Character building and experience

STATIC COSTS

One thing that bugs me about Vampire, both in Bloodlines and p&p, is that the character creation system uses a fixed cost system for upgrading stats while the actual game uses an increasing cost system for upgrading stats. This encourages a lot of minmaxing during character creation. And while I can simply not do it, that leaves me with the nagging feeling that I artificially weakened my character.

I propose changing this so that the in-game cost for upgrading stats is a fixed number. That way the first dot costs as much as the fifth dot. This would encourage players to make more specialized characters instead of a pretty much jack-of-all-trades character that is optimal in vanilla and that would make each playthrough more unique. It would also help dedicated roleplayers who max out a feat because it fits their character, even if they gain little benefit from the last dot or three (because less of the XP invested is "wasted"). And it would fix the problem of players optimizing free ability increases to gain the maximum benefit.

On the other hand this change would have the exact opposite effect in character creation. People would no longer be encouraged to put all the dots in a single stat because that's how you save the most XP. This would also make it less of a problem to give players more points at the start of the game.

There are two downsides though. The first one is that experience gains would have to be readjusted, but you're already going to do that anyway. The second is that if you don't build enough combat stats in the early and midgame your character might end up underpowered for the combat heavy endgame. But I imagine 99% who will play the mod will know what to expect and will build their characters acordingly.


FIXED ATTRIBUTES

I haven't completely made up my mind about this myself, but I have been toying with the idea of giving players the 7/5/3 attribute points from p&p during character creation but making it impossible to upgrade them after the game has started.

The upside is that you start with a more realistic character instead of a loser who's below average at everything and it's a nod to the p&p game. Downside is that all skillchecks would have to be readjusted and if you set something low and it proves to be a bad idea, you can't correct it.


HISTORIES

I would like all character histories in the mod to be equally viable, generally speaking. A specific history can be optimal for a specific character you want to create, but none can be absolutely superior to the others. And that includes "no history" option.

This basically means three main types of histories would be in the mod:
1) stat shufflers
2) discipline replacers (such as "City Gangrel")
3) quickstart history that makes endgame harder

That last one could give you perhaps +1 to all five disciplines (three clan, blood buff, blood heal), but it would limit them to max 3 or max 4 and give you an XP penalty. The penalty could be chosen is such a way that if you gain the minimal possible amount of XP by the end of the game, then the XP you lost is equal to the cost of 5 discipline dots. But if you do any sidequests or bonus objectives you end up losing more than you gained at the start.

Hm, I was thinking about something else for character creation. No free dots in the actual creation sheet, but instead giving average xp for a partly maxed out character in one of the first lines of Jacks dialog.
For disciplines, I might even start the 3 clan disciplines at 0 and give one dot to spend in the creation sheet. That would include giving some more xp at the start or during the game, and remove the need for special discipline use in the tutorial.

HISTORIES: The creation system I suggested above would make stat shufflers obsolete.
Discipline swappers like city gangrel can be handled more easily because the creation system already removes the need for specific dicipline use in the tutorial.

And in any case, for histories I prefer things like specific subclans or bloodlines like city gangrel for gangrel, or a specific kind of madness for malks, or selectable "diet" needs for ventrue.
For toreador I was thinking about giving a selectable bonus attribute instead of the fixed appearance bonus from the plus patch. And I'd make it a regular red dot, not a blue one. My ideas so far include
-artists muse: +1 appearance (that will be no history)
-author/poet: +1 charisma
-gallerist/collector: +1 manipulation
-painter/sculptor: +1 dexterity

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I like your solutions, sounds good.

List of ideas time?

SaulottheGentle wrote:

List of ideas time?

Preferably with description and stats. 

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SaulottheGentle wrote:

List of ideas time?

Ideas about what specifically?

Ideas for histories of the kind I mentioned above. At least, that's what I think our three eyed friend was talking about.

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Dragatus wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

List of ideas time?

Ideas about what specifically?

Histories and Discipline Replacers of course~

IIRC, we did come up with some "Alternate Clan Histories", although there were no ideas for Tremere or Nosferatu.

Ventrue - Ventrue Antitribu (Auspex, Dominate, Fortitude)

Toreador - Ishtarri (Fortitude, Celerity, Prescence)

Brujah - Osebo (Auspex, Celerity, Potence)

Country Gangrel - City Gangrel (Obfuscate, Celerity, Protean)

Malkavian - Dominate Malkavian (Auspex, Dominate, Obfuscate)


For some more bloodline replacers, it seems that Gangrel has quite a few breeds shall we say, underneath their belt. To count, City, Country, Greek (which became City, Animalism instead of Celerity), Aquarius (Gangrel with aquatic animal traits), Anda (Asian Gangrel), Noiad (Replace Fortitude with Auspex).

On the Malkavians part, there's some derangements that could do well, but I don't know about changing their dialogue, since the usual Malkavian appears to have severe schizophrenia. I don't know how you feel on this, Malkav, but I'm going to put some Merits and Flaws for the ideas. Also, I'm going to leave the ideas as generic enough for it to be reasonably molded to any fold desired as I tend to make crippling flaws and OP buffs.

Regression - Regressing to a childish state in stressful times. Humanity is positively affected while it's harder to resist frenzy.

Masochism/Sadism - The enjoyment receiving/causing pain, physical and emotional. What I had imagined was that it makes Frenzy checks when getting hit much easier to resist. As for the downside...what I imagined was that Humanity suffered from the shame of enjoying it. A self-defeating cycle?

Compulsive Liar - Continual lying that's hard to break out of. Persuasion is suffers while Manipulation is buffed.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder - Someone who has issues with their appearances. Appearance costs more due to imagined ugliness. I don't know about a merit for this though.

Depression - Long lasting sadness. Humanity costs more, due to dismal view of life. Didn't know what could be a good merit....maybe increase in Perception to find the flaws of existence?

There's a tweak for the Nosferatu that I thought of. Why not eliminate the "Three strikes rule" for them?

Of course, there's always the status conditions of the embrace. And unless otherwise stated, I haven't imagined a merit or flaw for them.
Like Toreador Poseurs and Artistic Failure, Nosferatu Skins and Rugged Bad Looks, Disgraceful Ventrue, etc.

Poseur - Art is nothing more than a matter of perspective. But it's hard to do so when most see your art as an abomination.

Artistic Failure - You love your art more than life itself, but it's next to the definition of "fail". If nothing else, your passion drove you on, which gave you eternal life...which also locked your mind in your time. In other words? You cannot create anything more than your abominations.

Skins - Ugliness doesn't factor towards inner beauty, but it damned hurts you to loose your mortal life. You have a higher affinity to Obfuscate, wanting to master it as soon as possible.

Rugged Bad Looks - Nosferatu are usually damn near unbearable, but you're more bearable than the rest. *This gives the three strikes rule*

Disgrace - The clan of Kings embraced a peasant.

That's so far what I've thought. What do you all think?