VtM Bloodlines v8.8 unofficial patch by Wesp5

Does he really? I never noticed he actually used dominate until the Key scene. Might have missed/forgotten it, though.
Or I didn't recognize it as a Dominate attempt, since it's not so uncommon for cRPGs to force the player down a certain path after he exhausted his pro forma protests.

 

Well the mechanics are a bit hazy really. The way I always understood it, the reason older generations are more powerful is because they have been around longer and learned a whole bunch of shit, not because their generation is lower. Generation does come certain advantages but nothing that would let you resist powers more easily or any other such rubbish, unless you are an insanely low generation like 4 or 5. Even then as a complete neonate of one week or whatever it probably wouldn't help you. In fact one of the most sure fire ways to rise in power is by hunting neonates with a low generation.

 

Generation does have some big advantages. In the case of domination, you can't do it against lower gen vampires.

It's p. obvious when he does it. Just decline his orders as much as you can and you'll see.

 

I thought generations mattered because it is a measure of how close you are to the original antediluvian blood. Would make sense that having purer blood would give you certain advantages over thinner blooded vampires, but in Lacroix case he is already so far removed that the experience the protag gets throughout the game outweighs the generational advantage.

 

Dominate explicitly doesn't work on vampires of lower generation. It has nothing to do with age.

Experience is basically a game mechanic for age, and experience can be spent to hone skills and improve disciplines. Generation gives other benefits - a bigger blood pool, the ability to spend more blood per round, and eventually increases in attribute caps. With a ton of experience even a 13th gen vampire can be really powerful, but a lower generation vampire can be substantially more powerful.

 

Ah, ok, thanks for clearing that up. I like that system a whole lot more.

 

The balance of oWOD, as I understand it anyway, is...

...new generation vampires have the potential to be pretty frightening, but they're kind of low on the totem pole compared to werewolves n' shit, and for the first hundred or so years of your new life, you're kind of easy to push around
...old generation vampires have the potential to be insanely powerful, but are also far more vulnerable until they reach a certain level of proficiency, because new generation vampires see them as a means to rapidly progress the social ladder by killing them

Furthermore, the more powerful you become as a vampire, the more powerful blood you require to rejuvenate yourself, else you fall into torpor. If you live too long as a vampire and become too powerful, you pretty much sleep for decades or centuries at a time, so getting more powerful isn't that wise of an idea. But I guess older vampires continue to enhance their powers, believing that by becoming closer to Cain they can overcome the torpor weakness and such.

So, technically, new generation vampires can have a lot more political power and sway because they can actually be active constantly. Combat prowess isn't /that/ big of a deal, until you reach a certain level. Sub 4 generation vampires are pretty resistant to anything you try to throw at them.

Though, supposedly flamethrowers are a sure-fire way to kill a vampire, even of any age? I don't really get that - but I guess in the white wolf universe, flamethrowers and other flame-based weapons are so highly coveted and squared away and it's not a common strategy. I haven't played the PnP, just tried to read into the rules some, and I've never understood why people don't improvise flamethrowers with aerosol cans and matches, or whatever.

 

Yeah, Fire Bad and all that
I miss Phil Hartman.

 

With very high dots in fortitude, it is possible to survive fire and even sunlight.

The Ravanos antidelluvian managed to fight werewolves, mortals, kue-jin and what not for 3 fucking days in direct sunlight.

IIRC fire deals 2-4 levels of aggravated damage depending on intensity. Wheras for sunlight it is 3-5.

The autosucess rules require 9 dots in fortitude for sunlight while heavily clothed with sunglasses and hat.

There are rituals in thaumaturgy which reduce vulnerability to fire damage.

So a sufficiently powerful elder could use a combination of fortitude and thaumaturgy rituals to survive a flamethrower squad if he has sufficient forewarning/suspicion. Oh the good times of PnP.

Also the gargoyle exclusive disciple 3 dot power allows to reduce fire damage as a passive. But it turns the skin of non gargoyle learning it into gray granitish texture which perhaps could be masked temporarily with chimerestry (ravanos illusion discipline).
Not sure wether it can be masked permanently with fleshcrafting...since it gives the partial flaw of the gargoyle bloodline and if those (like nosferatu fuckface) are attempted to bypass permanently with disciples results in the final death.

 

I am no expert on the vampire lore, but this is how I got it too. Also, I seem to remember something about "grey vampires" or something like that ; vampires who are so far down the generation line that they are completely diluted, lacking some actual vampire traits, and are a sign of the upcoming Gehenna.

 

Those are called Thin-Bloods. There's a quite a lot of references to them in VTMB, even a whole side quest that revolves around one.

 

This game is truly something special. Maybe now with the resurrection of the oWoD setting and kickstarter we could finally get to see a sequel (or at least another game in this setting). Hey, a man can dream.

 

Now this is interesting, i always thought that diablerizing takes you straight to the level of the person you killed. Tremere is listed as 3rd generation after having diablerized Saulot who was also 3rd gen, so this means he went straight to the antediluvians' level, no? Or does this work differently for antediluvians to begin with?

 

I recall reading in the P&P book that the Storyteller is supposed to discourage that behavior in the players, since old vampires are meant to be terrifying foes and not a delicious source of XP. It's the reason commiting diablerie is a huge taboo and gives you a black aura, which is like painting a KILL ON SIGHT target on your chest.

 

Cocktail mixing from a methuselah, much less a antediluvian is a really bad idea anyway. Just because they're in torpor doesn't mean they don't know what's happening, that's the whole point of the jyhad, it's just asking for the DM to fuck with you. Diablerie is like delicious bait that ends up with final death or your soul being chucked into wraith oblivion or consumed by the 'victim'. The Sabbat has a bit more latitude, for their enemies but better not overreach boy.

