Why are Elder Powers so... awful?

[Kammerer]

Alright, would requiring a minimum of one turn of casting per level of effect (or the required time in the description of the effect) make Paths more balanced?

No. This would make Paths useless in combat and be a non-penalty out of combat. VtM combat is extremely unbalanced in favor of the offense and most clans can access a die-no-save power one way or another. If your schtick requries standing in combat and spending actions to power up your kame-hame-ha, then you should find something else to spend that turn on. Because by turn 3 the combat is going to be over.

[11twiggins]

WoD Hermeticism isn't the same as IRL Hermeticism.

[Cadmiumcadamium]

Nit sure if it was a rule back in the day or if it was a houserule my friends used to run, but didn't thaumaturgy have the downside of always acting last in a turn?
If not, i can see this as a valid rule. It takes time to mutter an incantation or doing a gesture, but not as much time to need multiple turns.
The system would be something like this; either everyone rolls for initiative and place their actions as normal in the initiative order, but anyone using blood magic forfeits their initiative and acts last in the turn, except for if he/she has a higher initiative than another blood magician acting in the same fight scene.

Or, a character that is using blood magic has an initiative penalty of 8 minus their Blood Magic rating.

Example:
Vamp 1, initiative 12, physical action
Vamp 2, intiative 16, Blood magic (Thaum 3)
Vamp 3, initiative 10, physical action
vamp 4, initiative 11, Blood magic (Dur an ki 4)

Initiative Order (1st rule): Vamp 1, Vamp 3, Vamp 2, Vamp 4.
Initiative order (2nd rule): Vamp 1, Vamp 2, Vamp 3, Vamp 4.

[Kammerer]

No, that's a house rule.

[Aahz]

Obtenebration. How can you go from utterly broken to laughably weak? The Darkness Within is a joke of a power. Each turn someone is enveloped they need to roll Stamina (6) and failure means you get a point of their Blood. It's not like you can, I don't know, pin them with your OP Tentacle Powers and drink them dry using your... phangs? Fangs?

You can also use the Level 2 Abyss Ritual Feed The Darknesss (Rites of Blood) so that your Tentacles suck blood. Thats is not only way cheeper to learn, but there is also no way that the victim can resist against the feeding (and seriously a single succsess against Stamina (6) is not that likely to fail) and you actually get all the bllod and not only 50% of it.

[CajunKhan]

And again, all I'm saying is that Mage's Order of Hermes and Vampire's Tremere are ahistorical and are "hermetic" in name only. Hermeticism was developed by christians and was deeply intertwined with christian mythology and religious practices.

Well the Tremere are clearly using ideas prevalent in the common themepark understanding of infernalism, which in turn uses distorted pagan witchcraft imagery. Back in the times when they were burning witches, people came up with a distorted image of infernalism based on little surviving the bits of what Mage would consider Verbena stuff. The Tremere were created as a hodgepodge of Hermetic imagery, pagan rites, and the themepark infernalism that came from Puritans and the like observing pagan practices and distorting them.

[Aya Tari]

Well, the Puritans were getting their information about pagans and witchcraft third-hand, from Renaissance theologians who 'rediscovered' the threat of paganism and witchcraft in order to explain the series of unfortunate events that ended the Middle Ages. While paganism and witchcraft survived underground during the rule of Christianity, it was also paradoxically shaped by the beliefs that Christians held about pagans and witches. Modern pagan traditions and modern witchcraft have gone through so many reinterpretations that I doubt that they share anything with their predecessors beyond the names of a few deities that they worship, and I doubt that many of them keep to the ancient rituals like animal sacrifice or blood offerings.

[Kammerer]

Well the Tremere are clearly using ideas prevalent in the common themepark understanding of infernalism, which in turn uses distorted pagan witchcraft imagery. Back in the times when they were burning witches, people came up with a distorted image of infernalism based on little surviving the bits of what Mage would consider Verbena stuff. The Tremere were created as a hodgepodge of Hermetic imagery, pagan rites, and the themepark infernalism that came from Puritans and the like observing pagan practices and distorting them.

Tremere and Order of Hermes are probably closest to LaVeyan satanism, That included willworking, a hodgepodge of classical western magic, enochian chants with YHVH's name scrubbed and replaced by Satan, and great disdain for every other kind of magical group.

[11twiggins]

You can also use the Level 2 Abyss Ritual Feed The Darknesss (Rites of Blood) so that your Tentacles suck blood. Thats is not only way cheeper to learn, but there is also no way that the victim can resist against the feeding (and seriously a single succsess against Stamina (6) is not that likely to fail) and you actually get all the bllod and not only 50% of it.

Agreed, however that's a Ritual you need to cast earlier in the evening, and so the comparison was a bit tenuous IMO. Definitely worth noting, especially if you have Early Riser, but those with Abyss Mysticism are kind of screwed anyways so...

