Firearms: what attribute do you use?

[Heavy Arms]

While Strength + Potence + innate Agg bite for vampires is a potent combo, there are some significant flaws with it:

1) Lower Initiative means you end up declaring your intent to grapple and blood use first (in pre-V5 anyway), and give Dexterity based combatants the chance to simply not stay in range of you (movement rates being based on Dex after all).

2) Str based fighting provides no boosts to defending yourself, which Dex based approaches inherently do. Parry, which is Dex based, also provides a mundane counter-attack to add to Dex's potential damage output while being used defensively.

3) Grappling is extremely bad with the way the WoD generally handles defense and action economy. If you're outnumbered, grappling someone is basically committing two turns at a minimum to not defending yourself while you chomp on an enemy. If you're fighting five muggers with knives, and you grapple-chomp one, while the other four average after soak 1L per attacker, you're screwed.

Strength based fighting is way better in a very select set of circumstances, while Dexterity based fighting is better in all the rest, and still good when it comes in second. In the WoD being a one-trick pony in combat is a really good way to get ashed.

[adambeyoncelowe]

While Strength + Potence + innate Agg bite for vampires is a potent combo, there are some significant flaws with it:

1) Lower Initiative means you end up declaring your intent to grapple and blood use first (in pre-V5 anyway), and give Dexterity based combatants the chance to simply not stay in range of you (movement rates being based on Dex after all).

2) Str based fighting provides no boosts to defending yourself, which Dex based approaches inherently do. Parry, which is Dex based, also provides a mundane counter-attack to add to Dex's potential damage output while being used defensively.

3) Grappling is extremely bad with the way the WoD generally handles defense and action economy. If you're outnumbered, grappling someone is basically committing two turns at a minimum to not defending yourself while you chomp on an enemy. If you're fighting five muggers with knives, and you grapple-chomp one, while the other four average after soak 1L per attacker, you're screwed.

Strength based fighting is way better in a very select set of circumstances, while Dexterity based fighting is better in all the rest, and still good when it comes in second. In the WoD being a one-trick pony in combat is a really good way to get ashed.

Exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself. The way oWoD works, especially pre-V5, whoever goes first usually wins anyway, and that's also determined by Dex.

Grab and bite is usually only useful if you have multiple actions without penalty (i.e., Celerity, in which case, you should be Dex-based anyway), or have significant backup.

I absolutely think Strength should be more useful, though. Making it work with Brawl and two-handed weapons by default, as V5 does, is a good way to do that.

Of course, there are other attributes that need it more than Strength. Though Appearance has some OP uses in very niche circumstances, it's generally irrelevant the rest of the time. I'd prefer a consistently useful trait than one that's super important but only on rare occasions.

I've been toying with swapping Appearance for Intuition as a trait, and folding the few uses Appearance does have into Charisma and Manipulation.

I thought about using Composure, but it's redundant if you already have Virtues *and* Willpower, and I like those more than I care about making Appearance useful.

Intuition also gives you something nice to use for creative endeavours. The main drawback is that it takes one of the potential uses out of Perception. But if Perception is going to be used more often for Firearms in our games, that may not matter too much. And Intuition works well with, e.g., Awareness and Occult, so feels fitting for a game about supernaturals.

On that thought, though, and I realise this is somewhat of a tangent: what are people's ideas for making Appearance more useful?

[Heavy Arms]

While I've gone on about making Appearance better at length before, a quick version:

1) Get rid of the idea that App expresses how good you look and any vague appeal to human bias towards specific features having social power due to subconscious bias on their status as signs of good genes. Redo anything that's a direct reflection of beauty/ugliness as a Merit/Flaw type modifier that can be nuanced in a way a base Attribute shouldn't need to be.

2) Redouble the focus on App as a measure of how well you use your non-verbal communication to impact others socially. Put this into practice with example rolls: Appearance + Intimidation is what bouncers and body-guards use to appear threatening to discourage potential threats without having to say anything or do anything to back it up. Appearance + Stealth to "act normal" in a crowd rather than give away that you've noticed people are looking for you. Dexterity + Performance might wow the audience with your perfect form and flawless execution of immensely difficult techniques, but Appearance + Performance brings them to tears as your dancing evokes a powerful emotional reaction. Etc.

