Why are Elder Powers so... awful?

[Matt the Bruins fan]

One of the few interesting things they created in V5 was that power Skin of Marble, that lets you ignore the damage of the first attack you suffer every turn. It amazes me they only came up with something like that now, after all this time. It's already better than every Fortitude power from 6 to 9 in the previous versions.

That wasn't created in V5, it was created in 2nd Edition. But it was a sixth dot Protean power rather than Fortitude. V5 (rightly) ported it over to Fortitude instead and changed the mechanics up somewhat.

[Herr Meister]

While soaking is arguably a problem when one thinks of the concept in the game as a whole, I don't think it's the reason Fortitude sucks. It's more because people failed to come up with anything interesting. Fortitude is even worse than other disciplines when it comes to be resistant to damage (the only thing that Fortitude should be about), even when thinking about elder powers. Serpentis, Protean, Daimoinon and even Thaumaturgy have many interesting defensive powers/rituals and Fortitude doesn't. One of the few interesting things they created in V5 was that power Skin of Marble, that lets you ignore the damage of the first attack you suffer every turn. It amazes me they only came up with something like that now, after all this time. It's already better than every Fortitude power from 6 to 9 in the previous versions. It's not that hard to think of interesting defensive powers, the problem is that they didn't even try to come up with such mechanics. Why not create powers like the werewolf gift Iron cannot bite or Requiem's Juggernaut's Gait? It's inexcusable they never came up with anything better than a power that let you ignore all damage taken during a scene that is not a combat scene (I mean wtf...but whatever, I have already posted a thread about this shitty power). The thing is that it's a huge oversight and nothing else and it's one of the (many) reasons I houserule about 90% of the things in the game and create my own powers whenever I ST.

[monteparnas]

The overall problem with Fortitude is the problem with Soak rules. Soak is an extremely hard to adapt mechanic because it is a normal opposed roll for traits that simply aren't equivalent.

Your soak pool naturally tends to be lower, because it would be impossible to work with if it was really equal to damage pools. They have a similar starting points, but wildly distinct ways to increase. As it is an opposed roll, it gets compared to other rolls and simply can't catch up with them, and as it opposes damage, if it does catch up it creates a problem with bogging fights down with more and more meaningless rolls.

So, bottom line, it will never be balanced. It will be underwhelming until it suddenly becomes too good to be used.

[Herr Meister]

If one reads carefully, it's not hard to realize that, in general, V20 (especially DAV) buffed most discipline powers (naturally with a few exceptions, like shitting on Nagaraja's Nihilistics etc.), including elder powers. I see a progression in the editions, where Second Edition powers are the worst by far, most powers got better with every new edition. Fortitude is an odd exception, as I already said, even though it became a bit better, it's still probably the worst discipline in the game.

[Jackob]

One thing I noticed while going through older edition books is that while elder disciplines have always been a mixed bag, the tendency of elder disciplines to be complete crap wasn't there.

Look at the Elder disciplines in Player's guides to the high/low clans for example, specifically the celerity elder powers. The elder powers for the physical disciplines are Full of crap in later editions, but in Guide to the high clans there isn't a single celerity power that wouldn't be worth taking.

That made me smile. Thanks.

[monteparnas]

DAV20 has fortitude changed to being able to soak your fortitude rating automatically then roll for soak with a point of blood.

Then it is on DAV20 to also change the elder powers to compensate the basic power becoming stronger. As bad as they are, they're meant for the usual mechanics. It doesn't change if there should or not be elder levels for the Discipline.

[Herr Meister]

The werewolf example was facetious, in a normal vampire game where the ST doesn't hate the players, fortitude 8 will be more than enough, especially considering the fact that you are most likely going to have other disciplines and skill beside fortitude (DAV20 made the physical disciplines available to everyone without needing to find a teacher or drinking blood) of course if the ST is a dick and wants to stick werewolves and mages in it just to be an asshole than it's another thing, vampires in oWoD are paper tigers, you are not supposed to run them side by side with either werewolves or mages, hell even changelings can be more versatile than them.

Well, first and foremost, "in a normal vampire game" no PC is going to have Fortitude 8, it's very rare to find tables with such levels of disciplines. Second, if a PC has Fortitude 8, that means he's most likely not going to run into conflicts with fledglings and neonates, that's usually not exactly how to write a good story. The ST doesn't need to "be an asshole" or "hate the players" to present a challenge for the PC (arguably, he needs to present a challenge for the group), what I pointed out is that your logic is flawed, there's not such thing as "more than enough" and then I pointed out the fact that given the way Fortitude powers were terribly designed, it doesn't make a vampire sufficiently resilient even when he has 8 in that discipline. Thirdly, vampires are not really "paper tigers", if you swap the Fortitude 8 for Celerity 8, then there are very few things in the setting who can pose a threat to such a vampire. The problem is how terribly designed elder Fortitude powers are, what, as I pointed out, is very strange given the fact that "resilience" is one of the trademarks of vampires in folkore around the world, arguably, even more so than speed.

