on humanity

So I've seen a lot of complaints that it is a bit too easy to maintain your humanity in this game. (Although of course I am biased since that is my position as well.) To help mitigate that, I was wondering: What if you simply double all humanity losses in the game, while leaving all humanity gains as they are? Kill somebody while feeding, and it will take you two good deeds to make up that one instance of giving in to the beast. For Toreador they should probably have only +1 to humanity shifts rather than doubled (e.g. killing somebody would lose 3 points of humanity, not 4, and redeeming yourself would get you back 2 points back).

Also, perhaps a very low humanity could cost you masquerade points (or otherwise summon the hunters) to represent the more animalistic qualities coming to the fore.

Also, since there is no general feedback section, let me say that I am trying out 1.2 now and very much enjoying it. I had to tweak it a bit since Zer0 and I obviously have conceptual differences of opinion with regard to certain game improvements, but the new disciplines are greatly improved over the old ones and the visual effects are gorgeous. Very nice work.

Hi,

I think, doubling humanity losses while keeping the gains at 1 per good deed is a really good idea. But please keep the "simply" out of this statement I haven't even figured out yet, where the humanity loss for killing innocents is programmed. And the internal function to double humanity shifts that is used for Toreador is set two ways and can't be easily changed.

But to get away from the technical stuff, I'd really like it if we could make the amount of a humanity penalty dependent on the severity of the crime and the humanity level the character currently has. So murder would cost more humanity than theft or blackmail...
And if you're already down to a "Jack-the-ripper-state", you'd care even less, while someone like VV still is troubled by the thought of killing hunters who are out for her.

Yes, getting the hunters on your trail for really low humanity surely has its appeal. It could be something like this:
huanity max. Masquerade
7+ 5
5-6 4
3-4 3
2- 2

Can you tell me a bit more about the things you like to change? I#ve really missed your input in the time you've been offline.

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I meant the idea was conceptually simple, not technically simple. I honestly had no idea what the technical implications were.

I actually disagree with the idea of making the humanity penalty relate to severity of the deed. Doing that means we get into a very sticky situation of determining exactly how inhuman a person is behaving. Some really simple things might be obvious – blackmail is probably less extreme than killing – but in the game's twisted logic even that is hard to judge. Let's say you opt to ruin Lily and E's budding romance by revealing that she is a murderer. That crime could easily be considered more lacking in compassion than, say, killing a cop who catches you feeding. While the latter is obviously more ethically wrong, the former is far more "inhuman" (the way that, say kicking a puppy for no reason could be called more inhuman than killing a cheating spouse). If something is going to cost humanity, it should be obvious so that the player who makes that choice can easily predict the effect that it will have on their character. Making the shifts variable will just cause frustration in players whose moral compass does not align perfectly with your own, in my opinion.

My interpretation of humanity is more that the vampire is trying to avoid slipping into the emotional void of a sociopathic serial killer than that he has to be a good person. It's acceptable to be evil – being dispassionate is the greater threat.

As for the changes that I've made, I've mentioned them before: I rebalanced character generation so that the second and third points of attributes both cost 6 instead of 4 and 8, and the first, second, and third points of abilities all cost 4 instead of 3, 3, 6 (so that creating a well-rounded character at chargen doesn't cost you 3 or 4 XP). I rebalanced feats as per my chart in the feat rebalance thread, which necessitated changing a few disciplines slightly.

I think most of the passive buffs that Zer0 has implemented are way too powerful, and there are a few mechanics that I find clumsy but which he has embraced. For example, I dislike capping attribute scores for tremere and charging more XP for social scores for gangrel. The clans' character generation and disciplines already give them a strong nudge towards a certain style of play, and I think playing against type should be difficult, not verging on impossible. Besides, their "handicaps" aren't handicaps at all if you don't want to play against type – a gangrel who prefers to brawl his way through the game won't even notice that his social skills are hamstrung. These changes will only frustrate players who thought it would be interesting to try out a suave, slick gangrel.

