Low Gen NPC's

[Frontline989]

I'm working on my chronicle for my home city of Dallas. I've written up a bunch of NPC's and since the Tremere elder Meerlinda canonically resides in Dallas I wanted to have her a couple childer in the city as major ancilla NPC's that sort of run the chantry for her. She's to be MIA in the chronicle and these will two will be at odds without her guidance. My only problem is I'm trying to determine if having such low gen character will cause issues. It seems like at some point methuselah level(1000+ yr) Kindred cease to embrace or at least its much less common then seems realistic to me. Of course having such rare blood immediately makes you a massive target but I know the cannon has examples of childer embraced by low gen vamps so its not like it makes much difference if you were embraced today or in the 1300s. There would have to be ways to make sure they are not eliminated or very few elders would have survived to modern nights.

[Illithid]

Luckily, Generation and Age/Power are different things, so you can have one without the other. There is a risk with low powered Thick blooded individuals being targeted for Diablerie, but they're in the Camarilla/Working in a Chantry much of the time (I assume) and their active Methuselah sire is in the city with 3 great investigation disciplines in clan.
And Meerlinda has a Canonical childer embraced in 1812

To prevent them being targets of Diablerie, they may believe that they are her childer but actually embraced by thinner Tremere and assigned to her. They could even "know" this fact about the other, but be dominated in to not believing it about themselves, so they have the superiority complex over each other; both thinking that they are the real childer.

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I'm working on my chronicle for my home city of Dallas.

I am interested in a Dallas campaign - please keep us posted. That said, there are a lot of elders in Chicago (and there used to be more) and that does not automatically cause problems. The elders just have protection. And a feud can pull in the PCs and provide story fodder.

[PazuzuAxelf]

I am interested in a Dallas campaign - please keep us posted. That said, there are a lot of elders in Chicago (and there used to be more) and that does not automatically cause problems. The elders just have protection. And a feud can pull in the PCs and provide story fodder.

Yeah I'd love to hear about this too. I've my own DFW by Night Chronicle that I've been working on for a while and it would be fascinating to hear the perspective of another native.

[Kalendeer]

Actually, low generation seems to have a pretty big impact on characters.

There are some young 5th gen in the books (I think Damian from Chicago and Christopher from LA) and they are just LOADED with disciplines despite being pretty young. Another one who is rather fishy is Astrid Thomas, Etrius' childe, who is way too young to be the Regent of the Vienna Chantry (even if one can assume that with Etrius actually in Vienna, she's more like is a secretary than a full regent). While it's unwritten in the rules, that has led me to assume that very low gen young vampires either buy disciplines at a lower cost (perhaps as low as 2xp/level for their clan disciplines) or that they manifest right after their embrace far more disciplines than weaker vampires.

A 5th gen newly embraced Tremere would not be equal to a 11th gen. In his first decade he would easily reach at least 6 disciplines dots versus 3 for the other one, if not more.

[Frontline989]

Yeah I'd love to hear about this too. I've my own DFW by Night Chronicle that I've been working on for a while and it would be fascinating to hear the perspective of another native.

Its a game im putting together for my buddies who've never played VTM so Im not going super metaplot heavy but its helping me flavor the setting for them if they wish to dig deeper.

The two NPC's in question are Silas Hargrave an Englishman embraced at the height of the industrial revolution human rights abuses and Victor Obonyo a Kenyan doctor who started looking into occult knowledge once traditional medicine failed to save his wife. Silas is them more rebellious of the two and once the destruction of the Vienna chantry is revealed will be looking to make a play towards joining the Anarchs and starting his own House with the help of a lovely lady named Carna. Victor is a more traditional Tremere Kindred and the two have never gotten along. PC's can help either and determine the balance of power in the city.

[Frontline989]

I am interested in a Dallas campaign - please keep us posted. That said, there are a lot of elders in Chicago (and there used to be more) and that does not automatically cause problems. The elders just have protection. And a feud can pull in the PCs and provide story fodder.

Yeah I was just worried because these would not be elders but young ancilla. I could make them elders but I wanted at least on of them to be a bit more modern in his mindset because of the horrors he experienced as a mortal. This colors his outlook and makes him gravitate towards the Anarch cause. Still working out all the details though so some things might change but Id rather not have them elders because I do like the idea of them being her childe and how that could affect the power structure of the city.

