Salubri 2.0 Discussion

SaulottheGentle wrote:

ThePhilosopher wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

Philo, I was hoping to ask if there were some more conceptualization or ideas?

I just fucked the original concept, made it pregnant and then it gave birth to Salubri 2.0
It's an orphan child and it's all yours to take care of if you desire.

This is a responsibility I feel I am not ready to accept   

Although I did put down some ideas for new Obeah levels but that's more like babysitting

Sucks to be you then. You found a baby in a basket at your doorstep so now you can either take care of it or let it die.

Dragatus wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

ThePhilosopher wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

Philo, I was hoping to ask if there were some more conceptualization or ideas?

I just fucked the original concept, made it pregnant and then it gave birth to Salubri 2.0
It's an orphan child and it's all yours to take care of if you desire.

This is a responsibility I feel I am not ready to accept   

Although I did put down some ideas for new Obeah levels but that's more like babysitting

Sucks to be you then. You found a baby in a basket at your doorstep so now you can either take care of it or let it die.

There's a third option. Discreetly move the basket to your neighbour's doorstep.
Or bring it to the next Greenpeace office and complain about the erratic behaviour of storks these days...  

-  

If he moves it to my doorstep, I'm letting it die. Or I might just feed it to the dogs.

Dragatus wrote:

If he moves it to my doorstep, I'm letting it die. Or I might just feed it to the dogs.

*licks snout*

You whistled?

*wags*

Now I have a story hook in my head, but it begs the following question: does vitae contain the requisite nutrients for an infant ghoul to subsist solely off it?

Feral wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

If he moves it to my doorstep, I'm letting it die. Or I might just feed it to the dogs.

*licks snout*

You whistled?

*wags*

We need to wait for Sally to make a decision. But in the mean time, here's a bone.

Dragatus wrote:

Feral wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

If he moves it to my doorstep, I'm letting it die. Or I might just feed it to the dogs.

*licks snout*

You whistled?

*wags*

We need to wait for Sally to make a decision. But in the mean time, here's a bone.

*licks Draggy across the face, wags and starts munching (bone, not Dragatus)*

malak wrote:

Now I have a story hook in my head, but it begs the following question: does vitae contain the requisite nutrients for an infant ghoul to subsist solely off it?

I doubt so. I recall that regular nutrients are necessary too. One of Tzimisce lineages (shoot me, I don't remember reference, something on ravenants) tried to rise Ravenant line in Africa that way and it ended poorly indeed.

I have babysat, documented it's first words and made some things on it.

So far, what I have listed was:

Almost everything Philo said on the idea.
A document that's pretty much the same (in format, and completely unfilled) to V20.
The previous statement includes (unfilled) stereotypes from within and without.
Obeah and Valeren are listed within it. I added some ideas, although no mechanics listed.


And that's pretty much it.

Here's everything I had written on them for Clauds' tumblr. The only thing missing is the new Obeah and some details here and there, me thinks.

ThePhilosopher wrote:

I always had a problem with the Salubri Clan. The idea of a Clan made up completely of “good guys” seemed extremely shallow and poor to me. I thought they could be reworked to become a more interesting, realistic Clan of vampires. So I did some work on them. This is not intended to fit completely into estabilished oWoD lore, some things are left vague, others are retconned out of existence. Remember the Golden Rule : the most important thing is to have fun.

Salubri 2.0

If one would ask a Salubri who they are, the answer would be something akin to “The philosophers, healers and seers of the Kindred.” The truth is a little more unsettling. Out of all the Clans, the Salubri received an horrible curse: they can barely survive on blood alone, having to resort to siphoning one’s vitality and soul through other means.
The forced adaptation this curse had on the Clan can be seen mainly in two results: The Clan’s highly structured and hierarchical discipline, and the Unicorns’ extreme knowledge of the spiritual world (and capacity to alter it).

Nicknames: Unicorns
Sect: The highly structured and disciplined hierarchy of the clan is where the Salubri true loyalty lies: if their secret is ever made public, their existence would surely be compromised. The Salubri’s resources, contacts and inner structure can certainly make the Salubri clan Independent. Most often than not, however, the Salubri will be nominally aligned to the reigning faction of their city.

