One Last VtMB Mod idea (for convos sake)

I remember years ago when I was bored, I sorta has a mod idea for VtMB along the lines of Camarilla Edition, The Final Nights and Antitribu. Mainly editing the clans out, their disciplines, and adding new content. Sadly, like about 99% of other people on Earth, the problem of "Loads of Ideas but no Talent" applies.

Nonetheless, I hope to bring these ideas up mostly to see what people think of it, if any ideas come out of it, or just for conversation's sake. Sorry for the TL;DR in this first post.

One of the ideas I had was calling it something along the lines of "Independents", "Inconnu Edition" or the like. The Clans within would also be replaced with Bloodlines that weren't covered in the main game, TFN or Antitribu, if only to separate it more from the other mods and add in more disciplines to play with.

The Clan ideas were as follows, and just to note I'm aware that one can't simply add in new Disciplines without replacing old ones, so here's the list of the disciplines in the Vanilla game. At the end, I'll put down a new list with what Disciplines would be replaced with.

Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dementation, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Presence, Potence, Protean, Thaumaturgy

Blood Brothers - Replacing Malkavian. The main idea behind them was to introduce two "followers" later on that could help you on stuff, and maybe a short storyline of growing independence from masters, free followers being their main benefit. They would ofc have Potence, Fortitude and Sanguinius (which I imagine would replace Protean). Their weakness would be that they have a Mental Attribute Cap of 3 dots.

True Brujah - Replacing Brujah. It's obvious, I know. Their benefit would be that they have +2 against Frenzying, but the cost is that their Humanity costs extra Exp to raise. Celerity would be replaced by Temporis. I know from some chats with Malkav that it's not possible to cause people to freeze like time has stopped, but I think a way that can be worked around is by having "Temporis" remain the same to Celerity, but raising Dodge and Wits when it's used, giving the feeling of being harder to hit. Ofc, this means they have Potence, Temporis and Presence.

Children of Cacophony - Replacing Ventrue. I imagine they'd be able to use Melpominee like Ventrue use Dominate. And unlike how they were originally named "Daughters of Cacophony", I'm taking liberties because the reason men aren't sired is flimsy. They will have Fortitude, Presence and Melpominee. Their benefit will be the use of Melpominee in dialogue. Their drawback will be heightened exp prices for Mental Attributes due to the constant songs in their heads.

Gargoyles - Replacing Nosferatu. I imagine they'd be edited to look more stone like, and their weakness is their appearance causing masquerade violations like the normal ones. They'd use Fortitude, Potence and Visceratika, which would basically take over where Obfuscate was. Their benefit would be lowered Physical Attributes.

Ravnos - Replacing Toreador. Mainly because Antitribu disappointed abit in that they didn't use them. They would use Auspex, Fortitude and Chimerstry. Chimerstry would replace Dementation, and could be used in Dialogue as replacement. Such as for example conjuring an Illusion to stay with Samantha, creating illusionary money to give to the gangsters hounding Venus, etc. As for why Auspex replaces Animalism, I remember that one Caste of Ravnos use Auspex in place of Animalism. And Animalism is being used for another purpose. Their benefit would be the ability to use Chimerstry in Dialogue, but their drawback is that they're addicted to feeding from blood dolls, represented in that they get more blood from Blood dolls and less from everyone else.

Salubri Antitribu - Replacing Gangrel. Kinda like TFN's Salubri, except more pissed off and can easily cause violence. Their Clan Flaw would be mirrored to TFN's Salubri, instead of taking more blood to get fed they drain their victims faster. Their Valeren would also focus on violence, and would replace Animalism. Auspex, Valeren and Fortitude for them. Their benefit would be lowered Physical Attribute costs.

