|
I think Requiem is a better game, but as a fan of the original clans a ton (90s nostalgia isn't nothing) and the move to making blood not just magic points I have decided to try V5 for my next campaign. My last Vampire game was V20 so it isn't exactly a huge leap but sometimes you pick the thing that still gets support over the dead line. Unfortunate, but I buy more books than I play games in my old age.
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 14:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Honestly, Hunger and Loresheets are awesome updates to the vampire rules. Loresheets in particular really draw in on that VtM nostalgia for those of us who played in the 90's and early noughties, specially because they let players get a stake on the metaplot elements they want in the game. I do prefer Requiem's stronger disciplines, but in terms of world building they pretty much work the same for me. Hell, I had the Lancea Sanctum as a local faction in my last VtM campaign. I never really got the sense that I was supposed to be blindly following the metaplot instead of drawing what I wanted from it, including from Requiem. Doubly so because where I feel V5 really messed up was the metaplot updates. I also like the three-rounds and out conflict rules being the default. Actual combat in both systems suck, though I'd say Requiem's sucks a bit less. The one major house rules I used for V5 was removing XP multipliers (and adjusting XP gain to match) because goddamn, was that an old dumb convention that should have been buried forever in the 90's. I also let PCs ignore prerequisites for what were in-clan discipline powers in older editions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 14:25
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:Honestly, Hunger and Loresheets are awesome updates to the vampire rules. Loresheets in particular really draw in on that VtM nostalgia for those of us who played in the 90's and early noughties, specially because they let players get a stake on the metaplot elements they want in the game. Yeah, VtR and V5 are both good games, it's more that there's no reason to play V20 anymore, imo. Even if you ignore metaplot stuff like The Beckoning (though why would you, that's one of the best things in V5) and run it like V20 or Revised, the rules are just better. Another good homebrew rule is that the extra dot you get from Predator type can instead be used to up the power you already have at 1 dot to 2 (so you have 2 in clan at 2) and then you get another single dot in your third clan discipline or whatever the Disciplines related to that predator type, so your spread is 2/2/1. This only matters if you're not flattening XP costs because otherwise it basically penalizes anyone that doesn't use the predator type to get a third dot in their best in clan discipline (15xp vs 10 or 5). It also adds some nice variety at the start and PCs don't have level 3 out the gate unless they spent starting exp on it, but functionally having 3 different disciplines makes for a more fun toolkit at the outset. Interestingly that's the actual homebrew rule Jason Carl used at the start of LA by Night, it's how Victor started with Presence 2, Dominate 2, and Potence 1.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 14:39
|
|
|
Hunger is bad though. Half-thought mechanic invented just to make gameplay more random and less fun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 15:29
|
|
|
The Beast be an unpredictable rear end in a top hat. Eh, a lot of people (myself included) really like the Hunger mechanic and how it factors into other stuff and the Beast can drive you to just lash out and be extra when it's inconvenient. You're a bag of meat with the shadow of a conscience still floating inside it, taped to a hungry and psychotic Beast that's chained up and trying to break free constantly. Being a vampire is ugly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 15:41
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Hunger is bad though. Half-thought mechanic invented just to make gameplay more random and less fun. The V5 system has some definite pitfalls on the whole, really. Only being a couple of bad rouse dice rolls away from starving sucks and a lot of players don't like that kind of loss of control because it feels extremely arbitrary. It can lead to some unfortunateness when you really need blood and the easiest options to feed require a big dice pool - that you don't have - because V5 really likes big dice pools.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 15:52
|
|
|
Having being an unliving horror who can't ever have perfect self control is actually one of the parts I am most interested it trying at a table. It is one of those things I understand why people dislike, but as long as the players know going in that freaking out is always on table definitely makes blasting your strongest power at every threat more risky.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 16:11
