Are disciplines necessary?

sofei · Post by **sofei** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:35 pm

Hi, I am a malcavian and I am at the "Society of.... professors" quest. All of these time I have never used my disciplines. They make me lose blood and I found out that I can finish the quests without their help. What do you think about that? Am I the only one who does that?

Jhereg · Post by **Jhereg** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:46 am

sofei wrote:Hi, I am a malcavian and I am at the "Society of.... professors" quest. All of these time I have never used my disciplines. They make me lose blood and I found out that I can finish the quests without their help. What do you think about that? Am I the only one who does that?

Probably. Disciplines are just magic. They come at a cost to control how much and often you use them. You are not, however obliged to do so. Using magic is just a matter of adjudicating use against cost. If you do not choose to make that effort, then that is your choice to make. No harm, no foul.

A more important point is that this is an RPG. In it, you assume and bear the persona of a vampire. You have 'powers'. Your character would use them - probably. Not choosing to use your powers is more likely to be a violation of Role Playing than anything else. Ergo, not playing into the spirit of the game, not violating any 'rules'.

Ultimately, it's your call and your choice. If your style works for you, then it works for you. It is, after all, your style. You choose what you choose.

haydox · Post by **haydox** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:18 am

You havent used the Malkavian disciplines?! How do you live

Auspex is incredible if you are a ranged based character as it has the potential to give you a ranged feat of 13 (same with inspection), and it is like night vision/thermal vision.

And Obfuscate is amazing, level 5 obfuscate makes you almost invincible. you can simple walk up behind someone and kill them, and you can use computers etc, whilst remaining invisible!

sofei · Post by **sofei** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:32 am

But I am at the Hell ... Hotel Hallowbrook now and I am doing just fine again.Ok you are both right that the disciplines gives you more options and can make the game more interesting but you can easily play the game without them as well. Maybe it is because I enjoy using the weapons more..I will play the game when I finish it with another character(don't know though if there is a character better than a malcavian) and I will use the disciplines more to see the differences.

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:39 am

Disciplines are not necessary but I enjoy the game far more when I use them as I prefer playing magic type characters in RPGs. If you want a character that really relies on disciplines then I'd suggest Tremere. They are really fun to play if you use their disciplines.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:40 am

I cansee why you would like the weapons, especially if you are using the Unofficial patch, well besides that I really think Troika did a great job on sound effects and feel of weapons.

Clearly you could have a actual Role going here as well as a nice changeup.
You could be playing as a very recentful Vamp, maybe a exHunter turned out of spite or expreacher, whom is attemplting to survive with as little feeding as possible.

I do agree with many of the other posters disciplines are fun but they do cost too dam* much blood.
Which is why I edited my files to make blood cost more inline with the P & P version.
An example most passive disciplines only need to be cast once a night, so an example of Auspex woudl only cost 1 blood to last all night.

haydox · Post by **haydox** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:06 pm

Acleacius wrote:I cansee why you would like the weapons, especially if you are using the Unofficial patch, well besides that I really think Troika did a great job on sound effects and feel of weapons.

Clearly you could have a actual Role going here as well as a nice changeup.
You could be playing as a very recentful Vamp, maybe a exHunter turned out of spite or expreacher, whom is attemplting to survive with as little feeding as possible.

I do agree with many of the other posters disciplines are fun but they do cost too dam* much blood.
Which is why I edited my files to make blood cost more inline with the P & P version.
An example most passive disciplines only need to be cast once a night, so an example of Auspex woudl only cost 1 blood to last all night.

I edited them as well, made Level 5 Auspex and Obfuscate last 200 seconds for my Malk, i even changed the help text to say it lasted 200! I also altered levels 1-4, i made them start at 60 seconds for level 1 and go up by 35 until i hit 200. It makes much more sense to use Auspex now as you can benefit form the Ranged feat boost for more than one enemy!

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:30 am

haydox wrote:I edited them as well, made Level 5 Auspex and Obfuscate last 200 seconds for my Malk, i even changed the help text to say it lasted 200! I also altered levels 1-4, i made them start at 60 seconds for level 1 and go up by 35 until i hit 200. It makes much more sense to use Auspex now as you can benefit form the Ranged feat boost for more than one enemy!

Alternatively, you could just set the blood point cost to 0 and turn on "Auto Renew Disciplines" in your gameplay options. Constant Auspex, no loss of blood.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:39 am

That maybe possible now or maybe I am just confused, but orginally if you set it to 0 it would still use 1 bloodpoint or maybe you found a way. Anaximander?

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:46 am

Crap. No, you're right. I just forgot that the auto renew option makes it use a bloodpoint even if you set the cost to 0. My mistake.

I suppose you could set the blood cost to 0 and the duration to some really high number. If I remember correctly, the PnP mod does this with Fortitude.

haydox · Post by **haydox** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 10:28 am

I knew i could set it as auto renew, however saving and changing location with disciplines active can often make it crash.

