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View Full Version : Homebrewing for a system I've never played (Vampire the Masquerade)



Durkoala
2017-10-13, 07:35 AM
I think the title sums it up: I've been invited to a VtM game and my most popular concept is one that doesn't work in the rules at all! Given that it was better-liked than the vampire who inspired Loki and became Ronald McDonald, I'm going to take my first stab at homebrew... in a system I've never played.

I've come to ask for help from the peeps in the playground. Any suggestions, criticisms and advice on how to actually play the game are welcome. Ideally, I'd like to create a Discipline that can be attached to other characters in other games that balances well with the existing mechanics.

The Concept
I want a group of children or childlike vampires who are actually many bodies controlled by a single mind. They frequently glide in en masse whenever they can get away with it and silently watch people like an exceptionally creepy murder of crows. They favour stealth and unnerving tactics and often play with their prey, darting around as pale shapes in the shadows, whispering in the night. Their churning, chaotic mind can reach out and pull imprints from yours.

They're extremely hard to kill permanently as the loss of single bodies means little to them, but mental effects can affect all of them. The entity dies if all its bodies are killed.

The psychic aspects that effect other characters will be represented by the Auspex discipline.

The plans
Legio/Excercitus
A hive mind vampire that controls multiple bodies and can survive loss of an individual shell with little trouble. Only when all their bodies are killed will the vampire die. When Embracing a human, they can choose to make a new body under their control rather than create a new vampire. The new shell transforms as normal for a newborn vampire, but is under the overmind's control as soon as it awakes. Normally, the existing shells feed it some of their own blood: a desperate controller down to one body may raise many new shells and burn out the last adult body.

When raised as a new puppet, the body is altered to reflect the overmind's stats: they may grow or shrink in size, change facial features or fingerprints and even gain or lose body parts. All shells have a distinguishing feature that can be used to identify them, such as a crooked finger or persistant eye colour or hairstyle; this must be easily noticable and recur over all bodies. The likeness of one shell to another varies from vampire to vampire, but is usually in the lines that they resemble a close family. They immediately have the full stats of the controller, but are in frenzy when they first rise.

When struck by mental attacks, all shells bear the effects. Blood bonding one shell binds the entire mind and even destruction of the body that was Bonded will not undo this.

Each extra body increases the daily blood drain as a way to limit the potential to conscript as many bodies as possible.

I'm not sure how to handle combat: having a dozen shells on in a fight will be a nightmare to keep track of. Maybe some kind of abstract system where shells are disabled when losing a number of lethal hp?

Bonuses and increased level ideas


- an increasing ability to resist the frenzy to help offset the effects of losing blood very quickly
- a increased blood pool, for the same purpose.
-the ability to canabalise a body for a greater than usual amount of blood points. This might have a willpower cost?
-the power to have a body retain its looks and physical stats it had in life. This can only be used on a single shell at a time. It will often still bear the distinguishing mark, but is harder to pick out as part of the hive and can be used to shore up a physical stat that the base stat set doesn't cover.
-When siring another vampire or creating a ghoul, a link to the hive can be implanted into their mind. The creature has their own independant will and can oppose attempts to control them or extract information.

high level powers:

- can induct entire other minds into the hive to gain memories, including other vampires when commiting diablerie.
- for a blood cost, the hive can dig into their memories and gain a profienciency for a short time.
- Also for a blood cost, the hive can temporarily manifest another discipline if they have a reason to know it, such as adding a vampire who knew it to their hive, being under a blood bond to a vampire with the discipline, having come into close mental contact with the right vampire or an using arcane ritual to bind them to another vampire's power. If there is a cost for using the temporary Discipline, that must be paid as well.
-the ability to survive as a disembodied consciousness for a while if all bodies are killed. This wandering mind may have no way to feed, but still loses blood points at the usual rate and will die when it loses control of itself

This is all I have so far. What suggestions do you have?

Quarian Rex
2017-10-13, 01:26 PM
It has been a looong time since I have played around with VtM so I'm not going to be of direct help but I do offer this (http://bjz-backup.droppages.com/). Zanzibar's was (probably still is) the largest repository of WoD homebrew there is. Take a look at the massive discipline section and see if there is anything you can pilfer.