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:The Beast be an unpredictable rear end in a top hat. It this. My last session my player rolled a crit success on her rouse check. That gave us a chance to change up the dynamic of a scene with her new mortal friend. She's a Toredor, and her mortal friend triggered her clan bane of Desire. With that crit on rouse, she still had control of herself, but it gave a bit of mechanical weight to the story we were telling and made the scene much more interesting and has further pushed along the potential plot lines with that NPC. Will the Toredor and the pretty mortal girl get together or will something loving terrible happen? Who knows! Personally I'm hoping she tries ghouling the mortal because that will really make things interesting but having a mortal lover who is (at this point) unaware of vampires and unaware of the player being a vampire is also a fun plot thread to play with. Our next session has been on hold for a bit because of scheduling, but what I've got written out should be fun. I'm planning to pull her sire character off the board for a while to focus more on the relationship between the player and her NPC Coterie mates as well as revealing that one of her Coterie mates is actually the sister of her sire (the Coterie mate shares a Sire with the players sire), introducing combat with some local goober hunters, and pushing the "Oh poo poo the Sabbat are probably invading" plot line forward by sending her to go find a Noddist scholar, because the Prince thinks that will help (it won't but Prince Frank is in over his head so gently caress him) So far we've run three sessions and the Sabbat has been a mostly off screen threat, with the last session introducing an abandoned Sabbat haven the player found. I'm planning to actually introduce them in game in a few sessions with a big assault on some event/location the player is at that I haven't figured out yet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 16:18
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:This is exactly how Loresheets/Bloodlines work in V5, just so you know. The Clan Banes are overall far more impactful in V5 than previously (a few are honestly too overtuned and make certain clans legitimately difficult to play) so you don't pick up anything extra, and a lot of the abilities related to the sheets are often passive bonuses or really unique powers that are in theme but limited usage. Maybe I'm not remembering the rules from the last time I read the game, but: * In V5, does picking up a new discipline give you a new bane? As far as I know it does not, and getting a dot of Oblivion does not destroy your reflection or something. You're just unlikely to get the dot because you'd need a teacher and many vampires view their clan powers are proprietary trade secrets. * In V5, is there a limit on how many Loresheets you can have? As far as I know there is not. So in fact V5 does not have the elements of Requiem which stifle power diversification. In fact, it's the opposite; a Requiem vampire might, say, be really invested in Obfuscate and have lots of Obfuscate devotions on top of their normal Obfuscate rating. Their Masquerade equivalent only gets five Obfuscate powers, period, and each combo Obfuscate power they take has to fill a different one of their limited other Discipline slots, such that they have much more need and incentive to branch out into weird bloodline crap once they've run out of their allotment of "regular" vampire powers. Lord_Hambrose posted:Having being an unliving horror who can't ever have perfect self control is actually one of the parts I am most interested it trying at a table. It is one of those things I understand why people dislike, but as long as the players know going in that freaking out is always on table definitely makes blasting your strongest power at every threat more risky. It's not actually more risky. Your 5 point hunger pool is mathematically equivalent to a 10 point blood pool, and the danger inherent to being or being around a vampire is exactly the same: when their mana is low, they are more likely to hurt you (either as a calculated decision or because they failed a self control check).
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 17:38
|
|
|
While the thread is talking V5, I'm starting a V5 thinblood game next week. It's my first V5 game, my first Masquerade game (I've run and played VtR), and my first thinblood game. For people who have played V5 using thinbloods are there any rules and mechanics that I should take extra time reading over and understanding?
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 17:55
|
|
|
It's just adding a random gently caress you to a game that already had plenty of random gently caress yous. In the old version you always HAD to feed eventually because blood was always going down. Now if you're lucky you never have to worry about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 18:06
|
|
|
Badactura posted:While the thread is talking V5, I'm starting a V5 thinblood game next week. It's my first V5 game, my first Masquerade game (I've run and played VtR), and my first thinblood game. For people who have played V5 using thinbloods are there any rules and mechanics that I should take extra time reading over and understanding? The biggest one to stress is if you want to be good at something, go for a big dice pool because four dice isn't going to cut it without Willpower spending. This also ties in if you want to help out in the fighting also make sure to go in on a decent size pool for your preferred method of throwing down. I'd probably avoid the Jack of All Trades spread for that reason because it's a lot of one dots in a lot of skills which may not work for you in play. Little bit of a char gen trap. I like Fuzz's house rule about adding to a Discipline you already get to start at a 2/2/1 spread but if your ST doesn't go for it remember that thanks to how the math works out getting 3 dots in a Discipline is a better buy at the start than using XP to raise it later. As long as you don't mind if you can't do it under risky situations, you don't need to throw points at Drive or Technology or even a place to stay with Haven so you can put those resources elsewhere. Awareness is always worth having as a skill. Chasse is a great Coterie Background. Anything more specific I'm sure I or anybody else who's read the book would be happy to help.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 18:17