Appearance: The Clan often embraces the intellectual and spiritually inclined, but appearance has little to influence one’s chance of embrace, for better or worse. In regards to clothing, the Salubri often dress to impress, seeking to keep their “spiritual leader” image.

Havens: Because of their curse, the Salubri Clan make their domains where people sleep, such as hotels, hospitals and madhouses, for it is far easier to feed on kine that way (see “Soul Draining” below). Usually, the Clan will have one domain of such in a city, ruled by an elder and serving as the neonates haven. But for security reasons, any Unicorn capable of having a second haven will do so, but will make sure to have access to sleeping kine.

Background: One must have something to give back to the Clan in order to be embraced. Those specially attuned to the spirit world are the main source of Salubri embraces, but the Clan also embraces those with a talent for deceit, espionage and dealing with social situations. With the advance of technology, tech-savvy humans are being embraced more and more.

Character Creation: There are three archetypes of Salubri embraces. Use them as a guideline, not as gospel.

The Deceiver: Focused on Social Attributes and Backgrounds. They engage in the social life, partake in the political machinations and favor-commerce of the Kindred on the city, just having a bit more expertise to look like they don’t. They tend to have just enough knowledge on Obeah in order to give an appearance of spirituality, while focusing more on auspex, dominate, some making sure to learn Presence along the way.

The Scholar: If you were to believe a Salubri, these types would be far more frequent than they actually are. The scholars focus on mental attributes and seek to better understand the spirit world, and achieve the purity of Golconda. They are often fanatically focused on their Obeah discipline, disregarding socialization and sometimes the entire society.

The Expert: Spies, technology gizmos, hackers, fanatical and brave warriors. These types were embraced to fill a specific function for the clan, too important to be obtained with third parties in exchange for gold and favors. Their attributes can vary depending on their occupation, but they will often have a high-ranking ability which is the reason of their embrace.

The main bulk of the clan has both Deceiver and Scholar characteristics.

Clan Disciplines: Auspex, Dominate, Obeah

Weakness: Through regular means of feeding, a Salubri may only gain one blood point per night, regardless of how many people he feeds from or how much. See “Soul Draining” for the system rules

Organization: All Salubri belong to a strict ruling body known as the Cabal. The Cabal is responsible with grating right for Embrace, right to move from city to city, and other services. The Cabal is mostly a bureaucracy in regards to these items, however. It’s main purpose is hunting down and killing any Kindred that might be getting to close to the truth regarding the Salubri. As such, a neonate Salubri will be affected more by the reigning elder in the city than by the clans’ overlords in unspecified places, except in special circumstances.

Soul Draining.
A Salubri may only gain 1 BP per night through usual feeding, no matter how much blood he consumes. In order to gain more blood points, he needs to drain a victim’s life essence, possibly killing it in the process (although not necessarily).

In order to drain someone’s essence, a Salubri must be touching his target skin-to-skin, draining through clothes (even delicate ones) is impossible. If awake and unwilling, the victim has all the chances to either escape (dexterity-dodge based roll) or resist. Against resisting victims, the Salubri must be successful in a competed strength roll.

Sleeping or otherwise paralyzed/bound targets have no right to roll.
Every few seconds, a Salubri can steal one willpower point from his victim. For every willpower point he drains, the Salubri gains 2 blood points. If a victim is lead to zero willpower points in that manner, her soul is drained and she dies.

Unlike normal feeding, a Salubri energy drain is not pleasurable. In the process, the victim feels slightly bad, however it is not a traumatic experience, only a mild unpleasant one (unless it is the victim last willpower point). The Salubri feels his needs being sated, however, it is much akin to drinking water when you’re thirsty, not the orgasmic experience of the Kiss.

Salubri vampires will often drain their blood dolls before and/or after they gave them the Kiss, in order to keep that blood doll sated.

since you are draining *willpower*, shouldn't some mental roll (wits, or maybe willpower itself) be the defensive roll? I can understand needing to physically subdue them to make and hold contact, but it seems weird to be physically resisting a spiritual attack.
actually, using contested willpower rolls makes sense. also makes it easier to drain a tired/beaten/already drained victim(and creates an incentive in the player that simulates wassail).


