Ideas for the upcoming 1.3

Some ideas popped into my head while playing, some of them are profoundly connected to the vampire body, i.e. the game engine.

1.) Being fledgling - O.K. we get it, you are a newborn vampire, have the first drink of blood etc. etc., but by the very middle or should I say end of the game, you get to have 5 tier disciplines, 5 points into strength and dexterity and your skills are honed to the maximum. Doesn't that bare a striking resemblance of what a real vampire would be? A dangerous one ? And unless the presence of Fortitude, you get to still be slammed down by some aggravated damage that you would initially get. My insight into this issue is that, "if god allows it", the coding of some way that every point you spend whether into skills/abilities or attributes adds a sip of "reconstruction to your vampiric body, like for every 10 or 15 points spent you'd get an addition to your soak feat. And, maybe remove the stamina factor from the game as a source of the soaking feats and leave it blood consuming only.

2.) Fists - For someone focusing on using the fists as your main weapon they are surprisingly underpowered, IMHO. Potence does the trick, but not entirely. The fact that when using a combo of strikes, the 3rd strike always knocks them down is rather annoying, and a reason for that is while being knocked down you can't attack them, I know of the one attack that could, but it takes too long for the animation to fire and you need a certain precision. Is that so?! For someone who is being knocked down? He should be a wounded bird, susceptible to just about anything, fists, legs, and we all know the game doesn't allow the use of your legs as a low punch, only the 3rd combo uses the legs and they are directed to the higher part of the body i.e. from the waist up. Again, I have no idea if this can be done, but at least give it some percentage for the knockdown to occur, not 100% chance that someone will be knocked down, this gets especially frustrating when fighting groups of 3+ in the fight.

3.) Empty space - I'd like to have more, but I don't atm, but someone with better ideas could kick in, it would be great to make the game more realistic and enjoyable for everyone together. :E

Regards.

I agree with your second point about the mechanics of physical combat, particularly with fists, need to be made a little more effective...not necessarily with damage, but your victims should certainly be more accessible to a good old fashioned ass beating once they're prone. I don't know what the limits are for the game engine in this regard, but if someone could make fist combat more effective I'd definitely make another Brujah.

As to your first point, though, I personally don't think it needs any tweaking. Some clans simply don't have the Disciplines to withstand brunt damage; the Brujah compensate by being on the giving end of a beat-down rather than the receiving, Nosferatu compensate by killing their enemies before they get a chance to fight back, so on and so forth. It's implied heavily by the Sabbat leader that your character actually has a very low Generation. I know the concept is never mentioned in Bloodlines, but to people familiar with Vampire The Masquerade as it was written by Justin Achilli they would catch that reference.

Basically, the Upstart of LA has very potent blood, which explains his/her ability to rise to power in what game time is probably a month or two at the most. Be that as it may, potent blood or not, if you're taking heavy aggravated damage it can only come from one of two sources. The first is you got too close to some fire or some other bane of the vampiric existence, at which point there isn't jack you can do about that except maybe stave it off with Fortitude...or avoid it altogether. In this case, I would submit that vampires simply have certain inherent weaknesses that no amount of power or age can stave off completely.

The second reason you take aggravated damage is by getting slugged by another supernatural creature, one who (like Ming Xiao, for example) is probably a LOT older, and for all intents and purposes should have the edge that age gives them. Potent blood should only go so far as to make victory possible, because even though the Upstart is mighty in mortal terms, when you come to compare the player with the greater world of the supernatural at large they've really only taken (to quote LaCroix) an 'infants stride of progress'.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. =)

Dante Revere wrote:

I agree with your second point about the mechanics of physical combat, particularly with fists, need to be made a little more effective...not necessarily with damage, but your victims should certainly be more accessible to a good old fashioned ass beating once they're prone. I don't know what the limits are for the game engine in this regard, but if someone could make fist combat more effective I'd definitely make another Brujah.

Reading this a few times has brought up an idea: Why not adding an effect similar to presence (reduced combat stats and perhaps even a chance of mesmerization) for the victim of your hits only to brawl? That woud probably also help with the issues lofgren and i discussed on the unarmed combat thread.

