Idea about humanity

I've been thinking, Perhaps make humanity gain and loss not such an absolute. If you do something "wrong" either you loose humanity or you're already so far beyond humane behaviour that it doesn't affect you in any way. And for good deeds it's the same.
Why not make it a gradual effect. The highter your humanity, the more you loose or gain.

Maybe set a variable that starts at 0. Each time you do something "bad" your current humanity score is subtracted. For a "good" deed the current humanity is added. And whenever the variable goes beyond ± 15, 1 point of humanity is gained or lost, and the variable modified accordingly.
I think murder will still cause one point of humanity lost unless you are already downt to 3.

Ideas, suggestions, comments?

Childe of Malkav wrote:

either you loose humanity ?

You spelled loose wrong, it's spelled lose. HAHA, I had to get you back for you correcting me earlier.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

either you loose humanity ?

You spelled loose wrong, it's spelled lose. HAHA, I had to get you back for you correcting me earlier.

You lost, boss...

I have no issues with the proposed system, but I'm not sure it's worth the work either.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

either you loose humanity ?

You spelled loose wrong, it's spelled lose. HAHA, I had to get you back for you correcting me earlier.

Actually he spelled "loose" correctly but meant to type "lose"; the previous word is still correctly spelled despite the grammar error

As for the idea, I quite like the sound of it personally and think it would add to the overall mod if you're willing to do the work for it. It gives you bragging rights to add to the feature list when you release!

Dragatus wrote:

I have no issues with the proposed system, but I'm not sure it's worth the work either.

Actually it's not that much work. I have already covered most humanity gain and loss situations with a python script that creates a threshold for the effect taking place. So it's mostly rewriting the script, and adding the function call where I haven't done it already.

We like the idea. You may proceed.

How do you modify the variable after the change? Set to 0 again I suppose? Humanity <3 (less than three, Feral) is still allowed?

Jad.3 wrote:

We like the idea. You may proceed.

How do you modify the variable after the change? Set to 0 again I suppose? Humanity <3 (less than three, Feral) is still allowed?

And I thought <3 stands for a heart

As for the Humanity changes: the more PnP, the better.

Feral wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

We like the idea. You may proceed.

How do you modify the variable after the change? Set to 0 again I suppose? Humanity <3 (less than three, Feral) is still allowed?

No I'll leave it at 3. But if you commit more "evil"acts, the variable won't be reset, so it gets harder and harder to regain humanity. After the change I don't set the variable to 0. I just remove the points that are needed for the change (probably 10, I have to think about it).
Let's say a vampire with humanity 8 does something bad. The variable goes to -8. Later he commits another crime and the variable drops anothe 8 to -16. Now his humanity drops to 7 and the variable is changed by 10 to -6. If he comits another crime the variable will drop by 7 to -13 and another humanity loss is due. If on the other hand he does something good for a change, the variable will rise by 7 to +1 So he needs another 2 good deeds to regain humanity 8.

Quote :

And I thought <3 stands for a heart

Only for Setites.

Quote :

As for the Humanity changes: the more PnP, the better.

So how does one regain humanity in p&p?

How does spending xp to raise Humanity fit your idea?
I dunno, leaving out the possibility of death by the sword due to complete Humanity loss seems wrong.

So, the sainter you get, the easier it is to lose Humanity and the harder easier it gets to raise it due to the high score.
The eviler you get, the more good deeds it takes to raise Humanity and the more misdeeds it takes to lose it 'cause of the low score (you're so rotten hardly anything moves you anymore).
Oh don't mind me, I'm just wraping my mind around the idea. Somehow I feel it should get harder to improve the score the further up the road you get (analogically to losing Humanity slower when it's low).

How about changing the variable by a fixed number, and changing the amount required for Humanity shift based on the current score (different target value for gain and loss)?

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Feral wrote:

As for the Humanity changes: the more PnP, the better.

So how does one regain humanity in p&p?

By doing good deeds, lots and lots of introspection ('what I did was wrong because of these reasons...'), trying to actually feel the gravity of the crime (y'know, actually empathizing with the victim) and ... spending XP.  But only after the loooong process of in-game 'redemption' is over, i.e. once the ST thinks that the character has actually regained their moral footing.
It's supposed to be difficult, as with the Beast and whatnot, it's just way easier to lose further humanity than to regain it. It's hard to represent in game mechanics, though the system you laid out works quite well for that purpose, I think. If you do want to add an option to buy humanity, make it so expensive that it's not worth it, except for maybe one or two points in the game - according to the core book (IIRC at least) there's not supposed to be major shifts 'upwards' in terms of humanity in any single story - one point at most, since players have to invest a lot of work into (re-)gaining humanity, with possibly an open end for humanity losses.

That would ramp up the difficulty, of course, but it'd also make for better roleplaying instead of min-maxing. Once a character falls to the beast, gameplay is just over. Whether you want that added difficulty is something you have to decide - your mod, your rules.