I must say I dislike that Salubri as you have written them actually NEVER need to feed in either manner. They could exist completely on either feeding. sure, never using blood for anything other than waking up if you don't suck souls, but it could be done.
I propose three alternate ideas:

1) The Salubri soul is less tightly tied to their body, and as such the curse of Cain cannot awaken the vitae of others in them. Their body simply cannot use vitae they intake unless is has been 'infused' with the soul of another. The Unicorn must drain a human (no animal willpower here, just don't work, animal blood is fine) soul. Every willpower point drained they drain will 'infuse' two (or one) blood points in their body.
As other kindreds souls are bound properly to their bodies, the curse of Cain works properly and they naturally infuse their own vitae. as such, if a Salubri feeds from another Cainite all gained vitae is already infused. Actual vitae from a ghoul or revenant works similarly, though their mortal blood must still be infused.
For purposes of being 'hungry' for Frenzy checks, un-infused bloodpoints do not count. The Salubri beast DOES know that it has blood and needs to infuse it for it to become usable vitae. Ergo, a Wassailing Salubri will first drink blood, then suck soul to sate his hunger. Due to this distinction between blood and vitae, a frenzied Salubri will preferentially attack kindred, though will not seek vampires out if mortals present more accessible blood/soul.

      I like this one as it forces them to follow both the physical Cainite hunger and their own soul sucking hunger. This makes being a soul-sucker a nightly part of their existence. This also leads a great deal of credence to the Tremere attacks on them, and makes it easy to label them a clan of Diablerists, due to their frenzied preference for Vitae over blood.
Following this, I would have some higher levels (5 or 6 maybe) of Obeah allow for creating a 'soul reservoir' for the Salubri elder, which they can fill before acquiring blood. Seems the kind of thing they would develop.

       Flavor for this one works GREAT if Saulot had either progressed towards Golconda or had started down the path towards creating the Baali prior to creating his clan. Also, if something he did as the Baali progenitor affected ALL of his childer who had not signed contracts with their demon masters, this 'loosened' soul concept works great. (kind of a symbol for the demons and/or mystic way to make the demonic pacts easier. Kind of a super-Rite of Aposty performed on Saulot or his blood that affected all of his childer)
EDIT: This also works nicely with Enoch siring Malkav, Saulot and Cappadocious. All three are slightly untethered from this world.

2) Salubri cannot naturally regain willpower. Instead, they must drain it from others. drain 1 willpower, gain 1 willpower. drain LAST willpower, fill your willpower. Salubri feel willpower as a second Hunger, and their Beast treats it as such, but this does nor risk Wassail on its own. This is in addition to the mental exhaustion/lethargy a normal creature experiences when low on temporary willpower. A Salubri low on willpower will not frenzy from JUST low willpower, but the Beast will feed if it can. When a low temporary willpower Cyclops drains a soul, it must resist the Wassail or feed to satiation.

    an option, though i dislike it as it makes willpower rain like candy for Salubri. It does encourage the Unicorn Beast to kill mortals for willpower though, which makes maintaining humanity somewhat more difficult.

3) Obeah (and non-'natural' disciplines) burns 'spirit points'. Salubri have an available 'spirit pool' whose max is equal to their CURRENT willpower. To use vitae for any reason other than waking up, healing, blood-buffing, or Celerity/Fortitude/Potence they must burn a spirit point as well.

    I dislike creating extra slots on the character sheet, so I would never use this one. using my option '1' would not need an extra slot. simply mark blood points/vitae in a manner similar to mashing/lethal/aggravated wounds. That said, this one does encourage the Salubri to suck soul, while not requiring it. I understand to take of the Unicorns you are looking for is a regular soul-sucker, so this would not work for you. it is, however, a functional rule. restrictive enough to make the Soul Sucker weakness actually a real thing, unlike some clan weaknesses *coughtremerecough*, while not risking being the only aspect of the character, like Malkavs brood (bad players suck).

Regardless of which choice you use, I propose the following:
        Saulots get can only drain the soul of someone whose blood they currently have inside them. Assuming the victims blood in inside the Salubri, any skin to skin contact between Salubri and victim creates a pathway through which the Soul Sucker may feed.
I can see most Salubri maintaining the physical Kiss to cover that they are sucking a soul. This would also allow for a Salubri caitiff to not actually know what they are doing, and merely follow the Beasts instructions on how to feed.

