[Hypothetical] Thoughts On 3 Discipline Levels?

In keeping with my desire to see VTES undergo an incompatible rework, what if there were 3 discipline levels? Instead of inferior and superior, we get basic -> advanced -> expert, or something similar. Expert would be a diamond superimposed on a square.

My thought was that this would solve one of the biggest issues with VTES that grouping tried to fixed: there are only so many discipline combinations and creating new vampires is hard.

This setup would also align with the low-caps, mid-caps, high-caps thematically and mechanically.

LivesByProxy wrote: My thought was that this would solve one of the biggest issues with VTES that grouping tried to fixed: there are only so many discipline combinations and creating new vampires is hard.

That's not at all what grouping attempted to solve. Grouping prevents "dial-a-crypt" problems and hyper-tuned crypts. If I can pick any vampire, I can create a crypt of 11 PRE vampires before I hit a 5-cap to round out my 12. Or have great support vampires for my deck: such as adding Shane Grimald to the recent ANI/DOM TWD, giving me a better support vampire than the dominate-free weenies therein.

I actually like the idea. It fits with the source material too, as the first, third and fifth discipline levels are traditionally the "good" ones (Though V5 looks to be changing that up thank Snips).

It would also make design of cards that much deeper, with three levels of discipline. At one point I had notes on a Vampire: The Requiem version of V:tes that used a three-tiered discipline system, but never had the time to really put in the effort on it.

Sadly, this would take waaay too much in the way of completely restructuring the game to accommodate it. That and the general resistance to change the base seems to have make it unlikely for these things to change.

kschaefer wrote: That's not at all what grouping attempted to solve. Grouping prevents "dial-a-crypt" problems and hyper-tuned crypts. If I can pick any vampire, I can create a crypt of 11 PRE vampires before I hit a 5-cap to round out my 12. Or have great support vampires for my deck: such as adding Shane Grimald to the recent ANI/DOM TWD, giving me a better support vampire than the dominate-free weenies therein.

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.

So theoretically Majesty would be something like:
Pre: Prevent 1 damage this round.
PRE: The opposing vampire cannot play strike cards this round.
PRE+: Strike: Combat Ends, and untap this vampire.

You don't have to redesign the game to do it. It's not true 3-level of the same discipline, but Elemental Stoicism pattern could be used more frequently to create three-tiered effects.

I think the grouping as it is works ok; Taking grouping away would remove a lot of depth from crypt building and lessen the importance of vampires in new expansions. Currently printing a new vampire with a combo of disciplines creates interest since it may plug a hole in some existing deck's crypt. Considering the amount of cards already in circulation, that crypts are still difficult to put together is amazing.

As for the discipline levels, I'm not really sold on the idea. Currently a specific combo of superior disciplines creates a strong, unique effect thats kind of like having a third level of a single discipline, and is the domain of large-cap(old) vampires. (Example: instantaneous transformation, forced march, beast meld, etc)

So from deckbuilding standpoint, I think the idea of old vampires having strong abilities is handled pretty well as is. They simply have an abundance of superior disciplines that enable more cards.

The only grief I have is that several of the more common discipline cards are actually based on methuselah-level discipline abilities in the RPG, that standard young vampires shouldn't really be able to possess. But thats a flavor problem, not a games mechanics problem.