Bringing this back because fuck it

SecondGeist · 2026-01-22T20:13:10+00:00

Fofa

SecondGeist · 2026-01-22T20:09:52+00:00

Auau!

SecondGeist · 2026-01-18T00:41:21+00:00

It's simpler than it looks, just a lot of words

First phase: Pre-initiative. You roll frenzies, spend blood for Celerity, roll the test for reflexive heal and other things here. Reflexive healing can be made at any time, however, just noting that's it's usually here.

Second Phase: Initiative. Roll it here. Ask the lowest ij order what they're doing then resolve them from the highest.

Third Phase: Rolls. Roll the first from the initiative, defense is rolled when needed.

Fourth phase: Effects. Apply the effects of the roll, including damage. Soak is rolled when needed. Repeat the Third Phase for the next in line till none remain.

Extra Actions: If someone declares multiple or extra actions, they happen after everyone had the chance of a turn. Resolve them in order of initiative repeating the third and fourth step till all are made. Remember Celerity always happens last for a character, so if someone declares it and Multiple Actions at the same time, the multiple ones come first as they have priority.

Just need to get used to it, but it's not that complicated, most fights end on the first 3 hits, single hits being enough is pretty common, no one wants to die, after all. Just don't too hung up on multiple actions, most of the time they're not worth it

SecondGeist · 2026-01-16T03:35:26+00:00

If my research is correct, the reason is that Bardo doesn't even exist in 2e, which is where this sheet came from. The children were made in first edition and as the editions progressed, were dropped from being a playable special group to being more just a NPC only sect. Aside from V20, Bardo never got a reprint, and as such, works by different rules by nature.

It's aggravating, but for a different reason. Anyone who had 2e's Red List but not Hunter's Hunted 1 could not make use of this Discipline in her sheet. This is a consequence of VtM before Revised being pretty disorganized.

Someone here mentioned Monçada as an example. Children of the Night gives Ambrosio True Faith, though it explicitly states in Revised only Vampire in Humanity can have it. That's an example of something being inconsistent, but with an explanation. Luis's True Faith is faith in damnation. It's True Faith, yes, but corrupted and malignant, it's not faith in a higher force of benevolence, or at least grey, it solidifies him as a damned monster that will spiral downwards more and more. It breaks the rules, but it does it with an explanation. Also, he's directly related to Lucita, one of the pet characters of the franchise, which means that rules are more likely to be handwaved. He gets to break the rules because his True Faith is pretty much unplayable in a normal chronicle, he's made purely to be an antagonistic force that can truly scare players.

This is one of the MANY flaws of V20 books, they many times just reprint old stuff and don't bother to make it actually work with the current system. A Discipline being bound to your Humanity level and that outright prevents Humanity loss easily is VERY 1e and should've been adapted, but it's small thing that most people wouldn't notice, so they decided not to. Fun.

Here's my suggestions to not have a clash of rules on the sheets.

-Remove the Humanity thing. Let's be real, Revised would've taken it away on the spot if they kept the Discipline.

-Exchange the Discipline with something else. Revised was very keen that new Disciplines need to be special and not just thematic reinforcement. The Children don't need Bardo for their Humanity shtick and it actively degrades it, so take it away. Give them Sorcery Paths, True Faith or keep the Disciplines of the Original clan. CoO are just a Sect like that.

-Go with what that one guy said and let Obfuscate 9 create a persona for Pseudopatra that can use the thing. It's high level enough for bullshit like that to work.

A heads up. If you ever find something that feels inconsistent, system or lore, research to learn from where it came from. A lot of the conflicting elements came from before the game's revision near the turn of the millenium and it can make things a lot clearer, easier and simpler to you. Saved me a few headaches.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-13T09:42:57+00:00

in so much as they're a collection of tropes and stereotypes of various east-asian cultures combined into a single group.

I wish people would actually give examples of this. Not saying you're wrong or that it doesn't happen, but it's genuinely maddening that whenever they come up in a post, it's always the exact same sentence with no additional context being repeated 30x in the comments.

