Vlad Tepes Makes Third Tradition Progeny as the Justicar of a Non-Camarilla Clan

Bloodartist wrote:

Killiam wrote:

QUESTION: "Can Vlad Tepes perform Third Tradition: Progeny as the Giovanni Justicar, and will it result in GIOVANNI OFFSPRING?"

1. Yes conditionally. He plays it as a Justicar. not specifically a Giovanni Justicar.

I think this is wrong.
It has already been ruled by PB (as the rule director at the time) that Vlad can spoof any specific title (even baron of the ISS if you want). With this ruling, Vlad can spoof the title of Justicar of any clan (Giovani included).

And similarly with the fact that no list of city is written in the rulebook, no list of clan is written in it. Therefore, I think that Vlad could spoof the title of "Nerdy Justicar" if you want. I still believe it would have strictly no effect in the game right now but it could have if a card like that existed :

Puppet
Requires a non-sterile titled vampire
The acting vampire loose their title.
Put this card in play, it becomes a 1 capacity vampire with the lost title. If the title is attached to a clan and/or sect, this vampire is of this clan and/or sect.

EDIT : after all this discussion and rule diving, I am not so sure anymore that the progeny will not be Giovani. After all, Vlad spoofing a camarilla title is considered a camarilla vampire for the effects of the cards...

LSJ
28 janv. 2005, 03:41:07
à
Emmit Svenson wrote:
> But she's still non-Camarilla as far as the Closed Session is
> concerned, because it doesn't require a Camarilla vampire, correct?
It requires a Justicar, and therefore a Camarilla (since you cannot
be the former save that you are the latter).

I will wait for Vincent to finish his own rule-dive ^^

Bloodartist wrote:

Killiam wrote:

QUESTION: "Can Vlad Tepes perform Third Tradition: Progeny as the Giovanni Justicar, and will it result in GIOVANNI OFFSPRING?"

1. Yes conditionally. He plays it as a Justicar. not specifically a Giovanni Justicar.

Why can't he play it as the Giovanni Justicar? Consider the following two rulings:
1. Vlad can choose any title he wishes that meets the requirements of the card for his special ability. Source:
www.vekn.net/forum/rules-questions/76865-vlad-tepes-anarch-secession?start=0#89418
2. Justicar titles are considered unique titles, with each belonging to a clan. Source:
Rulebook, section: "6. Vampire Sects," subsection: "Camarilla," first paragraph.

I think we can conclude that Vlad's ability would allow him to play a card possessing a justicar requirement as if he had ANY ONE of the justicar titles, with there being one such title per clan. He is not pretending to be a Giovanni; he is pretending to be a vampire with the title of "Giovanni Justicar," and the card he played should recognize him as a vampire bearing that title, insofar as that card required a title and that title meets the requirement.

Bloodartist wrote:

2. No. Third tradition literally says "same clan as the acting vampire".

Yes, it does say that. This is the crux of the rules question: does being the Giovanni Justicar necessarily imply being Giovanni, and moreover, does the Third Tradition played get fooled by that implication -- not as the result of a clan requirement, but as the result of a title requirement, where the particular title just so happens to imply a clan?

Bloodartist wrote:

Vlad never stops being Vlad, or stops being Tzimisce. As Whisker said, he does not pretend to be specific clan. He can merely PLAY cards as if he had the required sect or title.

That's correct; he never stops being Tzimisce, nor does he pretend to. He merely PLAYS the Third Tradition as Giovanni Justicar. And it may well be that the Third Tradition ends up seeing him as Tzimisce. But clearly there is more than enough wiggle room here for it to come down to a matter of interpretation.
An official ruling is required to settle the matter so we can move forward. The ruling may go either way, and I'm not betting on either result; I just need to know because it affects deck design.

Bloodartist wrote:

Nowhere is it allowed to be a specific city or clan title.

The ruling I linked to says it's allowed to be a specific city:
www.vekn.net/forum/rules-questions/76865-vlad-tepes-anarch-secession?start=0#89418

Looking forward to getting an official ruling on this. Thanks to everyone for helping to lay out the arguments and hammer out details for the rules monger.
-Cheers

This is an interesting debate

First thing I would say is that the ability to fake a title does not give him the ability to invent a title.

Someone said that Vlad could say he is the prince of anywhere. I don't agree. He could be a prince faking an existing prince title. He could be Prince of New York as that title exist. But he could not be prince of Albacete as that prince title doesn't exist.

He can only fake existing titles. He can invent titles. He can't say he is de Lord of the Independents (a title that doesn't exist)

Said that he could not be Giovanni Justicar as that title doesn't exist. The title is not actually Justicar, but 7 titles of Justicar.

But about any other justicar titles.

Have a look at this example. You can be a vampire Tremere Justicar. Someone plays derange on you. You become malkavian. Being tremere justicar doesn't make you tremere again. Being Malkavian voids your title.

A title doesn't give you the underlying prerequisites. You still have to meet the prerequisites.

If you fake being a tremere Justicar and you don't meet the prerequisites, the title would be void and would not work. You would need another way to fake being tremere, so the title would not be void as soon as you get it. Even if it is temporary.

About being Independent and faking a Camarilla title, remember that Vlad fakes both the title AND the underlying sect, so he can meet the requisites of the title. Probably that's why they set that he could fake sects, so he could meet the requirements of the title.

