Murdering the Innocent

Ok kiddies, I spent about 3 hours tonight doing something that I'm so proud of that I just had to share! Originally in Bloodlines when you murder the innocent you're Humanity will drop to a minimum of 3, you cannot drop lower than 3 from simple murder. Now in TFN I had the dialogue setup so that you COULD drop below 3 if you did something evil through dialogue, however simply murdering the innocent was still capped at 3.

Well tonight I setup a python script and attached it to every single innocent NPC in the game including pedestrians, hookers, bums, cops (including spawnable), clerks, blood dolls, and special NPCs like Knox, Arthur, and even your ghoul Heather. I did this by going into every freakin map and tracking down each one of these NPCs and attaching the script to em. YES, this took 3 hours to do including the node graph rebuilding.

Now that it's done however, you will lose 1 Humanity point per murder all the way down to 0. DID YOU HEAR THAT? MURDER IS NO LONGER CAPPED AT ALL. I took my Osebo with Potence and a Police Baton around all of the hubs and shops and started murdering people and it worked perfectly, I dropped my Humanity to 0 every time.

NOW! Bloodlines wasn't meant to drop Humanity to 0 and because of this Troika set the "Initial Cost" for Humanity at 0 as well. Which basically means that when you drop to 0 it costs you 0 XP to get it back to 1. Well that kind've defeats the purpose doesnt it. So, I decided because it's so easy to lose Humanity now and the initial cost of 0 could be considered a bug, I made it so it costs 2 XP to raise Humanity no matter what level you are. If you have 0 Humanity then it costs 2 XP to raise it, if you have 9 Humanity then it costs 2 XP to raise it.

Cost for Raising Humanity Table
Vanilla Formula - "Current Level * 2" ( Level 1 costs 2XP, Level 2 costs 4XP, Level 3 costs 6XP, etc...)
TFN Formula - "2 XP No matter what"

Now one of the Ishtarri Clan strengths is that it costs less XP to raise Humanity so it will only cost Ishtarri 1 XP to raise it, pretty sweet eh?

I hope you guys like the new rule change because I LOVE IT!! Also having a Humanity of 0 made my character frenzy almost everytime I got hit with Blunt damage so it will be very important to keep it at a relatively balanced level, or higher.

Man I love how TFN is turning out!

Great work, Z. I am astounded by the game/engine-knowledge you possess.

Whoa, awesome mate!

again i i can say is... AWESOME JOB DUDE! you nearly change EVERYTHING in the game that is changeable! simply awesome...!

Good idea, nicely done. But with only 2 XP cost for level... Wouldn't that be too cheap? Like, it beats the reason of working to keep high Humanity if it's so easy to buy back?

I like it too.I find that investing EXP in humanity is acceptable now.

Great work! Cant wait lol

And dancing raises humanity.

What about wightdom?

Surely it should be game over it humanity gets to 0? That's when the beast has completely taken over and you can only act on instinct, most lose the capacity for speeth and leaving frenzy at all and can't raise humanity. They're Wights, they have more weaknesses than vampires and can't use the majority of disciplines either.

8people wrote:

And dancing raises humanity.

What about wightdom?

Surely it should be game over it humanity gets to 0? That's when the beast has completely taken over and you can only act on instinct, most lose the capacity for speeth and leaving frenzy at all and can't raise humanity. They're Wights, they have more weaknesses than vampires and can't use the majority of disciplines either.

Yeah, I share the same thought. It'd be like having 0 Masquarade points.

Feral wrote:

Good idea, nicely done. But with only 2 XP cost for level... Wouldn't that be too cheap? Like, it beats the reason of working to keep high Humanity if it's so easy to buy back?

We can tweak this rather easily if we need to. I like the low cost of Humanity because in the vanilla version it was just too expensive to make it worthwhile. By charging the player 2 XP per point it's just high enough to affect the player's XP Pool a little but not so high as to leave the player broke of XP. With all the other difficulty changes going into TFN I think this will balance nicely. It seems low now but I think once you get into the game and realize just how much more difficult everything is you might say "I'm glad raising Humanity isn't higher".

Beta testing will truly show us if this is a good level and if we need to raise it we certainly can, but I want the community to play it first before deciding.

srle wrote:

I like it too.I find that investing EXP in humanity is acceptable now.

That's what I was thinking too. In TFN the player will want every ounce of XP he/she can get their hands on. With the disciplines costing more to raise XP will become extremely important, and with the high chance to frenzy so will keeping Humanity mid to high so now spending 2XP to bump your Humanity up by 1 should be balanced.

Remember, if your blood is low and your Humanity is low-mid, you could be strolling down the boardwalk and all the sudden roll a bad number and frenzy running down the street and taking 3 victims before you come out of it. Boom you just lost 3 Humanity which would cost 6XP to get back. Now that's rough, that's a whole side quest worth of XP you just lost. Do you reload or cut your loses and move on?

8people wrote:

And dancing raises humanity.

What about wightdom?

Surely it should be game over it humanity gets to 0? That's when the beast has completely taken over and you can only act on instinct, most lose the capacity for speeth and leaving frenzy at all and can't raise humanity. They're Wights, they have more weaknesses than vampires and can't use the majority of disciplines either.