Also, i feel like i would be cheating a little if i made it auto renew as i would be invisible and have amazing defense, ranged and the 'aura-vision'!

Gorgul · Post by **Gorgul** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 1:11 pm

sofei u don't have to use them if u don't want...but as a nosferatu u may need it if u don't want the police running around shooting u

and btw if u don't want them anymore go to the console...type vstats and sell them at least u get some extra xp

Jhereg · Post by **Jhereg** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 5:25 pm

sofei wrote:But I am at the Hell ... Hotel Hallowbrook now and I am doing just fine again.Ok you are both right that the disciplines gives you more options and can make the game more interesting but you can easily play the game without them as well. Maybe it is because I enjoy using the weapons more..I will play the game when I finish it with another character(don't know though if there is a character better than a malcavian) and I will use the disciplines more to see the differences.

Oh, there are differences all right. I played 14 games with mixed disciplines - that is, I customized them with cheat codes right off the hop. Even using the exact same clan, same sex and same playing style, I found that just having different disciplines than the ones that come naturally to that clan changed the way I had to play the game drastically. Even changing just one. My first switcheroo, I swapped out Auspex (which I hardly ever use anyway) for Obfuscate. Wooooooowwwww. What a difference. It got so weird and crazy that I just stopped doing it.

Olympus · Post by **Olympus** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:41 am

Anaximander wrote:Crap. No, you're right. I just forgot that the auto renew option makes it use a bloodpoint even if you set the cost to 0. My mistake.

I suppose you could set the blood cost to 0 and the duration to some really high number. If I remember correctly, the PnP mod does this with Fortitude.

Or you could use the blood cheat and type 'blood 10000' into the console. (which gives you 1000 times as much blood as the maximum on the side bar indicates(Which is 10 bloods when maxed out I believe).
that should last a while

sofei · Post by **sofei** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:33 am

First of all thank you all for replying. Secondly I have just finished the game and I want to start a new one. I want this time to use my disciplines more so as to see the difference. I am thinking of playing a gangrel because animalism sounds cool(although the girl is not as hot as the malcavian

). So I want to ask you a couple of questions:

1. Does the think with the frenzy is going to be annoying? What’s your experience on that and

2. Would you suggest another character that has better disciplines? And by saying better I don’t mean necessarily more powerful but more fun to play with. (I consider fun dementation and animalism.)

Jhereg · Post by **Jhereg** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 5:38 pm

sofei wrote:First of all thank you all for replying. Secondly I have just finished the game and I want to start a new one. I want this time to use my disciplines more so as to see the difference. I am thinking of playing a gangrel because animalism sounds cool(although the girl is not as hot as the malcavian ). So I want to ask you a couple of questions:

1. Does the think with the frenzy is going to be annoying? What’s your experience on that and

2. Would you suggest another character that has better disciplines? And by saying better I don’t mean necessarily more powerful but more fun to play with. (I consider fun dementation and animalism.)

1. All the time I've played, I've never been able to frenzy - even when I deliberately tried to.

2. If Gangrel sounds cool to you, then go for it. You're in this for the fun, not the science.

Coruel · Post by **Coruel** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 6:05 pm

If you like animalism and want to experience some different type of play you can also try to play a Nosferatu.

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 6:35 am

Discplines, in the Pen and Paper, don't really cost as much as they do in the game, aren't used anywhere near as often and are generaly very different in what they do... And in that regard, I didn't use them often either. However, you and I differ in one matter:

I never turned Obfuscate off.

Obfuscate level 5 is like a tiny God. Stealth kills on everyone, drink the last man alive. It's a shame it doesn't work on bosses, but really, you can kill people in the street with a stealth kill right next to a cop looking directly at you and have NO police hunt and NO masquerade breech. It makes breaking into the musem and walking around the Dane a cake walk. Heck, even the sequence where you are climbing the tower to meet the prince for the last time becomes laughable... 10,000 swat members falling through the roof shooting guns? Sure, in theory, but really it's just 10,000 confused looking guys sailing into a room and asking: "Why the hell did we just do that?"

Jhereg · Post by **Jhereg** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:08 pm

pennypincher wrote:Heck, even the sequence where you are climbing the tower to meet the prince for the last time becomes laughable... 10,000 swat members falling through the roof shooting guns? Sure, in theory, but really it's just 10,000 confused looking guys sailing into a room and asking: "Why the hell did we just do that?"

:laugh: What a beautiful image! I got that picture in my head and now it won't let go. For me, by that time my character usually is Sneak 8 or 9 and in a dimly lit cafeteria, 25 SWAT or no, I just top off myself and my Odious Chalice, slaughter whatever remains, and head upstairs for dessert. I mean, really! SWAT troops at night with thermal imaging goggles? Can they even spell room temperature? We vamps can see in the dark unaided. Not even a decent contest. The buffet was pretty good, though... Lots of young, strong virile guys? Tres tasty. My compliments to the chef. The cafeteria is the perfect place for that encounter.