) and sticks (Turning you into lunch)
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Oct 14, 2018 12:30
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Loomer posted:(unless you've got Vampire Lenin in the joint) Was there ever an actual vampire Lenin in oWoD? The russian revolution must have been mentioned at some point.
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Oct 14, 2018 12:32
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Lenin was a mastermind playing the various factions off against each other, as I recall, but never a supernatural himself. Like 4 different groups all arranged to have him die.
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Oct 14, 2018 12:34
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Charlz Guybon posted:Protean should be extremely common. Before the mid 19th century it would be necessary for any one hunting outside. Neccessary for anyone moving any distance whatsoever. 'Outside?' Outside where, the cities where only Gangrel really go with regularity? You mean with the woods where there's only animal blood (i.e., the flat Coke of the vampire world) and werewolves looking to play 'how many pieces can I cut off a Kindred?' No, it's pretty well suited for the only clan who puts up with that nonsense regularly.
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Oct 14, 2018 13:06
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Crasical posted:A vampire raises his lips from the prey's neck, fangs gleaming in dripping crimson of the sanguine lifeblood of the mortal who's life they have stolen. Now, they must mark this mortal to prevent further predation, to shield them from further assault until their blood has waxed to fullness once more. Their cold and dead hands slip into their own pocket, and with perverse tenderness apply the cheerful cartoon sticker to his victim's shirt. The beaming smiley face surrounded by white text reads: "Be nice to me, I gave blood today." This is where I admit that my fishmalk first PC gave his herd sugar cookies and orange juice (as well as zero-day warez) each time he dropped in for a sip.
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Oct 14, 2018 18:30
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Loomer posted:Lenin was a mastermind playing the various factions off against each other, as I recall, but never a supernatural himself. Like 4 different groups all arranged to have him die.  I remember how the general Russosphere had a Mystery Shadow Doom Curtain Over It, Because, Man.
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Oct 15, 2018 08:00
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Nessus posted:
Nobody wants to deal with Baba Yaga.
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Oct 15, 2018 19:14
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Punting posted:Nobody wants to deal with Baba Yaga. Especially if she finds out that you killed her dog.
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Oct 16, 2018 02:45
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Bieeanshee posted:Especially if she finds out that you killed her dog. Nice. So, the werewolf running for city council is going to be a side plot in this next chapter before dominating the play in the chapter after that. The seat Alvi is running for has a do nothing incumbent who's not in the pocket of any supernatural faction. My current plan for the actual campaign is to have it as an extended contested roll, one roll per day (30 days) of Presence+Politics for the player vs a 5 die role with the rote quality to represent the incumbent advantage. Cashing in merits like resources, allies, mentor, fame from any of the pack will add +1 to every roll, while holding rallies, fund raisers, knocking on doors will be separate rolls where every success adds a bonus die to that day's roll. Packmates can help with this and good RP of those scenes will add bonus dice too. Any main roll that scores an exceptional success adds a perma +1 while any roll that scores 0 successes adds a -1 from a gaff. Still that seems kind of boring. Thoughts?
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Oct 16, 2018 07:19
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Soonmot posted:Nice. Wouldn't it be more fun to have them play through a few events either to promote themselves or "smear" their opponent and let those determine a lot of the results rather than essentially just rolling for it?
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Oct 16, 2018 07:49
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First, that's a hell of a lot of rolls. Even if everything else were interesting and fun, that would get old fast. I would suggest zooming out a little, maybe a roll per player per week; in 28 days that's four rolls, or five if you want, and that should be plenty. Be very flexible about what they're doing, and depending on how they approach it give out dice bonuses and tricks. Maybe someone scripts an ad blitz, sure, roll Wits + Expression, and if they pour a lot of money into it give them +2 dice, but if someone elects to bring in some exceptionally clever pitch-man, give them 8-again, or even rote if they extemporize an actual clever ad. And if they come up with something that's a really great idea but doesn't seem to call for a roll, just give it to them. They probably rolled plenty or spent XP getting into that position in the first place. They already won that battle, don't make them have to win it again.
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Oct 16, 2018 08:07
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Nessus posted:
Which, bafflingly, they brought back for Werewolf 20.
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Oct 16, 2018 08:25
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Loomer posted:Which, bafflingly, they brought back for Werewolf 20. It was to mesh with the mid-second-edition setting that V20 ran with. We ditched it as of Changing Breeds 20, because I'm buggered if we're writing a Changing Breeds book without the Ahadi.
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Oct 16, 2018 10:26
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Hel posted:Wouldn't it be more fun to have them play through a few events either to promote themselves or "smear" their opponent and let those determine a lot of the results rather than essentially just rolling for it? That was the idea with the campaign events, but I can see where just having those give a straight up bonus instead of another roll makes now sense. Dropping it to a week seems like too little, but 2 rolls a week, representing the start and end of the news cycle feels like a sweet spot. Edit: and of course I'm rolling with whatever off the wall poo poo they cook up, that's why I didn't include dirty tricks. Our irakka has the gift that lets you possess animals and I can just imagine what she'll do with that. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 16, 2018 14:39
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Soonmot posted:Nice. Giving the incumbent a rote quality on the roll seems very unbalancing. Even if they stack up 15 dice, they could be drawing fairly easily to someone with 7 or 8 with rote quality. 8-again or 9-again would be much more forgiving mechanically. I'd give the incumbent a large pool of bonuses instead (from rallies, fund raisers, etc.). Then lay it out, let them chip away at each other's dice pools via scenes and build up dice pools via scenes. Then have a debate and use social combat rules (doors work okay, but there are social combat rules in Danse Macabre that I've really enjoyed using). If the PC wins the debate, give it a bigger bonus like 9-again, to make it really mean something. By making them scenes you can keep it active and then it's not just dice rolling, even if you're only keeping track of a handful of dice for the meta-roll. You could also have scenes where they're holding a town hall meeting and then whoops, there's something screwy with the spirits in the high school auditorium... Then that's two stories with one scene.
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Oct 16, 2018 14:41
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I forgot about those social combat rules, I remember that preview, thanks!
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Oct 16, 2018 14:45
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Loomer posted:Which, bafflingly, they brought back for Werewolf 20. Didn't Baba Yaga get eaten eventually?
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Oct 16, 2018 16:17
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Dawgstar posted:Didn't Baba Yaga get eaten eventually? By a Niktuku, no less.
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Oct 16, 2018 17:44
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