3) Make sure specific subsystems use Appearance more thoughtfully. Social mechanics shouldn't regulate Appearance to being the first impressions Attribute and then toss it aside. Disciplines should make sure Appearance (and really all Attributes) are as equally represented as possible; or if you want your supernatural powers to be biased in Attribute use, be upfront about it so players are aware.

[adambeyoncelowe]

While I've gone on about making Appearance better at length before, a quick version:

1) Get rid of the idea that App expresses how good you look and any vague appeal to human bias towards specific features having social power due to subconscious bias on their status as signs of good genes. Redo anything that's a direct reflection of beauty/ugliness as a Merit/Flaw type modifier that can be nuanced in a way a base Attribute shouldn't need to be.

2) Redouble the focus on App as a measure of how well you use your non-verbal communication to impact others socially. Put this into practice with example rolls: Appearance + Intimidation is what bouncers and body-guards use to appear threatening to discourage potential threats without having to say anything or do anything to back it up. Appearance + Stealth to "act normal" in a crowd rather than give away that you've noticed people are looking for you. Dexterity + Performance might wow the audience with your perfect form and flawless execution of immensely difficult techniques, but Appearance + Performance brings them to tears as your dancing evokes a powerful emotional reaction. Etc.

3) Make sure specific subsystems use Appearance more thoughtfully. Social mechanics shouldn't regulate Appearance to being the first impressions Attribute and then toss it aside. Disciplines should make sure Appearance (and really all Attributes) are as equally represented as possible; or if you want your supernatural powers to be biased in Attribute use, be upfront about it so players are aware.

Thank you. I may have seen your previous threads on this some years back, but this is concise and useful. I can work with that!

As this year is the 30th anniversary of VTM, I've been making my own homebrew V30 for my table, and this is a good way to fix Appearance.

[Sergeant Brother]

Personally, I think I’d use Wits for shooting. Wits is more about how quickly your mind can react to things, where as I see Dexterity as being more about being able to move your body quickly. High Dexterity could be for a gymnast, but shooting a gun seems more about connecting your mind and hand than the sort of athleticism that Dexterity represents.

I know a guy is who a great shoot with a pistol, in fact he has all kinds of trophies and awards for shooting competitions. But he’s a middle aged fat guy who surely wouldn’t rate high on many tests of Dexterity. That further leads me to think that Wits would be better.

Finally, Dexterity is already too much of a god state in WoD. I think that using Wits as the ranged attack attribute would help balance out combat.

[Heavy Arms]

Ultimately though, the Attributes and Abilities are abstractions. If you want to keep them to a reasonable number, you're going to have cases such as your acquaintance that don't fight the level of granularity in the system. This is one of the reasons things like Merits and Flaws get introduced: so there can be a way to add some fine tuning.

Yes, Dex is overused by the system, but let's face it, in a Vampire game how much is moving shooting guns to Wits really going to change that considering how much vampires tend to focus on lethal hand-to-hand weapons or aggravated claws/teeth if they're serious about winning a fight?

[PazuzuAxelf]

3) Make sure specific subsystems use Appearance more thoughtfully. Social mechanics shouldn't regulate Appearance to being the first impressions Attribute and then toss it aside. Disciplines should make sure Appearance (and really all Attributes) are as equally represented as possible; or if you want your supernatural powers to be biased in Attribute use, be upfront about it so players are aware.

Appearance is a hard cap on your social dice pools in first impression scenarios and "situations in which appearance matters", which, if you're familiar with the hundreds of medical and psychological studies that have been done on the subject, is nearly EVERY social situation imaginable. Arguably, Appearance is the most vital social attribute, if you go by RAW.

[Heavy Arms]

Lets try to avoid derailing too much on the App thing?

Appearance is a hard cap on your social dice pools in first impression scenarios and "situations in which appearance matters",...

In V20 at least, it's situations, "...that involve people who view Appearance as very important..." not any situations where appearances matter. Even then it's an inane design. It just encourages people to make superficially judgy characters so they can nerf opposing social rolls.

