A Change to Deflection: Case Study

Kevin's OP was asking about a theoretical change to the game environment.

As to why, Boris the Blade summed it up perfectly:

Non-existant user wrote:

The only problem is that the same discipline has Govern, Deflection and Conditioning.

Deflection is a problem because the same 3-cap dom weenie can bleed for 5, then wake and bounce a bleed for 5.

How would the environment change if Dominate bounce could never be used on an older vampire, even at DOM? (besides preserving the RPG parameters of the discipline?)

In it's current form I think it could promote a lot of Blood-Denial + Mid-bleed Combinations...

Personally I think Deflection is a card that should see revision, but I would prefer to punish the play of multiple Deflections in a row rather than each individual Deflection.

"Cost: 1
Burn X where X is the number of Deflections you have played since your last untap phase.
[same text as usual]"
(To help get around the usual Tremere Ankara Citadel shennanigans.)

let's go back to Jyhad version and make it cost a pool

Still worth it to deflect those small bleeds sometimes....

X = bleed amount would be way too expensive. Making the superior cost an additional blood might be appropriate.

Personally, I think Deflection is *mostly* balanced, due to the way it becomes completely useless once you get into the two-player phase of the game. That being said, it's still superior to the alternatives in almost all other ways.

I don't like the idea of making it cost additional pool. What makes it so amazing is not the lack of age restriction - it's that t doesn't tap the minion at superior, and essentially gives a vampire multiple extra actions directed at your prey while protecting your own pool. I think it could be unchanged, but if it were to be changed, I prefer the "On the Qui Vive" solution. Add the following text to Deflection, problem solved:

"A vampire may play only one Deflection between his or her untap phases."

That way, it'd still get played (and it should get played!) but people would also have to consider combining it with alternatives like Redirection as well.