Something to keep in mind is that this IS a video game, not PnP. Some differences have to be made for balance. I would think it would get very frustrating for a player who accidently frenzies in the streets because of a random frenzy check and loses the game. That just doesn't seem like very much fun to me.

If a player drops their Humanity to 0, whether on purpose or accident, they will have plenty of pains to deal with on their own. Telling them it's game over and their a Wight now seems a little harsh, even for TFN.

I don't know, man. For me this idea about losing it to the Beast and losing the game by it seems right. It would keep you motivated not to lose too many humanity points. I like challenges. But maybe I'm beaing a little masochistic on it.

Zer0Morph wrote:

If a player drops their Humanity to 0, whether on purpose or accident, they will have plenty of pains to deal with on their own. Telling them it's game over and their a Wight now seems a little harsh, even for TFN.

If you tell them in advance, I don't know. It's the same with masquerade violations. It's stated in the rules, and in a loading tip. And you get two ingame warnings from the jester. But if you drop to 5 violations you get a nice cutscene ending with a free haircut done by the sherrif.

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

If you tell them in advance, I don't know. It's the same with masquerade violations. It's stated in the rules, and in a loading tip. And you get two ingame warnings from the jester. But if you drop to 5 violations you get a nice cutscene ending with a free haircut done by the sherrif.

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Could you script it so if you drop to 0 Humanity it automatically goes to the beheading cut scene?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Childe of Malkav wrote:

If you tell them in advance, I don't know. It's the same with masquerade violations. It's stated in the rules, and in a loading tip. And you get two ingame warnings from the jester. But if you drop to 5 violations you get a nice cutscene ending with a free haircut done by the sherrif.

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Could you script it so if you drop to 0 Humanity it automatically goes to the beheading cut scene?

That sounds like a really good idea. 0 Humanity means you've lost control to the Beast, so you should be taken out. I'm sure the script for this would be similar to the Masquerade points, so it shouldn't be too hard.

On raising Humanity with XP: It seems that the lower your Humanity, the harder it should be to raise it (unlike the vanilla version, which is the opposite... 18 XP to raise Humanity from 9 to 10? ridiculous). I mean, if your Humanity is 2, you can't simply say, "Gee, I must do good works from now on" and have it happen. On the other hand, at the start of the game all you have to do is give that bum in Santa Monica a dollar, and your Humanity is raised from 6 to 7.

Having 0 Humanity result in death, and a low Humanity being more costly to raise, might stop some people from running around killing innocents just for fun. Face it; in Kindred society, that kind of behavior attracts hunters and risks the Masquerade. When you meet Nines at the Last Round, he tells you, "... you rampage 'round here you'll get put down." And the Camarilla is even more strict. If you feel the need to kill for sport... well, you can always make your own "Sabbat Edition" mod.

PGM1961 wrote:

Could you script it so if you drop to 0 Humanity it automatically goes to the beheading cut scene?

That sounds like a really good idea. 0 Humanity means you've lost control to the Beast, so you should be taken out. I'm sure the script for this would be similar to the Masquerade points, so it shouldn't be too hard.

On raising Humanity with XP: It seems that the lower your Humanity, the harder it should be to raise it (unlike the vanilla version, which is the opposite... 18 XP to raise Humanity from 9 to 10? ridiculous). I mean, if your Humanity is 2, you can't simply say, "Gee, I must do good works from now on" and have it happen. On the other hand, at the start of the game all you have to do is give that bum in Santa Monica a dollar, and your Humanity is raised from 6 to 7.

Having 0 Humanity result in death, and a low Humanity being more costly to raise, might stop some people from running around killing innocents just for fun. Face it; in Kindred society, that kind of behavior attracts hunters and risks the Masquerade. When you meet Nines at the Last Round, he tells you, "... you rampage 'round here you'll get put down." And the Camarilla is even more strict. If you feel the need to kill for sport... well, you can always make your own "Sabbat Edition" mod.

I really liked alot of the things said here and I'm starting to understand what you guys want for TFN in terms of realistic and difficulty. It sounds like we should really start learning towards a more realistic survival "This is REALLY what it would be like for a Vampire" style of expansion and really get away from the fluffy, console style, shoot em up game for the brainless.

If that's the case then I'm all for it! I was trying to keep other "newer" players in mind for this mod because I didn't want complaints about it being TOO hard but seeing that most of the dedicated members would rather see it that way excites me.

As far as hitting 0 Humanity it's game over... prince takes your head, I think that's doable from a technical standpoint. I'll run it by Malkav to see what he thinks. For the costing more XP to raise lower Humanity levels, I would need to come up with a formula that works. I'll look into that.

Zer0Morph wrote:

As far as hitting 0 Humanity it's game over... prince takes your head, I think that's doable from a technical standpoint. I'll run it by Malkav to see what he thinks. For the costing more XP to raise lower Humanity levels, I would need to come up with a formula that works. I'll look into that.

I haven't really looked into it yet, but calling the headcut cutscene should be possible.
For humanity, I think you don't need a formula. You can also use a table in traiteffects. Then you'd even be able to make a few individual changes for every clan. Perhaps make it a bit harder for Baali, who can only go up to 8 anyway. Then you can make it hard for really low levels, a bit easier in the middle, and harder again for reaching very high humanity like 8 to 10.

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