 

Considering how many other vamps the character gets to suck dry over the course of the game, maybe he just accidentally diablerized a few of them...

 

You can't bite vampires in the game, only humans and ghouls and kuei-jin. Well, this is not strictly true, since you 'bite' jeannette for your 'sex' session.

 

Can't you bite e.g. the Sabbat trash mobs in the Hotel? I thought so.
Man, I really have to replay the game, seems I forgot a lot of details already.

 

Tremere was 4th gen before diablerizing saulot. So diablerizing one gen lower still lowers tremere's gen by 1.

The Cappadocian/harbringer of skulls stuff shows that attempted diablere can appear to succed and yet fail...

 

Xor, you talked a lot about werewolves before, do werewolf elders/werewolf equivalent of antediluvians exist?

 

Werewolves don't live forever. They can get stupidly powerful (10+ strength etc), but don't try to combine WoD gamelines. It never works, especially at higher powers that the player is not meant to use, or at the faction level with all of these masters of the unknown reality running around (this is bad enough just on a single gameline, much less on 2+). Not to mention the lore/backstory, which of course never meshes.

The monsters that straddle the gamelines (like the abominations, or the few examples of mage/XXXX crossovers) are infamous for being very bad ideas such that later editions said: 'NOPE, this doesn't ever happen, paradigms can't mix. Whats a paradigm? Uh look over there, a maelstrom'

Whenever a exotic monster was thought of later on, they tended to be underpowered relative to the main gamelines (dhampirs for instance). Whole clans/disciplines/powers were nuked for abuse potential with unwise DMs, or going against the 'grimdarkness' bullshit of the game like Bardo. Culminating on the 'new Wold of Darkness', which is, of course 'balanced', probably for their goddamned MMO.

 

I just finished that restored Library level.

It felt like a pretty unnecessary addition. I feel like it was only added because they had extra level resources and felt like they had to use them.

 

I don't remember that Jack actually manipulates the PC. He is keeping an eye on him/her and he could also use you as a source of information (if you talk to him), but mostly Jack plays his own game and he does it alone. He isn't really involved even with the Anarchs, he just hangs out with them. That's why I thought he was the lone wolf, but this is most certainly a mistake. Lone wolf is an obvious reference to Beckett.

 

One of the big themes of VTM is that you're constantly being controlled by your elders, who are in turn being controlled by their elders, and so on all the way back to the antidiluvians, and possibly all the way back to Caine. So younger vampires might seem like they're more in control than their slumbering elders, but in reality they heed the call of their blood.

Of course all of that is draped heavily in innuendo and myth in the VTM sourcebook.

Fire is a pretty prolific vampire weakness for a few reasons. It does aggrivated damage, which as I mentioned a few pages ago can't be soaked except by fortitude and armor (in my experience players don't generally wear armor because it comes with a dex penalty and dex is the god stat in WoD PnP), and it can cause vampires to panic if they see it (the exact mechanics for that are somewhat complicated). Fire is a nice, sure way to deal with a vampire the same way silver works on a werewolf. There are other methods that work on vampires, of course - a crossbow bolt to the heart will paralyze the vampire, for example. Or you can burn their haven down during the day and force them to choose between being on fire and meeting the sun.

IIRC Tremere used a ritual to absorb Saulot, not just straight diablerie. Or it could just be storyteller fiat.

There are a bunch of humans in the warrens that the sabbat were keeping there presumably as blood dolls. If you look closely you'll also notice that all of them are blind.

I remember talking with someone about a theory that Saulot was actually evil, sacrificed his clan on purpose, and was actually running the Tremere clan. This was before the Time of Judgement stuff was published, obviously.

SCO basically answered the question, but I'd like to give my own thoughts.

All the different factions in WoD have different power scales, and to make things more confusing they also gain power at different rates. Werewolves are terrifying from a combat perspective out the gate, and a werewolf elder is nothing to sneeze at, but their advantages slowly disappear compared to vampires as vampires get older and their stats start to go up above 5. High dot discipline powers can get pretty ridiculous. Elder werewolves also have so many pacts with spirits that they usually can't do much beyond fight the Wyrm without pissing one spirit or another off.

Of course, all the WoD supernaturals have limits to their power once they reach a certain point. A mage with an arete of 6+ can make reality their bitch, but they can't set foot outside the Umbra without gaining paradox. Hunters are shit to begin with and never get to become powerful because everyone is too busy killing them. Werewolves have their war with the Wyrm and have to deal diplomatically with spirits. I've never played mummy but I hear they're even weaker than hunters, and I've never played demon but I hear they're completely overpowered and no storyteller I've met has ever let anyone play one.

Not to mention the Technocrats using a space laser and multiple magical nukes.

IIRC there's an epic power that requires something like obfuscate 7 and fortitude 8 that makes you completely immune to sunlight.

That's half the fun, though. And it does work, it just requires the storyteller to be flexible and come up with a uniform way for various powers to interact. In our case the ST had us roll off - dominating a mage required rolling the level of the discipline vs the mage's mind sphere, for example.

 

Xor

your lore of oWoD is

Oh man Combination Disciplines. They are scattered over way too many books to keep track of them all. And those CCP faggots did not include it in vtm 20th aniv edition.

PS: And fuck the nWoD. Fuck all that shit. Fuck their MMO. I hope CCP chokes on its own cock and dies.

EDIT:

Isn't malkav the one, who gives Saulot his third eye, before Saulot goes to search East for Golconda?
Could have been, that being devoured by Tremere causes some hint of madness/insight from malkav's blood to rise in saulot, and he seeked to master the jyhad.
All this non cannon now though. With gehenna./time of judgement line.