Submission: Blood of the Elders

Blood of the Elders

+1 stealth hunt action. Move 1 or more blood from an older uncontrolled vampire you control to this vampire. If you move more than one blood, you may search your hand, ash heap or library for a Master: Discipline card and move it to this acting vampire.

Game Need: This would give bloat decks another way to spend pool by pulling it off uncontrolled vampires. Making it a hunt action makes it usable by a vampire with 0 blood which makes it an interesting option.

WoD reference: none that I know of, but it fits within the theme of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, in which a vampire can gain power by drinking from her elders.

direwolf wrote:

Blood of the Elders

+1 stealth hunt action. Move 1 or more blood from an older uncontrolled vampire you control to this vampire. If you move more than one blood, you may search your hand, ash heap or library for a Master: Discipline card and move it to this acting vampire.

Technical nitpick: you don't control an uncontrolled vampire. I know what you mean, though. "... in your uncontrolled region" would be fine.

I quite like the idea - a discipline tutor that 'costs' a pool, with a little mechanical flavour to it. I'm sort of wondering what it might look like in a breed-boon deck - add a few and you can turn a few of you obf/dom/pre/whatever (pick one) weenies into having the superior, without using up your master phase actions. And breed-boon is one of the decks that typically has enough pool spare to pay for this. I'd be interested to see how it worked out, though, and maybe, possibly add a "Requires a unique vampire" clause to it if it broke things.

direwolf wrote:

WoD reference: none that I know of, but it fits within the theme of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, in which a vampire can gain power by drinking from her elders.

In WoD terms, the straightforward method for that sort of thing is diablerie. Weird, mystical things do happen, though e.g. blood-cursed Assamites would collect blood to advance their powers, given they couldn't diablerize anyone. And obviously there's scope for a whole lump of narrativium meaning that a Storyteller lets you do something.

In WoD terms, the straightforward method for that sort of thing is diablerie. Weird, mystical things do happen, though e.g. blood-cursed Assamites would collect blood to advance their powers, given they couldn't diablerize anyone. And obviously there's scope for a whole lump of narrativium meaning that a Storyteller lets you do something.

The World of Darkness takes a lot from the Vampire Chronicles. I was making the distinction that in the VC, vampires gained power (Generation/Blood Potency) simply from drinking from elders rather than having to completely drain them and suck in their soul.

At the same time, I get upset in vampire fiction when a vampire must, or is compelled, to KILL each and every night. In the VC, vampires generally kill every night, frequently multiple victims, and drinking without killing is a difficult feat.

One of the things that makes sense* about the World of Darkness is that vampires can feed without killing and that is considered the norm. Also the vampire population rate of the WoD is MUCH greater than in the VC.

*as much as the living dead with fangs drinking blood can make sense.

direwolf wrote:

The World of Darkness takes a lot from the Vampire Chronicles. I was making the distinction that in the VC, vampires gained power (Generation/Blood Potency) simply from drinking from elders rather than having to completely drain them and suck in their soul.

In the oWoD, as distinct from other vampire mythology, vampires are somewhat careful about drinking from their elders - or other vampires generally - assuming said vampire is going to stay alive, because it creates blood bonds(*). You usually only need to do this a few times for the complete bond to be established. It's three normally, though there's obviously potential for story-based considerations to tweak this either way.

It obviously can have positive effects, though. In V:TES, the okay-ish-but-not-really Vial of Elder Vitae exists as one expression of this.



(*) Some nefarious sires bond their childer before they know better. The Tremere are all one-step bound towards other important Tremere, as part of the clan weakness.

Hmmm in the WoD there is quite a few sample of situation where a young vampire receives temporary benefits from drinking from very old vampires (one among else: in chicago by night background book the caitiff maldavis is said to have received supernatural powers as receiving blood from the chicago primogens : inyanga/khaled/tyler...)
However technical effects were neither truly described or very very rarely (during a scenario of the chicago chronicles some neonated receive blood from an elder brujah: critias and gains temporary levels in potence, in the giovanni chronicle blood of a methusaleh is said to be able to give an incredible power and so on...)
In the masquerade liveplay and later supplements, elder vitae was daid to be able to rescue a vampire from torpor, it was almost the only thing to be able to do that except some necromancy ability and ... time (as a vampire naturally went out of torpor on a time lapse depending on their humanity or path of enlightnment advancement)...

but even the notion of elder is kinda confusing between vtes and the rolegames.
Vampire rolegames considered elder a vampire of more than 300 years approximatively however "power" of the blood was sometimes considered more by the generation of the vampire (caine is first generation, his childe second and so on... most players were playing vampire between 7th and 13th generation).
Vampires with low generation could resist naturally domination powers of vampires of "higher" generation, they could also heal quickier, have more blood in their bodies and be able to quickier and more strongely increase their physical abilities without even the use of discipline.