A Manipulation 5/Subterfuge 5 king of con artists should not lose 7 dice for being Appearance 3, and therefore barely roll better (via Specialties) than someone with Manipulation 2/Subterfuge 1.

Appearance should not be rendered self-defeating because you can never roll Appearance + [Ability] since you can never roll more than Appearance dice. Two supermodels auditioning for a fashion show shouldn't be doing a coin toss of rolling the same number of dice because they have the same Appearance rating, but one has significantly more dice in Performance.

It's a bad mechanic that the vast majority of groups skip because it renders rolled social encounters either mind-numbingly silly as everyone's dice-pools get dropped into the toilet, or players get incredibly frustrated because their high social pools are applicable only on a completely whim based metric and thus completely unreliable. That's why I started with #1 on my list as #1.

...if you're familiar with the hundreds of medical and psychological studies that have been done on the subject, is nearly EVERY social situation imaginable.

Of which zero support it having the drastic kind of effects the rules imply. And frankly game design is not about trying to model every nuance of reality.

[PazuzuAxelf]

It sounds to me like you don't know how much of a difference physical appearance actually makes in average day to day life, and would rather impose your homebrew than listen to any reasonable dissenting opinion.

[Bladedancer]

Re: Appearance, I think using Appearance as a cap on *Attribute* dice in situations where Appearance matters strongly is a good play. Possibly Appearance as a total cap in purely first casual impressions.

Re: Firearms- Using Wits does make for a chronicle where Torador/Brujah/Anyone with Celerity are going to strongly favor melee and thrown weapons over guns. Might make a good flavor change, but definitely shifts the feel of your setting.

[Heavy Arms]

It sounds to me like you don't know how much of a difference physical appearance actually makes in average day to day life, and would rather impose your homebrew than listen to any reasonable dissenting opinion.

Actually, it's more that I've lost track of how many times I've been in threads on Appearance and how much the "but science!" crowd seems to have never actually read any of those papers about how our innate biological biases work, because issues like the uncanny valley, cultural norms, and other non-verbal cues besides morphology all mix together into a rather complex mess.

And even then, I'm not even arguing that Appearance doesn't matter, I'm arguing that the way the rule apply Appearance in VtM 1e through V20 are bad. They're bad from both an appeal to verisimilitude (looks matter, but they're not mind control or the only thing that really matters) and an appeal to game design (something that only exists to hold characters back is less fun than something that actively lets the players do things to affect the state of the game).

You can try to disparage it as me propping up my homebrew, but take a look at V5, the CofD, Exalted, and the Storypath games. That is, all of the newer designs of the system instead of the designs from the 90s. They all do one of two things:

1) Drop Appearance completely and regulate it to their equivalent of Merits and Flaws.

2) Keep Appearance but redefine it to be less about good looks and more about character aptitude, ensuring that Appearance is actively rolled, and high Appearance might provide a small passive bonus because yes, looks matter, but it's more fun when they matter in a way you use, not a way that restricts you. Merits/Flaws still potentially modifying this further (Exalted 3e basically ask you to pick between "striking looks" and "aggressive looks" which modifies when the Appearance passive boost applies).

Feel free to call this an appeal to authority, but when multiple different-if-overlapping design teams working on the same original system all start heading away from how a legacy mechanic was used, it's still a fairly good basis to assume that there's more here than just trying to "impose" my homebrew (and, let's remember, we were explicitly asked to post homebrew for Appearance by another poster). I don't need to "impose" my thoughts on Appearance. That's already where the games are headed.

And I'm quite open to reasonable dissent. However it has to be reasonable. Vague appeals to science without any expansion of why the impact of said science should be as drastic as the pre-V5 rules make it is not reasonable. I'm also going to offer counterpoints to defend my position, which a reasonable dissent should be capable of engaging with instead of falling back on ad hominem jabs.

Tell my why my Manipulation 5/Appearance 3/Subterfuge 5 gets three dice to con wealthy socialites that absolutely do care about physical presentation (more than just raw looks mind you). What scientific literature backs up that drastic of a reduction of performance for someone of above average physical appearance? What does it add to the game to make sure that there's no way to get more than 5 dice without supernatural powers on some social rolls when the system is built for a 1-10 dice scale? Glib dissent doesn't garner thoughtful response.