Merely ideas for you to play with. as stated at the start, I dislike allowing a Cainite to survive without blood, and unless I read it wrong, your Salubri can simply suck souls every few nights and never feed the Beast. I would see this as a higher Obeah power, or an aspect of Golcanda, but a neonate Salubri should be out there drinking down whores once or twice a week.

You have some great ideas, Malak, especially number 1.


I'm no longer working on this, so whoever says what is "official" or what isn't is the one to first grab the baby in the basket.
But I see no reason why we shouldn't let it as: Hey, there are these two-three systesm about Salubri soul draining, choose the one that looks the most fun and enjoy.

I'm sorry to be the Devil's Advocate, but isn't draining 1 WP and gaining 2 BP from it abit OP?

And, I'm sorry since this was an earlier brought idea, and if it isn't liked I'll withdraw it, but for the weakness, this is the (I think either Philo or Jad brought it up first when it comes to crediting) idea.

When the Salubri is draining a person of blood, the victim loses one temporary willpower per one blood point drained. A victim who loses all temporary willpower cannot regain any points until a lunar month has passed. He's considered soulless like in Unburdening the Beastial Soul, unable to do anything unless reminded and easily possessed. If there's zero temporary willpower in the victim, then they cannot gain any more fulfillment from drinking and do not gain any more blood points.

I'm sorry if I get convoluted on explaining my points for this weakness and/or covering plot holes caused by it.

Firstly, it would make any Salubri very conscious of when they're feeding so that they don't mess up and drain their victim too much. This would essentially mean that the Salubri would need to take care of the victim (with the side benefit of further proving their "Bleeding-Heart Jesus" image) so that they don't trip any flags proving the "Soul-Sucker" image.

Although on the downside (or upside since they're made to be more manipulating), this also means that, since they have Dominate, they'll have an easier time to enthrall people or ghoul people into their service.

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Here's everything I had written on them for Clauds' tumblr. The only thing missing is the new Obeah and some details here and there, me thinks.
+ awesome snip

How come I never got that ?
Only skimmed quickly but that sounds awesome.

/will add an "alternative tag to stupid clans/bloodlines"

SaulottheGentle wrote:

I'm sorry to be the Devil's Advocate, but isn't draining 1 WP and gaining 2 BP from it abit OP?
When the Salubri is draining a person of blood, the victim loses one temporary willpower per one blood point drained. A victim who loses all temporary willpower cannot regain any points until a lunar month has passed. He's considered soulless like in Unburdening the Beastial Soul, unable to do anything unless reminded and easily possessed. If there's zero temporary willpower in the victim, then they cannot gain any more fulfillment from drinking and do not gain any more blood points.

I'm sorry if I get convoluted on explaining my points for this weakness and/or covering plot holes caused by it.

Firstly, it would make any Salubri very conscious of when they're feeding so that they don't mess up and drain their victim too much. This would essentially mean that the Salubri would need to take care of the victim (with the side benefit of further proving their "Bleeding-Heart Jesus" image) so that they don't trip any flags proving the "Soul-Sucker" image.

Although on the downside (or upside since they're made to be more manipulating), this also means that, since they have Dominate, they'll have an easier time to enthrall people or ghoul people into their service.

I like this. good mechanic, keeps them as a Cainite first and foremost, with the soul sucking being important still. Gotta wonder when the Salubri figures out that their Kiss is deeper than that of the other Clans.
My question is this: Does the Salubri have a reasonable means of tracking a given bloodbags willpower? Any vampire is going to quickly learn how much blood he can safely take from a human before hurting them physically, but most humans have 10 bloodpoints. Most standard humans will have willpowers from 2-4. People whose jobs require it (law enforcement, military, trauma surgeons, ect) will be in the 5-7 range, but will be harder to find. Also, the Cyclops would need to find one who still has their temporary willpower points.
Remember: humans have no normal means of spending blood, they have a PILE of ways to spend/lose temporary willpower, and smaller pools to begin with.
Just how often do our Soul Suckers need to hunt? Due to these, I propose that one willpower be worth 2 blood points, so long as they still need to get the blood. Maybe set at every odd number of BP drained the victim loses a TWP.