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:It's not actually more risky. Your 5 point hunger pool is mathematically equivalent to a 10 point blood pool, and the danger inherent to being or being around a vampire is exactly the same: when their mana is low, they are more likely to hurt you (either as a calculated decision or because they failed a self control check). Local tabletop player does not understand probability. It is mathematically equivalent if you're rolling hundreds or thousands of times (that is, during an entire long chronicle), but there is no force in the universe saying that for every successful rouse check there must be a failed one. A player can eat poo poo and fail all their rouse tests in a session, they can be very lucky and not increase their hunger at all despite rousing constantly, I've seen both happen at the table. It is to taste if this unpredictability is preferable or not in one's games, but I personally like vampire mana banana mana as a gamble instead of a resource.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 18:50
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:Local tabletop player does not understand probability. I said equivalent, not identical. On average, you have the same amount of mana in V5 as in V20. The difference is that in V5 you sometimes get to heal or wake for free. It's not actually "riskier" to use your powers and I wouldn't even call the results unpredictable - if I'm at Hunger 1, and I decide to use a discipline, the absolute worst thing that's going to happen to me is that I end up at Hunger 2.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 19:02
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:* In V5, is there a limit on how many Loresheets you can have? As far as I know there is not. It's officially one Loresheet per character based on commentary from the edition's main mechanical developer and the sourcebook Cults of the Blood Gods. The first section on Loresheets in V5 Core says that at the Storyteller's discretion, players can purchase dots in "additional Loresheets during gameplay," and weirdly enough that's still in there even after this ruling (I thought I had the most recent printing of the core but maybe not?), but otherwise 1 Loresheet per character has been the going standard for the rest of the edition. Players can also buy into a Bloodline (a specific Loresheet representing their nature of their undead heritage) in addition to a regular Loresheet, but in official material that's limited to the Hecata to represent their various internal factions. EDIT: Turns out the extra Loresheet at Storyteller's discretion is actually part of the corebook's errata and my memories are just scrambled eggs, but apparently the CotBG's statement holds and also considers "Descendant of..." Loresheets to count as retroactive Bloodlines. But then also The Chicago Folios introduces a rule that if you've gained all five levels of a Loresheet, you can buy into an additional Loresheet with narrative justification as long as its not a "Descendant of..." (and I would assume this also applies to Bloodlines). So with all that in mind, I guess it's ideally 1 Loresheet during character creation with an additional "Descendant of..." or Bloodline Loresheet, with the option of either gaining a new Loresheet once you've gained all your abilities of your current Loresheet, or just at the Storyteller's discretion. So, I guess it's technically 1 but only as a soft limit? I apologize for this sudden mental wild goose chase I've led everyone on. Free Cog fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 19:14
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:I said equivalent, not identical. On average, you have the same amount of mana in V5 as in V20. The difference is that in V5 you sometimes get to heal or wake for free. It's not actually "riskier" to use your powers and I wouldn't even call the results unpredictable - if I'm at Hunger 1, and I decide to use a discipline, the absolute worst thing that's going to happen to me is that I end up at Hunger 2. Well, if you can reliably take guesses at 50% odds more power to you, man. All I know is that I never saw that 50/50 split in a single session and I've never met anyone who's thrown heads of tails 10 times and got a nice even split of results either.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 19:39
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:Well, if you can reliably take guesses at 50% odds more power to you, man. All I know is that I never saw that 50/50 split in a single session and I've never met anyone who's thrown heads of tails 10 times and got a nice even split of results either. I'm not talking about an even fifty/fifty split, I'm talking about a bounded range of outcomes. If I've got +10 to hit and come at an enemy with 21 AC, I don't know if I'm going to land a blow and I certainly don't know that my attacks are going to metronome between missing and hitting ad infinitum but I'm not exactly launching myself adrift into a maelstrom of incomprehensible chaos. The real question is whether the uncertainty is good or serves the game's themes, and "draw on your dark powers without any cost to the people around you" is a far cry from "take a swing at a goblin but miss".