Re: Firearms- Using Wits does make for a chronicle where Torador/Brujah/Anyone with Celerity are going to strongly favor melee and thrown weapons over guns. Might make a good flavor change, but definitely shifts the feel of your setting.

I think the shift is more visible for the characters that don't soak bullets as bashing damage and half the damage from bashing on top of it or other such supernatural boosts, but it's still pretty small. Even if not directly in the Attribute assignments, anyone bringing a gun to a supernatural fight either needs a magical gun, or needs to have a good head on their shoulders to execute proper tactics than trying to rely on how effective guns are against humans in the systems.

Even if you're using VtM for a pure mortals game, Wits is already not an Attribute to dump-stat for a combat focused character as part of Initiative alone. A Dex 4/Wits 4 shooter is already at a significant advantage over a Dex 4/Wits 2 shooter. When you factor in wound penalties and the stun rules, going first makes a huge difference.

[Theodrim]

I've always used the most appropriate attribute for a given roll at a time. If that means something other than Dex for a Firearms roll, so be it: Strength for a high-caliber, high-recoil (not that the two are mutually exclusive), and/or automatic weapon. Perception or Intelligence for extreme-range shots for a weapon of a given caliber. Manipulation if you're trying to suppress or cover. Even Charisma if you're doing trick shots to amuse or impress.

Of all of them, Perception is by far the most problematic attribute to use (yes, even over Dexterity) once players figure out Heightened Senses would then apply to the Firearms roll, and some smartass in the group decides to roll up some Carlos Hathcock, Simo Hayha, ass motherfucker of an Assamite vizier.

Easy way around that is to remember that, as pointed out up-thread, improper breathing and not timing your shots to your heartbeat can fuck you up when you're talking about shots at such range that being off by a mil or two can translate to missing by a meter or more. Since vamps don't exactly breathe or have heartbeats, they're left with counting mils, compensating for bullet drop and coriolis effect, et cetera. So right there's a perfect justification for calling for Intelligence + Firearms or Wits + Firearms rather than Perception + Firearms, whether the character is going old-school and doing maths in their head or using technological toys like laser rangefinders and GPS assistance.

[MyWifeIsScary]

RE: Str vs Dex

Dex and Celerity is most certainly better than potence in 1 v 5 gun and sword fights... but if you're the 1 in 1 v 5 fights, you're playing stupid. Vampire isn't DnD. You aren't meant to be clearing warehouses of orcs or ripping and tearing your way through hell (Werewolf, on the otherhand...) You're an urban creature with modern problems that require modern solutions and going too loud is pretty problematic with a game supposedly centred around a Masquerade. Vampire is a game where you're supposed to try and take control of the situation, not bungle your way through a scenario like a deranged killer. If the storyteller puts five guys in front of your currently-alone character, you can run away, or sneak around them, or talk your way past, or threaten their families, or hire... whatever. It's undesirable to wrack up a body count or get yourself into a protracted fight. The best feature for celerity isn't that you can hit five guys in a second, it's that you can run faster; fleeing when things get too big, or chasing after someone beefore they can escalate or complicate the scenario. Potence is also very good for mobility. I'd argue it's better. But for fighting, Strength+potence is just better for vampires, because a vampire should always strive for a context in which they are in complete control of a fight; That means preventing the opponent from offering any meaningful resistence and having full control over how lethal or non-lethal your attack will be. Grapples with the overwhelming strength of Potence are best for feedings, kidnappings, hostage grabbing, dissapearances, silent murder without a weapon, mid-convo suprise attacks, any fight under water...

RE: Appearance
I have people less kind to appearance 1, more kind to appearance 3, appearance 4 and 5 are oddballs where people might take -broadly appealing- specialities for all-round favour and minimal drawbacks or they might take more polarizing options where some people bend over backwards for them but others may become jealous or intimidated or creepy. I houserule appearance specialities to be dynamic (you can change them or add more relatively easily) and also you can choose a speciality at any level (even nosferatu can pick an appearance speciality, though it should be fitting) Mastery of clothes and makeup can add a dot or two temporarily, because I've watched RuPaul; people, even Nosferatu, can accomplish great things if they strive for them.