Kiasyd - Replacing Tremere. I know they have that "stay in a library for 300 years" schtick, but a Clan isn't a Stereotype, they're still people. Their benefit is that they may buy Social Attributes for a Lowered Cost and have Appearance 2 at Character Creation. Their drawback is that they take more damage from weapons (to stand in for their weakness for cold iron). They can use Auspex, Presence, Mytherceria. The reason they don't have Dominate or Obtenebration is because I'm going with V20 rules, that Kiasyd can be embraced from fae touched mortals and replace one clan Discipline with Mytherceria. And ofc, Mytherceria would replace Thaumaturgy.

With that out of the way, let's look at the discipline list.

Auspex, Chimerstry (Dementation), Fortitude, Melpominee (Dominate), Mytherceria (Thaumaturgy), Potence, Presence, Sanguinus (Protean), Temporis (Celerity), Valeren (Animalism), Viscerastika (Obfuscate).

I know that five of the Clans have Fortitude, but I feel that's acceptable.  I don't have any other ideas atm, mainly thinking of how Loading Screens would describe the Bloodline/Clan, little dialogue tidbits, who'd explain the clan to the person, and even ideas on joining the Sabbat. Any thoughts, feelings or discussion?

Two things struck me while reading this.

First, many of the Disciplines could be a real pain to render properly. Temporis, Mysceratica, Sanguinus... Especially the last one is tricky: how and with whom to replace limbs, Attributes etc?

Secondly, most of the Clans are very likely to go Sabbat, so a good Sabbat storyline is a necessity. Which is a lot of work to do. Some of the Bloodlines are very hard to explain in the Final Nights, like the Gargyole anywhere outside of the Chantry.

All in all, a good idea, but I feel it needs work. It could be great if the Bloodlines had the feel of VtM lore about them and the Disciplines were done right.

Feral wrote:

Two things struck me while reading this.
First, many of the Disciplines could be a real pain to render properly. Temporis, Mysceratica, Sanguinus... Especially the last one is tricky: how and with whom to replace limbs, Attributes etc?

I fear that some of them would need some liberties taken. Like said with Temporis above, being a "better Celerity". I fear that Viscerastika would have the same problem, being a "better Obfuscate" (though on the plus side, not having more Bloodlines with Obfuscate means that most people will need to actually pay attention to Steath. ). As for Sanguinus, from what I'm reading the user can freely take body parts from other members of their circle no matter how far away. Some powers, like Gestalt, Walk of Caine and Coagulated Entity might be abit harder to justify and may need liberties taken...

Mytherceria may also be a pain to include. It's not offensively oriented like Thaumatugry's Path of Blood. ><" But then again, I feel that offense is one of the things the game kinda used loads of (mainly in the end missions), and I wouldn't mind making more social ways of solving problems.

Feral wrote:

Secondly, most of the Clans are very likely to go Sabbat, so a good Sabbat storyline is a necessity. Which is a lot of work to do. Some of the Bloodlines are very hard to explain in the Final Nights, like the Gargyole anywhere outside of the Chantry.

Indeed. If nothing else, doing a completed Sabbat storyline would be awesome, basically having it as a dark mirror to the Camarilla. Not only can missions have more casual disregard for human life, but they can point out that "the Sabbat and Camarilla are practically the same, with elders using their lessers as pawns to keep themselves alive for one more century".

As for the Gargoyle, I think the writers covered that. Basically, they had a revolt and wanted to be recognized as their own bloodline and not slaves. Sadly, Tremere indoctrination was kinda hammered into them, so they're mostly Camarilla oriented. Although for clans like Salubri Antitribu or True Brujah, I can see some difficulty. For one, the Salubri Antitribu tend to be part of mass embraces (and die off just as quickly), but seeing as TFN managed to pitch in Salubri (even a few Laibon Bloodlines) I don't see anything wrong with doing the same for Salubri Antitribu or True Brujah.

Feral wrote:

All in all, a good idea, but I feel it needs work. It could be great if the Bloodlines had the feel of VtM lore about them and the Disciplines were done right.

Thanks, and yes. It'd need loads of work. The one thing I do really want in the mod is following the Lore or playing on it. For example, I imagine a Salubri Antitribu COULD walk into a Tremere Chantry...but if they have any Masquerade Violations concerning them, then they'd basically be walking into a death trap with Strauss killing them "for the good of the Clan".