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As to your first point, though, I personally don't think it needs any tweaking. Some clans simply don't have the Disciplines to withstand brunt damage; the Brujah compensate by being on the giving end of a beat-down rather than the receiving, Nosferatu compensate by killing their enemies before they get a chance to fight back, so on and so forth....

I wholeheartedly agree with you on this point (and on the rest I cut out for saving space as well).

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I would like to see "Presence" giving temporary stats (intimidation, subterfuge, and the like) to the player. AS for now, its prettty much of a combat only disciple, while in P&P it was mostly used for more social interaction. Ithink its strange that the Toreador are unable to use their vampiric beauty/appearance not to their advantage when facing mortals but mostly when you face crawling heads and giant fleshspiders.

Necrorubi wrote:

I would like to see "Presence" giving temporary stats (intimidation, subterfuge, and the like) to the player. AS for now, its prettty much of a combat only disciple, while in P&P it was mostly used for more social interaction. Ithink its strange that the Toreador are unable to use their vampiric beauty/appearance not to their advantage when facing mortals but mostly when you face crawling heads and giant fleshspiders.

Adding Presence as a dialogue option has been discussed for some time across many Bloodlines boards including this one. In theory it can be done but has never been really implemented due to the high amount of work editing every piece of game dialogue.

As far as Toreador are concerned, instead of having a Presence based dialogue option Troika instead gave them a bump in appearance which effects Seduction.

I think i didn't make myself clear: I supposed that presence temporarily boosts stats like appearance so as a sideeffect of that discipline seduction/intimidation/persuasion would increase. Otherwise it would double as domination ... which wouldn't make sense. New lines needn't be written at all.
In other words: What auspex does for hacking/firearms presence would do for intimidation/persuasion/seduction

Hi Necro,

the problem with your idea is that entering a dialogue automatically turns all running disciplines off. So even if Presence increases the social skills, it doesn't help you in a dialogue situation.

But for CE it might be possible to make an ugly hack around that problem using the blood timer: If you start presence it will boost the social skills for a specified time, no matter if the dicipline gets turned off or not.

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As what Childe said, as soon as you enter dialog your Presence would shut off so your idea isn't possible, we would have to implement it similiar to Dominate unless...

Childe,
You think a python script could really make that happen?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Childe,
You think a python script could really make that happen?

If there is a starting flag for the disciplines, i think it is possible. Else i could probably set up an additional starting condition in the dialogue files to ask characters with presence if they want to use it in this dialogue.

After that, it's just another counter linked to the bloodtimer. It wouldn't be accurate for the timing, as I'm limited to multitudes of 15 seconds.
I'll look into the matter.

btw: I've started a game with my email college. Technically it seems to work fine, but i'm already thinking of changing the rules about the cost and the limits for using it.

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I've looked into the presence matter today. At least it's not as easy as I first thought.

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But do you think it would be worthwhile?

I really have no idea, what to do about it.

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

I really have no idea, what to do about it.

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Thats the conclusion Burgermeister and I came up with too.. lol

Is there any way to stop the disciplines from turning off? Why is it in game in the first place? Couldn't you add some of these "bonus"-blue dots on the character sheet?

The disciplines ending is pretty much hard coded from what I can gather.

I may say that it's in the game because it's in the pen and paper game (the one with dice, charactersheets and coke). Using disciplines is something that takes time, energy and concentration skills, for any Vampire. Having disciplines that can be used for free* gives the player too much power. Vampires should be carefull, and using disciplines was something thought as to be very exceptionnal.


*the pen and paper games counts as "free" two passive disciplines : Potence and Fortitude, but on the video game they are too powerfull to be constantly active, without any blood cost.

Wasn't Auspex free as well? Damn, I miss my zealous vampire-monk ...
Actually, with CE's-bloodloss these disciplines would not really count as "free". The vampire has to sustain his might, whether that is resilience or supernatural charme.
What about boosting only "intimidation" with blue-dots as a passive side effect of presence?

