Striga/Maleficia

1up20x6 wrote:

As you said, all Hunting Grounds have the text. Not all Striga/Maleficia discipline cards do (in fact, aside from the masters, none of them do).

Barrenness
+1 stealth action.
[mal] Put this card on a vampire and untap this acting vampire. This vampire is sterile and his or her capacity decreased by 2 (to a minimum of 1). Maleficia is not a Discipline.
[MAL] Burn a vampire whose capacity is 1. Burn option.

Evil Eye
Do not replace until your untap phase.
[mal] [COMBAT] Cancel a strike played by the opposing minion as it is played (no cost is paid). The opposing minion cannot choose another strike and gets no strike instead. Maleficia is not a Discipline.
[MAL] [REACTION] Cancel an action card as it is played and tap the acting minion. Burn option.

Fractura
[cel] X is 0. Strike: dodge.
[str] This vampire gets X additional strikes each round. Those additional strikes can only be hand strikes. Striga is not a Discipline.
[STR] As [str] above, and this vampire gets +1 strength for remainder of this combat.

And so on. In fact, all cards which require Maleficia or Striga have this text. As do the cards which give Striga or Maleficia. So the first time a new player picks up and reads his Striga or Maleficia card that he wants to put in his deck he will clearly see that it is not a discipline.

Many things are not defined in the rulebook. Requirements such as Seraph or Flight have no definition in the rulebook. They don't need one. The only way they effect the game is by how they interact with other cards (most often by enabling said cards to be played).
The only traits which need to be defined in the rulebook are ones like Infernal, Anarch, or Red List which change how the rules of the game treat that vampire simply by being there.

@ Mael

Mael wrote:

1up20x6 wrote:

As you said, all Hunting Grounds have the text. Not all Striga/Maleficia discipline cards do (in fact, aside from the masters, none of them do).

Barrenness
+1 stealth action.
[mal] Put this card on a vampire and untap this acting vampire. This vampire is sterile and his or her capacity decreased by 2 (to a minimum of 1). Maleficia is not a Discipline.
[MAL] Burn a vampire whose capacity is 1. Burn option.

Evil Eye
Do not replace until your untap phase.
[mal] [COMBAT] Cancel a strike played by the opposing minion as it is played (no cost is paid). The opposing minion cannot choose another strike and gets no strike instead. Maleficia is not a Discipline.
[MAL] [REACTION] Cancel an action card as it is played and tap the acting minion. Burn option.

Fractura
[cel] X is 0. Strike: dodge.
[str] This vampire gets X additional strikes each round. Those additional strikes can only be hand strikes. Striga is not a Discipline.
[STR] As [str] above, and this vampire gets +1 strength for remainder of this combat.

And so on. In fact, all cards which require Maleficia or Striga have this text. As do the cards which give Striga or Maleficia. So the first time a new player picks up and reads his Striga or Maleficia card that he wants to put in his deck he will clearly see that it is not a discipline.

Huh, so it does. Sorry, I probably should've actually reread the cards first.

Nevertheless, this still creates the same problem - new players who own these cards know that Maleficia/Striga are not disciplines, but therefore have no idea how to play them. After all, all they know is you use the disciplines in the sidebar to play the card, and the card appears contradictory until looked at in retrospect.

Many things are not defined in the rulebook. Requirements such as Seraph or Flight have no definition in the rulebook. They don't need one. The only way they effect the game is by how they interact with other cards (most often by enabling said cards to be played).
The only traits which need to be defined in the rulebook are ones like Infernal, Anarch, or Red List which change how the rules of the game treat that vampire simply by being there.

I won't begin on whether or not requirements such as those belong in the rulebook because you're right, it would be ridiculous to include all of these definitions. But I do believe that these pseudo-disciplines should be for the aforementioned reasons.


@ Haze

Alright, I've actually slept recently and school is almost done for the year, so I'll be more reasonable and articulate in my argument this time.