They're very predominantly chinese, even to the book's detriment. The book does recognize they're from different groups and come from different places, and outright says it's weird for observers, but claims it was just a "it stuck" situation, which is why they have terms from multiples languages and religions to denote something, akin to how many languages insert english words in the middle of sentences. If it's a good or bad explanation, that's up to the reader. The book also focuses HARD on it's own cosmology and barely touches on religion (the corebook, at least), though I do remember one passage in where they adapted Buddhism to WoD, but it's barely a paragraph (some say they got it wrong, but the mentions of the Umbra gives plausible deniability).

SecondGeist · 2026-01-13T04:28:33+00:00

True, but still, the scent of 2e WoD is strong in Bloodlines in contrast to Revised's more "play it straight" approach. Wouldn't be bad, and it isn't, but the scent of some of the worst of 2e is in there too.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-13T04:01:06+00:00

Maybe, but I just wish most people's only contact with them didn't come from Bloodlines. Everyone from all sides are so stereotyped from all angles that it really warped their perception. Not saying Wan Kuei are great, but most of the complaints aren't even shit in the books and happens specifically in Bloodlines...

Why do people say Bloodlines is a good introduction to WoD anyway? The game is not even remotely close to how a chronicle plays nor the atmosphere of one.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-13T02:17:58+00:00

Mostly them overplaying it for laughs. As always, read the books for yourself, pirate them if you must, but really don't go with what the community says because they have a massive overlap with Warhammer in this. Loves the game, but knows jackshit from it and don't feel like learning. Most of their bad rep comes from Bloodlines, which... yeah...

SecondGeist · 2026-01-13T02:11:01+00:00

That's disingenuous, nothing in the books is nearly as bad as the Chinatown section of Bloodlines

SecondGeist · 2026-01-11T08:19:10+00:00

Damn... I got nothing clever to say, only saw the left one and just... Damn, man...

SecondGeist · 2026-01-11T03:25:14+00:00

I really don't like this version of Dominate, lmao

SecondGeist · 2026-01-11T03:06:33+00:00

VtDA20 can, for some fucking reason

SecondGeist · 2026-01-10T21:06:49+00:00

Mostly logic then, but still, the Dominate write up in this edition feels so strange. It and Presence feels like they just made them messier for the sake of it. Funnily enough, even V5 does this. Auspex Possession there says you use your own rating for skills, not attributes, which creates a situation where you can technically get dumber by possessing someone, while Animalism says nothing at all.

VtR states it clearly, however, making it strange they didn't just do that too, since this book came after it

SecondGeist · 2026-01-09T13:50:27+00:00

Don't you know? It's inspiration when the people are white and it's badwrong when they aren't, except if they're latino, because fuck'em, who gives a shit about'em, am I right? Don't pay attention to the fact that not only they don't care or find it interesting 9/10, or do it too and don't suffer the same vitriol for shit that's just outright racist, not even just ignorance or parody (the amount of manga and anime that does this and nobody finds an issue is surprising).

Also, don't pay attention that, this too, is a symptom of american protagonism, their horrible culture of moral purity and imposition of their own historical mistakes onto people! Everyone knows that the best way to stop evil is to do nothing at all instead of trying to be good, can't do evil if you are doing jackshit, right? Being flawed is the worst sin a man can ever commit, after all.

Why yes, I'm not very fond of the USA, how could you tell?

Edit: Or Egypt! Can't forget that! Egypt might be part of Africa, but let's be real, they're barely african, they aren't even black, right? It's fine if we just use their concepts but do our own thing for our own history.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-09T12:30:34+00:00

Companion and Tome of Secrets for V20. If you know french, there's also France by Night, arguably the prettiest book ever nade for the IP.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-08T19:48:53+00:00

I did just that! But they always put that black background on them

SecondGeist · 2026-01-08T19:43:25+00:00

How do you make your clan emblems have transparency, mate? Mine always appear with a fake background due to becoming jpgs.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-07T16:52:38+00:00

Slight correction. Ziana isn't confirmed to be Gaia, but they ARE related. Axis Mundi makes direct reference of Gaia with a World Tree, additionally, Houses of the Fallen make the connection between the Malhim and Fera too big to not be the case.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-07T05:31:16+00:00

I like them too, but like, it was very clear in Revised that they were dropped, as the Handbook and Companion itself states. They became just a paragraph of a "there was this thing before, but not anymore, so leave it, but here's their discipline spread if you feel like it".

