thoughts on the usage of keywords in Vtes.

self wrote:

so what say y'all? I personally feel that beyond titles, the one-off keywords or other traits of interest (+stealth, +intercept, +bleed, &c.) would be best incorporated in the main line, Bolded along with sect and title.

Discuss.

When teaching a new player, I feel one of the biggest strengths of the game is the relatively small number of keywords that need to be memorized. The hardest part is explaining titles, almost everything else in a given vampire's text box is a) self-evident or b) a trait which doesn't imply extra rules, e.g. Black Hand, Camarilla and so on.

As for the suggested re-formatting, I doubt that it's worth the effort.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

This should be transported across to ideas like "Immunity". If a minion cannot be affected by a card (e.g. Reactions), a strike (e.g. S:D), a type of card (e.g. Frenzy, Grapple, etc), a type of action (e.g. diablerie, enter combat actions, etc) and so on then they should be "immune to X".

Most of what you say about keyword is good, but this one stick as a bad idea, because neither on your blog or here you are able to define properly what is an immunity ; I do frankly believe you hide widely different mechanism behing the same "immunity" keyword, which is very bad.

For example, you say that immune to damage make damage not affect you, and immune to bloodhunt that bloodhunt cannot be called on you. It is two completely different thing ; if immunity worked the same, then either it would be impossible to inflict damage to a damage immune target (meaning you can't even play strike card), or that bloodhunt referendum does happen but do nothing to your vampire (including not being tapped by a Scalpel tongue played in the bloodhunt referendum and such).

There is keyword that are easy to do. Let's stick to that and don't try to make immunity too wide.

Ohlmann:
Immunity is actually a simple idea. If it will not affect the minion, then they are immune. Immune to non-aggravated damage, immune to aggravated damage, immune to grapples, immune to actions, and so on. It's actually must easier than you seem to think it should be.

You can declare a damaging strike against a target that is immune, but it will have no effect.

You can try declare a action on a minion that is immune to actions, but it will resolve unsuccessfully.

And so on. It's not that complex at all...

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

It's actually must easier than you seem to think it should be.

You alway say that and alway have conflicting examples. Your repeated unability to show it is easy is a proof for me that it isn't

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

You can declare a damaging strike against a target that is immune, but it will have no effect.

You can try declare a action on a minion that is immune to actions, but it will resolve unsuccessfully.

If it was the same thing, it should resolve successfully and have no effect. Also, what about action modifier on the action ?

Your example for Immortal Grapple is also problematic, not on a pure rule sense, but because it mean you can grapple an immune for the press. Which mean your vampire will be grappled, while the other isn't.


And neither do you don't resolve the inherent bloodhunt immunity issues.
For me, immunity should be only to damage, because damage immunity is well defined. The rest is on very shaky ground.

"Immunity to Grapple" would mean the Grapple has no effect when you use it with the other minion. So any card with the Grapple keyword will unsuccessfully resolve (meaning neither vampire is bound by the Grapple, there will be no press AND the next round of combat is NOT automatically close range).

"Immunity to bloodhunts" means that the vampire is immune to the results of the referendum. So the result of the referendum is redundant, if they would be burned it has no effect. If they would survive, that has no effect. It is as if the bloodhunt referendum never occurred.

If you choose to play action modifiers on an action that will not resolve successfully, then that's your own foolishness, just like declaring the action in the first place.

self wrote:

Take this, for example:

It's not the bold that makes your card easier to read, it is moving all the standard effects to the beginning so that the brain is not busy trying to understand the previous sentence when it comes to reading them. That, and go to the next line between two different effects if card space allows it.

Infernal is a keyword, though (i.e. it is used as a requirement or trigger by other cards in the game), so it should be in bold. +2 bleed is not.