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 19:49
|
|
|
All of these things make me think that V5 is fond of having a level cap. And the way you can customize characters reminds me of the ways you could switch out your powers in 4e D&D. Thematically it makes sense for not everyone to be able to access everything, but it’s a TT game, not a video game and it should stick to that concept. Why would you want a system that’s big selling point is “we narrowed all the options into archetypes” is beyond me or my desires for a game. Having hundreds of options that fit together in a thousand different ways for more character concepts than you can think of was a strength of the WoD. They were not optimal, and some are just terrible in many situations, but they were options not requirements. Except for that pesky meta plot making things less optional of course (unless you ignore it completely). You’re playing a character that is essentially immortal. Capping how much you can learn is limiting for only arbitrary reasons. If I want a character who specializes in Obfuscate and want to put a bunch of XP into that, why shouldn’t it be possible? The way it is most games don’t end up using 4-5 dot powers anyway and that is again boring. Character advancement in any direction and story advancement in any direction used to be a strong reason to play the *oD games, and if a 5th edition turns that into something with an even more limited set of options along with scaling XP then I can’t see a good reason to ever play it. And good luck with Ascension, it’s going to read like a video game creation screen. Or just the options in CK3 for the Masquerade mod. That said, I’m glad some people are having fun playing it (especially now that they’re not being constantly racist), but from a design standpoint there are still issues that other editions have already solved.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 19:49
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Maybe I'm not remembering the rules from the last time I read the game, but: * You only have your Clan Bane, you don't pick up new Banes. As you get stronger your Bane Severity increases and your Bane becomes more and more pronounced and problematic. All vampires can "tap into" all the Disciplines, it's a matter of learning how to which is what picking up or of clan stuff ultimately is. Some Bloodlines pick up strange flaws and drawbacks along with certain ability levels (like the Samedi), you get those if you take that ability from the Bloodline sheet. * You can only have one Loresheet at character creation and can only take Bloodlines at creation. There's an optional rule in Cults that allows a Bloodline and a Loresheet, but that's it. You can add loresheets later in game via play, but you still need to RP out, say, getting on Fiorenza's good side and earning a permanent connection to her. Once you max Obfuscate, sure you have the option of going into loresheets, but more likely you're branching out into other disciplines or adding more backgrounds as permanent things or raising your Blood Potency. There's already a lot of poo poo to spend on. The major difference now is you can have two Nosferatu with 5 Obfuscate and their capabilities are actually different and you have NO idea what to expect, because there's a wide array of combinations of powers they could have, on top of the different skills. Disciplines aren't cookie cutter single track affairs, you need to pick and choose what you want your character to be able to do, which in itself is a form of specialization. Dawgstar posted:I like Fuzz's house rule about adding to a Discipline you already get to start at a 2/2/1 spread but if your ST doesn't go for it remember that thanks to how the math works out getting 3 dots in a Discipline is a better buy at the start than using XP to raise it later. They're playing Thinbloods so they don't get any discipline dots by default. Specifically for TB, take a good, LONG look at the Thin Blood merits and flaws. There's a lot of combos and you should be grabbing at least a handful from there. The merit that lets you walk in daylight is inordinately powerful, but if no one else in your group takes it you're gonna be on your own hanging out during the day and the ST may not be able to handle you going off and actually getting poo poo done, and taking a pricey and super cool merit to then be related to being a watchdog for the other players during the day is terrible. So yeah, make sure your team isn't leaving you out in the sunlight by yourself. TB Alchemy is also crazy strong but NOT a necessity. You can always pick it up later, and it's a big sink of experience at creation. The stat spread suggestion is good, particularly for Thinbloods because you can't Blood Surge like full kindred can to get an extra two dice, only one. That means the base dice pools matter a bit more. Finally and most importantly: Get armor. Thinbloods don't halve superficial. Guns and knives will gently caress you up. Ferrinus posted:I said equivalent, not identical. On average, you have the same amount of mana in V5 as in V20. The difference is that in V5 you sometimes get to heal or wake for free. It's not actually "riskier" to use your powers and I wouldn't even call the results unpredictable - if I'm at Hunger 1, and I decide to use a discipline, the absolute worst thing that's going to happen to me is that I end up at Hunger 2. This doesn't take BP into account. As your BP increases, you basically get Advantage (a la D&D) on Rouse checks for increasing levels of disciplines, meaning you can roll two dice to Rouse and if either one succeeds, you don't get hungrier. The level up to which you can do this is dictated by BP, which is why higher potency kindred can just toss level 3 and 4 disciplines around and not really give a poo poo most of the time. Jhet posted:All of these things make me think that V5 is fond of having a level cap. And the way you can customize characters reminds me of the ways you could switch out your powers in 4e D&D. Uhh the opposite. In Requiem, to use Ferrinus' own example above, if you're not in some bloodline, you will basically NEVER have their unique power set. Full stop. There are like 70+ special bloodline disciplines in Requiem. That is huge chunks of the power set in the game that you'll never see. V5, conversely, you wind your way up through a discipline and have a selection of 5 powers. It's not that hard to actually learn a new Discipline that isn't in clan, just take a sip of (non-blood bonding amount) vitae from someone that knows that discipline (doesn't need to be an in clan for them either), they show you some basics, you feed on the right resonance of blood, and you're all set. No Discipline is unique to any clan now - two of them have Blood Sorcery, two have Oblivion, three have Protean, etc. The Disciplines themselves are far more open and accessible, so in that regard the customizability of each character is really drat high in actual play. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:03