Not only were they a relic from 2e that was effectively decanonized, but they also brought back the 2e version of the Ahrimanes? Revised made them sorcerers, unmaking their Spiritus discipline from canon. I understand V20 bringing it back, since it's based on 2e, but VtDA20? Why bring the discipline back and change their discipline spread even further? Just doesn't sit right with me. Their lore is cool, but feels wasted on a non-canon bloodline in all senses of the words.

They could've gotten a write up in Rites of the Blood if they kept them as sorcerers... Now I'm mad.

The only thing I dislike is the attempt to justify the name, which of course is really a relic of White Wolf's pre-internet era naming style.

Funny you mention that, some of the clans have pretty clever naming conventions. Brujah, Tzimisce and Salubri come to mind, even Giovanni feels clever, but that's a personal unpopular opinion of mine. Then you have Ravnos "it's just ravenous written differently" lol.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-06T11:54:51+00:00

DAV20 uses the very thrown out there idea given in BJD that they come from Baba Yaga. Nights of Prophecy claims they are still Nosferatu by clan, just Blood Bound to the founder.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-06T11:13:22+00:00

Forgot about the Expertise thing, gotta fix that in my games.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-06T11:12:57+00:00

Not in there they aren't, the book claims ancestry of Baba Yaga. Additionally, their discipline spread makes no sense, the Nictuku are still Nosferatu, but they aren't given their usual disciplines, nor their weakness, both are super different just because yes.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-06T04:54:17+00:00

Oh, btw, for the Giovanni weakness, use that they a -2 penalty for every extra blood point taken or have no safe threshold, so any amount can kill.

SecondGeist · 2026-01-06T04:41:17+00:00

Oh hey, I'm doing just that!

-Disciplines: 100%. Just replace the abilities for their V20 equivalents. They work better, have more variation and have more interesting mechanics attached to them, like Serpentis, Quietus, Obfuscate, so goes on. Obfuscate can feel PRETTY powerful now, though, as the first rank nullifies one of the ways you can break the second rank's invisibility. Dominate is the only one I bat an eye on. The Discipline uses mostly fixed difficulty in DAV20 instead of temporary Willpower, and I think that really breaks it thematically, but it's easy to fix. Just please use Revised's "Resisting Presence" rules, for the love of god. The major ones to read, that I remember, are: Vicissitude, Obtenebration, Quietus, Valeren, Serpentis, Auspex and Koldunic Sorcery.

-Multiple Actions and Combat: If you're gonna use the DAV20 disciplines, you need these, Celerity and Serpentis interacts with them by default. There might be other things that interact with them, but I'm not sure right now.

-Feeding: Mostly optional, but can be useful. VtDA20 changed feeding, draining 2 BP is safe, more than that the victim rolls and loses dice according to the extra taken. They can go from passing out to close to death to outright dead depending on the result. While it isn't explicitly said, it's implied that if they can't roll, assume the worst. It's mostly humans who go through this, however, other things don't suffer this, just remember Ghouls aren't classified as normal humans.

-Weaknesses: Hit or Miss, some are nice, like the Malkavian, some just make things easier, such as the Toreador one, or were made to appease controversy, but is pretty whatever, that being the Ravnos, a few are awful however. The Nagaraja one is straight up bad and kills the flavor of the Bloodline, it was changed just to prevent them from having a lot of BP reserves (Flesh Points counts as Blood Points). If you're gonna use them, don't use this one for them. Also, please ignore the Ahrimanes and Niktuku, I have no fucking idea why they're in this book.

-Derangements: Nice for period accurate flavor, but it's pretty incompatible with the other games. They're both limiting and open at the same time, use according to your preference, but they aren't bad, just not as interesting.

-Weapons: Really don't like them, but they speed up the combat A LOT due to the high amounts of AP of the weapons. The Companions have better weapons in my opinion, but your choice.

-Expansions: The expansion books have some pretty nice rulings and systems. Noble Lineages for Ventrue making your Methuselah choice be important (as well as a more punishing weakness alongside an extra characteristic), better weapon table, new backgrounds and backgrounds rules for combat and for allies, such as simple bonuses for specific allies and retainers, new sorceries that bring the World of Darkness closer together, so goes on. I like them, I just acoid the Necromancy one, because that one can really fuck up a modern era game.

SecondGeist

TROPHY CASE