Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

Although novel Disciplines might be more specialized than the “old favorites,” don’t let
them be too specialized. Think of how many ways you can use increased strength, infl uence
over people’s emotions, or communication with animals. Since discovering clever uses for a
Discipline is part of the fun of having them, a Discipline that’s too narrowly focused might
be boring.
Make sure new Disciplines do not have levels that render earlier powers useless and/or
redundant. For example, if a fi ctitious Discipline creates a small bank of fog at one dot, you
shouldn’t have it create a much larger bank of otherwise identical fog at four dots. That
makes the initial dot effectively pointless and weakens the Discipline’s utility overall besides.
Instead, allow earlier powers to get better as the character improves, and introduce new effects
or variations as the Discipline advances. For example, if one dot creates ordinary fog, four
dots might create a smaller area of mystically impenetrable fog that renders even supernatural
senses useless.
While it may appear that the fi rst dot is now obsolete, in truth both dots still have utility
— the fourth dot may render supernatural enemies relatively helpless, but it covers less ground
and also immediately alerts foes that there is a supernatural enemy nearby. What’s more, if the
character is known locally as the only wielder of fog-based powers (and new Disciplines are often
easy to track), any survivors of the attack are sure to seek her out for revenge. By contrast, the
fi rst dot not only covers more territory (and is still quite effective against mortals and others
without supernatural senses), but since the fog registers as nothing more than ordinary weather,
if used cleverly enemies might not immediately connect its presence to the character either.
Another good tip is not to invent a whole Discipline if one or two new Devotions would
work just as well. A lot of players start off with a couple of good ideas for new vampiric powers,
but can’t quite get a whole Discipline concept out of them, and wind up padding the rest
of their Discipline’s ranks with redundant or unrelated powers. Rather than going to that
all trouble, consider abandoning the levels that don’t work and just creating a new Devotion
or two that accomplish the same things instead. This is particularly true if the powers of the
proposed new Discipline could theoretically be derived from existing ones without stretching
the imagination too far in the process.
Another temptation to avoid with Disciplines is designing one centered around the idea
of making Kindred seem more human again, or similarly one that is specifi cally designed
to help them retain their Humanity and suppress the Beast. Vampiric powers may draw on,
exaggerate or play off of different aspects of life, but they can never truly allow a Kindred to
get closer to it even temporarily. Even the evolutionary advances of the Coils of the Dragon
are designed to make vampires better at their role as predators, not return them to their
humanity. If all it took was developing a Discipline to allow a Kindred to really conquer the
Beast or even come close to approximating true humanity once again, these powers would
have been created by penitent vampires long ago. Characters who wish to return to their
mortal life or fi nd victory over the Beast can look to Golconda or any other spiritual truth
they like, but new Disciplines will never provide the answers they seek.
On the other hand, watch out for Discipline arms races. New Disciplines might come from
a desire to build characters who are more powerful than anyone else’s. If a player succeeds,
other players could want to play characters of the same bloodline or create their own supercharacters
with even more powerful Disciplines. Such escalation can ruin your chronicle.
Alas, Storytellers can fall into this trap just as easily as players. You can feel a great temptation
to create a bloodline of Kindred that is tougher than the standard clans, especially if you
intend a member to oppose the players’ characters. This falls into the category of adversarial
Storytelling, which gives you reason enough not to do it.
376 mind’s appendix: eye theatre: bloodlines requiem