Why Blood Potency is over-priced

My Players never buy Power Stat Dots. Now I made them cheaper [x6] (and make the Vampire & Werewolf ones similar to the Mage/Prommie/'ling ones (10/1, 11/2, 12/3...) and look what happens

mplindustries:

... but it could also mean that they correctly designed Blood Potency, then incorrectly modeled other power stats after it, rather than treating each power stat individually.

I actually think, but do not know off course, that they modeled Blood Potency after Generation from V:tM. If you look at the both you'll see that the similarities are noticable. Remember that V:tR was the first one out the door and it is, IMO, the game that is most like it's predecessor (sp?). I know that is controversial but I still feel that way. And no I'm not saying it's a carbon copy of V:tM. Lots of things have changed but there's enough similarities in titles (prince, sheriff, seneschal etc.) clans/bloodlines (ventrue, gangrel, nosferatu, bruja/brujah, malkovian/malkavian etc.), disciplines and so forth. So I think Blood potency is a remnant from V:tM to some extent.

In my game I've changed it so its increase isn't as jumpy giving it a smoother curve as you increase your BP. Also I have made sure that the points where you're feeding is restricted (3 and 7) are worth a little extra. It breaks down like this:

Blood Potency	Trait maximum	Max Vitae / per turn	Feed from…
1	5	10/1	Animals
2	5	12/1	Animals
3	5	14/2	Humans
4	5	16/3	Humans
5	5	18/4	Humans
6	6	20/5	Humans
7	7	30/7	Vampires
8	8	50/9	Vampires
9	9	75/12	Vampires
10	10	100/15	Vampires

I got some critique for this one even though ChristanA (I think) had a very similar progression without any complaints from the audience. :) Still it works much better in my game and my players feel that it is more ok to invest in BP than before where buying BP up to 3 was more or less pointless and only a transport to get to BP 4 and the be able to spend 2 vitae per turn (which isn't *that* powerful IMO so I can let them have it earlier).

Cog.

Cogitare:

I got some critique for this one even though ChristanA (I think) had a very similar progression without any complaints from the audience. :) Still it works much better in my game and my players feel that it is more ok to invest in BP than before where buying BP up to 3 was more or less pointless and only a transport to get to BP 4 and the be able to spend 2 vitae per turn (which isn't *that* powerful IMO so I can let them have it earlier).

I think I am possibly being misunderstood, here.  I don't want to change Blood Potency, I think it needs to be (bluntly) not worth the price, or it will cease to function as a good measure of overall power.

By making it more attractive (and I have to disagree, spending 2 blood a turn makes a huge difference, just not a difference worthy of its normal XP price), you're increasing the likelihood that a vampire will buy blood potency before he has his other stats to a level befitting a 50 year old vampire (or 100 year old, or whatever new blood potency you're talking about).

Let me try and explain better.  Blood Potency, through the Predator's Taint mechanic, is supposed to provide a rough estimate of power level.  Most vampires with BP 2 should generally be stronger than those with BP 1, and those with BP 3 should be stronger still, etc.  Blood Potency is over priced (which you must agree on since you think it needs to do more), so the only time you're likely to buy it with XP is if you ran out of other things that you consider to be more reasonably priced.  I am positing that when a vampire has hit that point, the point at which Blood Potency starts looking like a worthwhile purchase, that vampire will have an array of stats similar to what an average vampire would acquire over 50 average years.  It is appropriately over-priced because it therefore helps to maintain the status quo of "higher blood potency equates to higher general power."

If you make Blood Potency a better value, either by lowering the price, increasing its usefulness, or both (wow, by the way), you risk that delicate balance.  Its oddly better if you make it a total bargain, one anyone would be crazy not to buy, because it just results in an even increase in Blood Potency across the board.  Its objectively better, period, than other purchases, so almost everyone would make it, just as almost everyone avoids it now. The real danger is if you make it balanced against other purchases.  When buying BP is actually just as good a value as buying another stat, then it just comes down to individual personal preference as to what is bought, meaning you'll have Blood Potencies all over the board, and power levels will no longer align with those who gain BP naturally.

mplindustries:

I think I am possibly being misunderstood, here.  I don't want to change Blood Potency, I think it needs to be (bluntly) not worth the price, or it will cease to function as a good measure of overall power.

No, I do understand your position. I just do not agree that it is concious design (or at least I do not think it is). I think it (Blood Potency and how it progress) is a remnant from V:tM. It feels like a very weird (and poor) design pilosphy to have a trait that has been given a xp-cost but is not intended to be bought. No, I do not buy that, it's very little logic to it IMO.