[PazuzuAxelf]

Even if their Sires were her Childer they would be quite potent. It's likely a large portion of the Tremere in DFW are descended from her. You could easily have them as the dominant clan with a full chantry of her spawn going all the way down to regular player character generations. There's enough humans in the metroplex to support 100 vampires or more which is plenty of room for Tremere.

The question you should ask yourself is what purpose they serve in the story. Is it really all that important they be her Childer, or can you get away with them being Grand-childer, or even 3 steps removed? If it's something you think should be explored within the story then by all means do it.

[Tubect]

I always thought it would be fun to do a cliched Anarch "you wake up after a party and are all Vampires, how do you survive?" but all the characters are mysteriously 5th generation. They'd be extremely powerful in terms of blood buff/healing etc but would have the skills of a rank fledgling and be a hunting target for everyone for miles around.

[Cynic01]

Overall I'd say the biggest thing working in your favor is that the Tremere clan as a whole is very young. Meerlinda was one of those who participated in the original ritual that made them into vampires in 1022, so would only be 997 years a vampire in 2019 so technically not even a Methuselah yet. In general they are going to still be interested in bringing strong candidates into the blood (as mentioned Meerlinda was embracing in 1812 which would be the very upper Ancillae range for when DC by Night was published (1995). If the Dallas chantry was intended as something of a base of operations it would make sense that she might want her personal childer to oversee it.

As for survival they are the childer of 4th Generation Methuselah of the clan that is considered to have some of the best security and inner cohesion. Even on a personal level they are fearsome. Almost no vampire will be able to Dominate them. They can spend 6 blood a turn, so at minimum stats they could 1 shot a vampire without needing extra successes if the target fails their soak. Next turn they could buff their Dexterity by 6 and start doing that 2-6 times a turn by splitting their die pool (if necessary they could spend 1 Willpower to make sure they hit that first turn since a Willpower success can't be canceled by a botch). Add to that Burning Blade (Level 2 Thaumaturgy Ritual) and they are doing aggravated damage on those attacks.

I would not put too much stock into the statlines of NPCs in White Wolf. They are generally overstatted and with no apparent regard for balance, consistency, or method. Here's a few examples of how disparate things can get.

• Starting Character (Neonate)
  • Attributes 15 (not counting starting at 1)
  • Abilities 27
  • Disciplines 3
  • Backgrounds 5
  • Virtues 7 (not counting starting at 1)
• Damien (Chicago by Night 2ed) 6th Generation Brujah
  • Embraced 1962 (born 1948) so well within the Neonate range (up to 100 years)
  • Attributes 27
  • Abilities 49
  • Disciplines 10 (highest Discipline is Celerity 4)
  • Backgrounds 13
  • Virtues 5
• Victoria Longwood (Chicago by Night 2ed) 11th Generation Caitiff
  • Embrace 1984 (born 1962)
  • Attributes 21
  • Abilities 31 (only has 3 dots in Knowledges total)
  • Disciplines 13 (highest Discipline is Potence 4)
  • Backgrounds 2
  • Virtues 4
• El Diablo Verde (Children of the Night) 13th Generation Nosferatu
  • Embrace 1993
  • Attributes 20
  • Abilities 47
  • Disciplines 18 (Celerity 5, Potence 5, Fortitude 5 tied for highest)
  • Background 24
  • Virtues 8
• Annabelle Triabelle (Chicago by Night 2ed) 6th Generation Toreador
  • Embrace 1722 (born 1698)
  • Attributes 21
  • Abilities 55
  • Disciplines 15 (highest Discipline is Presence 5)
  • Backgrounds 12
  • Virtues 5
• Christopher Houghton (LA by Night) 5th Generation Toreador
  • Embrace 1682 (born 1669)
  • Attributes 42
  • Abilities 56
  • Disciplines 38 (Auspex 6, Dominate 7, Presence 8 for the highest)
  • Backgrounds 11
  • Virtues 3

So despite being 20 years his junior and 5 steps further removed Victoria manages to have more dots in Disciplines and not too far off of Attributes.
Annabelle only has 5 more Discipline dots than Damien (2 more than Victoria).
El Diablo Verde a 13th generation vampire with less than 30 years under his belt has more Discipline dots than Damien, Annabelle, and Victoria (three of which are at 5); only 1 less Attribute than Annabelle and Victoria and only 2 less abilities than Damien.
Christopher is only 40 years older as a vampire than Annabelle but has 21 more dots in Attributes and 23 more dots in Disciplines.