Haze wrote:

1up20x6 wrote:

Haze wrote:

1up20x6 wrote:

I'm reading a Jyhad rulebook. It lists and shows all disciplines on the back. Now I'm reading a Legacies of Blood rulebook. It has an image of Jeremey MacNeil on the back with all of the card components labeled, including disciplines.

Any new player who tries to learn the game from the Jyhad rulebook is gonna have bigger things to worry about than Striga and Maleficia. it was so badly written.

What a wonderfully interesting opinion that has nothing to do with this discussion.

then why did you bring up the painfully out-of-date Jyhad rulebook? you said that it lists and shows "all disciplines" which is clearly false. the Jyhad rulebook does more harm than help for this hypothetical new player everybody's talking about.

Two conversation topics had been brought up in this thread before I entered it: the pseudo-disciplines and whether or not players had reasonable access to the disciplines names. I was trying to present the existence of this access from the beginning and the updated existence from the LoB rulebook and the reference cards. I realize that I probably should've been more clear with this.

There is a master who's name escapes me which counts as any discipline. A new player might try to use it to play Striga or Maleficia, which cannot be done.

maybe the new player might try to use Agent of Power to gain one level of his made-up discipline, Poop, which he's never seen before.
this new player could possibly read their Striga/Maleficia cards which clearly say "is not a discipline" before deciding whether or not to illegally play Agent of Power. If he's never seen a Striga/Maleficia card, then he'll never think of trying to play it that way in the first place.

Yes, I probably should've reread the cards before trying to defend my position. Nevertheless, I'm now backing up the similar argument said above, "new players who own these cards know that Maleficia/Striga are not disciplines, but therefore have no idea how to play them. After all, all they know is you use the disciplines in the sidebar to play the card, and the card appears contradictory until looked at in retrospect."

As you said, all Hunting Grounds have the text. Not all Striga/Maleficia discipline cards do (in fact, aside from the masters, none of them do).

wrong wrong wrong.
every single card that requires or has this text.
why are you not reading the cards we are discussing?

A lack of time, mostly.

The main point is that these are not disciplines when they seem as though they should be to a new player. You don't need to go into a 40-page description of every card that requires the disciplines in the rulebook, you simply need to write that they are pseudo-disciplines, and possibly explain how to play them for clarity.

the cards themselves say they are not disciplines.
you play them like any other card with requirements.
if needed, one could go to this page for more clarification, and also learn about that Research Area doohicky that isn't explained in the rulebook either. because the only cards that interact with the Research Area are the ones that have cardtext about the Research Area.

The only problem here is the tautology of the situation - the requirements to play the cards are unknown to anyone who doesn't already have the means to play the cards.

Oh, how clever. You used yet another example that still does not in any way affect the topic at hand. You get a gold star!

"Whenever the cards contradict the rules, the cards take precedence."

Since the topic at hand is "cards that have text on them that break the rules" I figured it was very relevant. I've seen people who've played the game since 94 make assumptions about cards because they didn't bother reading them fully. Just like how YOU made assumptions about Maleficia & Striga cards because you didn't read them.

Pretty accurate, yes. I'll retract my pointless statements such as that one.

If you have some form of brain injury that prevents you from forming long-term memory, I apologize in advance. Otherwise, I am confused as to why you cannot remember the point you had made in your last post, which had nothing to do with Striga/Maleficia, and instead dealt with the availability of the names of the disciplines.

Woah, a passive-aggressive accusation of brain injury! Watch out, we're dealing with a real badass over here!

You're right, that was quite uncalled for. I'll try to keep things more argumentative and relevant in the future.

The point here is that the cards were designed so that players could play "match the icons" for requirements such as Clans and Disciplines, regardless of actually knowing the names of the icons.

