Minor/Anomalous Clan: Shiryo, the Spectres

[Yossarian]

Would be interesting to see - how did you make him up in your game?

Well, it was actually mostly my player, but I had some input--favored attributes and what not. I'll post the bare bones rules. I've modified them a bit for B&S. I probably would have made them a liiiiiittle more like normal Kindred, but he insisted that we get it weird (we call his character "Clan Weirdo"):
Night Horror: Vrykolakas
Use all rules for Kindred in Blood and Smoke, unless otherwise noted:

• Vrykolakas cannot create the Vinculum or Ghouls.
• Vrykolakas Vitae cannot provide sustenance for other vampires.
• Vrykolakas are damaged by sunlight, but do not day sleep unless they desire to. Instead, they must spend the whole of every Saturday completely comatose in their haven.
• Vrykolakas cannot use the blush of Health, but their bodies are functionally alive in most senses:
  • Their hearts pump, they can have sex, their hair and fingernails grow, they breathe and can be suffocated. Vrykolakas can even eat and digest food.
  • A Vrykolakas can also bear or sire children, though the child is inevitably monstrous.
  • A Vrykolakas’ body does not cleanse after each day. Any changes they make to themselves are permanent.
• A Vrykolakas's body swells upon its death, and gains a ruddy complexion, like it’s just heavily exerted itself. Its skin is tight as a drum, and actually sounds like one when struck.
• Vrykolakas cannot blood buff. Blood has little to do with a Vrykolakas’ power.
• Vrykolakas breath steal for their sustenance. This is similar in most respects to feeding. They cannot inflict the Scarred or Swooning Conditons when feeding.
• Vrykolakas can never draw sustenance from animals or other vampires, but they may always feed on humans. They cannot commit diablerie, and likewise it cannot be performed on them.
• Vrykolakas suffer from a number of banes:
  • A Vrykolakas cannot enter a private home unless a door or a window is left open. She may only ever knock on a particular door once per night. This lead to the Greek superstition of not opening a door unless someone knocks more than once.
  • Vrykolakas may not cross an unbroken line of salt.
  • Vrykolakas cannot enter torpor.
  • Staking does not paralyse a Vrykolakas
  • Fire deals lethal instead damage to Vrykolakas, but lightning and electricity do deal aggravated damage.
• Vrykolakas do not have a Beast. They never check for fear frenzy or Rotschreck, and cannot create the Predator’s Aura. Instead of anger frenzies, they experience Hamartia:
  • Vrykolakas find themselves compelled to vengeance and fear mongering. When someone angers a Vrykolakas, she must roll herHumanity (use the usual modifiers for an anger frenzy). If she fails, they take on the Hamartia Condition, which forces them to seek eye-for-an-eye revenge against the offender. Until the Condition is resolved, the Vrykolakas can only spend Willpower in pursuit of her vengeance. The Condition is resolved when their vengeance is complete.
  • Vrykolakas do experience the equivalent of hunger frenzy, though it is colder than that of Kindred.
• The following Disciplines are in-clan: Auspex, Cachexy, Protean, Resilience, and Vigor. The equivalent of the Thaumaturgy Path Movement of the Mind is considered an in-clan discipline for Vrykolakas.
• They may not learn any other disciplines, though they may learn blood sorcery.
• Their favored attributes are Manipulation or Stamina.

[Troller]

That's really good feedback, thanks. I'm impressed with you folks how your able to judge a framework based on seeing the product without having benifit of a blueprint for it. I'm constantly neurotically digging my nose in the book to see if I'm doing all right. I only wish my gaming group was so forthcoming and helpful.

Tenebrose looks a little up and down to me — Pulse of the Invisible and Ephemeral Blood are a little limited, I think, compared to the Blood & Smoke Disciplines (especially with the required activation rolls), while the Beast's Shadow is a big step up in power.

My design does keep closely too Blood Tenebrous because it was done years ago before B&S. My original inspiration was from the old video game Soul Reaver and Raziel in specific. I definitely see your point about the first two dots being underpowered due to activation costs. Beast's Shadow, well I always thought because it could only really be done in a place where the Gauntlet was weak or at a Loci meant it wasn't as versatile nor as reliable, so merited it's power. Generally it's what the werewolves do naturally. Plus that world brings its own dangers, especially if your going there physically.

Consume Ephemera is interesting, although it feels a little more like a Devotion or a Discipline power for a bloodline concerned with memories, standing a little apart from the theme of the rest of Tenebrose.

