Malkavians

In other threads we have recently discussed possible clan weaknesses for Malks.

I have been thinking about this for a bit. Perhaps social skills in dialog could be a bit erratic for Malks. So in certain dialogs, it is randomized if your Malk will get the persuasion, seduction, or intimidation option.
Of course I would do so only in dialogs where there already is a Dementation line, or one can easily and logically be introduced.
Or in places where the social skills would only provide for a very minor bonus (one xp, or not more than 100$)
Examples would be asking the professor about finding the dig site, or pretending to be the health inspector at the diner.
Perhaps geting the secrets out of the Giovanni guests. Though there I would make sure that you can get at least two of the three secrets.
Other instances that come to mind are:
-persuading the Santa Monica blueblood to give you money
-persuading the clinic nurse to let you in (Dementation for both, the nurse and the upstairs guard are available)
-getting the large bribe from the doctor playing doctor
-the corrupt Dane cop (I think, Dementation is there, and as a Malk, the sneaky option is quite easy, too)
-getting info about the plague bearers from the bums (Dementation available, or it will only cost you about 5 bucks)

Any suggestions/comments on this?

-

My opinion is that randomization works fine in pen & paper games, but not in a cRPGs. That's because in a computer game people can save and reload until they get the desired result.

I also dislike weaknesses that hurt certain types of characters more than other. A warrior or infiltrator who doesn't bother with social skills at all would be completely unaffected by this (or the new Dementation lines would actually make it easier) while a social Malk would be strongly affected. BTW, I dislike the Gangrels' expensive social attributes for similair reasons. An additional problem with Malkavians is that Dementation can to a certain degree replace social skills, so any form of social penalty will automatically already have a reduced impact.

IMO a clan weakness should be something that will affect all character types. That leaves us with only six options:
1) experience penalty
2) frenzy penalty
3) feeding penalty
4) humanity modifiers
5) no special clan weakness, but no special clan advantage either
6) some sort of brand new effect

The first four don't really make sense so that leaves us with #5 and #6. So basically it comes down to whether we can come up with a clever new effect.

Edit: I've had some time to think abut it and I've come up with an idea. You have a Crazy Meter and every time you use a Dementation power or use Dementation in dialogue the Crazy Meter increases by 1. Once it reaches a threshold value (like 20 or 25) you suffer an attack of madness and the Crazy Meter resets back to 0.

For the attack of madness itself I have two ideas. The first one is that you get attacked by a halucination. The problem with this aproach is how NPCs would react to the attacker and if you could cause criminal violations for attacking the halucinatory attacker.

Another aproach would be that the attack of madness would mimic the Hysteria power. You'd lose control of your character, who would just stand there and laugh manically for a shot duration, attracting attention of nearby NPCs. This should probably also end all active disciplines to cover for the times when you suffer the attack while using Obfuscation. The problem with this aproach is that I'm not sure how doable it is.

Crazy Meter. I love the sound of it.

If it is doable, can a variation of it be based on a dementation you chose at character creation? Nothing point-related throughout the game, but simple choice. For example, excessive blood usage: for N number of game steps after (or N number of times) you spend blood on a random discipline (including Masquerade violations). That would give the Malk a real feel of chaos, as opposed to jumbled speech and the occasional insight.

Good idea, but I don't like the sound of random Masquerade Violations...

I just like the sound of "Crazy Meter", no matter the penalty.

Duncan.Oliver wrote:

I just like the sound of "Crazy Meter", no matter the penalty.

Crazy Meter sounds good. But from the practical point of view, I can only see one way of doing it linked to Dementation powers. And that would involve putting a special entity called events_player on every map that allows for use of Dementation. And this thing only registers the use of the first two levels of a targeted discipline like Dementation.

Doing something that is timed completely random on the other hand is relatively easy. E.g. something that happens every 4 to 6 minutes, perhaps with the timebase shortened for every level of Dementation you have available. But it must be some really worthwhile effect. After all, losing control of your character can be deadly. Not only in a fight. Imagine the Ocean House. You just jumped into the elevator well, and before you can jump out again to the base of the ladder, you get stuck by hysteria. Down comes the elevator... whoom, malkavian pancace

-

THIS LIfT DoN'T ExIsT In REALITY BwUhhUhuuuu... and then the game crashes, cuz nobody died.

Furthermore, a random timed effect will avoid the problem of getting stuck in the same space and having a 'crazy meter' overload at the same place in the game.

As for the elevator scenario and the like, I think that it's a good shocker to liven up the game. Would also drill it into the heads of the more forgetful (myself included) to SAVE GAME more often than we do.

Hm, Imo, I still save too often. In RL, you can't go back to yesterdays save if something goes wrong today either.

-