[Grasharm]

Without reading the rest of the answers, mine is because they weren't made with general use in mind but with being plot powers. What makes for a good story power for an NPC to have is different than what makes for a good player power.

[11twiggins]

Without reading the rest of the answers, mine is because they weren't made with general use in mind but with being plot powers. What makes for a good story power for an NPC to have is different than what makes for a good player power.

I think that's a fair response. For example, the one which gives you 1 BP from a skeleton means you can break into a crypt which hasn't been disturbed for 1000 years and there still be an active (insane) Samedi in there, surviving on bones of the old city's inhabitants, and animals and rats etc. which fall down there. And while it's a great way to introduce plot-related powers, Elder Games are a thing and Dark Ages Vampire is a thing, PCs can have level 6 powers. On top of that, it would be nice if they were balanced and they were plot-generating. Like if this power let you get 10 points of blood from a human skeleton, and reduced the difficulty of other Thanatosis rolls by 1.

[Herr Meister]

Without reading the rest of the answers, mine is because they weren't made with general use in mind but with being plot powers. What makes for a good story power for an NPC to have is different than what makes for a good player power.

I kinda agree that this could be the only explanation, but even so, most advanced disciplines are utter bullshit. Finding good ones is very hard indeed. V20 did a good job recreating some in Dark Ages, but still they are very mostly underwhelming to say the least (it seems many times the writers just copied and pasted a great deal of the old powers, but at least some of them were reworked). Obtenebration is king in this regard, Evocation of the Oblitte is a great example, even if it seems very powerful you imprision someone in the Abyss for a number of days. I mean come on! This is a level 7 Power and all it can do is giving someone a free trip to the Abyss for a few nights!? Even Ahriman's Demesne that looks very interesting and thematic and is a level 9 power, but then you need THREE TURNS TO CHANNEL! I mean come on a level 9 power and you need 3 turns to deal your Manipulation + Occult in dices of aggravated damage...in 3 turns a methuselah of 4th generation can usually cause literally more than a hundred damage easily, why would they waste their time channeling to cause at most 18 damage!? It makes no sense at all.
That's why I tell my friends that after storytelling for more than 20 years, I REALLY LOVE the WoD setting, but the rules ALWAYS need a good ST to balance and many times rewrite many things from scratch. Most cainite powers need a fix. Even werewolves gifts suffer from the same problem, they are not balanced at all. Mage seems to be the exception to the rule as the system is so perfect and at the same time kind of generic that it needs little to no tweaking at all.

[Bluecho]

Arise, Necro-Thread! Arise!

[Bluecho]

In all seriousness, the issue with Elder Powers is that White Wolf, back in the 90s, were stuck between their desire to keep adding cool powers to the game, and the restrictive game mechanics they established with the very first VtM release.

Loads of the game - both mechanically and lore - exist principally to carve out more design space.


The non-core Camarilla Clans were the first of these. Obviously, they existed to cover certain niches within the broader vampire genre. But they also just wanted to throw in a bunch of cool powers.


Bloodlines were the same thing, when they decided it wasn't as feasible to keep making full Clans. Bloodlines also, explicitly, allowed the designers to make really unique Disciplines as rare as they or the Storyteller wanted them. Of course, over the years, the game accumulated a lot of Bloodlines, which while individually small in number made the World of Darkness's vampire community seem very crowded.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that More Options > Fewer Options, all else being equal. People on this forum know I've been banging on that drum for years.

But even I think all these Bloodlines are a bit much. Evidently, White Wolf saw it the same way, and was on the lookout for more ways to cram in cool powers.


The Elder Powers, first and foremost, seemed meant to give cool things for NPCs. But they also served to further justify why a vampire would WANT to commit Diablerie. What with the risks involved, before and after.

But, as this thread demonstrated, many Elder Powers did not feel worth the investment you'd need to get them. It's not like EXP comes any faster to a "high level" PC in VtM. A character you've worked on for decades, real time, will accrue EXP as fast as one fresh out of char-gen. So you can't just waste it on powers that barely do anything. (Not to mention Elder powers that exist solely to make earlier Discipline powers good; throwing good EXP at bad EXP, for "filler powers" in the lower track).

The fact that Elder Powers are gated behind low Generation AND massive EXP makes their inconsistent power levels all the more unbearable. Some powers were good. Some weren't worth the paper they were printed on. But you paid a high price for both. Not good game design.


There are, of course, Supernatural Merits and Flaws. Good for letting a PC do something really cool and interesting right out the gate. Because while earning one's power in-game has its own virtue, there's something to be said about skipping to the "good bits" when it comes to playing a game. (It's why D&D moved away from spellcasting classes being barely magical in 0e, to having a baseline of at-will spells at first level; no one really signs up to be a Wizard who can only cast 1 spell a day). Also, some "powers" might instead be spun off into Flaws, which makes them less about utility and more about roleplay (and coolness).