I likened it to a lesser Diablerie. Something spirits do to each other as well.

I like the Consumption Manifestation a lot.

Thanks, I felt that was very in keeping with Vamps.

is a specter's Blood Potency meant to translate directly to Rank or be divided somehow? It mentions rounding down but doesn't specify a division.

Yeah, during one of my rewrites I messed it up. Thanks for spotting.

I probably wouldn't require a Devotion to use Dominate or Majesty on an ephemeral being, provided the vampire could perceive the being to initiate the use in the first place. I think it's interesting enough that the vampire needs to learn at least one Discipline across clan to pull a trick like this — and thus needs a taste of blood.

Maybe I described it poorly? An ephemeral in twilight in my version can't be affected unless the kindred goes into twilight themselves or the ephemeral materializes. This devotion nulls that.

Spirit Ear has some awkward mechanics inherited from pre-Blood & Smoke rules. You might as well just split it into a one-dot Merit and a two-dot Merit, since there's no difference in the new system between buying both of those and buying one three-dot Merit.

Yeah, old merit. GMC and B&S doesn't necessary disqualify the merits from the old books so its a toss up how to handle them exactly.

I got to agree with a previous poster about it being s shame there's only a few common disciplines to choose to give to our clans. I see why you went with Obfuscate, a good choice. I think your form of Embracing puts a great spin on your Clan. I only wonder about ghouling ephmera. See most supernatural's can't be ghouled. Vitae addiction yes, blood bonds no. Pendragon (I think that was his board name) has a Coil of Spirits for the Ordo Dracul. There he has ephemera gain a new Influence, Blood. I think it might be a good way to go.

[Stupid Loserman]

By all means, Troller (and Yossarion, your Vrykolakas are welcome too if you care to share them)!

I like your expanded fluff for the Alukah; I didn't feel quite the need to repeat the full format for the Shiryo, as you can see.

Tenebrose looks a little up and down to me — Pulse of the Invisible and Ephemeral Blood are a little limited, I think, compared to the Blood & Smoke Disciplines (especially with the required activation rolls), while the Beast's Shadow is a big step up in power.
Consume Ephemera is interesting, although it feels a little more like a Devotion or a Discipline power for a bloodline concerned with memories, standing a little apart from the theme of the rest of Tenebrose.
I like the Consumption Manifestation a lot.
Is a specter's Blood Potency meant to translate directly to Rank or be divided somehow? It mentions rounding down but doesn't specify a division.
I probably wouldn't require a Devotion to use Dominate or Majesty on an ephemeral being, provided the vampire could perceive the being to initiate the use in the first place. I think it's interesting enough that the vampire needs to learn at least one Discipline across clan to pull a trick like this — and thus needs a taste of blood.
Spectral Blow feels more in step with the Tenebrose Discipline to me — I would personally probably put it at the three-dot level of Tenebrose, and bump the Beast's Shadow up to four dots. But that's me, and my choices are already reflected in Musubi anyway.
Consume Entity is very neat, I dig it.
Spirit Ear has some awkward mechanics inherited from pre-Blood & Smoke rules. You might as well just split it into a one-dot Merit and a two-dot Merit, since there's no difference in the new system between buying both of those and buying one three-dot Merit.

[Troller]

Heh, this looks like a popular theme. I made a home brew Clan myself called the Alukah which I nicknamed the Spectral.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...P7QR_OuPM/edit

Looks like we both drew from Blood Tenebrous (great discipline!) but added our own spins on the last two dots. I really like how you did your take. I hope you don't mind I share my own, and crib off of you a bit.

[Baaldam]

I've been running a Requiem for Rome game where one of the players is a Vrykolakas, from the most literal reading of Greek legends possible. He's a bloated corpse who can fly and has to sleep on Saturdays. I should write them up in more detail.

Would be interesting to see - how did you make him up in your game?

[Yossarian]

I've been running a Requiem for Rome game where one of the players is a Vrykolakas, from the most literal reading of Greek legends possible. He's a bloated corpse who can fly and has to sleep on Saturdays. I should write them up in more detail.

[Baaldam]

Nice to see people tinkering with the idea of lost clans here and there - i have one of my own created as a sort of answer/revenge for a Player's insistence in a sire from roman times in what was intended as a mostly city-locked modern game set in Brazil. So i gave him Victrix, or at least my almost-khaibit seeming variant, Valeria.