|
|
|
V5 is a couple of interesting ideas kludged together in a way that doesn't work merged with a setting that should have stayed in the 90s.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
I mean, that's almost every White Wolf and OPP release. I don't think either company has released a game that didn't have serious issues with its mechanics.Jhet posted:All of these things make me think that V5 is fond of having a level cap. And the way you can customize characters reminds me of the ways you could switch out your powers in 4e D&D. I am not a fan of how PDX manages things, but you can still do a prep Brujah, the game doesn't limit you to playing one that listens to Rage Against the Machine, nor do you have to stick to the archetype with any other clan, if anything it is easier to get out of clan disciplines now through a predator style. RAW rules you still get at Obfuscate 5 five different Obfuscate powers, same as in previous editions and Requiem, you just get to pick different powers at those levels as disciplines got consolidated between V20 and V5, which I have mixed feelings about, as some cool discipline powers got lost in the translation. As I said in a previous post, scaling XP costs were buried in GMC 2E for a good reason and it is a standard that should have died with the 90's and is one of the things I house-ruled away (I also house ruled getting Discipline powers without increasing Discipline levels). I am not blind to V5's flaws and limitations, but I do find enough to like in it to prefer it over Requiem 2E for now. Also LOL, they haven't even managed to release Werewolf and Hunter: The Reckoning will be Web 3.0 with no Imbued, so yeah, it is a shitshow. Ferrinus posted:I'm not talking about an even fifty/fifty split, I'm talking about a bounded range of outcomes. If I've got +10 to hit and come at an enemy with 21 AC, I don't know if I'm going to land a blow and I certainly don't know that my attacks are going to metronome between missing and hitting ad infinitum but I'm not exactly launching myself adrift into a maelstrom of incomprehensible chaos. The real question is whether the uncertainty is good or serves the game's themes, and "draw on your dark powers without any cost to the people around you" is a far cry from "take a swing at a goblin but miss". But hunger spirals do happen and they do drive the action in the game, more than one session had crucial events as a consequence of Hunger building up quickly and players being in situations where they are forced to take the risk of increasing it beyond safe levels, and each increase in Hunger increases the odds of the Beast acting up in a way that didn't happen in past editions. Again, it is fair to not enjoy that, but I for one like it and it made the Beast much more present in V5 games than it was in decades of running previous VtM and VtR campaigns.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:15
|
|
|
Except in previous versions Blood is always ticking down while in this one it can never go down if you're lucky enough. So you'll have the one player with bad luck and the one player with good luck and then no one's having fun. Edit: Also adding a pointless dice roll to make you do two rolls cause rolling more = better.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:17
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Except in previous versions Blood is always ticking down while in this one it can never go down if you're lucky enough. So you'll have the one player with bad luck and the one player with good luck and then no one's having fun. Or everyone is having fun because it's chance and risk and anyone could have had the bad luck. If you're risk averse and don't like chance, you shouldn't really be playing any game where dice determine outcomes, no? A lot of people actually enjoy when things go sideways and outcomes aren't guaranteed or binary, and those 3 hunger dice you're lugging around suddenly make a routine roll to search an apartment turn into you ripping the place apart and gouging holes in the walls as the beast gets impatient with this bullshit because it wants to go out and drain someone dry.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:23
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:Or everyone is having fun because it's chance and risk and anyone could have had the bad luck. If you're risk averse and don't like chance, you shouldn't really be playing any game where dice determine outcomes, no? A lot of people actually enjoy when things go sideways and outcomes aren't guaranteed or binary, and those 3 hunger dice you're lugging around suddenly make a routine roll to search an apartment turn into you ripping the place apart and gouging holes in the walls as the beast gets impatient with this bullshit because it wants to go out and drain someone dry. See, that kind of dumb posturing doesn't work in real life. A game should be fun for everyone, and it's become accepted wisdom that you shouldn't roll when it doesn't lead to an interesting outcome. And adding chances to be constantly hosed over, randomly, is not fun. It's not chance and risk: it's bad game design, pure and simple. Edit: It's like those old D&D stories of the Gamemaster making you roll not to fall every step of the journey.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Except in previous versions Blood is always ticking down while in this one it can never go down if you're lucky enough. So you'll have the one player with bad luck and the one player with good luck and then no one's having fun. I dunno, mounsier, I've played one-shots and campaigns with three different groups and people had fun. It is fine if you don't like the idea of Hunger, more power to you, I hope that no one will ever force you play a game you don't like.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:29
