Alternate Clan Bane & Animalism?

[Elfive]

[USER="192"]
- It does what dot 3 does, just differently. They are way to similar for our taste.

That's basically how disciplines work now. Take a look at obfuscate.

[MCN]

*Shrugs* I don't see the problem with the Daeva. It doesn't need the ST - its entirely in the hands of the player. Do you want to avoid the clan bane? Okay, sure, its easily done. Just don't feed from the same person twice. Focus on being a highly promiscous incubus/succubus type. That's the bane working as intended. Why? Because you can't have a herd if you take this mindset. Think about that for a second. Vampires, by their nature, may be predators but they tend more towards being cultivators and gatherers over hunters. Hunting, night after night, not only takes up a lot of time, but its risky. What if there's a freak weather of some kind, and you need blood? It wasn't long ago that below 0 weather with lots of snow was a thing, and people stayed away from the night life. Lean times there for our Daeva. Vampires cultivate herds to avoid this exact scenario, but our Deava -can't- because they're "avoiding" their curse. And paying the price anyways as they're forced to keep moving their feeding routine and hoping nothing bad happens.

Meanwhile, we have those that do feed more than once from people. Cultivate an extensive herd. You fall in love with your herd, however. And, make no mistake, the door swings both ways - the herd is going to be Persistantly Swooned and very likely Addicted (to either the Kiss or the Blood). That alone is dramatic. And it doesn't stop the abuse of your herd, because here's the fun part. The love stops when the herd member dies. You can eat someone alive, kill someone you're in love with, drain their very last drop, and you'll feel good about it. Especially if you take a bane relating to that humanity point.

There's a lot of potential in the stories here. You don't have to have STs keep on trying to "gotcha" with the same person if the player doesn't want that kind of story (though stalkers are a classic Daeva story and can be fun once in a while, but for different reasons). In fact, you shouldn't do the gotcha - that's a misunderstanding how the Curse is played, that the STs have to somehow push Daeva into having to be dependant on a person. Not how its supposed to work.


As for the Ventrue? Its a bit wonky, because, yes, it basically is just a 1xp tax. Its the same story as other vampires if you take an extra touchstone at char gen than you normally would. I get the idea - harder to keep touchstones - but that probably should have a harder stystem to establish new touchstones than make it more expensive to use the touchstones.


In the end, though, its all in what kind of stories you want to tell. I mean, hells. Its trivially easy to take a Mehket bane that never comes up in play. Nos curse is basically removed with a purchase of a single dot of Majesty (yay for negating all penalties!). Gangrel can specialize in Riding the Wave and Lash Out as the goal of the frenzy, then successfully resolve the frenzy after that, effectively sidestepping the actual penalty. And that's assuming that one's Resolve+Composure score is greater than your Humanity. Its all in how you want to run things, since each "avoidance" method comes with its own cost.

[MegaZarak]

That's a perfectly fair assessment.

Early humans were primarily scavengers, eating bone morrow that predators couldn't get to for example. This is of course almost exactly as you described and Animalism specifically says it works with scavengers. That said, I feel kinda funny bringing evolutionary anthropology to gameplay discussion. I think the bigger issue is does it overlap too much with other disciplines that do similar things? (I personally don't think so, but who am I?)

[MegaZarak]

I'd also like to add, Ventrue having a weakness that isn't much of a weakness? Why that would be unprecedented. (Deava I don't really care about one way or the other)

[Tessie]

One could say that the Ventrue weakness is that they can't have two attached touchstones when at Humanity 2 and can't have any attached touchstones at Humanity 1, ensuring they have an easier time falling to Draugr once they've reached the low end of the scale.

[Elfive]

^this. It's a joke of a bane until it's suddenly not.

[Tessie]

For player characters it would really depend on the type of chronicle you're running whether or not it's a big deal. For example, I'd rather have the Gangrel clan bane for my current Humanity 2 character than the Ventrue clan bane. Of course, mastering Coil of the Wyrm makes the Gangrel clan bane a lot easier to deal with. But I assume most player characters rarely drop below four.

[Justin Sane]

Ventrue are about control. Once they attach to something, I don't see them just letting go. I'm guessing anything that threatens to take their new Touchstone away from them is in for a world of hurt.

Which gives you interesting play patterns, no matter you you spin it - either you detach completely from humanity (upper case H optional), or you'll make Mama Bear seem reasonable when something threatens your cubs.

[Neros]

Elfive
As far as I can see with Obfuscate, the next dots has more powerful effects than the first one, building on the first instead of replacing it. The more powerful versions also has a higher price accociated with them.

With animalism, the thing that makes dot 4 more powerful than 3, is that it basicly can affect everybody, not only animals. Humans, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons, angels, ect. For the same cost even, as something lower down the "chain". It doesn't cost more.

MCN
Still feels very odd to have a vampire with Humanity 1 thats in love with multiple people. Also, the regnant has bonuses to manipulate, persuade the daeva.

I guess a workaround the bane could be to just take a Bane for killing your regnant and get around the Breaking Point problem with the Daeva curse and blood bonding at the same time.
That way, you get get rid of some of the problems from the bane and can get rid of the one you are bound to easier. Just seems powe

Me and my group also doesn't want the bane to be a "gotcha" thing. But since it then would be completly in the hands of the players, the bane assumes everybody is equally good at roleplaying

Tessie
Could work, except most games are about staying away from that point, so getting there would almost never happen.

Ventrue Bane Thought
Been thinking and reading the other threads, a problem with using a mechanic about losing Touchstones, is that there is that Sanctity of Merits rule. If the player buys a Touchstone and loses it, he can get a new one without it costing XP since he won't "lose" the dots invested.

The rules state that it should be spend on something that fits to how he lost the dot, and maintaining ones grip on Humanity is something that seems fitting to me.

[Tessie]

It's so that players don't feel cheated out of XP when they lose Merits. But when you lose a Touchstone you have ample of drama around how that happened and have to actively find another Touchstone to replace the one you lost. If your particular game is supposed to focus around the Humanity aspect of VtR then your group's ST should never accept the player saying "Ok, I just buy in another Touchstone". It's Aspiration material that could take a session or two before it's resolved.

[Tessie]

A variation of the Ventrue clan bane could be that the bonus dice from attached Touchstones are reduced by one. That removes the extra XP cost of having to have one more Touchstone to get the same bonus as other clans, and will make it easier for Ventrue to lose Humanity/control even at high Humanity so it won't primarily affect those at Humanity 1-2.

[Elfive]

I think "fitting" in this case means "could plausibly arise as a result of the thing that made you lose the original merit."

Like trading in ambidextrous for resources from the liability claim or something.

[Tessie]

Oh, like a combat Merit for taking revenge or training self defense with the remaining Touchstones, or Safe Place as your paranoia grows and you force another Touchstone to move to a safer location?

[Justin Sane]

Yes, exactly. The "new" Merits acquired through Sanctity of Merits should fit the narrative, it's not "well, my Retainer died, I'll just put these points into Striking Looks".

[Elfive]

Also if it's from humanity loss you can't actually trade in the touchstone dots, because they're not lost, just detached. If you traded them in then the new one would go in the old one's slot and not do anything.