JeenLeen
2017-10-13, 03:06 PM
Sounds like a fun Clan to work with. I'm trying to look at the concepts from a metaphysical (i.e., consistent with oWoD fluff) and mechanical (fun/ease of play) perspective.

Some stuff I like
--choice of incorporating a body or letting it be a new vamp when siring
--extra blood cost per day to limit multiple bodies
--bodies alter to look close to original. Good to not let you effectively steal identities

Definitely agree that combat is a mess. Hmm... since it is one mind, perhaps they don't get multiple actions without penalties? If you do two actions in a turn, there's a penalty build-in for doing that. Make that penalty persist regardless of how many bodies are doing the actions. (Dividing focus to do stuff like talking or acting creepy is fine, but in combat you gotta focus not to get shredded.)

Hard thing: how does the blood pool work? That is, where is the blood?

Some recommendations
Since mental effects effect the entire hivemind, I think frenzy (or the fear equivalent) should affect them all, too. It's not just one body being hungry, it is the Beast asserting dominance. That's a mind thing, just expressed by and exacerbated through the body.
Also, seems mechanically simpler to keep track of.

Recommend drop
-When siring another vampire or creating a ghoul, a link to the hive can be implanted into their mind. The creature has their own independant will and can oppose attempts to control them or extract information.
This seems like an extra complication, and blood-binding someone should be effective enough.
Also recommending no extra blood pool or cannibalizing bodies, at least without a Discipline.

So let me try to tie this together...

Hivemind Clan (obviously give it a good name)

Boon: the vampire does not have a single body, but rather a mind spread amongst potentially unlimited bodies (but see Curse below). This means that the vampire cannot be truly killed without destroying all the bodies. Staking a body or destroying one simply disconnects it from the hivemind. If the last body is staked, then the mind goes into torpor with that body. If the last body is destroyed, the mind also dies. Each body tracks damage separately, but also must spend blood to heal separately.
Multiple action penalties apply regardless of how many bodies do the actions.
The blood pool is mystically shared between the bodies. If a body that has vitae physically in it is destroyed, the vitae becomes inert and coagulated blood in another body turns into vitae. This also has the special benefit of making diablerie on these vampires impossible unless it is done on the final body.
When sired, the vampire has only its base body, but it can incorporate new bodies into its hive by draining them of blood and feeding them one dot of vitae. When doing so, the vampire can choose whether to sire a new vampire (as usual) or include the body into its hive. The newly-incorporated body undergoes a metamorphosis over the next hour, during which it is incapacitated, during which it shifts to appear more like the original body (at least like a close relative). This has the effect of making it impossible to assume identities of incorporated bodies. All bodies share the same statistics.
Using blood to boost physical attributes only works on one body per blood point.

Curse: But this has downsides. For one, it costs an extra blood for every day per body. Second, if a mental effect impacts one body, the entire mind is effected. This includes the blood bond, frenzy, etc. If a power would deal psychic damage, that damage is spread to all bodies (e.g., a Mind mage dealing damage would damage all the bodies.) The shifting of blood between bodies also impairs the vampire's ability to use the 'flush of life'; it takes twice as blood as normal to appear living for a scene.
Lastly, each body has a noticeable trait (use what you described above).

Disciplines: Auspex, ???, Hivemind (probably avoid any physical Disciplines and avoid Obfuscate (hiding many bodies is hard). But maybe Celerity is valid as a way to help the multiple bodies act in a coordianted fashion)

