Alternate Blood Potency Increase Hack - "Family" Tree

[Vent0]

So, I was playing around with ideas and thought up this variant system for Blood Potency increases (its actual effects stay the same) - instead of increasing +1 every 50 years, it increases proportional to the character's bloodline/brood. Like a pyramid schema.

An extremely rough example structure is

Blood Potency	Childer	Grand-Childer*	Great-Grand-Childer*
1	None	None	None
2	1+	None	None
3	3+	None	None
4	5+	None	None
5	5+	1+	None
6	5+	3+	None
7	5+	5+	None
8	5+	5+	1+
9	5+	5+	3+
10	5+	5+	5+

* = You could either treat your Grand-Childer as either total, or per direct Childer, depending on how stringent you want to make the requirements.

In this manner, a vampire is "encouraged" to spread their blood and foster a family tree of descendants. And protect them, since trimming their number has an impact on their own power as well.

Titles might change to reflect stature, as opposed to age: Patriarch or Matriarch might replace Elder, for instance.

Thoughts on the hack? Changing the math? Social implications?

[Live Bait]

As is it seems that avoiding siring more than two vampires would stop your Blood Potency going above 2 regardless of how many grand kids you get down the line.

[Gellydog]

It's an interesting idea. My first thought was, "how does it work?" You'd think "spreading" your Blood out would weaken it, not make it stronger. In retrospect, it totally makes sense, though! Blood Sympathy resonance, I guess- every member of your "family" essentially spreads your Blood out far more than a single Kindred body could hold, so in a way you sort of "leech" their strength back, and that increases your own Blood Potency. It's sort of like a sound entering an echo chamber and emerging louder. (Is that real? Can that happen?)

I could definitely see this working if you wanted to emphasize the "contagion" aspect of vampires. Putting pressure and rewards on Kindred to reproduce quickly could create some interesting stories, as different families fight over limited feeding grounds. It'd definitely seem to encourage more Clan-focused Domains, with blood ties mattering far more than the ideologies and politics of the Covenants.

[Vent0]

As is it seems that avoiding siring more than two vampires would stop your Blood Potency going above 2 regardless of how many grand kids you get down the line.

Yeah, that was an implication of the direct scaling model. Maybe a point-value would work better? The idea was to be like a pyramid scheme, which requires a certain amount of layers.

[Vent0]

It's an interesting idea. My first thought was, "how does it work?" You'd think "spreading" your Blood out would weaken it, not make it stronger. In retrospect, it totally makes sense, though! Blood Sympathy resonance, I guess- every member of your "family" essentially spreads your Blood out far more than a single Kindred body could hold, so in a way you sort of "leech" their strength back, and that increases your own Blood Potency. It's sort of like a sound entering an echo chamber and emerging louder. (Is that real? Can that happen?)

I could definitely see this working if you wanted to emphasize the "contagion" aspect of vampires. Putting pressure and rewards on Kindred to reproduce quickly could create some interesting stories, as different families fight over limited feeding grounds. It'd definitely seem to encourage more Clan-focused Domains, with blood ties mattering far more than the ideologies and politics of the Covenants.

Thanks. Yeah it definitely serves to illustrate vampire-as-contagion. The actual degree of acceleration would probably be slowed due to the Humanity costs and "feeding capacity". Bringing more mouths to feed into the Domain might increase your power, but it also increases your chance of seeing the sun.

[Gellydog]

Ooh. Not to hijack your thread or anything, but might not this work well as a unique clan bane? Call it the... Filial Curse, or something. You could cast it as a non-Kindred clan in the vein of the Jiang Shi, where they're vampires with a lot of similarities, but just enough differences not to be "true" Kindred to the five big Clans. Their Clan Bane is that they cannot increase Blood Potency in any way other than by having childer...while also not lessening the costs of doing that in the first place.

[Vent0]

Ooh. Not to hijack your thread or anything, but might not this work well as a unique clan bane? Call it the... Filial Curse, or something. You could cast it as a non-Kindred clan in the vein of the Jiang Shi, where they're vampires with a lot of similarities, but just enough differences not to be "true" Kindred to the five big Clans. Their Clan Bane is that they cannot increase Blood Potency in any way other than by having childer...while also not lessening the costs of doing that in the first place.

Sure, that's one way to add this into existing material without the implications of a full conversion. The only issue with that as a Clan Bane is that it doesn't seem to track to Humanity at all, and isn't that much of a Bane, compared to a different way of doing things.

I don't have Half-Damned (yet?), but I hear Revenant Dynasties are a thing now? Maybe one has the unique trait of being able to actually boost their Blood Potency through this familial pyramid scheme?

