Seduction, the ultimately obsolete skill

I've been wondering about the Seduction, as it seems pretty useless in comparison to Intimidaiton and Persuasion skills. I tend to avoid investing in Abilities and more in Attributes, since they raise two stats at once (aside from Appearence and Charisma).

Now to the point - let's take a look at Persuasion, probably the most important skill in game. Gives you loads of additional xp and options, can be raised by Charisma or Scholarship and even though the first one raises only this particular skill, the second one boosts Research as well.

Now let's look at Seduction - it allows you to feed on a one chick in each town, as well as some dialouge lines. Certainly isn't worth more than Persuasion or even Intimidate. The problem is, that both Appearence and Subterfuge raise *only* this particular skill and since xp is hard to come by in this game, I always end up ignoring it overall.

I put some thinking into this and I think that with the current alterations with the mod, it'd be good for Subterfuge to affect both Persuade and Seduction, while Scholarship would not. Intelligence already raises Research and Hacking, so it will not be an obsolete skill.

Thoughts?

Well from my experience ( if memory serves ) is that Persuasion and Seduction are more important than Intimidation. There is almost no need to intimidate any NPC if the other 2 are high enough. And of course seduction helps with some of the blood dolls, as if I remember correctly you can't even get a few of them without decent seduction skills. I agree with you that of the 3 Persuasion is the cream of the crop and is most useful for most situations. Scholarship is HIGHLY useful as it effects and modifies several things, so usually in the past I have tried to get that to 4 or even 5 if at all possible. In the end it depends on an individuals play-style though. I am sure Z, could give us ALL some good advice, as he's probably played and done more than most if not all of us

Celsius,

I do understand what you're saying about Seduction, however it can be used for quite a variety of things. Examples...

- Get past Brian to get the Astrolite without combat
- Get the actual Astrolite for free
- You can eventually seduce not only Blood Dolls but Prostitutes from every town (which is very important with the Bloodtimer)

I don't want to completely spoil the reasons to have a high Seduction, but Seduction (and Persuasion) are vital to the strategy I use. If any of the three it's Intimidate I find worthless, however even Intimidate can be beneficial such as getting Trip to sell you weapons.

I will however look into your suggestion about the attributes and abilities linking up with Feats, such as which increase which.

Thanks for the idea...

-Z

Perhaps I am wrong about it's usefulness, but I'd say that it requires much more xp when compared to other skills, since the Abilities\Attributes it requires will not raise any other skill. It's not as vital as Defense or Bashing, so it makes it a bit obsolote.

Celsius wrote:

Perhaps I am wrong about it's usefulness, but I'd say that it requires much more xp when compared to other skills, since the Abilities\Attributes it requires will not raise any other skill. It's not as vital as Defense or Bashing, so it makes it a bit obsolote.

I'm strongly considering taking your idea and implementing it in CE 1.2. I took a look at what you were saying and you're right, 2 different skills/abilities that effect persuasion are dual enhancing which is unbalanced for seduction. If we move Scholarship to only effect research and make Subterfuge affect both Persuasion and Seduction, it would certainly balance things out a lot better.

Zer0Morph wrote:

I'm strongly considering taking your idea and implementing it in CE 1.2. I took a look at what you were saying and you're right, 2 different skills/abilities that effect persuasion are dual enhancing which is unbalanced for seduction. If we move Scholarship to only effect research and make Subterfuge affect both Persuasion and Seduction, it would certainly balance things out a lot better.

Not exactly, Charisma raises only Persuade. At least it does for me and I'm running CE 1.1

Other than that, I'm glad that you approve my idea. Now about that 1.2....do you have some specific time frame in mind in terms of release?

Celsius wrote:

Zer0Morph wrote:

I'm strongly considering taking your idea and implementing it in CE 1.2. I took a look at what you were saying and you're right, 2 different skills/abilities that effect persuasion are dual enhancing which is unbalanced for seduction. If we move Scholarship to only effect research and make Subterfuge affect both Persuasion and Seduction, it would certainly balance things out a lot better.

