Simple vampire special

Izaak wrote:

The discard phase action is the least utilized resource by most players.

This is a false assumption. Every player I know discards a card almost every turn, unless they already have a hand that satisfies them. The discard phase is never used to discard a useful card and hope to draw into a better one. It's used to discard a less useful card in the hope of drawing a more useful replacement.

Alot of it has to do with the fact that losing a card with uncertain gain is counter intuitive. This vampires special basically gives you the option of doing the best discard possible each turn instead of having to guess at which discard is the best, that makes it strong imho since cardflow is one of the most important parts of the game.

As Ohlmann pointed out, the only thing that this special prevents is that you discard a less useful card and replace it with an even less desirable card. Preventing that is kinda cute but also rather cornercase.

Also, the special doesn't get rid of an undesirable card by any means. It just removes the even less desirable card. Regardless, the actual effect is in both cases that you are effectively playing with handsize 6 until you get another discard phase action.

I'd value it as a "flavor" special that is probably more suited for a Tremere or a Follower of Set instead of assigning it a point cost and downgrade the vampire accordingly.

I disagree, if you look at the powercreep of potential cardreplacements it would be 1. replace with any card you want -> 10. replace with random card from the deck. The rest should be somewhere inbetween.

There is also the cardflow of other players turns to consider and optimizing your hand each turn to the best possible replacement from your DPA is good imo. If you're totally satisfied with your hand at any given moment and skip your DPA you need to think about what possible cards are available and compare them to the cards in your hand, in most cases this means you should probably be discarding and looking for that villein/giants blood combo. Being able to chose your discard with knowledge of the replacement makes the DPA a resource without any drawback, which imo is strong.

I'd agree with Juggernaut that it's value is about 0 - 0.5 points worth.

0 if the vampire has got some unusual discipline spread, 0.5 if they've got a solid all in-clan or otherwise complementary set of disciplines.
So for the op vampire, plus 1 level of (for example) and no other change would be fair if fairly pointless, or plus 1 level of and (eg) -1 intercept against Tzimisce.

Myrdin wrote:

I disagree, if you look at the powercreep of potential cardreplacements it would be 1. replace with any card you want -> 10. replace with random card from the deck. The rest should be somewhere inbetween.

I don't understand what you are saying here. It may be because I am not a native english speaker.

Myrdin wrote:

There is also the cardflow of other players turns to consider and optimizing your hand each turn to the best possible replacement from your DPA is good imo. If you're totally satisfied with your hand at any given moment and skip your DPA you need to think about what possible cards are available and compare them to the cards in your hand, in most cases this means you should probably be discarding and looking for that villein/giants blood combo. Being able to chose your discard with knowledge of the replacement makes the DPA a resource without any drawback, which imo is strong.

That part is perfectly understandable, however, and is what would be called in french a smoke of screen :
* You can fish for a villein / giant blood combo exactly as easily with regular DPA than with this special.
* Discarding a card with knowledge of the replacement have exactly the same drawback as regular DPA : you must discard a card, just with a bit more choice. You can't even replace the drawn card on top of your library if you regret the action !

Ohlmann wrote:

Myrdin wrote:

I disagree, if you look at the powercreep of potential cardreplacements it would be 1. replace with any card you want -> 10. replace with random card from the deck. The rest should be somewhere inbetween.

I don't understand what you are saying here. It may be because I am not a native english speaker.

Myrdin wrote:

There is also the cardflow of other players turns to consider and optimizing your hand each turn to the best possible replacement from your DPA is good imo. If you're totally satisfied with your hand at any given moment and skip your DPA you need to think about what possible cards are available and compare them to the cards in your hand, in most cases this means you should probably be discarding and looking for that villein/giants blood combo. Being able to chose your discard with knowledge of the replacement makes the DPA a resource without any drawback, which imo is strong.

That part is perfectly understandable, however, and is what would be called in french a smoke of screen :
* You can fish for a villein / giant blood combo exactly as easily with regular DPA than with this special.
* Discarding a card with knowledge of the replacement have exactly the same drawback as regular DPA : you must discard a card, just with a bit more choice. You can't even replace the drawn card on top of your library if you regret the action !

What I meant is if you look at what the most powerful replacement for a discard would be (i.e. chose a card to replace with) vs. the current DPA.

The biggest difference is that if the replacement is something you do not want, you can discard the replacement and leave your original hand the same. So fishing for cards is easier and less risky. There are two main problems still though, one is that you can replace with a 1shot card you want at a later time and don't want to discard, or you are afraid of running out of cards to finish the game, both of which fall into the problem of deckbuilding rather than hand-optimization.

Myrdin wrote:

The biggest difference is that if the replacement is something you do not want, you can discard the replacement and leave your original hand the same. So fishing for cards is easier and less risky.

Stop with that. It's 'less risky' in the odd case where you discard a useful card, while having 6 even more useful cards, to draw one you don't need. It's just a rare occurence that I am willing to risk in any game, and usually mean I am in good shape anyway.

It may be psychologically better. But if you know what you're doing, this special do almost nothing. Maybe more than what would do the special of the skindoctor Morrow, but not by much.

Ohlmann wrote:

* Discarding a card with knowledge of the replacement have exactly the same drawback as regular DPA : you must discard a card, just with a bit more choice. You can't even replace the drawn card on top of your library if you regret the action !

The difference is that with a regular DPA you can end up with a worse card then the one you discarded so you need to actually think about using or not using it. Drawing a card, on the other hand, will never make your hand worse. The only reason to ever not draw a card is that you either have the best theoretically possible hand or you're running out of library.

That said, it's a useful special but not so useful that I would choose it over better disciplines.