I really don't like animalism 1 and 5. Animalism 1 effectively costs nosferatu a power (although making animalism 2 actually worthwhile goes a long way towards making up for that), and animalism 5 is a buff power on par with all of the other buff powers in the game – except that you ALSO get 3 targeted spells for the same investment.

Finally I think Zer0 overestimates the difficulty of feeding. I played through the 1.1 mod and I only wanted for blood once, when I came out of the plague house after fighting Vic. And that was without ever buying a bloodbag (and having sold the first three I came across). That was with the blood timer set to 1/3 minutes instead of 1/4. Blood is really, really easy to come by if you have any of the tier 1 distraction powers. While I appreciate his effort adding more prostitutes and blooddolls because it adds to the atmosphere of the game, I don't believe it actually makes the seduction feat anymore useful. All that feat ever was was a convenience for people who wanted to spend some XP in order to save themselves five minutes of hunting. (Although to be honest I have never played as a toreador or brujah, the only clans without distraction powers, so maybe it is more difficult for them.)

Anyway, that all sounds like a lot, but honestly I would not go back to vanilla (I tried, and it was not nearly as exciting). Zer0 has said that the first two balance changes are not in the purview of this mod (which makes sense as they are drastic changes to the fundamental game), and I think that the buffs are probably so powerful because Zer0 believes that blood is more dear than my experience has taught me, so he has to justify every drop of the PC that he drains. Basically most of these issues stem from some core conceptual/experiential disagreements, as well as Zer0 trying to build a mod that hopefully everybody will have fun playing, whereas I am concerned exclusively with my own playstyle. And since it's Zer0's mod I'm really not entitled to even talk about it here… but hey, you asked and I always try to give honest feedback. Besides, the amount that I like all of the other changes more than makes up for the things I don't like.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Yes, getting the hunters on your trail for really low humanity surely has its appeal. It could be something like this:
huanity max. Masquerade
7+ 5
5-6 4
3-4 3
2- 2

As for this, it sounds very good. Part of the reason I think hunters ought to appear when you have low humanity is just because I so rarely see hunters, but they are very good for spicing up an otherwise dull hunt or other chore like checking your e-mail.

The only problem I see is that low humanity means that you are more likely to frenzy, and that means you are more likely to violate the masquerade. It may mean that if you get down to 3-4 humanity with a gangrel, you are just a shotgun blast away from simply losing the game outright.

You are right there, frenzying with a (forced) low masquerade is dangerous, and it would really be frustrating for the player to get kicked out of the game, only because the character got hungry once to often.
So I'll have to see, if a low humanity itself can attract hunters Meeting this nice torch wielding lady in a dark alley always is a nice surprise

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I've made tests today, and it seems that a few lines added in vamputil.py can make low humanity alone attract hunters, without the need for a lot of masquerade violations. I had a visit from two or three of them with just one violation and humanity 3. Sadly I was distracted, and my character not built up for combat, so he frenzied into suicide before I could do anything about it

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New tests confirm it. You can get the hunter's attention without breaking the masquerade.

The way i've set it up for my tests, every point of humanity below 6 counts as a masquerade violation for the purpose of summoning hunters only.

What do you think, should a feature like this be included in a new version? And what should be the limits for that?
Any suggestions are welcome

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I don't see why not.

lofgren wrote:

So I've seen a lot of complaints that it is a bit too easy to maintain your humanity in this game. (Although of course I am biased since that is my position as well.) To help mitigate that, I was wondering: What if you simply double all humanity losses in the game, while leaving all humanity gains as they are? Kill somebody while feeding, and it will take you two good deeds to make up that one instance of giving in to the beast. For Toreador they should probably have only +1 to humanity shifts rather than doubled (e.g. killing somebody would lose 3 points of humanity, not 4, and redeeming yourself would get you back 2 points back).

Sorry I didn't come back on this part of the thread yet, but it got lost in the discussion of low humanity and hunters or masquerade violations. But I have it on my to do list now.