Not exactly, Charisma raises only Persuade. At least it does for me and I'm running CE 1.1

Other than that, I'm glad that you approve my idea. Now about that 1.2....do you have some specific time frame in mind in terms of release?

Probably in the next few weeks, I'm going through and fine tuning 1.2 and fixing some stuff overlooked in 1.1. I made Subterfuge effect both seduction and persuasion and took persuasion away from scholarship. I really like the change and plan on keeping it.

I was actually thinking that investigation should affect persuasion instead of scholarship. Investigation is almost a null skill right now, since most people will find everything it shows you just by exploring. (And really, who needs a skill that makes exploring less important? It's half the point of the game.) It's also significantly less useful to anybody who has played the game before, even more so than hacking. (I can never remember all of those passwords, but I tend to remember important locations and secrets.)

I find it weird that they decided to make scholarship so ridiculously useful to begin with. You almost don't need any other skill. I feel foolish investing in any other mental skill. It's particularly odd since the description of knowledges imply that they are the only things you can learn from books, yet you can actually raise almost every ability with research. Limiting scholarship to only raise other knowledge abilities would go a long way towards making it more balanced.

This is probably not the purview of this mod, but seduction could be made much more useful if it gave you the chance to feed off of anybody on the street without risk. Several clans can use their powers to feed, and others can feed from a distance, but some have a difficult time of it. Increasing the number of people on the street would make that even more difficult and make seduction even more important, as well as make the nosferatu curse more relevant to the game experience. I have no idea how difficult such a change would be, so if I'm talking out of my ass just ignore me.

I find that several other feats are pretty useless as well: haggle and intimidation (mentioned above, I see), for example. With a 1 in haggle I was able to keep my guy fully stocked on ammo for every weapon in his arsenal, keep plenty of blood packets around, and purchase every piece of body armor, and what more do you need, really? I've also never had to spend any points on stamina. The healing, armor, and defense are plenty to keep even melee characters sturdy, and all of the enemies that you really have to be scared of do lethal or aggravated damage anyway.

lofgren wrote:

I was actually thinking that investigation should affect persuasion instead of scholarship. Investigation is almost a null skill right now...

I don't see your point there. How would investigation help you make people do what you want them to do? I believe, subterfuge for seduction and persuasion is the better idea. But you are right, investigation is one of the more useless abilities.

lofgren wrote:

I find it weird that they decided to make scholarship so ridiculously useful to begin with. You almost don't need any other skill. I feel foolish investing in any other mental skill. It's particularly odd since the description of knowledges imply that they are the only things you can learn from books, yet you can actually raise almost every ability with research. Limiting scholarship to only raise other knowledge abilities would go a long way towards making it more balanced.

To do that you have to change the available books. I think it can be done, but i haven't tested it yet.

lofgren wrote:

This is probably not the purview of this mod, but seduction could be made much more useful if it gave you the chance to feed off of anybody on the street without risk. Several clans can use their powers to feed, and others can feed from a distance, but some have a difficult time of it. Increasing the number of people on the street would make that even more difficult and make seduction even more important, as well as make the nosferatu curse more relevant to the game experience. I have no idea how difficult such a change would be, so if I'm talking out of my ass just ignore me.

This would be a lot of work. For evera person you wnt to talk to, you need a text-base, sound files and the right lip-movements for the dialog-mode.

lofgren wrote:

I find that several other feats are pretty useless as well: haggle and intimidation (mentioned above, I see), for example. With a 1 in haggle I was able to keep my guy fully stocked on ammo for every weapon in his arsenal, keep plenty of blood packets around, and purchase every piece of body armor, and what more do you need, really? I've also never had to spend any points on stamina. The healing, armor, and defense are plenty to keep even melee characters sturdy, and all of the enemies that you really have to be scared of do lethal or aggravated damage anyway.

Yep here you speak my mind exactly. I take the free point in finance from the fat man but i never spend any experience for finance and manipulation. And i dont know what to do with my bucks. Perhaps i could improve the looks of my haven with a green wallpaper

Childe of Malkav wrote:

lofgren wrote:

I was actually thinking that investigation should affect persuasion instead of scholarship. Investigation is almost a null skill right now...