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:The biggest one to stress is if you want to be good at something, go for a big dice pool because four dice isn't going to cut it without Willpower spending. This also ties in if you want to help out in the fighting also make sure to go in on a decent size pool for your preferred method of throwing down. I'd probably avoid the Jack of All Trades spread for that reason because it's a lot of one dots in a lot of skills which may not work for you in play. Little bit of a char gen trap. I like Fuzz's house rule about adding to a Discipline you already get to start at a 2/2/1 spread but if your ST doesn't go for it remember that thanks to how the math works out getting 3 dots in a Discipline is a better buy at the start than using XP to raise it later. Thanks but to clarify I'm running the game. I'll let my players know it's prob not a great idea to go all Jack of all trades w their stats.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:38
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:I dunno, mounsier, I've played one-shots and campaigns with three different groups and people had fun. It is fine if you don't like the idea of Hunger, more power to you, I hope that no one will ever force you play a game you don't like. I'm not saying you didn't have fun, games don't need to be perfect to have fun. I've been playing rpgs for 20 years, trust me I've had tons of fun playing games with many many bad rules. As is, V5 is way better designed than most games published in 90s/2000s. But having fun with a game doesn't mean every mechanic in that game is good or well thought-out. Hunger is a bad mechanic that exists just for the devs to go "Look, this is different!" They clearly didn't think about it in-depht. It doesn't add anything to the game and in fact removes stuff from it: the ticking time bomb aspect of vampirism is gone, replaced with lul randomz.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:39
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:* You only have your Clan Bane, you don't pick up new Banes. As you get stronger your Bane Severity increases and your Bane becomes more and more pronounced and problematic. All vampires can "tap into" all the Disciplines, it's a matter of learning how to which is what picking up or of clan stuff ultimately is. Some Bloodlines pick up strange flaws and drawbacks along with certain ability levels (like the Samedi), you get those if you take that ability from the Bloodline sheet. Makes sense, thanks. That's a good design, except that I'd want players to be able to "stake out" a bloodline that they have but is still dormant in their blood in case they want to start with a social loresheet and only discover their heritage later. quote:This doesn't take BP into account. As your BP increases, you basically get Advantage (a la D&D) on Rouse checks for increasing levels of disciplines, meaning you can roll two dice to Rouse and if either one succeeds, you don't get hungrier. The level up to which you can do this is dictated by BP, which is why higher potency kindred can just toss level 3 and 4 disciplines around and not really give a poo poo most of the time. BP makes it more predictable; it weights the average of +0.5 Hunger per rouse closer to 0. ZearothK posted:But hunger spirals do happen and they do drive the action in the game, more than one session had crucial events as a consequence of Hunger building up quickly and players being in situations where they are forced to take the risk of increasing it beyond safe levels, and each increase in Hunger increases the odds of the Beast acting up in a way that didn't happen in past editions. Again, it is fair to not enjoy that, but I for one like it and it made the Beast much more present in V5 games than it was in decades of running previous VtM and VtR campaigns. Hunger spirals are great, but in particular they are what has made every edition of Vampire great because it's been possible since 1st edition to use blood, get hungrier, have rolls go bad, need to use more blood, etc. It's like the most fundamental dynamic of Vampire as a game. The question is why V5 contains the opposite of a hunger spiral: a hot streak in which you just get a string of stuff for free. In an earlier edition, you might get unlucky and then need to spend blood (you get injured, for instance, and have to heal, or you wind up in such a difficult situation that only a discipline will get you out safely) or you might spend blood, get unlucky, and need to spend more (your power fails or is only partially effective, you end up escalating a conflict such that you need to double down and get hungrier still), but even in the absolute best case, if you were going to draw on the blood, some unlucky SOB was going to pay for it either tonight or later in the week. If you dropped a powerful discipline to autowin some game situation, that was a point of lethal damage waiting to happen to a mortal down the line. I've made this comment before, but V5 actually resembles Mage much more than Vampire. Instead of paying a cost, you risk a backlash. If you do something big and significant, you're blowing on those dice and crossing your fingers to see if you get away with it. But in Requiem or 20 or whatever, you can never get away with healing a point of damage or blurring across a room with Celerity. You always incur a cost that, because you're a vampire, some other person is going to have to pay. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:45