The other thing was just a short description to what I've done to make BP more attractive because I think that something given an xp-cost should be worth getting otherwise I would just houserule it and say it cannot be bought but only aquired through diablerie and/or age.

I think that Blood Potency is something that is very overanalyzed through PT, progress, ease of getting Vitae compared to other power sources and so on. For me they just dropped the ball somewhat on this one and corrected it in the newer game lines so I am taking steps in my V:tR game to do the same. Simple as that :)

For those that think it balances out or should be as in RAW in their game. More power to them!

mplindustries:

Blood Potency is over priced (which you must agree on since you think it needs to do more)

Oh, yes! :)

Cog.

Cogitare:

Blood Potency	Trait maximum	Max Vitae / per turn	Feed from…
1	5	10/1	Animals
2	5	12/1	Animals
3	5	14/2	Humans
4	5	16/3	Humans
5	5	18/4	Humans
6	6	20/5	Humans
7	7	30/7	Vampires
8	8	50/9	Vampires
9	9	75/12	Vampires
10	10	100/15	Vampires

I got some critique for this one even though ChristanA (I think) had a very similar progression without any complaints from the audience.

Just kinda copying and pasting my criticisms of the chart from the last time I saw it posted. It's the only one I saw posted- if I had seen something similar by someone else, my criticisms would be similar.

That seems like a fairly steep increase to me. It builds into additive levels above the RaW. You've playtested it and I haven't, but it seems like it could trivialize the process of acquiring blood and marginalize the idea of vitae management during gameplay.

Vitae management is one of the key benefits to having Blood Potency, using the charts as written, even a level or two becomes a fairly significant step forward in enabling a player to have a great deal of latitude in how and when they spend blood. Players certainly try not to run low- their listed blood pool might be ten but they'll only spend the last three if it's life or death and the ones from four to seven start making them uncomfortable, they know they're burning reserves. Most players regard their freely spent blood pool as something like three or four vitae, after which they'll generally try to replenish through feeding if possible. At least in my experience with my players, other people may have experience that disagrees with this- but players do not treat their blood pool as being divided into equally important levels when they go to spend it.

So the effective blood pool that players feel can be spent is about half what's listed in the RaW charts, one extra blood is a substantial margin for voluntary (rather than necessary) spending. Two or more, they will feel a lot more freedom as the breathing room increases.

Ramping it up too steeply, I'd predict a scenario where the players start to largely ignore the idea of blood as a source of supernatural fuel because it would take extraordinary circumstances for them to get low enough to risk hunger frenzies, an inability to wake from their daily slumber or that emergency healing. Vitae expenditure then begins to be the go-to solution for most problems. In combat? Pop a discipline every turn, they don't think twice about spending twelve blood if they've got twenty stored. Have a tricky social situation or a puzzle? Just blood buff their stats, throw high-power abilities with a blood cost at the obstacle, hit every NPC with every trick every time- because their reserves of their fuel stat are sufficient to let them essentially waste it without planning, forethought or the idea of conservation.

While it could be argued that giving the same Blood Potency levels to NPCs would equalize the playing field, any character without some kind of defensive power to supplement their dice pools or ability to avoid the effects of Disciplines will tend to become comparatively quite fragile, as the setting supports the idea of just unloading Disciplines and blood buffed attacks on them for a couple rounds until they succumb. It widens the gap and, I believe, might have the consequence of messing with game balance, at least slightly.

The vitae expenditure per turn strikes me as even more of a concern, increasing as sharply past the RaW as it does in your chart, for the same reasons. The ability to unload like that, the explosive nature of that kind of blood expenditure has gotta effect the balance in ways that ripple through the setting and impact gameplay pretty heavily.

And even after all that- my argument remains that the ambiguous benefits that are less easy to quantify more than make up for the RaW costs involved. The status, the social impact when dealing with other vampires, the stories that arise from the feeding restrictions, the character's perspective on the change, the way the character's behaviors and patterns shift to fit their new capabilities... These are valuable aspects that are tough to attach a number to.

Edit: Besides which... while we are analyzing the costs from an out of character perspective, the characters themselves are not. Am I completely alone in encouraging my players to have an in-character reason for an experience expenditure? If they want another dot of firearms, they get a gun and go to a range and practice in-character (or during downtime), they want that dot because there was some time in-character where they missed a shot, or because they were assaulted by something nasty and had no offensive means of protecting themselves or because one of the other characters is encouraging it. From the perspective of a player building a character, the players spend the experience in a way that reflects the character's growth or the changes in the things the character develops or studies. I have had players flat out say that they think Discipline X is really cool, but their character has no reason to have thought about learning it- so they spend their experience elsewhere. Blood Potency from an in-character perspective is enormous, it's power and it's prestige and it's a way of defining themselves as something more than a new, weak nobody. It's not the only way of doing these things, but it's part of their overall reputation within the setting. Players may think it's expensive. Characters don't know how much experience it costs. Good players consider the perspective of the character as they develop and change their sheets.