If Vlad choses a Justicar tittle other than Justicar Tzimitze he looses the benefeits of the tittle so he won't be meeting the requirements to play the card

groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/c/L9D4GK0yNv8/m/H9vnUciv2psJ

Coyote wrote:

First thing I would say is that the ability to fake a title does not give him the ability to invent a title.

Someone said that Vlad could say he is the prince of anywhere. I don't agree. He could be a prince faking an existing prince title. He could be Prince of New York as that title exist. But he could not be prince of Albacete as that prince title doesn't exist.

The ruling for this, which came from Pascal Bertrand when he was rules monger, is official and not ambiguous: Vlad can spoof a city title for any city, including made up ones. The phrase "made up" is specifically mentioned.
Here is a direct link to that exact ruling:
www.vekn.net/forum/rules-questions/69627-vlad-tepes-regent?start=12#69732
Unless there exists a more up-to-date ruling that would override this, that's the final word.

Coyote wrote:

But about any other justicar titles.

Have a look at this example. You can be a vampire Tremere Justicar. Someone plays derange on you. You become malkavian. Being tremere justicar doesn't make you tremere again. Being Malkavian voids your title.

This is true of HAVING titles; when you no longer qualify for the title, it becomes inert, and if it would be contested, you are forced to yield. When your title is inert, the inert title does not allow you to play cards requiring that title.
This is evidently NOT true of playing cards AS-IF-YOU-HAD the title, as many rulings amply show -- and that makes sense -- if Vlad had to qualify for the titles that he spoofed, then he would not be able to play many of the cards that it has been ruled he can play. No Secrets, for instance requires a magaji, but it has no explicit sect requirement, so Vlad is not allowed to spoof the Laibon sect for the purposes of playing that card. As such, if your argument applied to Vlad's special, he would be playing No Secrets as an Independent vampire with an inert magaji title, which means he's not allowed to play the card in the first place. But it has been ruled that he CAN play No Secrets From the Magaji.

Coyote wrote:

A title doesn't give you the underlying prerequisites. You still have to meet the prerequisites.

Yes, it is a very important point that having a title does not give you its underlying prerequisites, and that to hold the title, you must have already met those prerequisites independently of having the title.
Of course, Vlad's special allows him to sidestep prerequisites for the purpose of playing the cards AS IF he had those titles in their NON-INERT form.
The question this raises is: does being able to play the card AS IF you had a specific title IMPLY to the card's text that it was played by a vampire possessing the underlying prerequisites? Maybe not.. that's for the rules monger to rule on. So the question here is not whether Vlad has the ability to spoof the prerequisites (HE CAN'T AND HE DOESN'T NEED TO IN ORDER TO PLAY THE CARD), it's a question of whether or not the card's text can tell the difference.
Of course there's another big question of whether or not naming the justicar of a given clan while playing a card in as AS-IF capacity carries with it the implication of belonging to that clan; that's also for an official to rule on.

Coyote wrote:

About being Independent and faking a Camarilla title, remember that Vlad fakes both the title AND the underlying sect, so he can meet the requisites of the title. Probably that's why they set that he could fake sects, so he could meet the requirements of the title.

Point of clarification: Vlad can only fake the underlying sect if the sect is named as a requirement of the card, per Vlad's card text. If the card names a title in its requirement but does not name a sect, then Vlad can only pretend to have that title; he does not get to pretend to belong to that sect. If, on the other hand, it turns out that the card text regards him as belonging to that sect anyhow because the title IMPLIES that sect, then we're on to something here.

I suppose one interesting possible outcome would be a ruling that says a card that requires a sect-based title also implicitly has a sect requirement to play (e.g. No Secrets requires Laibon because magaji is a Laibon title), in which case your last observation here would be spot-on. And if that were the case, a similar ruling might be made that a card requiring a justicar or inner-circle title implicitly has a clan requirement attached to it. But I am dubious as to whether such a ruling would be made, because then would Vlad be able to play such cards at all, given that he cannot spoof clan? Perhaps he could only play them as Tzimisce justicar/IC? What about cards that could be played either by a prince or a justicar -- do those cards carry an implicit clan requirement? Seems fishy, but still possible, I guess.

Thanks so much for all your attention to these fine details. Best wishes!

Draud wrote:

If Vlad choses a Justicar tittle other than Justicar Tzimitze he looses the benefeits of the tittle so he won't be meeting the requirements to play the card

groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/c/L9D4GK0yNv8/m/H9vnUciv2psJ

The ruling you have linked to only applies to possessing a title, not to playing a card as-if-you-had a title. If you read my response to Coyote, you'll see that I have laid out the distinction between the two cases in detail, and demonstrated that they operate differently, and that this difference is already codified in rulings.

Long story short, Vlad does not lose his ability to play a card with a title just because he does not meet the requirements of that title. If he did, he could not play No Secrets From the Magaji, because magaji requires Laibon and Vlad is Independent. But it has been ruled that Vlad CAN play No Secrets. (And no, he can't use his special ability to pretend to be Laibon in order to play this card, because No Secrets does not have a sect requirement; it only has a title requirement.)

Thanks for your attention to this issue. Cheers!