Which disciplines would you not invest any exp in?

[Prometheas]

Some disciplines have side effects, like 6 dot Daimonium. You gain demon features like leather wings, bronze skin, horns, etc. that can ruin your character's concept. And if your character is social and the chronicle is medieval, buying such a discipline have the potential to cripple your character. Obtenebration sorcery will turn your eyes black.

And worst of all: Vicissitude 6 turns your blood in acid, making it impossible for you to create Ghouls, Blood Bond someone, or embrance.

There are also disciplines that have side effects only on lore but not system, such as Dark Thaumaturgy. Selling your soul to gain access to this discipline may not be worth it mainly because most of it's powers are mediocre.

Also, if you buy Temporis, you cannot buy Celerity.

Many of those have become either optional rules or specific powers in V20/DAV20. Obtentration only turns your eyes black if you use a specific ritual, and it will always revert back to normal unless you botch. That Vicissitude "Blood to Acid" is an optional elder power that can be substituted for any other elder power. Temporis is Not exclusive with Celerity as of Lore of the Bloodlines.

Humanity degeneration with Daimoinon is 100% optional, and I'd argue it's a Terrible way to get across how dangerous and corruptive the discipline is. to quote a previous thread:

Problem being, the average Baali isn't going to need to put in much effort to turn a neonate to the dark side, they have the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy for that already: Daimonion 1(Sense Sin).

I don't think many people have really thought out the full implications of that ability. It gives a person the ability to see all of the worst things anyone around them has thought, their darkest thoughts, and most closely held secrets. All without any of the context or good deeds that would offset the worst perspective you can have of that person. It's giving someone "Detect Evil" in The World of Darkness. It alone is a one-way ticket to slowly alienating everyone around you and quickly degenerating humanity without any help from the storyteller.

This is also why I think it cheapens the game if storytellers make the baali evil because they're baali or when storytellers mandate random humanity degeneration for having diciplines like daimonion. The discipline is designed to give players and NPCs just enough rope to hang themselves with, something that's much more impactful than "I'm evil now because I got infected with evil-juice #3".

You don't need random humanity degeneration to make Daimoinon scary. You're giving a player "Detect Evil" in the World of Darkness, they'll do all the humanity degenerating work for you and with the added bonus that they won't feel like you are forcibly trying to play their character For them.

[blailton]

Pretty much all of the bloodline specific disciplines (Mytherceria, Melpominee, Spiritus, Bardo, blah blah blah). But everything listed in the main discipline section of V20 I can probably find a use for, somewhere.

I completely forgot about Melpominee. Yeah, I would not bother to buy it.

[blailton]

there aren't disciplines that aren't worth having, unless you buy into shit like "every time you use this power, test your humanity".

Some disciplines have side effects, like 6 dot Daimonium. You gain demon features like leather wings, bronze skin, horns, etc. that can ruin your character's concept. And if your character is social and the chronicle is medieval, buying such a discipline have the potential to cripple your character. Obtenebration sorcery will turn your eyes black.

And worst of all: Vicissitude 6 turns your blood in acid, making it impossible for you to create Ghouls, Blood Bond someone, or embrance.

There are also disciplines that have side effects only on lore but not system, such as Dark Thaumaturgy. Selling your soul to gain access to this discipline may not be worth it mainly because most of it's powers are mediocre.

Also, if you buy Temporis, you cannot buy Celerity.

[blailton]

I'm surprised you mentioned obteneration, since it seems the general consensus is that its one of the most op powers out there.

What are your though on vicissitude?

Obtenebration is not weak, but mathematically speaking it may or may not be worth it. For example, the XP a vampire needs to spend to buy the first 5 dots of Obtenebration is 80/108 xp points. That XP could be spent on far more promising things. A vampire with Dominate 5 has a lot more possibilities in his belt than if he had Obtenebration 5. I think the expression would be one trick pony. It is a good but repetitive discipline.

Now, if the thread brings us the chance to spend infinite XP points, of course! I would buy Obtenebration powers, yes, although I would effectively only use them once every blue moon.

