On Parity Shift 6. "problematic card".

bakija wrote:

CON

Parity Shift is and always has been an incredibly overpowered card. A 10 pool swing (your prey loses 5, you gain 5) for what involves incredibly minimal set up effort ("Hmm. How do I get low on pool? I know! I'll bring out more powerful, huge vampires!") is ridiculous. And always has been.

Along with it being insanely overpowered, it also is one of the cards that makes playing, well, most vote decks that aren't Camarilla/Parity Shift based completely pointless. 90% of all attempts to build vote decks end at the "Huh. But why aren't I using Camarilla and Parity Shifts to do this?"

Yes. It requires a Prince/Justicar. Yes. It requires you to have less pool than your prey/target. Both of these conditions are incredibly minor conditions; Princes/Justicars are easy to get into play. Having less pool than your prey is easy to do either through shenanagins (Secret Horde; Gird Minions; Assault Rifles; whatever) or simply by getting big vampires out. Heck, if you have more pool than your prey, just steal 5 pool from someone else!

Parity Shift was a horrible idea when it was printed. It is a horrible idea now. It is insanely overpowered. It makes an entire strategy branch neutered before it even starts if the attempt to start it involves using something other than Parity Shift. If Parity Shift didn't exist, *soooo* many other vote strategies would look so much more attractive and competitive.

Killing it seems completely reasonable to me. It is one of the three cards I'm most invested in seeing something happen to (none of which are Villein, which while I'd like to see get a tweak, is less of a problem for the game as a whole than Parity Shift is, for my money). If it isn't going to get killed outright, reducing its power would be completely reasonable--make it steal X pool, where X is the number of players in the game, where X is no more than 3. Then it is doing the same damage as a KRC to one person, and you get an extra bonus of gaining 3 pool for the extra costs. Still incredibly powerful, but significantly less so.

This analysis is the best that I've seen, and one of the things that Bakija and I agree on *exactly*.

Really, the only possible non-ban fix that could ever be implemented to Parity Shift would be "One Per Methuselah". If you're going to leave the card on the playable list, nothing else is a reasonable fix, given how ridiculously powerful the card is.

Note that even one per deck is still pretty strong, but it's within the power level of other cards like Govern, Conditioning, Banishment, etc etc, so it makes sense to make it OPM.

(At the risk of being yelled at, OPM is the proper fix for Pentex Subversion and Direct Intervention, too.)

KevinM wrote:

(At the risk of being yelled at, OPM is the proper fix for Pentex Subversion and Direct Intervention, too.)

(I'll point out that the three cards that I think need to be fixed more than any others are Parity Shift, Pentex Subversion, and Direct Intervention. As they are both overpowered *and* negatively affect the game environment in ways that aren't specifically the result of just being too powerful--Parity Shift makes too many other deck strategies pointless; Pentex makes too many other deck strategies pointless; DI makes the game too much of a crap shoot as anyone at the table can foil your oust lunge at any time. Villein is too powerful, but mostly it just means you need to play Villein instead of Minion Tap.)

Agree with bakija; personally I would fix X at 2 or 3 and leave the card playable.

Dorrinal wrote:

Agree with bakija; personally I would fix X at 2 or 3 and leave the card playable.

The reason that I don't like that solution is that it's too difficult to explain to players who are unaware of the card change.

"[Card name] is 'once-per-methuselah' now" is simple, direct, and everyone knows what it means instantly, with no discussion required.

You could make those three cards I spoke of "once per game" and that'd likely be fine, too.

Ashur wrote:

... although I think the Sabbat should get a similar card.

Really?
Like all animals need to be equal?
Sabbat has gazillion cards available for the, and even more if you count Black Hand. Should Camarilla have their own versions of these?

Why not make PS for independents and Laibons while we're at it?


Sheeesh!