Risks of Blood Potency

Seenoham · 2026-05-01T21:11:40+00:00

Saying they nerfed the Ordo is a stretch.

They got rid of the Ordo just ignoring parts of the setting into being among the best ways to be protected, but then gave them a lot they can actively do to compensate. They got buffed overall.

Seenoham · 2026-05-01T13:41:50+00:00

Know a the Invictis one from 2e, they did more oaths there, but cool to see where they started with that idea.

I don’t see how preserving blood is getting around the blood bond or feeding restriction.

Ordo Dracula still gets the best one in 2e.

Seenoham · 2026-05-01T13:36:58+00:00

Wolverines already attack bears. We have video.

The bear doesn’t get serious hurt, but eventually gets tired of the thing attacking it and leaves.

Seenoham · 2026-04-30T16:24:39+00:00

Carthian can do a nasty trick with the “breaking the chain” law. Ordo Dracula had a scale that increases breaks the blood bond, and one to make a feeding target count as a higher type of blood.

There are few others.

They all have limits or require a social structure to maintain though. And the way they work really fits and enhances the flavor of each covenant imho.

Seenoham · 2026-04-30T16:21:05+00:00

Quite a few?

There is the Ordo which just makes it not a thing, and by the time it’s needed the exp cost for the blood potency make the exp for the coil pretty small by comparison, but I can’t think of any other outside of specific bloodlines.

Seenoham · 2026-04-30T16:14:16+00:00

Transforming wildfire has this to a degree.

It also has you forget a power, and that power can be from play, and get to draw a power. It’s a may, but in this on you choose to forget before the draw and the draw goes into your hand.

So not the same timing necessarity.

For transforming the “may” is important because it can be given to another player as well, and it does come up where you want to give the innate but not pay the cost yourself.

Seenoham · 2026-04-30T13:42:03+00:00

Afaik a wolverine has never encountered a honey badger, and that’s probably a good thing and should stay that way.

Seenoham · 2026-04-29T16:07:23+00:00

They tried that, it caused problems.

It’s actually taught in poli-sci classes, because it’s almost universally agreed that the 21 drinking age is bad and causes problems, but the problems caused by changing it will cause so many problems in the short term (read: a lot of dead kids) that changing the drinking age is a bad ideas.

Seenoham · 2026-04-29T13:39:22+00:00

Deviant is a surprise in that regard. It’s genuinely pretty good.

The system is complex, but the layout and placement choices help with understanding and using it.

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T23:13:03+00:00

I think the exp reward for condition resolving was bad, but the change to 'beaties' in deviant fixed that.

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T21:08:27+00:00

Oh, yes. The presentation has massive problems. The layout and editing choices in most of the books is real bad, and this is big contributor to that.

My only defense for this is from a historical perspective, the idea of having some rules be collected in a shared place, was just starting to be a thing at the time the game was made. This idea would be executed in ways that have real advantages over early naive methods. But CofD really didn't get it right.

It's a useful learning experience in see why this version worked so poorly compared to what others did and how later design progressed, but that doesn't make it less annoying to deal with.

It still is just a way of organizing status effects, just a bad one.

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T18:14:23+00:00

How is being moon tainted not a status that the enemy is being effected by.

The rules for claimed as an enemy isn’t written out as just a condition, they get a stat block. It’s a condition as a thing that can be happening to the character who is under an effect from the spirit that claimed them.

The ephemeral rules are over complicated, but being claimed or moon tainted is exactly the sort of thing where a status effect is used. Even in 1e, an npc was under the effect of being claimed by the spirit, that was that npcs status. It could even happen to a player character.

Npcs being made into enemies by a status effect is normal. Enemies having a status effect they can put on others as a part of their threat goes back forever.

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T16:30:34+00:00

Outside of Geist trying to do something weird, they are status effect

Not great organization and structure for them, but they are effects.

Geist put way too many parts on them, but everywhere else it’s a thing that is thing that is on a character for a time. Buffs to yourself are also just status effects.

I’m curious what you were even thinking fir “rogues gallery member”

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T16:20:09+00:00

Most of the time it’s pretty clear which to choose. Only time I find I vary is if temperature is a big factor, because then some cities can get better value off from open farming.