***
About Vicissitude: The first, fourth, fifth, and the level that lets you transform into a literal dragon are cool.

I think it's mediocre discipline. There is a discrepancy between the lore of vicissitude and the mechanical system. The lore features Tzimisce creating terrible creatures, but in game terms, all you can do is an operation that trades a point of stamina for a point of vitality, increasing one to decrease the other (at least in Revised it is).

If you want to create an army of fantastic creatures, your best option is hands down Ushabti. Better than Vicissitude.

There are even thaumaturgy paths that do the job better, I don't remember the name right now, but there were two that allowed you to do this, one of them being Biothaumaturgy, the other I don't remember the name.

Some Vicissitude levels are filler, sad to say. And in V20 some are just plain rubbish. Viss9 which allows you to create a cocoon to sleep in. There is no way to rationalize this being a Methuselah-level discipline.

A vampire with Vicissitude just doesn't have many possibilities to solve problems...

[Prometheas]

Why would having 4 in firearms shooting skill be relevant to building a gun? I grew up hunting and was top of my school's ROTC rifle team, and I couldn't build a gun to save my life. And I'm sure many gun designers aren't shooters themselves, being lab-geeks.

As for the bullet vs. RPG concept, firearms would not cover it. Having the relevant Gun Smithing & related Craft scores would though. Though you have to be a bit careful with this sort of restriction based thinking because it is very easy to wind up restricting something as simplistic as creating ice to chemists or engineers.

No. Not the Talent: Firearms(the skill for shooting guns), I was referring to Knowledge: "Engineering"[Specialization: Firearms](theoretically the skill tree for Making guns. Unfortunately that's also wrong as it'd be under Knowledge: Technology: Etc... not to mention how I typed it all backwards in my original post.)

Some players like to build characters that are very different from themselves to experiment with new things, others base their characters off the interests and knowledge they have IRL so that they can add a deeper layer of role play and game consistency.

In my case I routinely end up in groups with excessive amounts of specialist knowledge or skills. As such there isn't much to question why a character would know something when the players base those aspects off of IRL experience.

Oof, Most of my players tend to be more generalist "how would you stat an average couch potato" blank slates with specialist knowledge in things like "New York city", "Celebrities", etc.

Though, that might also have to do with the fact they don't tend to have IRL technical knowledge unless they looked something up on wikipedia.

[Ragged Robin]

V20/revised Thanatosis is a ferociously bad discipline

V5-oblivion, its unreliable and Dominate is just plain better.

[Rhywbeth]

Pretty much all of the bloodline specific disciplines (Mytherceria, Melpominee, Spiritus, Bardo, blah blah blah). But everything listed in the main discipline section of V20 I can probably find a use for, somewhere.

[Hades]

Most of the niche Bloodline Disciplines, Dementation, Chimerstry, Vicissitude, Animalism.

Some because they're underpowered, others because I don't respect them as Disciplines.

[MyWifeIsScary]

There are some pretty creative uses for Obtenebration. It's not just a monster-murder-slaughterfest.
(but it mostly is)

[Thoth]

the best counter that I've found for this is to ask your players "why would your character know this very specific and not widely known thing?". Give some of that a minimum knowledge dots in a specialization and ask them to "roll to see if they know this" if it's particularly game-breaking.

A tremere character is a gun nut and can summon widely available guns/ammo on the cheap? Sure. Your tremere wants to start conjuring high-level controlled military equipment like RPGs? I'm gonna need knowledge: firearms at 4 dots and a specialization on engineering at the minimum.

Some players like to build characters that are very different from themselves to experiment with new things, others base their characters off the interests and knowledge they have IRL so that they can add a deeper layer of role play and game consistency.

In my case I routinely end up in groups with excessive amounts of specialist knowledge or skills. As such there isn't much to question why a character would know something when the players base those aspects off of IRL experience.