So its clear that it's not just Generation (a 13th Generation outclasses two 6th Generation vampires in terms of Disciplines). Nor is it age (same 13th Generation embraced in 1993 outclasses those same two vampires in Disciplines despite Damien being 31 years older and Annabelle being 271 years older).

The TLDR is that White Wolf's NPC stats are arbitrary and should be treated as such not as any form of coherent mathematical consistency.

[False Epiphany]

I don't think Meerlinda would necessarily have that many childer (in Dallas). Most methuselahs are pretty picky about who they Embrace. This is both out of pride and the simple fact that it's dangerous to have too many low-generation childer running around. Do you necessarily want to have lots of servants who will be only one step removed from you in raw power after enough centuries? Ask the Second Generation how that worked out. Even worse, do you want to risk other Kindred diablerizing them before that time?

Etrius has sired numerous times over the years, but only once since the Middle Ages, and that was during the 1700s with Astrid Thomas. His other kids are either dead or elders who hold positions outside Vienna where they aren't under their sire's shadow. Even Astrid wasn't too stifled by Etrius, and had a largely free hand to govern Vienna alongside Ulugh Begh and Nathan Mendelssohn, at least before getting demoted in Beckett's Jyhad Diary.

I figure it's much the same with Meerlinda. John Diamond and Marissa are her youngest kids (I'm not sure if the latter is canon or White Wolf Wiki fanon, but I like the sire/childe connection there) and they are/were both elders and pontifices with vast areas of authority beyond Dallas. Most residents of the local chantry probably aren't her direct progeny.

Of course, there's a line between Meerlinda having no childer and Dallas swimming in fifth-generation Tremere. There might be one or several mortals who really caught her eye, for whatever reason (doesn't have to be a rational one--even methuselahs can make emotionally driven decisions) and she decided to personally Embrace.

[False Epiphany]

The TLDR is that White Wolf's NPC stats are arbitrary and should be treated as such not as any form of coherent mathematical consistency.

I don't think that's true, or at least tells the full picture.

Character statblocks from earlier Vampire books (pre-Revised) tend to have pretty swingy power levels. Some are average (Annabelle Triabelle), some are underpowered (Critias), and some are over the top (Victoria Longwood). Montreal by Night in particular handed out Disciplines like candy.

Revised established a consistent formula for character power in Children of the Night. Characters at age X typically have Y Attributes, Abilities, and Disciplines. That's also the metric by which I am describing Annabelle, Critias, and Victoria as over/under/average-powered.

Children of the Night's guidelines don't tell us how powerful vampires need to be a particular age, but rather, how powerful it is normal for them to be at that age. Characters can deviate upwards or downwards from the baseline as their concepts warrant. Even in Revised, there are virtually no characters who have the exact number of Attributes, Abilities, and Disciplines recommended for their age. That makes sense, as different vampires have spent their unlives focusing on different skills. But the formula grants context to those numbers by telling us what is normal. El Diablo Verde might have 18 Disciplines, but he's also a partly joke character who's intended to be the most badass possible wrestler that it's possible for a high-generation neonate to be. A more "serious" example is Theo Bell, who's got way more Disciplines than his age should normally indicate. As the book itself explains,

Concerning Backgrounds, Virtues, Humanity (or Path)
scores and Willpower, consider the character’s role in the
story. Is the character a powerful prince? Stock up on Back-
grounds. Is the character an ancient wanderer? Set her
Humanity very high or very low and add a significant Will-
power Trait. Is the character centuries old and weary with the
sins of unlife? Keep all of the aforementioned Traits low.
Elder characters who might be expected to have strings of
derangements may instead have none, as part of their back-
stories involve overcoming those dangerous mental states.
[...]
Naturally, there are exceptions to these rules of thumb.
Children of the Night contains several characters with
potential far beyond that suggested by their periods of unlife.
Some archons have spent almost all of their unlives in
vigorous training, whereas a given priscus may have devoted
centuries toward cultivating a strong network of Backgrounds.
Certain paragons of vampiric terror may have developed a
fearsome array of Disciplines. That’s just how it is.