I don't see your point there. How would investigation help you make people do what you want them to do? I believe, subterfuge for seduction and persuasion is the better idea. But you are right, investigation is one of the more useless abilities.

That's easy: blackmail! No, really it was mostly a game balance consideration. I think it makes about as much sense as basing manipulation off of research. "Helps you win debates" indeed. Getting people to do what you want them to is rarely about debating, even in the game.

Alot of good thoughts roaming about this thread, nice.

When making Subterfuge affect both persuasion and seduction was first brought to my attention, I immediately agreed and made the proper changes. Over time I was looking at it and suddenly the balance looked very lopsided. How could one ability which happens to be the cheapest stat to raise in the game make so much improvement on the character. Though it does make sense that subterfuge "should" affect both of these feats, it made subterfuge the ultimate skill the raise, and for very cheap.

I didn't like the game imbalance so I decided to put it back how it was.

As far as having a high seduction allowing you to feed freely on the street, it's a good idea but as Childe said it would be a pain in the ass. What could be done, at least for females would be to use the blooddoll dialogue text for specific female pedestrians. I couldn't say let's go ahead and make EVERYONE a blood doll, but adding the dialogue to 2-3 female pedestrians could work around the various hubs. Either that or I could create my own .mp3 voice/lip dialogue files for pedestrians blooddolls for seduction purposes. Something simple but still professional. I will look into this idea.

As far as haggle and money goes, I have been thinking about raising the price of bloodbags thus making haggle much more important, especially for Ventrue during the Warrens missions where they can't feed on rats and blood is in short supply.

Doesn't that just make scholarship the ultimate skill to raise, just as it was?

If not investigation, perhaps finance could be renamed into something that makes sense to affect both persuasion and haggle. "Barter," perhaps.

In any event, the bonuses from scholarship need to be either split up, or the books need to be made much, much more difficult to obtain (perhaps if you could only purchase them at prohibitive prices from one shop in each level). Otherwise it is just ridiculous.

Hi!

If you do both the suggested changes, then this new Barter would be the ultimate skill.

Getting the books to a vendor is easy, i've tried that. You can also link the availability to certain states of the game (look it up in Wesps Readme). I don't know about removing them from the maps.

Well I definitely don't think that you should do both. It's an either/or situation for sure.

I agree that Seduction should be awarded greatly in some way, so I am in the process of making it possible to perform a seduction feed on prostitutes right there on the street if you have a level 10 Seduction. This will also be possible with a level 4 Dominate for Ventrue (if they are willing to risk possibly vomiting).

Also I am looking into adding dialogue to a couple random NPC Pedestrians for the same effect allowing Seduction 10 to also feed on them in plain view.

So far everything is looking good, do this satisfy your feeling on Seduction being obsolete?

It's a good idea, but level 10 seems a bit hard to obtain. If you start from scratch you have to spend 40xp for the Attribute and another 33 for the Ability.

At least make it easier in the early stages of the game as with the blood dolls.

Well I could make the hookers set to XX seduction and the CE-made blooddolls set to another XX seduction. Maybe one group is 10 another group is 9 so if you want access to ALL available groups you will need a 10...

Being able to pick up blood right there on the street anytime makes blood very easy to obtain, thats a huge reward so I feel a huge reward should be hard to obtain.

I'll figure someting out.

Is there perhaps a way to randomise the requirement when you talk to someone? Perhaps only people in clubs so it doesn't look so weird when you go around from person to person hitting on them Perhaps make it so it picks between 6-10 for a requirement, or you can use dominate or presence to influence them.

Is it possible to add auras for users of Auspex? Probably a weird question, but maybe blood dolls and 'susceptible' victims could have a slightly different aura just to illustrate they're more in the mood.

Another idea is perhaps to base the seduction requirement on humanity - in pnp the lower your humanity the less human you look and feel, so pulling someone to feed from would be harder the lower your humanity.

