New Baali Female Concept

So as I neared the end of my Samedi playthrough for TFN 1.2, I wanted to get started on making the female Baali character playable. I started playing with different concepts for this character and here is what I came up with. I installed Blender to remove the glasses for the Armor 0 skin but I'd like to keep the glasses for Armor 1-3. Let me know what you think so far.

Fabulous
Although I can't tell precisely if that "belt" is actually a belt or a see-through-net-thingy like the arms

Oh yeah, looking good. My only comment has nothing to do with the model, but with the clan flaw. I see you still have maximum 7 Humanity. I don't think that's nearly enough to balance out about 15-20 bonus XP (depending on how many sidequests you do).

I propose changing that to a -3 penalty to Humanity. With that change you still can't go any higher than 7, but you also start the game with only 3 Humanity so you need to be really careful in the early game.

It's not a belt, it's shiny lace around her stomach and arms.

As far as the flaw goes, I was considering lowering it to 6 instead of 7. Now that humanity plays a role in bloodloss, it would be a more detrimental flaw. I like the idea.

Edit: Here's a close up of her face and eyes.

Are those the eyes of Andrew?

Great model. Creepy and dark. I wouldn't follow her into a dark alley for sure.

Oh yes, you would. You'd just regret it afterwards.   

Dragatus wrote:

Oh yes, you would. You'd just regret it afterwards.   

...if you're still alive to reflect on your error. Or perhaps you have until the end of the world to regret it.

-  

Ok so I have it set so that the Baali cannot raise Humanity past 6 instead of 7. They will start out with 6 however because I don't want them to be forced to run around and do good deeds by starting out at 3. I want their acts of evil to be voluntary.

I agree with you on this. Baali forced to act nice would have been, like, totally out of character and game breaking. Humanity 6 is reasonable.

Thanks Feral. Yeah, with Humanity now affecting your blood loss rate, keeping your Humanity high is more important. At level Humanity 5, you lose 30 seconds on your blood loss timer, and every point less you lose another 30 seconds. So, Baali are good at level 6 Humanity but one tiny slip and it starts affecting their blood loss rate.

Zer0Morph wrote:

They will start out with 6 however because I don't want them to be forced to run around and do good deeds by starting out at 3.

I of course agree that the Baali shouldn't be forced to do good deeds. But there are two things I'd like to note. Fist of all I still think the flaw doesn't balance out the merit. We're talking about 20 extra XP by the end of the game and in return my Humanity can't go up. That's all? It already never goes up for me, only down (except when I play Salubri). So from my perspective I'm getting 20 XP for free.

The second thing I wish to note is that I suggested already a long time ago to take out all the free Humanity gains out of the game so that if you lose Humanity, the only way to get it back is by burning XP (or using Obeah in dialogue to gain Humanity at the cost of a Masquerade Violation - but that option isn't open to Baali anyway).

Oh look, we made Malkav discontinue his signature line.

Anyway she's nice! I'd do her.
And Dragy is at least half-right.

Well remember, Draggy, Humanity now affects your blood loss rate so Baali who keep their Humanity lower than 6 will be losing blood much faster than every other clan. I personally think it's a reasonable flaw compared to the merit. We'll see how it goes. If it's terrible, we can change it.

I actually already have experience with this because I tweaked my CE installation. I created a"Baali" history for the Tremere which replaces Auspex with Obfuscate, gives you +1 experience modifier and -3 Humanity. I also changed the blood timer so that each point of humanity you lose reduces it by one full minute. This means I started out with a bloodloss rate of 1 minute, which I quickly increased to 2 minutes by upgrading Stamina. This turned out to be enough to make the game playable. I do spend a lot of time hunting, but that's kind of the point.

1 minute blood timer? Yikes! I don't think that would go over well with most people looking to play TFN. I understand you want it super hard which is cool in my opinion, but I gotta keep it to a level that most people would enjoy. Feel free to tweak it back to your optimum levels after you download it.

Zer0 not wanting to make the game harder for the sake of it being harder? You're not Zer0!   