If people really want to analyze and tweak cost to benefit ratios, they should start picking away at the physical disciplines, attributes and abilities for Requiem. The bonuses are strictly additive, with each subsequent level costing more while adding less and less of a respective increase relative to what the character already has. Vigor rank five (as a standalone change past vigor rank four) does the exact same thing that Vigor rank one does (as a standalone change relative to vigor rank zero) for an enormously inflated cost, but nobody seems to complain about that.

And now I can address said criticism :)

Loxosceles:

That seems like a fairly steep increase to me. It builds into additive levels above the RaW. You've playtested it and I haven't, but it seems like it could trivialize the process of acquiring blood and marginalize the idea of vitae management during gameplay.

I think you are exaggerating the use of a single Vitae. And if you look at the table the amount for 1 and 10 is the same. It's the ramp up that is different. Also there are two key values in reference to feeding restrictions and that is no something that is noted or highlighted at all in RAW.

Giving a little steeper ramp up will NOT (at least not my players) make the players disregard or ignore the idea of blood as the source of Vitae. The ease or hardship to aquire blood is up to every storyteller (and actually if you use the system in RAW it's not that difficult IMO, but if you act out every attempt to aquire blood it's more time consuming and probably more difficult as well) and can be made to be as hard or difficult as said storyteller likes.

Loxosceles:

Vitae expenditure then begins to be the go-to solution for most problems.

You put a whole lot of power into the single Vitae in earlier texts (it can be the difference between life and death and so on). So is it really logical to say that just because you get one extra Vitae than what RAW says when going from BP 1->2 you will invest Vitae in basically all you attempts? You seem to think that with RAW players will keep as much of their Vitae but with my table they will waste it without much thought and that is a very strange logic in my eyes. So you are somewhat contradicting yourself IMO.

Loxosceles:

The vitae expenditure per turn strikes me as even more of a concern, increasing as sharply past the RaW as it does in your chart, for the same reasons. The ability to unload like that, the explosive nature of that kind of blood expenditure has gotta effect the balance in ways that ripple through the setting and impact gameplay pretty heavily.

Actually this is double edged sword. Because those with possibility to spend several Vitae per round can (and will) burn through their reserves quite quickly. In a few rounds they are eligeble for both hunger and starvation minuses to frenzy rolls. So still players must keep the total in check. And while it is a big benefit to go from 1->2 (100% increase) the percentage increase lessens for each raising of BP.

Loxosceles:

Am I completely alone in encouraging my players to have an in-character reason for an experience expenditure?

That is fairly easy for most Merits, skills and attributes due to some form of training or study. The same can be said for Disciplines even. But BP is very hard to give some concrete in game justification to raise so IMO it boils down to an arbitrary decision by the ST. Which is fine by me if the ST wants to direct his players in that way.

For me, if BP is on par with other things (skills, merits etc.) as it comes to the mechanic side it is ok for the player to raise it.

So for most things I require some sort of in game justification (but I am not extremely strict with this because it's quite easy to justify most things) but for BP I have a hard time seeing what that justification should be?

Loxosceles:

The status, the social impact when dealing with other vampires,...

For me this is overstating the impact of BP. There is a larger status and social impact from the Status merit than BP. BP give, via PT, a general feel as to the relative power level between kindred. But after having met the first time (and maybe not even then if the first meet is not "worthy" of a PT roll) that is reduced to fluff that can be played up or down to an extent that is of ST liking. For my part BP can be a part of someones Status but it might just as well be a character belonging to a covenant in the city that is an underdog so while they respect his high BP his Status (city) might still be 0 (zero).

Loxosceles:

I have had players flat out say that they think Discipline X is really cool, but their character has no reason to have thought about learning it- so they spend their experience elsewhere.

I do not see the problem with players buying things they think that they will benefit from. The whole min-max discussion seem to recede now with games such as D&D4 where you're supposed to max out what is most beneficial to you. That does not make you a worse roleplayer. You must be able to distinguish between game mechanics and role playing. Being aware of the mechanic benefit of something is not a bad thing, quite the opposite. As long as the system and powers granted by the system hold together and are not broken there should be no problem with allowing the players buying the things they find cool without requiring too much of in game justification.