Hivemind Discipline
1) Coordinated Assault -- by spending a point of blood, the hivemind can ignore extra action penalties for a round. While doing this, each body may take only 1 action. Each body that acts takes 1 Bashing damage.
Drop this if you use Celerity as a clan discipline
2) Bodily Destruction -- by spending a point of blood, the hivemind can abandon a body, causing it to decay into an acidic, bloody liquid. This deals <whatever is appropriate> lethal damage to anyone making physical contact, and it can corrode <metal/wood/rope?>. This power can be activated in response to being struck by a physical attack, guaranteeing success. If used offensively, a successful Brawl roll is needed to make contact before turning to mush.
3) Subsume Identity -- by spending 5 blood and a point of willpower when incorporating a new body into the hive, the hivemind can cause it to not undergo the normal transmutation. The body is usable immediately and, while it gets the normal trait all bodies share, it otherwise keeps it original form and voice. Vague memories also remain; not enough to really pretend to be the person long-term, but enough to remember a kid's name or where the bathroom is in their home. For things like combinations or passwords, roll <Int + Empathy or some such> at a difficult of 10 - Humanity; a success means the necessary information was retained with enough memory to be accurate and usable. Such a roll can also help impersonate the person for a scene or be used to accelerate training time in skills the person had; DM discretion. If the body is ever lost to the hive, all memories vanish with it.
4) Split Body -- by spending 5 blood and a point of willpower, one of the bodies splits into two bodies. Both bodies have the same health as they did before the split. Normal, mundane clothing can be duplicated during the split, but no other equipment. The bodies are otherwise identical. (You can split bodies created via Subsume Identity, but only one of the bodies can retain memories.) This is especially handy to avoid final death if you have just one body left.
5) Hive Mastery -- this Discipline is a permanent alteration, allowing the vampire to more efficiently manage the hive. The blood cost at the start of day is reduced by 2 (minimum 1). Also, if a body would go into frenzy (or the fear equivalent), the vampire can drop it from the hive rather than suffer the frenzy; the body turns to dust as if the vampire had died. (Note that this does not let the vampire dust bodies that are subject to other mental effects, like Dominate; this is solely from a response it triggers in the vampire's Beast.) Lastly, Coordinated Assault no longer deals bashing damage to the vampire's bodies.
I'm not sure if oWoD had disciplines that just modified how a vamp works or not, so this might not be appropriate.


Not sure if it's balanced, but, well, maybe some inspiration.

EDIT/clarification: with dropping a body when frenzy happens, the idea is that the body that is experiencing something that prompts the Beast is destroyed, rather than risk it tempting the Beast. For example, a body near fire could be destroyed to prevent fox frenzy, or a body around something that triggers regulr frenzy could be dropped. I reckon let the roll happen for frenzy (to see if the Beast awakes) and, if it does, drop the body and the Beast goes back to 'sleep'. I guess this wouldn't happen just from low blood, but it would let you avoid frenzying from seeing a food source (just destroy the body near the food source).
Maybe let the body dust or just drop as a corpse, so you can use this around mortals without breaking the Masquerade.
I guess I could see also dropping the daily blood cost by 5. The idea is that this is an equivalent of free bodies/free blood pool to power bodies, wtihout giving extra blood you can use for anything. In most cases, it probably won't matter since an intelligent player will have a Herd they can refresh from in the morning.

Durkoala
2017-10-13, 07:16 PM
Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is a game that will apparently be playing rather loose with typical Vampire canon and will be very high level. Eventually we might have the options to become our own OC Antedivulians, to give an idea of the power level we might be playing with. We will be starting off as normal, basic vampires though.


It has been a looong time since I have played around with VtM so I'm not going to be of direct help but I do offer this (http://bjz-backup.droppages.com/). Zanzibar's was (probably still is) the largest repository of WoD homebrew there is. Take a look at the massive discipline section and see if there is anything you can pilfer.

Thank you, that's a lot of resources. Even if I don't find anything, I'm sure some of the other players will be glad of it.


Sounds like a fun Clan to work with. I'm trying to look at the concepts from a metaphysical (i.e., consistent with oWoD fluff) and mechanical (fun/ease of play) perspective.

Some stuff I like
--choice of incorporating a body or letting it be a new vamp when siring
--extra blood cost per day to limit multiple bodies
--bodies alter to look close to original. Good to not let you effectively steal identities

Definitely agree that combat is a mess. Hmm... since it is one mind, perhaps they don't get multiple actions without penalties? If you do two actions in a turn, there's a penalty build-in for doing that. Make that penalty persist regardless of how many bodies are doing the actions. (Dividing focus to do stuff like talking or acting creepy is fine, but in combat you gotta focus not to get shredded.)

Hard thing: how does the blood pool work? That is, where is the blood?

