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

select chapter a theme one: society • select of the damned powers
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KILLER DISCIPLINES?
One form of specialized Discipline presents a special danger. You might feel tempted to
create a Discipline geared toward combat, which enables its possessor to slaughter all opposition.
Resist this temptation. This goes for Storytellers as well as players!
“Killer Disciplines” really aren’t as much fun as they sound. For one thing, they usually
aren’t good for anything but killing enemies. They don’t offer many opportunities for the
devious cunning and intrigue that forms so great a part of Kindred existence.
Slaughtering your enemies is also not a great strategy for characters. A Kindred who racks
up a body count of other vampires — or even mortals — will almost certainly frighten his
elders enough that they plot his elimination. Elders have lots of ways to destroy a loose cannon
without getting into a fi ght.
Most importantly, The Requiem is a Storytelling game. Combat has its place, but it’s
fundamentally a game about making choices, not about how many foes one kills before being
destroyed.
SELECT THE POWERS
Assuming your Storyteller likes the concept of your Discipline, you can move on to defi ning
the specifi c powers gained with each dot. Your Storyteller might not let you design the whole
Discipline. She might want to leave some of the powers a surprise for your character.
The fi rst power is always the weakest, though it can be very useful. Look at the initial
powers in the standard Disciplines. Extra-keen senses (with occasional psychic fl ashes) or
issuing one-word commands does not crush all opposition and establish one as a blood god
of the night. They can be awfully handy, though, and give your character a crucial edge in
her endeavors.
The fi rst power in a Discipline tends to be subtle. These capabilities add a drop of the
supernatural to some natural ability, or at least to some feature common to all Kindred. For
instance, the fi rst dot of Majesty makes its user seem very interesting and attractive… but
some people are that way naturally. A single dot of Celerity lets a Kindred be frighteningly
quick, but anyone can try to be quick. It’s simply diffi cult for those who aren’t inherently
inclined toward it.
As a Kindred masters a Discipline, its applications often become fl ashier and more explicitly
supernatural, as well as more powerful. No one could mistake the effects of Sovereignty for
anything less than a magical effect, while no mortal could ever achieve the blinding speed
of fi ve dots of Celerity. Ordinary people certainly don’t summon waves of plague or conjure
legions of walking corpses, either.
The fourth and fi fth powers are, naturally, the most formidable. At this point, a Discipline
should grant some crushing advantage over mere mortals. Kindred who possess four dots
in a Discipline are deadly fi ends whom mortals defeat with diffi culty. This potency does not
need to involve combat, either. A Kindred with four dots of Auspex, for example, can learn a
mortal’s secrets and goals by listening to his thoughts — very useful for extortion, temptation
or for getting the hell out of the way before the mortal attacks.
Try to avoid overlap with existing Disciplines unless you explicitly design your new Discipline
as a variation on one of the old standards. If a Discipline leaves players thinking, “I’ve
seen that before,” it just doesn’t seem very exciting.
In particular, don’t make your new Discipline better at something that a standard Discipline
already does, especially at the same level. If your new Discipline is better at concealment than
Obfuscate, why would anyone learn Obfuscate? If it permits greater changes of form than
Protean, who needs Protean?