Burn the impostor!   

It wasn't 1 minute for long. I got 2 XP for the tutorial, 1 for talking to Mercurio and then I quickly ran to the hospital and saved Heather for a 4th. That allowed me to upgrade stamina to 2 and I also got +1 Humanity for saving my future ghoul. So alltogether that bumped up the bloodtimer to a much more managable 3 minutes.


OK, it's your mod so you get to do it your way. But if you don't want to do anything with Humanity, would you consider giving he Baali an additional flaw of some type? Or maybe giving them a weaker merit?

Dragatus wrote:

Zer0Morph wrote:

They will start out with 6 however because I don't want them to be forced to run around and do good deeds by starting out at 3.

I of course agree that the Baali shouldn't be forced to do good deeds. But there are two things I'd like to note. Fist of all I still think the flaw doesn't balance out the merit. We're talking about 20 extra XP by the end of the game and in return my Humanity can't go up. That's all? It already never goes up for me, only down (except when I play Salubri). So from my perspective I'm getting 20 XP for free.

The second thing I wish to note is that I suggested already a long time ago to take out all the free Humanity gains out of the game so that if you lose Humanity, the only way to get it back is by burning XP (or using Obeah in dialogue to gain Humanity at the cost of a Masquerade Violation - but that option isn't open to Baali anyway).

Sigh@underlined. Long time ago I pointed this out as the most unfair/unbalanced aspect from any clan, getting free skill points over the span of a few missions is just OP. It doesn't really matter how you intend to balance it out, the game is defined thru XP and giving more to one clan over the other means they get more powerful skills sooner and just have an overall easier/funner time of it. Hated that clan bonus then, still hate it now.

Now that I've complained, might as well propose a solution: what if Baali's bonus was centered around their Social/Appearance attributes? For example, they start with +1 in all Social skills which are also cheaper to raise. To me, this fits their classic traits: deceptive/mysterious/seductive/charming. Not to mention, when you move the cursor over the Physical attributes section, it says something like Baali don't have much use/need for those attributes, which makes sense: why bother with physical strength fighting an enemy when you can simply outmaneuver and bend them to your will anyhow? As they would rather deceive and fool their enemies, a stronger start in Social skills seems to fit perfectly.

How about this for the Baali:

Merit: Your Blood Timer is not influenced by low Humanity.
Flaw: Humanity maximum of 6.

This would make the "clan" perfectly suited for low Humanity characters, which is exactly what they're supposed to be.

Dragatus wrote:

How about this for the Baali:

Merit: Your Blood Timer is not influenced by low Humanity.
Flaw: Humanity maximum of 6.

This would make the "clan" perfectly suited for low Humanity characters, which is exactly what they're supposed to be.

I like the idea... Forcing a Baali to be humane is like saddling a cow IMO.
But wouldn't it make the game unbalanced? As if making the Baali overpowered?

They would lose the XP bonus, which now grants them around 20 XP by the end of the game. Letting them run around with low humanity is much milder.

Dragatus wrote:

They would lose the XP bonus, which now grants them around 20 XP by the end of the game. Letting them run around with low humanity is much milder.

Ah. Then I guess it makes sense...

Dragatus wrote:

How about this for the Baali:

Merit: Your Blood Timer is not influenced by low Humanity.
Flaw: Humanity maximum of 6.

This would make the "clan" perfectly suited for low Humanity characters, which is exactly what they're supposed to be.

Honestly does sound better, although I have noticed a problem trying to play a Baali character with low humanity, during a single section of the game. Somewhat hoping this would remove that problem, although it might require more to do so.

So we all know how the Museum works. It's either sneak through it, and avoid problems, run through it without killing any of the guards, or, kill every last guard you see. However, the way TFN works, it somewhat makes that last option dangerous, especially if a character already has low humanity.

While a player could have some Xp to spend raising Humanity, it seems odd to force that. Especially for a Baali.

Do you lose humanity for killing the security guards or do they count as hostiles and can be safely killed? I always sneak through so I'm unsure.