I like your combat ideas and I'll probably incorporate them.
As far as the blood pool goes, it's probably in circulation throughout the many bodies and they may share their reserves between themselves. Even if a single body is running low, the blood in the other systems can usually sustain the mind enough to repress the frenzy. When many bodies are running low, however...

This is mostly fluff and the blood/frenzy rules should be the same as for a normal vampire as far as I can tell.


Some recommendations
Since mental effects effect the entire hivemind, I think frenzy (or the fear equivalent) should affect them all, too. It's not just one body being hungry, it is the Beast asserting dominance. That's a mind thing, just expressed by and exacerbated through the body.
Also, seems mechanically simpler to keep track of.

Recommend drop
-When siring another vampire or creating a ghoul, a link to the hive can be implanted into their mind. The creature has their own independant will and can oppose attempts to control them or extract information.
This seems like an extra complication, and blood-binding someone should be effective enough.
Also recommending no extra blood pool or cannibalizing bodies, at least without a Discipline.


The complete frenzy makes perfect sense and I'll add that straight away. It's both a lot easier to keep track of mentally and I like the image of a stream of berserk vampires blindly charging over everything in search of blood.

Sorry, I meant the cannibalising of a shell is meant to be a skill in the discipline tree, not something that just any member of it can do when they turn.

I'll think about dropping the mindlink, but I do really like the idea of a clan where every vampire has the whispers of their elders in their head. The extra blood pool idea can probably go though.



So let me try to tie this together...

Hivemind Clan (obviously give it a good name)

Boon: the vampire does not have a single body, but rather a mind spread amongst potentially unlimited bodies (but see Curse below). This means that the vampire cannot be truly killed without destroying all the bodies. Staking a body or destroying one simply disconnects it from the hivemind. If the last body is staked, then the mind goes into torpor with that body. If the last body is destroyed, the mind also dies. Each body tracks damage separately, but also must spend blood to heal separately.
Multiple action penalties apply regardless of how many bodies do the actions.
The blood pool is mystically shared between the bodies. If a body that has vitae physically in it is destroyed, the vitae becomes inert and coagulated blood in another body turns into vitae. This also has the special benefit of making diablerie on these vampires impossible unless it is done on the final body.
When sired, the vampire has only its base body, but it can incorporate new bodies into its hive by draining them of blood and feeding them one dot of vitae. When doing so, the vampire can choose whether to sire a new vampire (as usual) or include the body into its hive. The newly-incorporated body undergoes a metamorphosis over the next hour, during which it is incapacitated, during which it shifts to appear more like the original body (at least like a close relative). This has the effect of making it impossible to assume identities of incorporated bodies. All bodies share the same statistics.
Using blood to boost physical attributes only works on one body per blood point.

Curse: But this has downsides. For one, it costs an extra blood for every day per body. Second, if a mental effect impacts one body, the entire mind is effected. This includes the blood bond, frenzy, etc. If a power would deal psychic damage, that damage is spread to all bodies (e.g., a Mind mage dealing damage would damage all the bodies.) The shifting of blood between bodies also impairs the vampire's ability to use the 'flush of life'; it takes twice as blood as normal to appear living for a scene.
Lastly, each body has a noticeable trait (use what you described above).

Disciplines: Auspex, ???, Hivemind (probably avoid any physical Disciplines and avoid Obfuscate (hiding many bodies is hard). But maybe Celerity is valid as a way to help the multiple bodies act in a coordianted fashion)

