Interest Check: Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition

So will True brujah be weak at 13th generation too? Just curious.

If we're truly 13th generation, yes. Arguably, everyone is weak at 13th gen.

I'm more curious about caps. This isn't NWoD, where VtR had Blood Potency instead of Generation. With blood potency, vampires got stronger over time. With generation, at least RAW, there are very few ways to lower your generation (and the most common way is considered to be the biggest sin possible by most vampires)... meaning you have a hard cap of 5 for everything.

Consequently, humans have a hard cap of 5 for everything (stats, skills, backgrounds, etc.) as well.

It'll take a moment for me to conceptualise 13th gen in the time of Enoch, but sure, if we imagine that vampires are freely begetting and begetting progeny in this era. In a revisionist way, lore-wise, these generations all died out didn't they? ;)

Daddy Caine probably wants to rush to the Time of Thin Blood to get it all over with. ;)

I would like to play a descendant of Haqim, a warrior-hunter who follows in his Antediluvian's footsteps of promoting neutrality among the kindred. He might be a judge too by the time the Second City comes abound. It will be interesting to play an Assamite without the middle-eastern influences and free of the Tremere curse.

I usually avoid diablerie in VtM/VtR games, but if we are truly 13th gens (and not, say, 5th-6th gens with the starting stats of a regular 13th gen character to allow for later growth over time) during the time of Enoch... I almost see it as a must for survival. Even though it puts you at risk for Final Death.

Hmm...

Yes- everyone is "weak" at 13th Gen, but not THAT weak. Just starting character level. You get 10 Blood Pool which you can freely use all of and use 1 per turn. It only really starts getting more/better than that at 9th Generation down to 4th Generation who have 50 max blood pool and can use 10 per turn. . . which is utterly insane when you consider some of the things you can do with blood pool (take an extra action, for instance- so a 4th Generation could act 11 times per round).

yes, it is a "change" to the lore- but the lore also never made any sense. If you take the core of Noddist lore literally and accept that it was "true" in universe then you are accepting both that there were exactly 17 Vampires (Cain, 3 2nd Gen, 13 3rd Gen) and that there were so many vampires that it caused literal God to wipe out the world with a flood-- both of those things can't be true. So I've chosen to go with the idea that the first isn't true and that Vampires had no limits on begetting and were making vast armies of the undead, and that it's just that most of these younger vampires don't survive the flood years & any that do don't talk about it.

As far as Diablerie-- yes, my expectation is that it will happen pretty regularly and that your generations WILL go down through that (and possibly some other) ways throughout the campaign. Remember-- while it is the biggest "sin" a Camarilla vampire can do in the late 1990s of the lore this is fully 14,000 years before than and 13,000 before the founding of the Camarilla, so like the Masquerade etc, none of the traditions exist yet.

Also-- there's a TON of character advancement that can be had with experience points. Don't worry for the power level of the game, you will feel truly epic on the long scale.

No no, don't get me wrong, I have no doubt you'll handle it with aplomb and I am absolutely along for the ride.

Everyone, naturally, has different takes on the lore... especially that far back. As an example, my IRL group always figured there had to be pre-flood methuselahs. It was the power of that level of Vampire and the fact they were beginning to actively spread the curse brought the floods -- not just the 13. (Fifth gens would have been the "thin bloods" back then, who only became able to sire as their blood thickened.) Always figured the main shackle on embracing was sustainable food suppy. Outside of Enoch, there weren't many cities.

I am curious of playing a nos before and after the curse. That could be interesting. (Especially if allowing for the nos 'ugliness' to be unique to the Nos than the bald and large ears.) The chance for clans like Salubri and Capodocian are also interesting.

Would the perk that lets you lower you gen at character generation be off the table I'm guessing then?

Yes, the background "Generation" will be banned-- just putting 5 points in it and starting 5 gens lower has always been absurd in character creation.

As for nos-- yes, they don't have the ugliness curse so you would start the game looking however you wanted, but yes they (and everyone else) will eventually acquire their clan curses as the game progresses so don't choose a clan whose curse you don't think you can un-live with.

For Saulibri-- remember this game is not only starting before they fell, it's starting before Saulot sojourn's in the east and gains enlightenment, so the original salubri are different still from how they are at the point where the clan falls.

Assamites still have Caine's curse* regardless of having the Tremere curse. It just isn't that relevant in modern games as player characters don't age enough for it to be a factor. Naturally, my character will be pissed at the Tremere when the time comes. :)

*(The curse of their skin slowly unnaturally blackening to onyx levels to display their inner wickedness as they age)

Yes- but we are starting BEFORE Caine's curse as well, since Caine's curse started at the downfall of the second city and we are starting in the FIRST city.

Right. And I'm aware that at this stage Haqim is still mostly a hunter-warrior. He doesn't become the kindred's judge until Saulot asks him to in the Second City. So my character's motivation and personality will develop with time.

Totally, that background has always been OP for me!

And kudos to Alordis for offering this game, I think it's gotten all of us thinking hard about our lore and head-canon.

I'm probably the odd man out (I often am) but I can't agree. There's nothing you can do with 5 dot caps that I'd qualify as OP. Maybe I can sort of see the claim if you're only comparing yourself to other 8-13 gen Kindred... but Kindred society as a whole, you're small fish.

With a lot of XP on your sheet you can certainly be relatively versatile and formidable... but the first sixth gen you piss off pastes you, because fuck you that's why.

That's the context of discussion though, that in chargen, looking at number of dots, this particular 5 dot is pretty much ahead of the others, for characters who would be around 8-13th. It's not like we make methuselahs on a regular basis in character creation.

I don't know quite enough about anniversary to join this discussion
8 do know the last character I made I put dots in generation, but that was mostly as the other backgrounds didn't fit her as she started as a bit of a recluse.

Not a problem with most oncepts for this game.

That was the idea with the nos. Thought it could be interesting to have a character suddenly forced to adapt tactics and way of living to the sudden appearence change.

Fair enough on Salubri. My clan lore on some is a bit shaky.

Right--

The problem with Generation isn't that it makes you OP compared to the rest of the world, it's that it's so unbalanced between characters so one person putting in high generation really drives others to feel like they HAVE to buy generation or be irrevocably behind.

It's kind of like in DND starting one character at level 1 and another at level 6 and how that makes them feel. Because of course, don't forget that mid-level lupines are just gonna shred even low gen vampires if given the chance.

Still don't really agree.

I don't think the extra blood per turn is that strong. You're a little more survivable in combat, because you can pump/heal more... but even with a slightly larger pool, it just means you run out faster. You can nova better, for what it's worth.

(And you resist higher gen Dominate, but Dominating other PCs crosses into PvP behaviors and is usually verboten.)

I've honestly felt Resources 5 is far more OP in game than being 8th Gen ever was.

The difference is that Resources 5 tends to grease the wheel for the entire party, whereas Generation is definitively singular.

Also, sorry for the long delay-- my gut tells me we have who we are going to get interested for this game and I wish I had said Tuesday instead of Wednesday morning, but I also know the cardinal rule of recruitment is don't change the rules in the middle so we have another 15 hours or so if anyone else expresses interest and then we can get rolling on char-gen and everything.

I dunno... I've see Gen benefit the whole party by providing a dedicated fighter to protect the otherwise largely non-combat oriented group (and in games where it was allowed, they help set their party up for diableries), and I've seen Resources only used selfishly.

In that regard, I feel like it really comes down to the player and how they play the character. Of.course, as always ymmv.

As for getting started... I agree, we should wait the full time. That said, if you want to put a post up detailing any pertinent info, we could start working on loose character creation.

(I might be kind of excited to get started. 🤣)