[Hypothetical] Thoughts On 3 Discipline Levels?

LivesByProxy wrote: I'm aware of the problems grouping was meant to solve. From LSJ himself: "It was hard to avoid redundant and duplicate vampires... which also led to power creep. If you could have every 2 or 3 cost vampire with Potence, weenie Potence became annoyingly good or trivial to build."

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is the two-tier structure of disciplines and how that skews powerful effects onto either the inferior or superior version of a card, since their is no middle ground. And because there is no middle ground, powerful effects get concentrated in either the inferior version of a discipline or the superior version of a disciple. This concentrated power is the 'dial-a-crypt' / 'hyper-tuned' problem. A 3-tier discipline setup would allow library card power to be dispersed across 3 options (the 3 tiers of Presence, for example) instead of 2, and as a by-product the power and efficiency of weenies is reduced.

You're missing the point somewhat. Redundant and duplicate vampires appear in a variety of ways. Weenies with one (or two) common disciplines are a very obvious and acute situation, particularly as some of the powerful disciplines came from several clans e.g. Dominate from Giovanni, Tremere, Ventrue, Ventrue Antitribu, pre-Dominate Malkavians, Lasombra etc. Somewhat similar for Presence - Brujah, Toreador, their two Antitribu etc.

But these are far from the only issue. Another very obvious issue is that of titles, particularly the good ones, especially Prince and Justicar because of the huge power of the Camarilla cards, and to a lesser extent Archbishop, Magaji etc. Being able to combine all the Toreador Princes (and maybe a Justicar or two) into one deck is hugely different from the current environment. Even worse for the Ventrue, although a couple of their existing Princes are a bit awkward to use. And because most of them are pretty big vampires, they typically have a decent spread of disciplines - although quite a few don't have all three in-clan disciplines at superior and it broadly doesn't matter. Yeah, Anson can't play Eagle Sight at superior and Anneke can - the deck is still very strong. In a world with three disciplines, it's likely Anson would probably have mid level Auspex anyway, maybe. What do you do, stop printing any new Princes ever?

You're also ignoring the other facet that LSJ points out in that thread - because new players are competing against crypts that old players have, using vampires from every set, the new players similarly need vampires from every set to compete. If they can make a good Group 7/8 Gangrel deck by buying a bunch of cards from a base set, and a bunch of cards from the Group 8 expansion deploying a clutch of Gangrel and some Noiad bloodlines from the relevant expansion, that's a good thing for getting players into the game. They don't have to buy key vampires from every set since 1994, which is generally great for accessibility. Whether you have 2 levels of disciplines or 10 levels, fundamentally some vampires will be better than others because that's just the nature of designing vampires in a CCG, and if they're split over sets from now, five years from now, ten years from now... that's creating a significant design-flaw barrier to entry, which grouping is intentionally trying to avoid.

I aware of those two points as well. I have thought about grouping but I didn't bring that stuff up because this wasn't suppose to be a convo about grouping, but the concept to the three discipline levels idea.

But to address the first point: I wouldn't have VTM's titles. I think this game is too closely tied to VTM but that's another topic. In a hypothetical rework of VTES, I'd have each vampire have a 'title' unique to them, similar to how Carna is 'The Princess Witch' and Elimelech is 'The Twice Damned', Anka 'Priestess of Thorns', Dre, 'Leader of the Cold Dawn', etc, etc, etc. And then have vampires get +vote bonuses similar to how +bleed and +strength bonuses and such are written out on the vampires themselves.

About the second point: Grouping as a means of not requiring players to go and seek out vampires from old out-of-print sets is great, but in a print-on-demand or non-CCG environment, would grouping be necessary? If vampires were readily available to all players via frequent reprints such as 'vampire clan packs' or whatever, then new players could get their hands on any and all vampires they wanted.
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The biggest benefit of grouping IMO, all the other reasons aside, is that it makes crypt building challenging (as BloodArtist said), but in a hypothetical rework of VTES, I imagine something similar could be implemented to make crypt selection a challenge. All of the FFG LCGs implement something similar to grouping that makes deck building challenging as part of the customization rules: cards in NetRunner have 'influence points' and you can only have so many, AGoT and L5R have certain cards that can or can't be used outside of their core faction, for example.

I once suggested that vampires could be 1-ofs in a crypt as a rule, make them truly unique so-to-speak, and Lonkka said this would 'destroy so many deck ideas' (even though I was talking about a hypothetical rework / spiritual successor). Does not the grouping rule also 'destroy deck ideas' since certain vampires are prevented from being mixed and matched, certain synergies denied, possible strategies quashed? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Having a 3rd level of discipline would help to make big vampires a better value for the pool cost. In the RPG, vampires of generations lower than 8 could develop unique and potent powers unavailable to higher generations. (The 7th generation is represented by capacity 8 in VTES; 6th by capacity 9, etc.) Extra points of out-of-clan disciplines are generally poor rewards for influencing a high capacity vampire.

High capacity vampires in VTES are valued for their titles and special abilities, not their variety of superior disciplines. If they had access to special, potent greater-than-superior discipline cards, it would justify their cost more. This is especially the case now that Villein has been nerfed.

AaronC wrote: Having a 3rd level of discipline would help to make big vampires a better value for the pool cost. In the RPG, vampires of generations lower than 8 could develop unique and potent powers unavailable to higher generations. (The 7th generation is represented by capacity 8 in VTES; 6th by capacity 9, etc.) Extra points of out-of-clan disciplines are generally poor rewards for influencing a high capacity vampire.

High capacity vampires in VTES are valued for their titles and special abilities, not their variety of superior disciplines. If they had access to special, potent greater-than-superior discipline cards, it would justify their cost more. This is especially the case now that Villein has been nerfed.

It would be easier to design library cards on a "bloodline discipline " template where you have basic, superior, and "only usable by vampires ot capacity 8 or greater " effects. I've always wondered why such cards haven't showed up, when several solid (sense the savage way, cog, etc) cards are only for capacity X ot higher.

Three effects on one card is too much complexity. You can do it on some "expert level" cards, but as a core template it is a bad design.

elotar wrote: Three effects on one card is too much complexity. You can do it on some "expert level" cards, but as a core template it is a bad design.

I agree, but also these sorts of cards make more sense as a cycle in the next core set. Possibly as added oomph version of existing cards:

Pursuitiest:
manuever
additional strike (limited)
ONLY usable by a vampire of capacity 9 or greater. Only usable when combat is about to end while this vampire is ready and the opposing minion is not. Unlock this vampire.
Draft: strike: dodge

Or

Super Freak drive
only usable at the end of a successful action. Unlock this minion.
as above, but usable even if the action isn't successful.
only usable by a vampire of capacity 9 or more. Only usable at the end of a successful bleed action causing you or your prey to lose pool. Unlock this vampire.
Draft prevent 3 damage.

Also:

We have legitimately wasted many cool names on shitty cards. Maybe we errata those AND add an outferior. Or just add something like what I put above:

Movement of the mind 3rd line

put this card on this vampire of capacity 9 or greater. This vampire has flight . Burn this card if this vampire goes to torpor.