Rebalance character generation?

Would it be possible to make the second and third points of attributes both cost 6 instead of 4 and 8? That way you can spread out your starting stats if you want to without essentially losing out on 4 experience points.

The same could potentially be done for the first three points of each ability score (make them 4, 4, and 4).

Don't know if such a thing is possible.

(If it is simple, could somebody tell me where? I am poking around in the system folder but not seeing where this data would be located.)

Edit: Nevermind, I think I found it, and I see it is probably not possible.

I think, its quite easy:

Just go mto the subdirectory \vampire\vdata\system in your vampire base directory,
open the file stats.txt with the editor,
find the attributes section, there is a line "Raise" "Current_Rating * 4", replace that by "Raise" "Table: 6, 6, 6, 12, 16"
find the abilities section, delete the line "New" "3", replace the raise line with "Table: 4, 4, 4, 9, 12"

That should do the trick.


JUST DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A BACKUP OF THE FILE BEFORE EDITING !!!

Hey, thanks!

Thanks for helping him Childe....

What do you guys think of this idea? One thing I really like about new World of Darkness is the way it mechanically encourages a balanced, well-rounded character, as opposed to most game systems which encourage you to pump a few stats through the moon and ignore the rest of them. This game is like that in most ways, except at character creation.

I have another idea for character creation, but it would only work for experieced player who don't use the auto setup feature (or whatever it is called )

I think it is possible to remove the points to distribute in the creation screen and instead give the player a certain amount of xp to distribute before he talks to Jack.
That way you can keep up the original cost for improving abilities and you are not "obligated" to put all points on one skill.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I have another idea for character creation, but it would only work for experieced player who don't use the auto setup feature (or whatever it is called )

I think it is possible to remove the points to distribute in the creation screen and instead give the player a certain amount of xp to distribute before he talks to Jack.
That way you can keep up the original cost for improving abilities and you are not "obligated" to put all points on one skill.

Hmm you've got my wheels turning with this idea. I think the reason they do it this way is so that you don't start out a Gangrel with high social skills, an ugly Toreador, or a stupid Tremere.

Clans on embrace people that would "FIT" well into their clan. Look a Gangrel would naturally embrace an outdoorsman, while a Ventrue would naturally embrace a business owner. Though it's a fine idea, I think Troika wanted to make sure that (at least in the beginning) your character would fit that mold, and then you can build the rest of his future the way you see fit.

------------------------

Now I'm wondering if we did it this way, and you received X amount of XP at the end of the tutorial, would we then force the user to do the tutorial?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Now I'm wondering if we did it this way, and you received X amount of XP at the end of the tutorial, would we then force the user to do the tutorial?

look up this part of quests_downtown
Quest
{
"Title" "Tutorial"
"DisplayName" "Jyhad for Beginners"

CompletionState
{
"ID" "1" // changed by wesp
"Description" "You have survived the vampire gathering."
"Type" "success"
}

CompletionState
{
"ID" "2"
"Description" "You have survived the Sabbat assault."
"Type" "success"
"AwardXP" "Tutor01"
}
ID 1 is what you get if you forego the tutorial. Add a line "Award_xp" and define the amount in experience_table. Adjust "tutor01" in the same file and the caracter gets the xp when he enters the haven.

I see ok.... I will give this some thought...

Please, please build in the option to skip the tutorial. I always skip it myself and just give myself 2 xp and the lockpicks through the console.

One thing to keep in mind about just giving players a bunch of xp is that it would be an additional 21 xp that they could spend on abilities or disciplines instead of attributes. Not sure how that would affect game balance, but it would mean that, for example, a gangrel could put 2 points in dexterity and two points in strength, instead of two points in strength and then making a difficult choice between stealth and security.

The more I think about this plan, the less I like it. Here is my thought process on this...

Ok you get to spend your XP however you want. Let's say you decide to be a Gangrel...

So the opening scene you get embraced by a Gangrel chick. She wants you as a companion because you...
A. Are very outdoorsy, love guns and hiking, and have 6 dogs.
B. Because you love art, your very charismatic and beautiful, and you wanted to take her to the theatre.

Ooohh Oooh, I wanna build my gangrel with option B!!!

Errrr, :: doh! VtM is built around storyline, and giving XP to be divided up however you want in alot of cases would destroy that not to mention that you could get rid of the histories altogether because alot of them would no longer fit.

You wanna build a pretty artsy fartsy Gangrel that's your problem, but at least he was "Gangrelish" before his embrace, or at least before you got a hold of him and started playing him out of character...

You guys see what I'm saying? I think a little restriction is a good thing here...

So? What affect does it have on your game if somebody wants to play against type?

We are assuming that this will be the player's second or third or more playthrough, because this is definitely a terrible idea for a first time. So we already know the story and the lore and we undermine them at our own risk.

To me the bigger issue is that it takes away some of the challenge and some of the flavor of the clans. All of the clans play very differently right now, mostly because of disciplines but also because of the gentle shove of character creation. Take that away and I suspect they would all start to play very similar to me because I would build my characters very similarly. I like being forced to make difficult decisions and I like the challenge of playing against type. It's part of the fun for me. Those decisions will be a lot easier and playing against type will be no challenge at all if the xp system is implemented.

Not that I am completely against it. I am just not completely sold on it. It would fix the problem that I mention in the original post... but (Shatner voice) AT WHAT COST?

If the case will be "adding" attributes, it's just put in the console the right command, if you guys wanna test something different, when the game start on a fresh PC, don't talk to Jack yet, open the console (do not use this unless you only wanna have fun to test high skills, will ruin the game fun to complete it using this cheat) type in there: giftxp 999, raise everything on max and use impulse 101 (dunno if it's required), wear some strong clothes then move to talk to jack =P it's kinda a short thing but funny to see.