New Discipline Vampire the masquerade (and requiem),

[Shinizak]

You know what always BOTHERED me?

The fact that SOME clans have clan specific Disciples like Dementation (malk) and Obtenebration (lasombra), and other clans don't like brujah, ventrue, and nosferatu.

Specifically I'm looking at Ventrue right now. I want to make a Ventrue specific discipline, but I don't want it to overlap with presence or domination. I'm looking at Ralab, but it doesn't feel EXACTLY right. (And the first skill is just a rehash of presence.)

Any suggestions for where to go with this?

Ralab, for those curious: https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Ralab

[Morty]

You added Requiem to the title, but I should point out that the issue doesn't exist in Requiem, where every clan has a unique Discipline.

[Anonymouswizard]

You added Requiem to the title, but I should point out that the issue doesn't exist in Requiem, where every clan has a unique Discipline.

Speciality Discipline. I make the distinction because while it's not common for members of other Clans to learn then it happens quite often, the main barrier is needing the Vitae of a user for the first dot, and the intentional misinformation spread about the requirements to learn it. Bloodlines however, when they get new Disciplines, almost always get truly unique Disciplines.


Also Masquerade 5e has stepped back from unique Disciplines to instead have have Clan draw from a pool of standard Disciplines with maybe some up powers. Which required merging Necromancy and Obtenebretion together, and a lot of discussion on how Vicissitude, Chimerstry, Valeren, and other weirder Disciplines and going to be included. Quietus becoming Blood Sorcery was weird, but allowed us to stop having the Castes as mechanical bloodlines (I think standard Banu Haqim are missing Presence, but it's not a big deal).

Notably Serpentine becoming Protean just seems to have mainly worked, but it was always the weirdest one to have as it's own Discipline.

[Morty]

Speciality Discipline. I make the distinction because while it's not common for members of other Clans to learn then it happens quite often, the main barrier is needing the Vitae of a user for the first dot, and the intentional misinformation spread about the requirements to learn it. Bloodlines however, when they get new Disciplines, almost always get truly unique Disciplines.


Also Masquerade 5e has stepped back from unique Disciplines to instead have have Clan draw from a pool of standard Disciplines with maybe some up powers. Which required merging Necromancy and Obtenebretion together, and a lot of discussion on how Vicissitude, Chimerstry, Valeren, and other weirder Disciplines and going to be included. Quietus becoming Blood Sorcery was weird, but allowed us to stop having the Castes as mechanical bloodlines (I think standard Banu Haqim are missing Presence, but it's not a big deal).

Notably Serpentine becoming Protean just seems to have mainly worked, but it was always the weirdest one to have as it's own Discipline.

Another upside of Requiem is having Devotions to handle "weird" stuff without figuring out Disciplines for them.

[Anonymouswizard]

Another upside of Requiem is having Devotions to handle "weird" stuff without figuring out Disciplines for them.

I mean, Masquerade has Combo-Disciplines, but Devotions are much more integral to the system, including being in the main rulebook. I'm also not sure when they stopped being 'mixing disciplines together' and became 'weird extensions of existing powers', but I like it.

Discounting Bloodline Devotions, of course.

But then again CofD is better designed than oWoD was anyway, it comes from first one and then two decades of experience writing urban fantasy/horror RPFs. And V5 wants to be Requiem 1e.

[Morty]

I mean, Masquerade has Combo-Disciplines, but Devotions are much more integral to the system, including being in the main rulebook. I'm also not sure when they stopped being 'mixing disciplines together' and became 'weird extensions of existing powers', but I like it.

When 2E rebuilt Disciplines as logical progressions instead of sets of five loosely-connected powers, the powers removed in this way ended up as Devotions. Which I think is fine; it means there's still room for specialized applications of vampiric powers while Disciplines themselves are cleaner. And there are still Devotions which are combinations of Disciplines.

[Anonymouswizard]

When 2E rebuilt Disciplines as logical progressions instead of sets of five loosely-connected powers, the powers removed in this way ended up as Devotions. Which I think is fine; it means there's still room for specialized applications of vampiric powers while Disciplines themselves are cleaner. And there are still Devotions which are combinations of Disciplines.

Yeah, it's just skipping from the 1e to 2e corebook without reading any of the in-between books made me wonder if they appeared earlier. Interesting to know they were part of the massive overhaul that was 2e.


Anyway, thread topic. As has been said, each Clan in Requiem has a significant m signature Discipline related to the right vampiric archetype the embody (monarchs/idols, beasts, occultists, monsters, and lords). This was built from the ground up, occasionally a Bloodline will nick another Clan's specially, but they tend to come with fairly major weaknesses.

Masquerade wasn't built to have such a thing, the original seven Clans had one signature Discipline with Dementation being unique to Sabbat Mallavians. Signature disciplines came in later due to a mixture of coming up with cool powers and wanting to give villains something PCs couldn't have. You can't go around changing the Disciplines of the Seven Original Clans without affecting the archetypes they represent (the Brujah in particular already have the perfect disciplines for their archetype).