[Newb95]

Well, werewolves have many ways of dealing more than 8 Aggravated per attack, not only werewolves, but also vampires and mages, changelings and the list is long lol. So, I'd say that even without thinking of terribly designed "one win button" gifts, the vampire is far from being that hard to damage. In any case, I don't even think Dam the Heartflood is that "stupid" like you called it, the problem is the developers forgot to give the other part a resisting roll, like they did with Paws of the newborn cub. That being a werewolf gift in a werewolf game isn't a big deal, but when you think about crossovers you need to at least make it a contested roll to give these powers at least a semblance of being well devised at all and not just a "fuck this splat" kind of power lol

The werewolf example was facetious, in a normal vampire game where the ST doesn't hate the players, fortitude 8 will be more than enough, especially considering the fact that you are most likely going to have other disciplines and skill beside fortitude (DAV20 made the physical disciplines available to everyone without needing to find a teacher or drinking blood) of course if the ST is a dick and wants to stick werewolves and mages in it just to be an asshole than it's another thing, vampires in oWoD are paper tigers, you are not supposed to run them side by side with either werewolves or mages, hell even changelings can be more versatile than them.

[Herr Meister]

DAV20 has fortitude changed to being able to soak your fortitude rating automatically then roll for soak with a point of blood. short of pissing off a bunch of high ranking werewolves with the stupid gift that doesn't let you spend blood, I can't think of anything realistically capable of dropping you at that point.

Well, werewolves have many ways of dealing more than 8 Aggravated per attack, not only werewolves, but also vampires and mages, changelings and the list is long lol. So, I'd say that even without thinking of terribly designed "one win button" gifts, the vampire is far from being that hard to damage. In any case, I don't even think Dam the Heartflood is that "stupid" like you called it, the problem is the developers forgot to give the other part a resisting roll, like they did with Paws of the newborn cub. That being a werewolf gift in a werewolf game isn't a big deal, but when you think about crossovers you need to at least make it a contested roll to give these powers at least a semblance of being well devised at all and not just a "fuck this splat" kind of power lol

[Newb95]

I wonder in which alternative reality do these people who think Fortitude 8 makes you only vulnerable to plot device levels of damage, lol! Any pulp still poses a threat to vampires with Fortitude 8 without special powers. In fact, I once had a game with a friend with Fortitude 8, and he took damage from a group of Constantinople's guards in the game and he complained a lot about the fact, after that I decided to make Fortitude auto soak, instead of rolling dice. By the way, if you go with stupid 3rd edition rules (God forbid!), you'd only roll your Fortitude to soak any kind of aggravated damage and as such even with 8, you'd still be FAR from "invulnerable".

With that being said, it's hard to think of a single decent advanced Fortitude power created in the books and that's why I chose to create a bunch and adapt things like Juggernaut's Gait from Requiem in order to have anything useful for the discipline in advanced powers. Celerity, on the other hand, has a good share of awesome powers. It seems the guys who developed powers in the books weren't very fond of one the most defining feature of vampires in most folklores, that is being resilient.

DAV20 has fortitude changed to being able to soak your fortitude rating automatically then roll for soak with a point of blood. short of pissing off a bunch of high ranking werewolves with the stupid gift that doesn't let you spend blood, I can't think of anything realistically capable of dropping you at that point.

[Herr Meister]

I wonder in which alternative reality do these people who think Fortitude 8 makes you only vulnerable to plot device levels of damage, lol! Any pulp still poses a threat to vampires with Fortitude 8 without special powers. In fact, I once had a game with a friend with Fortitude 8, and he took damage from a group of Constantinople's guards in the game and he complained a lot about the fact, after that I decided to make Fortitude auto soak, instead of rolling dice. By the way, if you go with stupid 3rd edition rules (God forbid!), you'd only roll your Fortitude to soak any kind of aggravated damage and as such even with 8, you'd still be FAR from "invulnerable".

With that being said, it's hard to think of a single decent advanced Fortitude power created in the books and that's why I chose to create a bunch and adapt things like Juggernaut's Gait from Requiem in order to have anything useful for the discipline in advanced powers. Celerity, on the other hand, has a good share of awesome powers. It seems the guys who developed powers in the books weren't very fond of one the most defining features of vampires in most folklores, that is being resilient.

