Malk history

I had an idea for a Malk history. I quite like it, but I think the penalty is too severe.

You have allways been obsessed with hygiene. You sanitized everything, including your fork before eating.
Now in undead you just can't touch people's unwashed necks, and certainly not filthy animals. So the only way for you to feed is finding bloodbags.

Just bloodbag? It seems a HUGE penalty to me, it makes the sewer level and the beginning a (un)living hell. Ok by the time you hit the sewer you should have money enough to afford bloodbags, but in the beginning you have just three and the quest in the beginning are not very rewarding... and you need to use discipline to pass most of them. And the number of bloodbags you can bring with you is limited...
What would be the bonus to mitigate this penalty?
Can you use the Odious Chalice? (It doesn't seem very hygienic )

MxM wrote:

Just bloodbag? It seems a HUGE penalty to me, it makes the sewer level and the beginning a (un)living hell. Ok by the time you hit the sewer you should have money enough to afford bloodbags, but in the beginning you have just three and the quest in the beginning are not very rewarding... and you need to use discipline to pass most of them. And the number of bloodbags you can bring with you is limited...
What would be the bonus to mitigate this penalty?

Any ideas on that?

Quote :

Can you use the Odious Chalice? (It doesn't seem very hygienic )

Why not? You can use a disinfectant on it before use.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

MxM wrote:

Just bloodbag? It seems a HUGE penalty to me, it makes the sewer level and the beginning a (un)living hell. Ok by the time you hit the sewer you should have money enough to afford bloodbags, but in the beginning you have just three and the quest in the beginning are not very rewarding... and you need to use discipline to pass most of them. And the number of bloodbags you can bring with you is limited...
What would be the bonus to mitigate this penalty?

Any ideas on that?

Sadly not. Maybe having more bloodbags in Santa Monica Haven freezer could help...
The only bonus I thought so far is very unbalanced: using dementation without spending blood...
Another one is convincing prostitutes to donate blood via dementation or persuasion... you could use the lines from "pimping for Romero" for their answer. After you could convince Heather without a lot of effort ("for you anything master")

I have some more ideas for Malk madness and I'd like to hear your opinions.

-agoraphobia: If many people are around you, your social skills deteriorate. Maybe even increased frenzy risc.

-autistic: no social skills at all, but on the bright side, no humanity loss either.

-hysteria: whenever something bad or unexpected happens, a frenzy check is called. Can be an attack, police hunting, being let down by a blooddoll...

-manic depression: unpredictably, the vampire gets depressed with a penalty on all feats except soak. When they emerge, they are hyperactive for a short time, with small boni on some feats.

Eh, I'd be really careful with mental illnesses because it's a touchy subject. I know that it fits the clan, but since Malks are basically a walking stereotype/cliche, that doesn't make it better. Translating symptoms into gameplay mechanics sounds very difficult for me, but I don't know the engine, so I can't speak on that. Just please do a lot of research (maybe even on something like the DSM-5 if you can get a hold of it) and handle this carefully.

For the bloodbags idea, just raise Haggle so you can buy them cheap enough. Yeah, time consuming, but the history might give you a free point in it, and you may invest another one to be safe.

Doesn't feel worthwhile to take the history for a free dot in Haggle in return for being unable to feed off anything or anyone to me. By the way, how would frenzies work? Will you feed normally when taken by the Beast?

Balancing the hygiene obsession would be tricky. Perhaps reduced bloodloss? Or maybe you can buy an item called "straw" and if you have it in your inventory you can feed from quality humans (but still not rats or bums).

Dragatus wrote:

Balancing the hygiene obsession would be tricky. Perhaps reduced bloodloss? Or maybe you can buy an item called "straw" and if you have it in your inventory you can feed from quality humans (but still not rats or bums).

ROFL

Btw, Heather would be very higienic if you ghoulize her

About the other histories I don't know, but they seem very hard to implement, with the exception of "autistic"; even though I would change the bonus to "you pay less xp to raise your mental attributes".
I had some ideas about Malk History, but they are mainly disciplines changer

What I want from the malk histories is mostly some penalty to compensate for the inspection bonus.
And I certainly can't use anything that limits abilities, or changes their costs. Because that would cause pronlems with Akeems books.
But I'm curious what you have in mind.

I personally find Inspection to be a pretty poor stat to invest in, it's not enough of a boon to occasionally find nice things here and there to bother investing in to my experience. Even in TFN when I tried making an Ishtarri focusing on inspection I got too fed up with how much of a waste it felt to invest in it because the things I found weren't good enough to wanna do away with the points in combat-related stuff or hacking or disciplines.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

What I want from the malk histories is mostly some penalty to compensate for the inspection bonus.
And I certainly can't use anything that limits abilities, or changes their costs. Because that would cause pronlems with Akeems books.
But I'm curious what you have in mind.

One history is Megalomaniac: presence instead of Obfuscate or easier to raise persuasion and harder to raise Obfuscate/ stealth
ADHD/ hyperactivity: celerity instead of Obfuscate. I don't know otherwise how to implement the lack of attention.
I don't remember the other histories
Edit: Paranoid: you don't trust people, so you trained yourself at discovering lies and defending yourself (+1 to perception, -1 to persuasion)
Narcisistic: you are so beautiful, and you always cured your appearence, standing in front to the mirror to watch (and talk to) yourself. As your beauty grew so did your anger toward the ones who criticized you like that judge to a beauty contest that called you vain, and now rest with a knife in her back... (+1 to seduction, easier to enter frenzy)

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I have some more ideas for Malk madness and I'd like to hear your opinions.

-agoraphobia: If many people are around you, your social skills deteriorate. Maybe even increased frenzy risc.

-autistic: no social skills at all, but on the bright side, no humanity loss either.

-hysteria: whenever something bad or unexpected happens, a frenzy check is called. Can be an attack, police hunting, being let down by a blooddoll...

-manic depression: unpredictably, the vampire gets depressed with a penalty on all feats except soak. When they emerge, they are hyperactive for a short time, with small boni on some feats.

The Bloodlines malk is already pretty heavily delusional. adding another dementation on top would, well . . .

Drop that fish, malk.

malak wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I have some more ideas for Malk madness and I'd like to hear your opinions.

-agoraphobia: If many people are around you, your social skills deteriorate. Maybe even increased frenzy risc.

-autistic: no social skills at all, but on the bright side, no humanity loss either.

-hysteria: whenever something bad or unexpected happens, a frenzy check is called. Can be an attack, police hunting, being let down by a blooddoll...

-manic depression: unpredictably, the vampire gets depressed with a penalty on all feats except soak. When they emerge, they are hyperactive for a short time, with small boni on some feats.

The Bloodlines malk is already pretty heavily delusional. adding another dementation on top would, well . . .

Drop that fish, malk.

I don't know. Ok, they talk funny, but that has no effect whatsoever on the actual gameplay. People understand them just as well.

I like the Megalomaniac and ADHD histories.