Auspex asks for a Perception + Empathy dice roll for most powers (aura viewing, spirit touch, telepathy and astral trip). Auspex is not a passive discipline as it's not as innate as fortitude or potence. It's more reflexive, as you need to activate it conciously ("I want to see over there" for point 1, is not the same as "I want to hit him harder" in a combat for Potence, which is not thought).
You can't botch or fail Potence and Fortitude, but you can totally botch any Auspex power (tympans exploiding, missinterpretation, being trapped in the Astral world..).

For Presence, the problem with adding blue passive points (intimidation, appareance, charisma...) is that it's different for every vampire. A Brujah demagogue will use his Presence to (basicly) increase his Charisma, whereas a Toreador might use it to fascinate and seduce a prey. A not very diplomatic Ventrue will use it to terrorise his assembly, but a high standar Ventrue may use it softly to strengthen his speach to the Primogens, so they vote his idea (without knowing they were under the effect of presence).
Bloodloss is the same if you have fortitude or not (FYI, on the third edition of Vampire the Masquerade, the book, you spend one point of blood each night, to secrete basic fluids and keep your machine running. It's one point for everyone, even if you're an elder, even if you have many points on fortitude, whatever your generation is). Bloodloss is just the basic consumation of energy of the vampire body, using powers will ask for more energy (therefore, running a marathon is not the same as watching tv all day, but you'll still need your 6h sleep each day..).



Now that's just the "role playing logic" behind the powers. The game is very limitating because it's coded, and for me, as a role playing gamer and appreciating the versatility of each character, whatever her clan is, falling into stereotypes (brujah = intimidation, toreador = seduction, ventrue = persuation) would be a bad move.
Maybe something can be made on the mods, but I have no idea what. I'm just explaining what White Wolf did for the basis ^^

Necrorubi wrote:

Is there any way to stop the disciplines from turning off? Why is it in game in the first place? Couldn't you add some of these "bonus"-blue dots on the character sheet?

I'm not sure what you're asking, do you mean you want disciplines to be toggles instead of timer based, so they stay on as long as you want? Technically no you can't do that, but you CAN make the timer so ridiculously long that it might as well be a toggle.

Necrorubi wrote:

Is there any way to stop the disciplines from turning off? Why is it in game in the first place? Couldn't you add some of these "bonus"-blue dots on the character sheet?

Why is it there? I'd say it's to prevent you from talking to someone while you are obfuscated or using high level celerity which would basically make communication impossible.
For these "blue dots": they are either permanent bonus points granted by the characters clan or history, or they are gained by posessing an occult item. I was thinking of using an item to give at the start of a dialogue and take it away at the end for temporarily boosting stats, as a substitute for presence. But since you can't create new items, I'd have to take something else away.

Zer0Morph wrote:

I'm not sure what you're asking, do you mean you want disciplines to be toggles instead of timer based, so they stay on as long as you want? Technically no you can't do that, but you CAN make the timer so ridiculously long that it might as well be a toggle.

You can make the timer as long as you want, that doesn't keep the game from shutting off the discipline when a dialogue or a cutscene starts.

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Sorry, I didn't read the question right before answering.

Maybe you can make presense the following way:

Level one: the current effect + 1 temporary blue dot in the highest of the three feats: Intimidation, Seduction, Persuasion.
Level two: the current effect + 1 temporary blue dot to the 2 of the 3 feats with higher level : Intimidation, Seduction, Persuasion.
Level three : the current effect + 1 temporary blue dot to each of the 3 feats : Intimidation, Seduction, Persuasion.
Level five: the current effect + 2 emporary blue dot to each of the 3 feats : Intimidation, Seduction, Persuasion.

That, of course, will only work if you manage to find a way to prevent disciplines from ending when starting a dialogue. It will certainly make presense useful.

I have no idea how to stop disciplines from ending when a dialogue starts. The only option I see there is somebody going through all the dialogue files and adding a presence option for every seduction, intimidation, and persuasion line.

Ahhh, the age old dilemma, can Presence be used in dialogue! Heh...

Don't laugh, Zero! A year ago all that we knew was that you can't change disciplines, you can't create new ones and you can't replace the old one. Look at your mod now!