[Prometheas]

Frankly, I was always of the opinion that physical disciplines didn't need specific powers for levels over 5, you are already a physical god at that point, like seriously at fortitude 8 you would be functionally unkillable by anything that isn't plot device, potence above 6 means you are killing or incapacitating most beings in a turn, celerity above 5 speaks for itself, the powers (especially the fortitude ones) are a waste of xp in my opinion.

On the other hand, the physicals suffer from the law of diminishing returns. The difference between a neonate with the first dot of celerity and one without is night and day as the one without is only taking half as many turns. The difference between a methusela with celerity 9 and an ante with celerity 10 is 1 extra turn, which probably never comes up as one of them will most likely have already met final death by then.


In this way, elder physical disciplines makes sense conceptually, as they're a way to make physical disciplines more blood-godly than just "hulk smash, Even Harder". The execution left a lot to be desired though.

[monteparnas]

The thing with the physical disciplines powers is that they are all things that you would be able to accomplish with just the dots anyway, you can already touch fire with fortitude 7, you already should cause lethal with potency at 5 anyway, you would already kill someone by running into them if you have celerity at 8, these things should all be natural consequences of giving the normal law of physics the finger, having powers for doing such things is superflous, a different matter for the other disciplines which would definitely fit with the idea that elders have powers aking to gods.

Unless there's a rule for that, no, they shouldn't do any of those things. And if there is a rule for that, then it is reasonable to have those powers stated as there is a rule.

You think those effects are reasonable or even required by logic? That's fair, but that's not how the game works. And it isn't even necessarily true. There are many ways to explain why the powers have the mechanics they have and why they don't have other mechanics attached to them.

Anyway, this is still about the specific list of powers, which is a bad list. They could have other effects instead of those. They could even have those effects instead of increasing the usual. As I said before, conceptually speaking 5 is mastery, there's no need for those Disciplines to still have the same effects above 5. Yet they do, because that's a simple, easy design, even if not necessarily correct.

But by all means, I don't believe in assuming logic to the point of granting actual non-stated mechanical benefits, as a designer I have many reasons to see this as flawed and riff with problems. So unless there are specified rules I missed (which is possible), I don't think any of those are granted.

[Newb95]

Oh, there's not even a comparison. Celerity has possibly the best list of elder powers in the game, while the other physicals are average for elder powers, and that means underwhelming. In their case, consistently underwhelming, but many Disciplines are like this.


The point isn't so much the Disciplines, but the very concept of Elder Powers.

We have lists of powers because the idea is, basically, that at this point the character has such mastery over that aspect of the power of the blood that they're stretching things beyond normal boundaries and developing signature powers. The powers listed should be just examples. In theory level 5 is true mastery, above that is what a blood god can craft into reality.

So, why should the Physical ones be different? Specially when conceptually even their standard effects shouldn't be there?

Not that I think they got a good execution of this, or the right design overall. I don't think that's the case for Elder Powers in general.

The thing with the physical disciplines powers is that they are all things that you would be able to accomplish with just the dots anyway, you can already touch fire with fortitude 7, you already should cause lethal with potency at 5 anyway, you would already kill someone by running into them if you have celerity at 8, these things should all be natural consequences of giving the normal law of physics the finger, having powers for doing such things is superflous, a different matter for the other disciplines which would definitely fit with the idea that elders have powers aking to gods.

[monteparnas]

True, Precision and Tireless Tread are also kind of lacklustre, but there are some really strong Celerity disciplines in other books, like Projectile and Flower of Death.

While the ones for the other physical disciplines are even in guides to the high/low clans for the most part pretty weak.

Oh, there's not even a comparison. Celerity has possibly the best list of elder powers in the game, while the other physicals are average for elder powers, and that means underwhelming. In their case, consistently underwhelming, but many Disciplines are like this.

Frankly, I was always of the opinion that physical disciplines didn't need specific powers for levels over 5.

The point isn't so much the Disciplines, but the very concept of Elder Powers.

We have lists of powers because the idea is, basically, that at this point the character has such mastery over that aspect of the power of the blood that they're stretching things beyond normal boundaries and developing signature powers. The powers listed should be just examples. In theory level 5 is true mastery, above that is what a blood god can craft into reality.

So, why should the Physical ones be different? Specially when conceptually even their standard effects shouldn't be there?

Not that I think they got a good execution of this, or the right design overall. I don't think that's the case for Elder Powers in general.