[tsusasi]

The Embrace costs 1 Humanity to perform, so they're effectively sacrificing Humanity to increase Blood Potency.

[Vent0]

Other models:

Blood Potency increases by having 3 or more Childer the 1 level lower. BP2 = 3 BP1 Childer. BP3 means at least 3 of your Childer need 3 Childer of their own (so they are BP2) and so on.

EDIT: The "cubing" model might work better as the Sum of Childe Blood Potency. So:

Sire Blood Potency	Sum of Childe Blood Potencies
1	0
2	3+
3	9+
4	27+
5	81+
6	243+
7	729+
8	2,187+
9	6,561+
10	19,683+

Yeah... Maybe not. That escalated quickly.

Each direct Childer is worth 2 Blood Potency XP. Each of their Childer is worth 2 BPXP to them and 1 BPXP to you.

[Vent0]

The Embrace costs 1 Humanity to perform, so they're effectively sacrificing Humanity to increase Blood Potency.

Yes. So spacing out the Embraces so they occur after you've had a chance to patch your Humanity is ideal.

[tsusasi]

Yes. So spacing out the Embraces so they occur after you've had a chance to patch your Humanity is ideal.

Raising blood potency costs the XP to raise blood potency plus the XP cost for Humanity. That's XP you're NOT using to gain more discipline facility, new powers, additional skills, merits etc.
I don't know what kind of settings you play in but the ones I play in and run, raising Humanity takes time or some sort of detailed explanation between chronicles and I don't know any ST who is just going to let you keep raising your Humanity for the express purpose of flushing it again in the process of creating more vampires over and over again.
You can potentially bane or coil out the Humanity loss from embracing but that (theoretically) brings new complications and that's pretty much the point with clan banes you either suck them up and deal with it when it arises or you spend time and XP circumventing them.

[Vent0]

Raising blood potency costs the XP to raise blood potency plus the XP cost for Humanity. That's XP you're NOT using to gain more discipline facility, new powers, additional skills, merits etc.

Well, in this model, you wouldn't be spending XP on BP - same as getting it from age, you would be getting it from expanding your "family".

I don't know what kind of settings you play in but the ones I play in and run, raising Humanity takes time or some sort of detailed explanation between chronicles and I don't know any ST who is just going to let you keep raising your Humanity for the express purpose of flushing it again in the process of creating more vampires over and over again.

None of which is inconsistent with what I've said - I said restoring your Humanity. It will likely take some time, so growing your brood will also happen over time (or you tank your Humanity). And you are raising your Humanity to raise your Humanity. In the above models, reaching 10 won't drop you to Draugr (unless you are already detaching yourself from your Humanity).

You can potentially bane or coil out the Humanity loss from embracing but that (theoretically) brings new complications and that's pretty much the point with clan banes you either suck them up and deal with it when it arises or you spend time and XP circumventing them.

Coil, maybe. The Embrace isn't a Breaking Point - it is a Humanity cost, so you can't obviate it with a Bane. Which means said Coil is just another cheat the Ordo offers for the vampiric condition.

[Jack]

I love this idea. To add to the idea, how do you feel about a vampire's sire needing to be dead to aspire beyond Blood Potency 5?

Blood Potency	Sire	Childer	Grand-Childer	Great-Grand-Childer
1	Alive	None	None	None
2	Alive	1+	None	None
3	Alive	3+	None	None
4	Alive	5+	None	None
5	Alive	5+	1+	None
6	Dead	5+	3+	None
7	Dead	5+	5+	None
8	Dead	5+	5+	1+
9	Dead	5+	5+	3+
10	Dead	5+	5+	5+

[Vent0]

I love this idea. To add to the idea, how do you feel about a vampire's sire needing to be dead to aspire beyond Blood Potency 5?

Blood Potency	Sire	Childer	Grand-Childer	Great-Grand-Childer
1	Alive	None	None	None
2	Alive	1+	None	None
3	Alive	3+	None	None
4	Alive	5+	None	None
5	Alive	5+	1+	None
6	Dead	5+	3+	None
7	Dead	5+	5+	None
8	Dead	5+	5+	1+
9	Dead	5+	5+	3+
10	Dead	5+	5+	5+

Could... though that does add a certain murderous pressure upon one's children. They can't rise as high as they "should" while you are still kicking around. In execution, they should be in the 5-7 range for you hit 8.

Thoughts on what Diablerizing your ancestor might do for you? Pick up their spot in the chain?

[Michael]

I really like this idea. It feels like a more honed version of the Generation system from Masquerade.

To add to the idea, how do you feel about a vampire's sire needing to be dead to aspire beyond Blood Potency 5?

I love that. Really closes that loop of inter-generational violence.