Quote :

Also, perhaps a very low humanity could cost you masquerade points (or otherwise summon the hunters) to represent the more animalistic qualities coming to the fore.

It's done. I think it's a good idea, but the way I implemented it for the tests is probably a bit too tough. I think I'll turn it one step down.

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Further thinking has brought me off the idea of doubling humanity losses, but keeping gains at +1 per good deed. Toreador may be an exception. In this case i'm planning on some form of compensation in the character creation. Perhaps a choich if you want to get the bonus on appearance or charisma, or making appearance, charisma, or subterfuge a little less expensive in xp.

Instead i'm planning to make the dialogue choices overlapping. So you can use the evil answers with humanity up to 6, and the nice ones down to 4.
And I think I'll keep low humanity attracting hunters as I tested it: humanity 5 will be treated as if you had one masquerade violation more than you actually have, humanity 4 as two more violations, and humanity 3 as 3 violations. This will have no other consequences on the gameplay; you only get more hunters on the hubs, if your humanity is low.

If you really whish for it, I could allow humanity to go down to 2 or even 1, at least for the losses obtained in dialogues or as result of a quest.

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Actually, having a low humanity shouldn't attray more hunters... A low humanity means you're a ass (or a sinner if you wish to use more churchly words). It may result in you being a bit more crude, but being a heavy convicted dude who hits and kills people on the street, as long as you do it without showing your vampire nature, it should attray the FBI or the police, not hunters.

A low humanity doesn't mean you do not hide physically you're a vampire (makeup, carefull while talking, not using powers...)

Claudia wrote:

Actually, having a low humanity shouldn't attray more hunters... A low humanity means you're a ass (or a sinner if you wish to use more churchly words). It may result in you being a bit more crude, but being a heavy convicted dude who hits and kills people on the street, as long as you do it without showing your vampire nature, it should attray the FBI or the police, not hunters.

A low humanity doesn't mean you do not hide physically you're a vampire (makeup, carefull while talking, not using powers...)

That depends on what you do to get your humanity down. If you kill a lot of people by draining them dry, even without witnesses...
Well, I think the police finding lots of dead bodys with nearly no blood in them woud cause some suspicions. And if i'm killing people, i can always use the blood.

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Yes, indeed many corpses with no blood does bring the attention to hunters, but there are many ways to lose humanity..

Maybe a 1pt loss in humanity could be for being a "immoral ass" (like when you steal the charity box), whereas a killing could be a 2pt loss (the idea from before).

I could not find the "List of Sins" for the Path of Humanity in English, so here's a quicky translation :

humanity moral fine line not to cross
10 egoist thought
9 egoist act with few consequences
8 hurting someone accidently
7 thieft
6 involuntary and accidentary violation (while feeding, while on frenzy)
5 breaking, entering, of someone's else goods (I'm sure there is a better name for this in english, must read through laws again
4 violation with mitigating curcumstances (involuntary killing, draining your ghoul or seducted victim on frenzy)
3 premeditated violation (man 2, enjoying exsanguination)
2 violation just for the hell of it (murder without a mobil, feeding while being full)
1 Total perversion and abominable acts


Yes, Humanity is hard !

Hi,

yes I've seen the list before. It can be useful for a human storyteller in the p&p game, but for the computer it's a big problem. If it had been used in the first place it might work, but including something like that in a mod would require checking out every single possibility to lose (or regain) humanity and add limits based on these guidelines....


For hunters and humanity, I think low humanity should have at least a little effect on getting their attention. At least for this game.

Hollywood is under close surveillance anyway; Bach is searching for LaCroix, so he probably has people reporting about any suspicious activities in town, like people going missing or getting killed. And a lot of the possible humanity losses are for killing or other criminal activities to protect the masquerade (Julius, Patty, Milligan).
So I still think, a humanity score of 5 or less should count as one violation for summoning hunters only.

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