[Cynic01]

False Epiphany

Their reasoning being somewhat arbitrary. They set a bunch of rules for how powerful a character should be and then made characters that broke them with the guidance of "fit the concept". I would have preferred they crafted ranges to work from within an age bracket.

Now as for Theo Bell, far beyond is the only way to describe that pile of dots. Let's break him down and compare him to their benchmark.

• Time as Vampire 142 years
• Attributes (7/5/3 = 15) +2/century (17 total)
  • 12/9/10 = 31 (14 over)
• Abilities (13/9/5 = 27) +5/century (32 total)
  • 31/31/19 = 81 (49 over)
• Disciplines (Square Root of Time Undead)
  • 142 = 11.9 (we'll be kind and round to 12)
  • 21 (9 over)
• Other Stats
  • Since these are already handwaved by the system there's no frame of reference to considered

At what point do you drift from the exception to the rule of thumb to the ludicrous outlier that essentially makes the system pointless. Theo Bell is a character that has nearly twice (and in one case over two and a half) times the dots they suggest. I think that is (I think half again as many dots as suggested should probably be the upper end of the scale). Also Theo Bell doesn't just have way more Disciplines he has way more everything!

Additionally they have a discussion about having 5's in a Trait.

As a side note, consider the function of the Storyteller "dot" system. Dots are geometric increases in the character's prowess, not arithmetic increases. Five dots is maximum human capacity for most Traits - a character with Computer 5 is literally one of the most capable computer programmers or power users in the world, Think about that next time someone tries to justify another character with Firearms 5 who "spent time in 'Nam as a sniper." Characters with scores of 4 in given Traits are rare enough, and the character with a 5 in the same Trait is far and away their superior. Strength 5 is an Olympic weightlifter; Dexterity 5 is a professional ballet dancer. Traits of this magnitude are hardly appropriate for Anonymous Shotgun-Wielding Brujah Thug Number 312. Vampires are rare. Traits above 4 are rare. Vampires with Traits above 4 are exceedingly rare - or they've had the time to cultivate them, which doesn't bode well for their lessers.

That said, there's nothing wrong with the players' characters having some significant Traits of their own - your troupe's stories should focus on those characters, so they should have some interesting and noteworthy characteristics. Just beware letting the Traits define the character. It's fine for a character to be among the strongest (smartest, most gorgeous, etc.) people in the world, but there's far more to a true character than a handful of penciled-in dots on a character sheet. Roleplaying and storytelling involve far more than enormous dice pools and godlike powers. Find the balance that fits your game and run with it!

Along those lines, Storytellers are encouraged to monkey with the numbers a bit in this book. Keeping things fresh and surprising for the characters demands that a Storyteller make each new piece of information her own - who cares what we say; we don't run your game! The Traits in this book lend themselves to the game as we see it, and if you see it differently, more power to you.

Meanwhile Theo Bell has 11 Traits at 5 dots (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Wits, Alertness, Brawl, Dodge, Intimidation, Firearms (Shotguns), Melee, and Stealth. 13 if you add in Allies 5 (mortal family) and Contacts 5). They devote two paragraphs of text to how super rare 5's are and then a vampire that doesn't even have two whole centuries under his belt has 11 of those. Also I find it funny that they mention Shotgun-Wielding Brujah Thug Number 312 and Theo Bell is basically the turbocharged version of just that.

The final part of that quote is the boilerplate "it's your game" they included with pretty much anything they made. I include it just to avoid the argument that they said you don't have to use the stats they provide. However if you want to use their statted NPCs then you are using their system and its outliers, which is why I analyzed Theo Bell.

A digressional aside.

I found it annoying and disingenuous that Merits and Flaws are culled altogether where possible. They say they are intended as story hooks during character creation and optional anyway. But then the Developer says that they hate them anyway. So did they cut them because they are optional or just because the developer didn't like them. If they wanted to be consistent they should have cut them entirely but because they were trying to keep to already printed material some NPCs still have them (like Aisling Stirbridge with Time Sense and Natural Linguist).

[Haquim]

When creating NPCs for a game I never felt constrained by the guidelines. Some people are just exceptional. So yes, Theo Bell should have lower stats but the life (and unlife) he led and his natural attitudes caused him to be more powerful/skilled than most of his peers and even a few elders. He is supposed to be that good because the story demands he is. He's the guy who kills Hardestadt the younger (6th gen), almost kills Vitel (5th gen), stakes Karsh (5th gen... with some help from Xaviar though) and gets Karsh secret masters killed (most probably 4th generation vampires, Baali and "True" Brujah?).