The rulebook does not list all these icons found in the game, and maybe they should be added or maybe not, but that doesn't stop new players from quickly understanding how to play most of the cards in the game. Striga and Maleficia are completely intuitive when played normally by using the related master cards, and are confusing when trying to break the rules with specific cards such as Ian Forestal, Agent of Power, Inceptor, etc. Thankfully, every single Maleficia & Striga card has text to give us a ruling on this. (NOT A DISCIPLINE. IF IAN FORESTAL IS PLAYING THIS CARD, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200)

(My emphasis added)

This is the problem - the cards are completely unintuitive to players who don't already know how to play them. New players can't easily figure out what these strange non-disciplines are while players who already know how to play them see them as intuitive, and therefore not needing explanation.

It's far more likely that a new player would be confused over Caitiff not counting as a clan, despite this being mentioned in exactly one line of the rulebook but nowhere on any cards. it's even worse because cards like Con Boon and The Embrace treat Caitiff differently. and they might also be confused by Flight having its own icon. It's not difficult to play the Flight cards, but you wouldn't know if it's a Discipline, Clan, or Trait without seeing it on a vampire, because its icon design is unique. These are examples where common sense AND the rulebook fails the new player.

A very good point about Caitiff, but I feel that the pseudo-disciplines are, while not equally confusing, at least on a similar level until the specific Master cards are seen. As for Flight, I honestly still have no idea what it was, although judging from your explanation, I imagine it's a discipline (I used to think it was a trait).

I know the entire opening post was a bunch of rules lawyering, but it disguised itself with "think of the new players, because they can't use common sense here." Yeah, right.

I think that the problem now is not so much common sense, but the tautological argument given above, as well as the fact that simply adding the definitions to the rulebook (which has already been proven to need a redesign) would take minimal effort and could help someone in the future.

Requirements such as Seraph or Flight have no definition in the rulebook. They don't need one.

Flight originally told you how to treat the skill until changes in LoB. All the Bloodlines and at least one LoB Flight cards specifically stated on the card how to use them 'Requires a minion with flight.'

He's trying to state that the old cards were more consistent and actually told you how they functioned.

A new version of say Pounce doesn't tell you what it requires, the reference bar doesn't link to anything and that seems a little stupid.

All the disciplines and traits should be in an Appendix to the Rulebook. This is especially true of traits as the Rulebook doesn't cover them so Rulebook + card does not tell you how it functions.

The Rulebook specifically covers Clan and Discipline requirements of cards (but not Trait) so I don't know how you can expect it to be complete without something to tell you how to use Scobax etc.

Any card saying 'Str is not a discipline' just tells you how to NOT use it not how to use it.

It was a relatively weak (poorly designed) playtest fix.

Separate Note: Which set was the last set to Include Rules + Summary card in the starters?

1.5. Overview of Crypt Cards

Each of a vampire's Discipline symbols is in the shape of either a square or a diamond. A square-shaped Discipline symbol means that the vampire has one level of that Discipline, the basic level; he can use only the basic (plain text) effect listed on a card that requires that Discipline. A Discipline symbol within a diamond signifies that the vampire has an additional level of that Discpline, the superior level, and therefore may opt to use either the basic (plain text) or the superior (bold) effect listed on the card (but not both).

This would indicate that Striga and Maleficia are in fact disciplines. Treat them as disciplines when you play them. However, all Maleficia and Striga cards have card text stating they are not disciplines. That text does not change the requirements to play the card.

1.6.3. Minion Cards

In many cases, a minion card will have a Discipline symbol, a clan symbol and/or a blood cost; in these cases, the card can only be played by a vampire who meets the requirements.

There are other requirements for cards that are not stated by the rules, such as sect, titles etc. Why can't Chandler Hungerford play the Second Tradition? I can ignore "Requires a Prince or Justicar" because the rulebook doesn't tell me how to play a card that says that.

The card text " is not a discipline" does not remove the requirement that the vampire must have in order to play the card. The text is there to prevent Ian Forestal from having and to prevent "Agent of Power" or "Spontaneous Power" from granting . It prevents Pherydima from stealing with "Absorb the Mind."