Small ideas about balancing and more

So, after playing Camarilla Edition a little I had a few ideas. Perhaps you'll like them.

My first idea was to remove the bonus for persuasion from scholarship and add it to intelligence instead. As an attribut scholarhip is too cheap to upgrade two of the most important non-combat feats, and you can even get an upgrade from Beckett.
Scholarship is the only ability that influences two feats, where intelligence is the only mental attribute improving only one. I think that's a little unbalanced, and simply switching the persuasion bonus would help a lot.

The second idea was about giving the Nosferatu a Clan advantage for intimidation. Since they lost their inherent +2 on feeding from rats in the mod, their current advantage is quite weak given their big drawback. Adding a little intimidation boost would make things more even between clans.
Plus, it makes sense that those guys can scare the hell out of you more easily than human-looking vampires.

The third one is a matter of taste only. The sound effect for Song of Serenity is kinda off I think. A wolf howling and a harp don't come across as something which would calm you down (yeah, I know it's just metaphoric, but still ), I was just thinking that a cat's purr or something inherently calming like that fits better.

Finally I wanted to ask if those ravens Gangrel can summon are available as seperate models. If so, would it be possible to add them to the maps? They'd fill the world a little and perhaps if they have an animation for landing/sitting, they could be an additional blood source, too.
But I guess, that one just wishful thinking


That's it for the moment. Perhaps I'll come up with some more ideas later.

Hey Coyote,

about your ideas.
Well, I'm with you on removing persuasion from scholarship. But I don't have a good idea where to place it instead. I don't want to have a feat using two attributes (Charisma and Intelligens if I did it the way you suggest).
If I knew how to do it, or if it's even possible, I'd like to use either Int or Wits for the hacking skill, as with the p&p rules.

A bonus on intimidation for Nosferatu sounds like a good idea. What do you have in mind? A bonus point for the the ability, or a +1 for the feat?

About the other things, I can't say too much. The discipline changes were done by Zer0 for CE 1.2. At that time I wa only beta tester and scripting assistant. And since I don't like playing either Nosferatu or Gangrel, I don't really know how the new animalism looks. Apart from that, I have next to no knowledge about sound editing.
Plus I have not really thought about doing further changes with the disciplines.

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Hi Childe of Malkav,

I see your point, yeah I guess Persuasion would be too hard to raise, if it was tied to two attributes... So the real Problem is that we've got 13 feats (not including the soak feats) but only 12 abilities... So if one were to detach the Persuasion Bonus from scholarship you could either bundle it with one of the less vital abilities or in a more radical approach replace one of them with some kind of 'argumentation'-ability solely raising persuasion, while we attach the former ability to one of the attributes which only raises one feat until now...

An Example for the latter: Change the inspection to the new 'argumentation'-ability. Then add the lost Inspection bonus to Appearance. A person concerned about their looks would naturally have an eye for the details what would come in handy with being observing in general.
Just an idea, and perhaps it's not even possible.



About the Nosferatu bonus on Intimidation, I think it should be a direct +1 to the feat as it's only due to their monstrous Appearance. They still can improve their Intimidation feat like anybody else by raising their knowledge about the matter and manipulation of peole.

Well, there are 3 unused Abilities in the game: athletics, animal ken, and occult. I was thinking of reviving them for quite some time. But only if I have good ideas for all three of them. Athletics could give a minor bonus on the bloodloss time, similar to Stamina, but only 15 seconds (or even 10, although that would mean changing the timer on all maps), instead of 30. Then I could change occult to rhetorics for persuasion. But I don't have a good idea for aother usefull skill yet.
Any suggestions?

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An ability increasing a Vampire's chance to resist frenzy would be a nice feature I think. Willpower or something like that.
I could also imagine the occult ability allowing a vampire to use the occult objects, similar to research.

Edit: How about an ability to increase your passive healing?

coyote wrote:

I could also imagine the occult ability allowing a vampire to use the occult objects, similar to research.

Don't ask me where or when I've seen it, but there are messages for this in the game. Much akin to when you look at books your research feat is not high enough to use, these messages tell you that whatever you're holding in your hand (i.e. the occult item in question) gives off a baaaaad feeling, dude, but no more - so no benefits from items if you can't identify them. I don't remember the messages displayed correctly, but I think they were funny...


Oooh, if Occult gets included, I'll start playing Corinna ingame. Teh library cat is watching you!

Eliza, you're right about both things: there are messages of that kind, and they are funny. I think I recall one mentioning a label "made in hell".
But I don't like the idea of not being able to use the item at all, if your occult feat is too low. And changing every itemm to something usefull, with increasing features when your occult feat rises is even harder work.

Coyote, in p&p Willpower is a trait like humanity. So that wouldn't fit for a skill.
For better passive healing, that should better be linked to something physical, like stamina, or athletics. Not for a skill.

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I have tested today. I can't revive these abilities. Game crashes.

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While browsing the files, I stumbled over the unused occult failure messages. Here they are, so that everybody can have a laugh:

"You have no clue what this thing is, but it looks eeeeeevil."
"Maybe if you were a bit more goth you would have a clue what this thingie is."
"If Ozzy were here, I'm sure he could tell you what this is."
"It isn't a WWJD bracelet, so you have no idea what it could be."
"You cannot identify this item, perhaps you should finish eating the soul doughnut?"
"You haven't seen one of these before, but Bun Bun left it here, so it can't be good news."
"Hmm, when you gaze upon this object, the skies darken and lightning flashes. Those aren't good clues to what this is though."
"You can't identify this item, but it has a "Made in Hell" label on the bottom."

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