When you create charatcers you decide how powerful they really are. It makes sense a vampire who spent most of his unlife doing nothing because of how wealthy his bood slaves are is not going to be as powerful as someone who spent 100 years fighting in the streets against the Sabbat.

Because of this, Critias' stats work as well for me. He just stopped growing after a while and that seems fine to me.

EDIT:

As for the OP: there's no reason you should not include a 5th gen neonate npc in your chronicle as long as it makes sense in the context of the story you want to tell. Yes, they are rare, but maybe Meerlinda had a reason for embracing them? And if the players target them because of their powerful blood, keep in mind they are still Tremere, possibly backed by one of the original 7 (who were mostly exceptional before being embraced and I generally consider more powerful than they "should be" because of their age). Trying to diablerize Meerlinda's childer could bring up interesting plot threads and stories indeed, just remind your players if they want to play such an high stakes game they should know failure will bring dire consequences for them, possibly death. As long as they know this and you are willing to put your money where your mouth is (i.e. they skrew up? They pay or they die), then you have some interesting story material on your hands.

[False Epiphany]

At what point do you drift from the exception to the rule of thumb to the ludicrous outlier that essentially makes the system pointless.

Theo Bell can have 10 Disciplines or 10,000. Outliers won't make or break the system, since they are just that, outliers. If most published characters had 10,000 Disciplines, then I would question whether the guidelines were really all that meaningful if the game designers didn't want to follow them. But for the most part, they did.

I put this together once for one of my players, who was particularly interested in how NPC stats are built. It's a sampling of a bunch of random NPCs pulled from Revised-era books:

10th gen, 101 years old: Attributes 20/17, Disciplines 8/10 (80%)
10th gen, 111 years old: Attributes 9/17 (53%), Disciplines 4/10 (40%)
11th gen, 124 years old: Attributes 17/17, Disciplines 8/11 (72%)
8th gen, 129 years old: Attributes 20/17, Disciplines 20/11 (176%)
9th gen, 131 years old: Attributes 22/17, Disciplines 13/11 (118%)
10th gen, 135 years old: Attributes 18/17, Disciplines 7/12 (58%)
9th gen, 141 years old: Attributes 31/17 (182%), Disciplines 21/12 (175%)
12th gen, 148 years old: Attributes 17/17, Disciplines 4/12 (30%)
9th gen, 149 years old: Attributes 22/17, Disciplines 14/12 (116%)
8th gen, 153 years old: Attributes 20/18, Disciplines 15/12 (125%)
9th gen, 179 years old: Attributes 24/18, Disciplines 16/13 (123%)
8th gen, 181 years old: Attributes 20/18, Disciplines 17/13 (131%)
9th gen, 189 years old: Attributes 17/18, Disciplines 14/14 (100%)
7th gen, 190 years old: Attributes 29/18, Disciplines 22/14 (157%)

Adding up all the Discipline percentages, we get an average of 100.066666667%. That tells us how despite the many deviations (only a single character has a perfectly average number of Disciplines), the developers conformed to their guidelines extremely closely, and the latter accurately mirror the reality of the setting. Namely, that vampires tend to have X many Disciplines at Y years old.

Theo Bell is okay being an outlier, since the guidelines aren't meant to tell us how many traits characters "should" have. Just what that means within the broader context of the setting. Bell has a reputation as a badass and his traits reflect that through their high values relative to other published characters'. We can quibble over whether Bell should be so huge a badass, but that's a separate topic.

I found it annoying and disingenuous that Merits and Flaws are culled altogether where possible. They say they are intended as story hooks during character creation and optional anyway. But then the Developer says that they hate them anyway. So did they cut them because they are optional or just because the developer didn't like them. If they wanted to be consistent they should have cut them entirely but because they were trying to keep to already printed material some NPCs still have them (like Aisling Stirbridge with Time Sense and Natural Linguist).

I thought that was pretty weird too. If JAchili had such a hard-on of hate for Merits, why include them in the system? I rather liked CofD's solution of just turning Backgrounds and Merits into the same thing.