But these are just the scattered musings of someone who would more than likely attract the attention of a Malkavian if plunged into the setting

Sounds good.

Perhaps in the clubs it could be easier to seduce people of the opposite sex.

And of course there are those who can only be seduced by a Nos

Maybe only in The Asylum?

Nosferatu seduction, now there is an odd idea. Maybe Knox would be interested? Or you'd have to have three dots in obfuscate to emulate having the ability Mask of a Thousand Faces.

I'm finishing up the Santa Monica Pedestrian BloodDoll, it's working out perfect so far.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Well I could make the hookers set to XX seduction and the CE-made blooddolls set to another XX seduction. Maybe one group is 10 another group is 9 so if you want access to ALL available groups you will need a 10...

Being able to pick up blood right there on the street anytime makes blood very easy to obtain, thats a huge reward so I feel a huge reward should be hard to obtain.

I'll figure someting out.

Using the 1.1 mod, blood is already exceedingly easy to obtain for most clans with a level 4 ability. Animalism, domination, and thaumaturgy make feeding off the street a casual experience, even for nosferatu. (Animalism and thaumaturgy are masquerade violations, but it's a simple thing to avoid that by just crouching in the shadows.)

A level 4 ability costs 30 points, gets you two extra powers (of varying usefulness), and can be used in combat to keep the blood meter pretty much full all the time. (Activate bats communion, recharge all passive disciplines, bloodheal, and then just before the bat gets back to you, activate spirit wolf. Now all of your discipline timers are refreshed, you're at maximum blood capacity, and that guy you were fighting is dead.)

10 seduction costs 73 points, gets you very little else (especially if male), and basically just saves you the time and effort it would take to nab a mortal with one of the abilities that you would have if you hadn't thrown all of those points into seduction.

I would suggest randomizing it from 5-10. If you could get Santa Monica characters closer to 5 and Chinatown characters closer to 10, that would incentivize keeping it pumped. By about 7 or 8 you should be able to find somebody fairly reliably, and at 10 feeding in masquerade areas should be a minor inconvenience at worst.

Might also consider having presence boost seduction when activated. That would make it cheaper for Toreador and Ventrue, who need it the most.

Problem with having it activated is that people will be reacting to it, would probably be more effective and characterful to have it as a dialogue option like Dominate or Dementation, as it can be used in pnp as a more targetted discipline. The difficulty with this would be making it clear, as as far as I am aware it isn't figured out how to add a different font for a line yet. The closest would be putting (Presence) before such a line, or (Activate Presence) which recudes the difficulty then just takes you to the normal dialogue options.

it is my view also that with bloodloss as was introduced in camarilla edition seduction becomes all important.
i find myself doing "maintenance and exploration", walking around a lot in hubs, where masquerade makes feeding dificult, and the ability that seduction gives to feed from hookers and street-side blood dolls without breaking masquerade is extremely useful to me.

i totally dislike intimidation on the other end in quests, because it antagonizes characters. there are characters that could remain sympathetic that will become antagonistic, and even in characters with whom conflict is inevitable i don't like to initiate the conflict.
i much prefer persuasion.
a case in point, you can get money from the street side blood doll in santa monica near Mercurio through persuasion, and then you can seduce him out of blood later on. if you intimidate him to get more money, you loose the ability to seduce him.

by the way, i found two street side blood dolls in hollywood that were not mentioned in walkthroughs. they are at edges of town, one near Isaac's Jewelry and the other near the bus stop near the Vesuvius. you might need a high seduction, but i think only as high as the one needed to feed for free from the hookers, to feed on the Asp Hole blood doll, and to get a discount from Misti in the vesuvius.

Those blood dolls weren't mentioned in the walkthrough because they are exclusive to the CE. We made those for the very purpose you spoke about, Seduction.

In fact the items you mentioned in your other post you found aren't in any walkthroughs either, we placed them there, again to make Inspection more viable. In fact we placed items and weapons all over the place for those with high Inspection feats.

I agree, Seduction is worthwhile in my opinion too, because of the bloodloss system. Some people agree while others don't, just depends on your play style I guess.