I would concentrate on a new story line first, and then think about new clans and disciplines. You can't fit a Ravnos or Gargoyle in the existing story, just as the Giovanni in Antitribu is a real problem imo.

Since I know next to nothing about the clans and disciplines you mention, I can only ask about Chimerstry. Any other ideas apart from using it in dialog? Doing illusions in a computer game is not easy.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I would concentrate on a new story line first, and then think about new clans and disciplines. You can't fit a Ravnos or Gargoyle in the existing story, just as the Giovanni in Antitribu is a real problem imo.

Since I know next to nothing about the clans and disciplines you mention, I can only ask about Chimerstry. Any other ideas apart from using it in dialog? Doing illusions in a computer game is not easy.

Alrighties then. My ideas for Chimerstry are something along the lines of:

Chimerstry 1: Ignis Faatus - Create an illusion that confounds the senses, keeping a target still for a moment as they feel or see something that isn't there. Basically like Dominate 1's Trance.

Chimerstry 2: Fata Morgana - Create an illusion that meets the tests of the senses, creating something that people see, touch and may interact with. In game terms, I imagine it creates a double of the character where the character targets at, and NPC's will focus their attention on that double rather than the character themselves. The downside is that the being fades after being hit once.

Chimerstry 3: Apparition - Basically the same as Fata Morgana, but the illusion has a set health, thus can remain longer.

Chimerstry 4: Permanency - Kinda like Apparition, except that the alternate version of the char can move, attack and stuff like that.

Chimerstry 5: Horrid Reality - Basically something like Lingering Malaise in Camarilla Edition, save that the character believes themselves to be on fire. Stuns them for a time, can instantly kill mortals and at least stun supernatural/boss enemies.

I've ben thinking on similar lines, at least for level 1 and 5. For the intermediate levels I had thought about something similar to presence in bloodlines: distracts the enemies so their attack and defence are reduced. But the idea of a player double is good as well. There is a technical problem, though. I don't know how you can make all enemies hate the fake more than the player and if it is to attack itself, how to make the fake hate all enemies, but not other people. And dynamically creating characters on the map is severely limited because you can't set all stats.
As for use in dialog I have thought about showing "badges" or "documents" to gain access to places. Like fo the Giovanni mansion, show the guard a fake id card and tell him you forgot to bring the invitation, but see I'm a member of the family, here is my id...

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I've ben thinking on similar lines, at least for level 1 and 5. For the intermediate levels I had thought about something similar to presence in bloodlines: distracts the enemies so their attack and defence are reduced. But the idea of a player double is good as well. There is a technical problem, though. I don't know how you can make all enemies hate the fake more than the player and if it is to attack itself, how to make the fake hate all enemies, but not other people. And dynamically creating characters on the map is severely limited because you can't set all stats.
As for use in dialog I have thought about showing "badges" or "documents" to gain access to places. Like for the Giovanni mansion, show the guard a fake id card and tell him you forgot to bring the invitation, but see I'm a member of the family, here is my id...

I see. I was thinking for the double to potentially be along the lines of the rarely used mechanic of picking up objects and throwing them so the people you're trying to sneak past would look in that direction. It would also be helpful for sneak attacks. Ack, now I can see using Melpominee using the same mechanic for one of it's powers.

Pardon if I'm saying how I want things without much of understanding programming limitations, I have no idea of programming limitations in Bloodlines (beyond changing text, a tiny bit of reordering the clans in the drop down list from doing a new game and the factor that you can't replace Vanilla Disciplines or add new ones without changing or rearranging the vanilla ones), all I'm doing is listing something that's similar and hoping it could be useful to people who know about it. ><"

And yes, that's perfectly fine for Dialogue, just what I was thinking of. To give another example, giving fake documents to Therese saying "the Prince wants you to call off the feud", but Therese knows much better than that (or she saw through it with Auspex, because it's a Malkavian Discipline).