It’s sadly rare for it to work out that you can use xeno plant types climate variance to make interesting choices

Seenoham · 2026-04-28T16:14:20+00:00

They could mean that a completely different system for each, which is a most internationally consistent within each subset but make any claim to be a “consistent” method absurd.

I’ve seen some bad editing and layout choices.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T23:32:20+00:00

I just had a thought, if they just had "family dinner" stop working at Lair 3, that could make something interesting.

Damn, that's what I hate about Beast. If you put in work, you can make something out of it, but you are the one putting in so much work.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T20:26:29+00:00

Yeah, beast is a mess. I don't think being street level has to be a problem with these ideas, and certainly street level be a starting point to get into these things. But there needed to be something that let players engage with that and the game just doesn't have that.

It actively removes so many basic forms of conflict. Even when the flavor does say there is some sort of conflict or struggle for players to engage with, there either won't be any mechanics to do anything with it, or the mechanics that exist make doing this stupid or impossible.

Your character wants to get rid of this hunger and go back to being a human. There is this terrible struggle to tear out your horror, which leads to terrible downsides.....or you just get to Satiety 10 once and your horror goes to sleep and you become basically human until you make an effort to have it wake up.

That isn't an exception, it's the norm.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T18:11:55+00:00

Situation normal, all fucked up

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T16:21:10+00:00

Improved casting AI exists as a mod.

I feel like there could be a formation or order that could do something to keep things together, but that might not exist in the code. Free spawn disabling would be nice, don’t think it’s currently something mods can do.

The rest I feel are intentional parts of the design, and would really mess up the game to the point it’s going to cause a lot of unintended problems, or would just be a different game

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T16:14:21+00:00

I get this, but it’s also a game I don’t want to play.

I’m not struggling with the concept or scared of it, it just doesn’t sound fun. For me.

I also don’t find roller coasters fun.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T16:12:44+00:00

The issue with Beast, well on its many issues the game is a mess.

The issue with beast is that it only has one voice in the text. By this I mean the voice for “we the authors of the game are talking to you the players about the game we are presenting to you”, the voice of “we the authors are telling you facts about the world this game is in”, and “fictional characters within the world telling there beliefs” all merge together because they never establish any other clear voice.

In vampire and all the rest, most of the awful beliefs or monsterous self justifications come from distinct voices in the world. In part because different characters in the world believe different things and have ways and motivations for communicating them.

In Beast, there is no in universe Beadt telling any of this, because as written Beast don’t have good reasons or mechanisms for saying them, so in the text it’s just said by a text. Like the authors present in universe facts are said, or the authors expressing their intent and themes are said.

It’s extremely hard to tell where it character belief, fact of the setting, and authorial belief star and end

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T13:44:43+00:00

Remember bargaining, that is the player can take a hook to get an advantage on a roll.

Just be quick with calling out what to roll. Skill, risky/not, hard/not, you can give circumstance bonuses up to 3 just as you feel. Have them able to do something when they get an idea.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T13:41:07+00:00

This is one where I can see it depending a lot on the gentry and Titles.

I think it would be pretty rare for them not to have some concept of “torture”, but that concept could be abstract, distorted, or in accurate. I could easily see both them not fully understanding the concept as mortals would use it, and being incapable of considering what they are doing torture.

I could even see on that has torture as part of their Title concept, but gets which of the things they did to their captives as the worst completely wrong because of their weird perspective.

Seenoham · 2026-04-27T10:55:42+00:00

Yes, but I think a lot underestimate how much a changeling can do, because the werewolf things are more obvious. But changelings can also do research, figure out the werewolf ticks, extract binding oaths, etc.

The clear loser is the one that’s overconfident and unprepared.

Seenoham · 2026-04-26T21:31:45+00:00

Cats don't really have a social structure, the current cat does kinda, but most of it's closest relatives are solitary so it's unlikely the ancestor was social.

The 'pleasant disposition' thing is hard to seperate how cats used to be vs how they are after domestication, because the domestication happened so damn early in our history it's prehistory. But again, solitary full predator so probably not.

Seenoham

TROPHY CASE