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:I mean, that's almost every White Wolf and OPP release. I don't think either company has released a game that didn't have serious issues with its mechanics. Yeah, I liked having all the bloodlines and devotions and all of the toys to play with. And making you pick which version of the toy you get is limiting in a way that’s not useful to me. Saying there are three options for a level, but you can only ever get the one is limiting for the sake of it, not because it’s going to break something to be able to modify the base option. My guess is that they’ll run out of ideas for how to do Ascension and it’ll just be terrible anyway. Or it’ll just be an Awakening sort of system with a WoD paint job, but one where you don’t get to use “magick”.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:45
|
|
|
To join the Lol Randumz Hangy chat, I've played V5 and had fun with it. Hunger is a good mechanic but I think players should be temper their expectations and always assume the dice aren't going to help you, then it's just blood points with a 50% chance of a refund when used and extra drama when at high Hunger. Also Malkavians get it rough, which I'm always a fan of. Granted our ST did not care about rouse checks to wake at the start of every session and let us skip them; granted the book is written horribly and promoted GM as adversary play.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:46
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:See, that kind of dumb posturing doesn't work in real life. A game should be fun for everyone, and it's become accepted wisdom that you shouldn't roll when it doesn't lead to an interesting outcome. And adding chances to be constantly hosed over, randomly, is not fun. It's not chance and risk: it's bad game design, pure and simple. Except it wasn't a dumb or arbitrary roll, it was from an actual game wherein we snuck into a guy's apartment and were trying to find a little black book he'd kept on notable kindred. The ideal would have been to leave no trace, but yeah that didn't happen, and a downstairs neighbor woke up and freaked out and called the cops, so what went from a quiet search and retrieval where we had a nebulous but not super pressing time crunch while the guy was downstairs at a public function instead turned into a breakneck (but successful! We found the book, plus some stuff we didn't know the guy had) race against time to escape before the cops came and avoiding all the cameras. That entailed the quick decision to head to the rooftop of the penthouse, climb out onto the actual building roof, and then descend down the outside of the building using a service ladder down to the service entrance and then booking it right as the cops showed up. Meanwhile the lookout downstairs at the event had to extricate herself from a drawn out (polite) social sparring with two other important NPCs, all while not tipping off she was in contact with us, and the Nos who was hiding in the elevator shafts decided to head downstairs and cut the power to escape because he didn't take Ghost in the Machine and would show up on cameras despite Obfuscate. For some crazy reason, everyone had a great time and it was tense and fun, and the one wonky roll sorta snowballed it all. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:50
|
|
|
There's definitely stuff I like in V5 and I'd have a blast playing it and I'd try to keep my nitpicks and "Requiem is better than MAsquerade" grognardry to a minimum. I still have a huge collection of old V:tES cards, I'm an hypocrite who loves all Vampire editions and sorry I've been grumpy. lovely day at work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:51
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:Except it wasn't a dumb or arbitrary roll, it was from an actual game wherein we snuck into a guy's apartment and were trying to find a little black book he'd kept on notable kindred. The ideal would have been to leave no trace, but yeah that didn't happen, and a downstairs neighbor woke up and freaked out and called the cops, so what went from a quiet search and retrieval where we had a nebulous but not super pressing time crunch while the guy was downstairs at a public function instead turned into a breakneck (but successful! We found the book, plus some stuff we didn't know the guy had) race against time to escape before the cops came and avoiding all the cameras. This could happen in any versions of the game (except the historical versions for obvious reasons), either Masquerade or Requiem. This is just a good game with a good group.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 20:54
|
|
|
An interesting detail about Requiem (that I'm not sure was in Masquerade or even made it into 2E) is that resisting frenzy is actually an instant action, extended roll. Someone flashing a camera in your face or insulting you or whatever might provoke you to the tune of 1 success, or 3, or 5. If I'm up against a 3-success frenzy and I get 1 success on Resolve+Composure, then I don't frenzy... on that turn. But I'm stuck doing nothing but struggling to gain control of myself on future turns (and, I guess, moving my Speed?) until I make it to the total I need, and any failure (either 0 successes on a roll, or failure to roll because I try to do something else) would catapult me into frenzy proper. And, of course, the hungrier I am, the bigger a penalty I get to each of my rolls, so there's a higher chance of me flipping out or at least taking longer to regain full control of myself. This actually created an organic and consistent way for hunger to interfere with and sometimes cause the outright failure of other actions - if I'm trying to give a speech or pick a lock, and I catch a whiff of blood or feel insulted or something, I might be stuck standing there vibrating with rage for a few moments, which might be of no particular consequence, but might mean I miss a crucial time window, put off whoever I'm speaking to, etc. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:01