Also, yeah, gaining 2 BP for one WP is OP, but only because of the TIME required to get it. So long as it is obvious that SOMETHING is up when a Salubri sucks a soul (whether by biting or some other contact.) they will still need to hide when feeding. If it took two turns to suck out a WP, then it becomes equivalent to drinking blood (from the hunters perspective)

malak wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

lolsnip

My question is this: Does the Salubri have a reasonable means of tracking a given bloodbags willpower? Any vampire is going to quickly learn how much blood he can safely take from a human before hurting them physically, but most humans have 10 bloodpoints. Most standard humans will have willpowers from 2-4. People whose jobs require it (law enforcement, military, trauma surgeons, ect) will be in the 5-7 range, but will be harder to find. Also, the Cyclops would need to find one who still has their temporary willpower points.
Remember: humans have no normal means of spending blood, they have a PILE of ways to spend/lose temporary willpower, and smaller pools to begin with.
Just how often do our Soul Suckers need to hunt? Due to these, I propose that one willpower be worth 2 blood points, so long as they still need to get the blood. Maybe set at every odd number of BP drained the victim loses a TWP.

Well, Auspex 2 or Obeah 1 could sense the Willpower remaining? Or slightly modified to do so?

As for hunting, at least at the same times as other vampires?

Sensing the WP remaining isn't fun. If you feed off someone who doesn't have temp wp left, then it attacks the next wp point and breaks that one down.

Clauds, for the means of clarification, you mean that if the TWP is gone, then it should attack Permanent WP? Isn't that abit more OP?

Once all temp WP are gone you lose one perma one and you get all temp WP back up to that one new level

It's like using coins
You have 6€, you spend all your cents for one euro, so then you're down to 5€ and can use cents for this new 1€ coin you're breaking

ouch. I would want to put some resist roll on that at least. or force the Salubri to burn a few temp WP. something to prevent accidentally destroying a member of your herd.
as I said before, if any permanent damage can be done, then either the victim needs a defense mechanism, or the Salubri needs a built in way to know when they are about to cause the damage. not a 'this guy has two TWP left, I should stop here' but rather a 'his spirit is starting to feel thin, I should stop here."

Basic thing to keep in mind: 3-4 mortals a week for other guys without hurting the donors, takes a 'negligible hour' to hunt for a two - three night meal (typical), if you kill them a single mortal can feed to satiation all but the eldest kindred from starving.
However they feed, Salubri should be in similar situation, unless you want to make feeding a major part of the campaign, but while that adds to the personal horror, it risks taking away from the story.

Also: you need to consider a Salubri (PC or NPC) feeding on a player, for whatever reason (blood bond, member of the coterie needs blood now, Amaranth, Sabbat rituals) and what happens with that. Lots of angry players if I say "You take one bashing damage, lose one TWP, and one BP." even more if I say "you stop resisting due to no remaining TWP, he takes the next blood point, you lose a permanent WP, but refill your TWP pool and can start resisting again"
that just feels weird. the transition from low TWP to full TWP would make REALLY weird mental/emotional leaps. You finally decide it doesn't matter, whatever you do is useless, and give up (low-empty TWP), then all of a sudden you are confident that you can escape this and be okay.

malak wrote:

Also: you need to consider a Salubri (PC or NPC) feeding on a player, for whatever reason (blood bond, member of the coterie needs blood now, Amaranth, Sabbat rituals) and what happens with that. Lots of angry players if I say "You take one bashing damage, lose one TWP, and one BP." even more if I say "you stop resisting due to no remaining TWP, he takes the next blood point, you lose a permanent WP, but refill your TWP pool and can start resisting again"
that just feels weird. the transition from low TWP to full TWP would make REALLY weird mental/emotional leaps. You finally decide it doesn't matter, whatever you do is useless, and give up (low-empty TWP), then all of a sudden you are confident that you can escape this and be okay.

If anything, this could also be seen as an extra difficulty toward Salubri in diablerizing people. Because its easy for them to nom down the soul of a person, but not the souls of other kindred would do some things:

1:This also lends to the one idea that the Salubri's souls are less "connected" to their bodies, and thus weaker compared to other Cainite's souls.

2: Now that I read the portion over, there's a side benefit to this way of diablerization. Because they require more time to diablerize, this would make them less inclined to diablerize others due to both the amount of time it takes and that the chances, despite gradually getting lower for the victim, also means that they have much greater chances to escape diablerie. Maybe this could add to their "nice clan" reputation or something?