Might take some time to put it on a topic of my own when i'm back home, or before, if i have something in my flash drive.

[FallenEco]

The only problem I have with it, (and I do mean only, it's quite good), is that now Obsfuscate is the most common clan discipline.

I'll try to to keep that in mind when I give the lost clans a stab.

[Yossarian]

I really like this. I might throw them in (along with the Jiang Shi) into the game I'm planning. Players won't know what the hell's going on.

Makes me want a whole "Clan Weirdo" book.

[Stupid Loserman]

Happily noted. The intent behind Shade Walker was that it enhances the functionality of Psychopomp, so it goes through that power's mechanics - that is to say, it's reflexive and lasts for up to a scene, though you can shut Shade Walker off and leave Psychopomp on. I think I might as well just set the latter to indefinite, though, as since there is no roll and no cost, there is nothing stopping you from activating it every scene. So: Shade Walker one scene, Psychopomp indefinite.

I'll update the PDF again fairly soon; it's expanding into a brief historical supplement for the Tokyo setting prior to World War II, for the purpose of assembling the histories of older Kindred.

[PenDragon]

A few minor notes on Musubi.

• Shadewalker should probably be a reflexive action. Also, what's it's duration? One scene? One night? Indefinite? (having a "Duration" field for each discipline helps clear this up)
• The dice pool on Cull the Mystic Herd is pointless, the penalty will almost never be enough to make the power fail. And when it does fail it will feel like the player went through a bunch of hard work (feeding off a high Rank being) for nothing. With the restriction that the vampire has to feed on the target first I think it's safe to make it unrolled.

That's about all. Again, excellent work.

[NeoTiamat]

*whistles* Very impressive indeed! I have a ghostly necromancer Kindred in my campaign for whom this would be perfect.

[Stupid Loserman]

Taking Tatterdemalion's comments into consideration, I've changed the PDF with an updated version of the Hungry Ghost power. I've laid out the information about the power in a little more orderly fashion (vampire traits applicable, spirit traits applicable, powers and activation), altered the destruction and Attributes/Skills, reduced the number of Numina by a couple, and added a paragraph of rough guidance on selecting Numina and Influences, though they remain very broad. I like this version better, being a little more balanced and more importantly, more play-friendly, because you continue to use the dot ratings you already have on your sheet. Thanks for your input, man.

I also edited the reference to vampires using Twilight Projection, as upon consideration, vampires in astral form are not actually tangible to other entities in twilight. So that example is just ghosts, spirits and angels now.

[Stupid Loserman]

In English, "Middle Kingdom" is an anachronism when speaking of modern China, and I wouldn't have used it when speaking of the current state. It remains in current usage in other languages, however; written in hanzi, the country's name remains 中国, literally "middle country" or "middle nation." The traditional Chinese view of the world considered China to be at the center of the world, and even Japan, or 日本 ("the sun's origin"), received its name from Chinese correspondence referring to it as where the sun rises — east of the middle kingdom.

I understand Hungry Ghost is a bit of a kludgy power in comparison, and I feel pretty satisfied with Musubi that it's just the final power that gave you the majority of pause. I hadn't looked at the Sta-Au devotion in some time, and I might consider that alternative; the goal was to counterbalance the Hungry Ghost with benefits and weaknesses, however. You gain some appropriate versatility, and you're pretty beefy in terms of Attributes, but you don't scale up as well as higher Rank spirits, and you're more physically vulnerable against an enemy who can exploit your bane or otherwise reach twilight beings than when you don't have it up. It's very much intended to give you reasons not to be a hungry ghost all the time. That said, I'm still thinking on it, and there may be better ways to balance it. You might try having the resulting spirit keep its normal Attributes and Skills, substituting appropriate dice pools for Numina.

It's already a beast of word-count, pretty much the size of the rest of the Discipline, so I figured Storytellers and players could use common sense in adjudicating what Numina and Influences are appropriate for a hungry ghost, rather than assuming players would take random Numina. General domains I considered appropriate include things like darkness, smoke, cold, predatory and scavenger animals, general physical and social influence in the form of Numina — really, I wouldn't want to limit the player's choice too much by implying a complete list of appropriate themes. Does it feel like a spooky ghost story? Does it fit with the themes of Blood & Smoke? Roll like that.

Thank you for your thoughts! I appreciate that you liked it enough that these details stood out so much to you in contrast.

[Gnomish American]

I really like this!