As for the bullet vs. RPG concept, firearms would not cover it. Having the relevant Gun Smithing & related Craft scores would though. Though you have to be a bit careful with this sort of restriction based thinking because it is very easy to wind up restricting something as simplistic as creating ice to chemists or engineers.

[Vilenecromancer]

I'm surprised you mentioned obteneration, since it seems the general consensus is that its one of the most op powers out there.

Obtenebration is overpowered in combat, but nothing else. Truth is, it’s terrible in almost any other situation, meaning unless your goal is to kill everyone, there are better tools for the job. This discipline best shines in ambushes, intimidation, and murder. Unlike Obfuscate, Obtenebration has a hard bonus to stealth rolls. It also has a soft benefit to intimidation because of its fear inducing effect. Although the use of Obtenebration for this purpose will break the Masquerade if you’re not careful. When the goal is complete annihilation, use Obtenebration.

[MyWifeIsScary]

...whatever disciplines your character sucks with.
If your appearance is 0 and your charisma is 1 and the related abilities are nonexistent, you're not going to get much mileage out of Presence.

A lot of thaumaturgy is junk, but there aren't disciplines that aren't worth having, unless you buy into shit like "every time you use this power, test your humanity". Still, a lot of disciplines are very low priority.


Also the path of conjuring shouldn't allow for strong chemical reactions owing to the incomplete nature of your creations: IE No explosives. You're welcome to conjure a .50 cal machinegun if you've ever seen one in person, but you can't make .50bmg. This solves 90% of the problems with this discipline.

[Hello]

Valeren

Animalism

Spiritus

Thaum. Paths like Path of Venus, Control Over Mortal Shell, Path of Corruption, Levinbolt, the Water one, the shadow stuff one, Hands of Destruction, and many others that are trash as hell.

Koldunic Sorcery Water, Earth, and maybe others.

Maybe Dementation... some of its elders powers are very nice. More nice than usefull, though, like the one that remove 9 dots of mental atributtes from someone...

Maybe fortitude. Its a unfun discipline. You dont have ways to be creative with it and its a passive discipline. I think its better to try buy Serpentis 9 and buy the power that let you immune to all physical damage than buy fortitude.

The Lilith discipline about subliminar messages.

Nowodays, the path to talk to plants and trees. In middle ages or before MAYBE its worth any point of xp.

I cant remember right, but maybe Sanguinus. Only the 5th dot is any good. (Maybe even op)

Most of Setites paths. Dry Nile, and others that i dont remember the details.

Many Assamites paths, like the one that give army under your command a dice bonus, the one that let you buff your blade.

Maybe Obtenebration. It's very niche. It help you in fights and thats most of it. Some elders powers are strong, but sadly more of the same.

And finally, most of Necromancy paths. The travel-to-silent hill-one, the ghost stuff one... The only one I remember right now that worth xp is the path that let you create and control zombies.

Maybe Mortis. The entire discipline have only 2 usefull powers: 3 and 5/6. The others are filler. Like, the 1 power let you appear as a cadaver while sleep, exept this disguise can be uncovered with sucess in a very easy test...

Maybe Temporis. Because RAW a character cannot have Celerity AND Temporis, so Temporis have to go.

I'm surprised you mentioned obteneration, since it seems the general consensus is that its one of the most op powers out there.

What are your though on vicissitude?

[Herr Meister]

Well, if Thaumaturgy Paths count, then I could enumerate some and the first to come to mind is the Path of Mars, despite the fancy name, it's mostly useless and VERY underpowered. I once had a player who had it and he wanted to make it useful somehow, but it's terrible lol, even Rego Aquam is better

[blailton]

Animalism has great utility when you don't want to be noticed or be at a place personally. You can send spies that are unlikely to be noticed, or even possess one and watch through their eyes.

Sending a bird to track your enemy to their haven, using rats to probe the insides, etc.

I don't know. At least in Revised, it explicity says that the animal is limited by its intelligence. Idk if a wild bird you summoned in the park can memorize the path the target toke to a location and after "report" said info to the vampire. Mainly bc it don't serves the animal interest in any way and neither is ingrained in it's instict.