Hivemind Discipline
1) Coordinated Assault -- by spending a point of blood, the hivemind can ignore extra action penalties for a round. While doing this, each body may take only 1 action. Each body that acts takes 1 Bashing damage.
Drop this if you use Celerity as a clan discipline
2) Bodily Destruction -- by spending a point of blood, the hivemind can abandon a body, causing it to decay into an acidic, bloody liquid. This deals <whatever is appropriate> lethal damage to anyone making physical contact, and it can corrode <metal/wood/rope?>. This power can be activated in response to being struck by a physical attack, guaranteeing success. If used offensively, a successful Brawl roll is needed to make contact before turning to mush.
3) Subsume Identity -- by spending 5 blood and a point of willpower when incorporating a new body into the hive, the hivemind can cause it to not undergo the normal transmutation. The body is usable immediately and, while it gets the normal trait all bodies share, it otherwise keeps it original form and voice. Vague memories also remain; not enough to really pretend to be the person long-term, but enough to remember a kid's name or where the bathroom is in their home. For things like combinations or passwords, roll <Int + Empathy or some such> at a difficult of 10 - Humanity; a success means the necessary information was retained with enough memory to be accurate and usable. Such a roll can also help impersonate the person for a scene or be used to accelerate training time in skills the person had; DM discretion. If the body is ever lost to the hive, all memories vanish with it.
4) Split Body -- by spending 5 blood and a point of willpower, one of the bodies splits into two bodies. Both bodies have the same health as they did before the split. Normal, mundane clothing can be duplicated during the split, but no other equipment. The bodies are otherwise identical. (You can split bodies created via Subsume Identity, but only one of the bodies can retain memories.) This is especially handy to avoid final death if you have just one body left.
5) Hive Mastery -- this Discipline is a permanent alteration, allowing the vampire to more efficiently manage the hive. The blood cost at the start of day is reduced by 2 (minimum 1). Also, if a body would go into frenzy (or the fear equivalent), the vampire can drop it from the hive rather than suffer the frenzy; the body turns to dust as if the vampire had died. (Note that this does not let the vampire dust bodies that are subject to other mental effects, like Dominate; this is solely from a response it triggers in the vampire's Beast.) Lastly, Coordinated Assault no longer deals bashing damage to the vampire's bodies.
I'm not sure if oWoD had disciplines that just modified how a vamp works or not, so this might not be appropriate.


Not sure if it's balanced, but, well, maybe some inspiration.

EDIT/clarification: with dropping a body when frenzy happens, the idea is that the body that is experiencing something that prompts the Beast is destroyed, rather than risk it tempting the Beast. For example, a body near fire could be destroyed to prevent fox frenzy, or a body around something that triggers regulr frenzy could be dropped. I reckon let the roll happen for frenzy (to see if the Beast awakes) and, if it does, drop the body and the Beast goes back to 'sleep'. I guess this wouldn't happen just from low blood, but it would let you avoid frenzying from seeing a food source (just destroy the body near the food source).
Maybe let the body dust or just drop as a corpse, so you can use this around mortals without breaking the Masquerade.
I guess I could see also dropping the daily blood cost by 5. The idea is that this is an equivalent of free bodies/free blood pool to power bodies, wtihout giving extra blood you can use for anything. In most cases, it probably won't matter since an intelligent player will have a Herd they can refresh from in the morning.

I like this very much. It catches all I wanted to capture and addresses the mechanics I missed. I'm a big fan of most of the discipline traits and especially the Hive Co-ordination/Hive Mastery powers. I'll run this past my GM and see what she thinks. Thank you, you've been a big help!

Also, I don't have a name for the clan yet, but I'm considering Legion, Legio or Excercitus for the Discipline.

JeenLeen
2017-10-16, 09:40 AM
If you are going loose on the vampire canon, this might not matter, but I could see this Clan being an offshoot of Tcizimize (sp) since... well, they do crazy stuff... but probably best as a clan made via thauamturgy, like the Gargoyles or (I think) Blood Brothers were. Some of the stuff they do seem similar enough to how thaumaturgy can modify blood use, and I could see it as way a Tremere was trying to bypass some limitations, like dying or staking. A magical origin could also explain stuff like blood metaphysically flowing among all the bodies at once.

I also think something should be added like a body cannot be more than X distance from the rest of the hive, or it goes into torpor or dusts. Mainly this prevents you from being literally unkillable by hiding one body in a vault somewhere across the planet. But it also seems fitting that someone could actually trap and kill all the bodies. So some distance less than a mile seems fitting, but enough how you could operate within a couple nearby buildings. That seems to give a fair mix of safety & multi-tasking without removing the real risk most PCs will have to deal with.

Though if the other PCs have equivalent safeguards via custom Disciplines or something, then it's probably okay for this particular game (if not as a clan for a general game.)

Also, remember that at Discipline rank 6+ you can sorta make custom Disciplines that vary vamp to vamp, even if some things are rather customary.