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:This could happen in any versions of the game (except the historical versions for obvious reasons), either Masquerade or Requiem. Sure, which is why I don't see where the complaint comes from for V5 specifically. They're trying to make the whole franchise more approachable to newbies, hence most of the metaplot being made irrelevant/streamlined, the gate of most cities specifically being nebulous and "it is whatever you want it to be in your game" a la Requiem, and making the "classes" pretty distinct but you're still not super locked into something, so if you make a Nos and want to learn Blood Magic, it's pretty doable. The scaling exp is still stupid, though. I don't get what their beef with beats was. Beats are great. ZearothK posted:Honestly, Hunger and Loresheets are awesome updates to the vampire rules. Loresheets in particular really draw in on that VtM nostalgia for those of us who played in the 90's and early noughties, specially because they let players get a stake on the metaplot elements they want in the game. Someone made Loresheets for the Lancea and the Circle of the Crone for V5, since the Caine myth isn't actually canon anymore and there's plenty of other religions and beliefs supported. They're on the homebrew wiki since STV specifically has rules about not overtly crossing over CoD and WoD stuff. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:01
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:For some crazy reason, everyone had a great time and it was tense and fun, and the one wonky roll sorta snowballed it all. I'm a huge believer in using randomness to prompt interesting decisions people wouldn't make otherwise, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Hunger rolls could be overtuned. The problem isn't that they can make something weird happen. The problem is when it's been a long day and you're three hours deep into a session, and you did some interesting Hunger rolls but you had to think about the consequences a lot, and someone just triggered another one but you don't want to think about what happens in the 10% chance they roll bad and turn the elysium into a bloodbath and you tell them to just skip the roll. That doesn't mean Hunger's a bad mechanic to represent the traditional slow blood drain and random feral need to feed. It just means it probably use another editing pass to make sure it lands in the sweet spot for people as much as possible. (To be fair, the point where it becomes a bit too much randomness is different for everyone. I just think a lot of the pushback in the thread is because you're talking like it's never a problem, when it can be a bit much sometimes in longer games.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:10
|
|
|
Okay, here's my proposal. Hunger goes from 0 to 13. When you Rouse the Blood, roll a d10. On a 6+, your Hunger increases by 1. On a 5-, your Hunger increases by 2. (The math for how many red dice this gives you and how they're read would be massaged appropriately)
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:23
|
|
|
I dunno, a lot of lol hangy random chat reminds me when people were hyperbolic about predator's taint causing everyone to go into a frenzy back when Requiem came out. Hunger has been a consistently good experience in every game I've been in and it is the one thing that I felt V5 really improved on previous editions, along with Loresheets. For me it hasn't been a case of "had fun despite of" mechanic, like everything related to combat in every game published by WW or OPP. Maybe it is because the people I play with are pretty chill (and most of my core group has been playing together for 17 years at this point), but people who don't get high hunger from their rolls feel lucky, while people who do and end up in messed up situations have the spotlight for a time. The Companion did suggest that "take half" should be the default modal for resolving actions in non tense situations where the beast rising up would be non-sensical and I am 100% for that. Fuzz posted:Someone made Loresheets for the Lancea and the Circle of the Crone for V5, since the Caine myth isn't actually canon anymore and there's plenty of other religions and beliefs supported. They're on the homebrew wiki since STV specifically has rules about not overtly crossing over CoD and WoD stuff. Going to check that out, thanks! [edit] Uh? What homebrew wiki? Google is failing me. Ferrinus posted:I've made this comment before, but V5 actually resembles Mage much more than Vampire. Instead of paying a cost, you risk a backlash. I like it being risk instead of a certainty and it is fine, Ferrinus, we will never play a game together, so we are allowed to enjoy our different things without invalidating each other's experiences. ZearothK fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:I like it being risk instead of a certainty and it is fine, Ferrinus, we will never play a game together, so we are allowed to enjoy our different things without invalidating each other's experiences. Hey, that's fine. Lots of people like the superheroes with fangs playstyle.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Fuzz posted:Someone made Loresheets for the Lancea and the Circle of the Crone for V5, since the Caine myth isn't actually canon anymore and there's plenty of other religions and beliefs supported. They're on the homebrew wiki since STV specifically has rules about not overtly crossing over CoD and WoD stuff. drat, I gotta check those out. I've wanted to cross over some stuff since the Translation Guide had options for it. Edit: Lol the Caine muth is totally still canon what are yout alking about? ZearothK posted:I dunno, a lot of lol hangy random chat reminds me when people were hyperbolic about predator's taint causing everyone to go into a frenzy back when Requiem came out. I dunno, I feel like that's different. For one, you only roll the Predator's Taint the first time you meet a new vamp. I really liked PT, btw. A cool way to get those Jojo/Highlander style tension of suddenly meeting someone like you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:39
|
|