Hm, maybe keep the shift at current humanity, but require -10 for drop and +20 or even more for gain.

Well, I want to get rid of all the stupid and ridiculously easy ways of gaining humanity. Like talking to the serial killer, convincing Wong Ho not to go to Ming, dancing... But I don't want to make it too hard. There should be a chance in the game other than just spending xp. But not a complete point of humanity for just some good advice.
At least I have found a way to get rid of the humanity gain for dancing.

Eliza wrote:

If you do want to add an option to buy humanity, make it so expensive that it's not worth it, except for maybe one or two points in the game

It's already possible to buy Humanity and was so even in vanilla. Though it never was worth the XP.

Dragatus wrote:

Eliza wrote:

If you do want to add an option to buy humanity, make it so expensive that it's not worth it, except for maybe one or two points in the game

It's already possible to buy Humanity and was so even in vanilla. Though it never was worth the XP.

In vanilla it's certainly not. There are so many opportunities to gain humanity I wouldn't be tempted to spend even one xp for it. That is what I want to change. But without completely removing the possibility to gain humanity by playing good.

What do you think of this system:
If you commit murder and your humanity is 4+, you lose 1 point of humanity.
For lesser crimes or really low humanity the impact is lesser.

I have set a variable with a range from -12 to +20. When it drops below -11, your humanity drops as well. If it goes up to 20 or more, you gain humanity.
Any crime short of murder drops the variable by (humanity -1), a good deed raises it by (humanity). For Toreador it's a bit more in both directions.
Plus I can set minimum drop and maximum gain for certain actions.
Buying humanity is expensive. With my modified xp system it's 100 xp (85 for Toreador), that is 10/8.5 regular xp.
Haven't yet made extensive tests. Should make you think twice before going on a killing spree, because you can't go hit the dancefloor to gain it all back.

100 exp? How much do you earn again on the average?

I made it 10 times the usual. So for a 2xp vanilla quest you get about 20 in uLA. Give or take a bit for more flexibility.
So the 100 equals 10 in vanilla.

That XP cost seems rather prohibitive to me.

Dragatus wrote:

That XP cost seems rather prohibitive to me.

Depends. The vanilla rate is 2*current humanity. So my price equals vanilla hum 5 to 6.
And I want spending xp on humanity as a last resort option. My first thought was making it even more expensive.
And on the other hand, there are situations where you don't lose a complete humanity point any longer, and situations where I give partial regain, but would never agree to giving back a full humanity point.

I don't know about you, but in vanilla I never had to think about humanity. You lose a point, you gain a point. But if you don't indulge the occasional killing spree, you have no chance of getting it really down. And even if you have it down to 3, it doesn't matter.

That's true. I pretty much ignored humanity in vanilla, unless I specifically tried to play evil. But I haven't found much more use for it in CE or TFN either, apart from the effect it has on bloodloss. The only reason I cared about it was because dropping to 0 would be game over and at 3 or less you lose it whenever an innocent dies, whether it's your own fault or not. So I tried to keep it at 4+ for that reason alone.

And since ULA doesn't let me drop below 3, I found myself ignoring it once again during the testing I've done.

Dragatus wrote:

That's true. I pretty much ignored humanity in vanilla, unless I specifically tried to play evil. But I haven't found much more use for it in CE or TFN either, apart from the effect it has on bloodloss. The only reason I cared about it was because dropping to 0 would be game over and at 3 or less you lose it whenever an innocent dies, whether it's your own fault or not. So I tried to keep it at 4+ for that reason alone.

And since ULA doesn't let me drop below 3, I found myself ignoring it once again during the testing I've done.

The way I have it implemented now, you can drop to 1, but not 0. And with 3 or less, you have hunters on your tail wherever you go.
And the impact on bloodloss is stronger when you are below 6. With stamina and humanity 1, you'd be down to 1 minute.

Hmmm. I've played with 2 minute blood loss for a while, but 1 minute would be too much even for me. Or too less. Depends how you put it.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Hm, maybe keep the shift at current humanity, but require -10 for drop and +20 or even more for gain.

Well, I want to get rid of all the stupid and ridiculously easy ways of gaining humanity. Like talking to the serial killer, convincing Wong Ho not to go to Ming, dancing... But I don't want to make it too hard. There should be a chance in the game other than just spending xp. But not a complete point of humanity for just some good advice.
At least I have found a way to get rid of the humanity gain for dancing.

What about making -10 to drop and +10 to raise at 5 Humanity and making it -8 to drop and +12 to raise at 6 and 7 Humanity -6 to drop and +14 to raise at 8 and 9 Humanity and finally -4 to drop at 10 Humanity; at 4 Humanity you'd need -12 to drop and +8 to raise and so on. This because as you get an higher level of Humanity it will be easier to lose it and indulge the beast and harder to adhere to the Humanity path. On the contrary the more wicked you get it will be harder to do greater sin and easier to do good deeds.