So for me this table works quite well. The smuding makes BP more attractive but it's not the end solution to all the players problems just because they got 2 more Vitae at BP 3. ;)

Cog.

Ok, I can weigh in on this outside of the context of Blood Potency as a measure of power.

Loxosceles:

Most players regard their freely spent blood pool as something like three or four vitae, after which they'll generally try to replenish through feeding if possible. At least in my experience with my players, other people may have experience that disagrees with this- but players do not treat their blood pool as being divided into equally important levels when they go to spend it.

In my experience, it depends on the vampire's humanity.  When my players feed from humans and are at 4 to 6 humanity (nobody can keep 7), they treat their blood as you suggest they would.  However, when they feed from animals or when their humanity is 3 or lower, they stop caring about killing what they eat and feeding because more trivial (well, actually acquiring more blood does at least, there's always consequences to that many murders).

Loxosceles:

The vitae expenditure per turn strikes me as even more of a concern, increasing as sharply past the RaW as it does in your chart, for the same reasons. The ability to unload like that, the explosive nature of that kind of blood expenditure has gotta effect the balance in ways that ripple through the setting and impact gameplay pretty heavily.

This, I agree with completely.  In my most recent game, the worst character overall (she just spent her XP really poorly), diablerized her way to BP 4 and just on the merit of being able to spend 2 blood per turn, she became a serious threat almost immediately (of course it helps that she has Resolve 5 and Coil of Blood 1, so pretty much all of her blood expenditure is for powers and buffs).

Cogitare:

Actually this is double edged sword. Because those with possibility to spend several Vitae per round can (and will) burn through their reserves quite quickly.

I don't think this is all that applicable.  Each additional blood per turn is 2 more dice they can use to front load their attacks and make sure the fight doesn't even get to the point that they're running out.  And that doesn't even touch on healing.  A full BP 6 vampire (my standard upper limit, and the BP of most of my princes), in your system would be able to take 10 bashing/5 lethal/1 aggravated per turn for 4 turns before even flinching (and sure, he's starving, but frenzies become alomst a non-issue once you hit around 7 or 8 Res+Comp, which BP 6 vampires probably have).  Hell, if that guy had Resilience 4, he could run naked across a football field on a cloudy day and end up without a scratch

So, I guess my objection is not how much better the lower end becomes, but rather how invincible the upper end does.  If I wanted to change Blood Potency (which I don't, anymore), I'd much prefer a system that only makes the first couple steps more attractive, without increasing the mid to upper levels to any significant extent.

Cogitare:

Blood Potency	Trait maximum	Max Vitae / per turn	Feed from…
1	5	10/1	Animals
2	5	12/1	Animals
3	5	14/2	Humans
4	5	16/3	Humans
5	5	18/4	Humans
6	6	20/5	Humans
7	7	30/7	Vampires
8	8	50/9	Vampires
9	9	75/12	Vampires
10	10	100/15	Vampires

mplindustries:

Each additional blood per turn is 2 more dice they can use to front load their attacks and make sure the fight doesn't even get to the point that they're running out.

2 extra potential dice. You have to take healing and/or discipline activation into account. But yes, they have theoretical higher max limit to attack dice. But it's two dice and affects all Kindred PC and NPC so it's even over the board so to speak.

mplindustries:

A full BP 6 vampire (my standard upper limit, and the BP of most of my princes), in your system would be able to take 10 bashing/5 lethal/1 aggravated per turn for 4 turns before even flinching (and sure, he's starving, but frenzies become alomst a non-issue once you hit around 7 or 8 Res+Comp, which BP 6 vampires probably have).  Hell, if that guy had Resilience 4, he could run naked across a football field on a cloudy day and end up without a scratch

Yes he can take 10 bashing/5 lethal per round for four rounds. But then he does not do ANYTHING but heal. No blood buff, no celerity (or other discipline use). He simply heals. Which is powerful but unless he can deal some damage as well that is just prolonging the unevitable. There are actually too many parameters that _could_ occur to even try to take them into account.

1 AG per round and not flinch is not correct (unless you have the Regeneration Devotion from the Carthian book, I think). Otherwise you need 2 days rest in order to heal one AG.

But the main thing here is that he would just heal, nothing else.

mplindustries:

So, I guess my objection is not how much better the lower end becomes, but rather how invincible the upper end does. 

Too bad I do not have my book here. But the upper end I seem to remember is not that different actually. Some smudging yes, but the upper end were basically bad asses before and is so now as well. And even a BP 6 kindred need mooks (ghouls, humans or whatnot) to stand up to a number of antagonists (or protagonists if it's the players) because it's really beneficial to be many vs. one in the WoD system.

Cog.