The downside to Merits & Flaws is that, by their very nature, there's no mechanism for PCs to acquire the supernatural ones after character creation. So you either bought it at the start, or you're never going to be able to do the cool thing. Not unless the Storyteller gives it to you through some event, which they're not obligated to, nor do the books give much help to STs as to how to do it. At least with Disciplines, there are methods of teaching them out-of-Clan.


Blood Sorcery, I think, was where A LOT of the ideas ended up being funneled. It was flexible, because you could make whole Paths or just one-off Rituals. It wasn't in-born, like Merits, but didn't require the creation of a whole new Bloodline to justify. It's a tool invented by blood magicians to solve a problem. It's fit for purpose.

Except now you're not only giving people who invested in Thaumaturgy a whole bunch of goodies, often for free in the case of Rituals, you've also gated them off from any Clan/Bloodline that didn't have access to blood magic. It was mainly the Tremere (or, for Necromancy, the Giovanni), notorious misers for magical lore. People often hate the Tremere (out-of-universe) because they get all kinds of cool powers (or at least the chance to learn them) denied to everyone else. (That and, for much of pre-V20 VtM, basically no Weakness of consequence).

The motivation behind creating all sorts of variant Blood Sorcery is, I think, rooted in their desire to unlock blood magic from the Tremere monopoly established in V1. That, and there were all sorts of other magical traditions that White Wolf wanted to tap, like they had for Mage. This had the consequence of moving the pendulum the other direction, though. Suddenly, it seemed like blood sorcerers were everywhere, even if they were really protective of their trade secrets. Made the Tremere, and Blood Sorcery in general, seem less special.

Not to mention if the whole coterie wants to get access to all these Paths and Rituals, they'd need to go to the trouble of learning all these mystical practices. Which isn't always consistent with the character or chronicle they wanted to play. If players wanted to all play wizards, they'd run a Mage game, and dispense with the vampire stuff that's just slowing them down.


Combination Disciplines were a major step in the right direction. Just letting a character use their existing Discipline knowledge to unlock new powers by combining them with other Disciplines. Made each Clan/Bloodline feel more unique, too, as each drew upon a different Discipline spread when making combos, and could tailor them to the Clan/Bloodline's needs. You didn't need to jump through narrative hoops to justify it or fundamentally alter your character, either. Just meet the prerequisites, and pay the EXP. Done.

Of course, these powers need to make sense as combos different Disciplines. Which can lead to powers that are a thematic stretch.

V5 liked these well enough to copy them whole (while giving them a new name, Amalgams, because in V5 everything must have a fancy name, even if it had a more straightforward one to begin with). This edition made the error, to my mind, of using them to restrict options, rather than open them up. Because V5 abhors having more Disciplines than the bare minimum, they serve to replicate powers previously found in whole Disciplines.

Logically meaning that any Discipline powers previously found in those defunct Disciplines, regardless of whether they were good or bad, no longer have a place in the game. Regardless of which path you took on the "tech tree", you're limited to five powers only. There's barely room for the staples of the old Disciplines as is, let alone the cooler, more salvageable Elder and Combination powers of old.

Nor can you reach either the broadness nor depth of the old power curve. Basically every vampire, from the Neonate, to the experienced PC, to the Elder NPC, can look forward to a varied but limited range of powers.

Some people will defend it. I will not. I don't like it. In my view, bad game design. Or if it's not bad for what the designers wanted, I disagree with their goals.


Lastly, I want to circle back to V20 and mention the alternative Discipline powers certain Clans (or factions thereof) got. Like the alternate forms of Quietus, tailored for the different castes. Or the stuff from DAV20, that radically altered how certain Clans worked. I didn't always like the latter, I thought them more hit or miss. But I liked how the designers just said "hey, you can just use different powers to the standard". They even let you buy the alternative powers for that dot at half price, as I recall, in addition to your initial pick.

Because it was just that easy. Could have saved a lot of hassle if they just did that the first time.

[adambeyoncelowe]

Arise, Necro-Thread! Arise!

He's practising Necromancy 9 to see if it's indeed as underwhelming as it looks. 🤣

More seriously, an easier way to do level 6+ Disciplines is to add a second benefit: regardless of which powers you pick, Elder Discipline levels also scale the effects, range, and so on of lower powers.

But this would probably require more planning for the Discipline progression that there currently is (even in V5). This is part of why I like VTR2e Disciplines, because at level 5, you can often start having an effect over a city block or similar, which makes it more straightforward to have a linear progression for earlier effects.

So at level 5, let's say you can affect an entire city block. At level 6, it's a city. At level 7 it's a whole region. At level 8, it's a whole nation. At level 9, a continent. At level 10, the whole world?

At level 5, let's say you can extend duration to a week; at level 6, it's a month; at 7, it's a year; at 8, a decade; at 9, a century; at 10, a millennium or longer.

And so on and so forth.