Rebalancing ranged weapons

Actually melee weapons have the edge over guns in damage. They do more damage, like in background material. If you compare weapons with same pool costs and no additional effects you will see that guns have built in maneuver but melee weapons do more damage, f.e. magnum does 2R damage, bang nakh does strenght +2 which is at least 3 and more if vampire has more strenght than 1. For me it's balanced: maneuver vs. extra damage. There is no need to fix it.

chrisn101 wrote:

In the original thread , Self-Bias wrote:

I brought this up a while ago, but do melee weapons suck because celerity/guns work so well? Would melee weapons be better if guns only minimally benefit from additional strikes?

My basic answer is "not so much", to pretty much all of the suggestions that involve making guns worse - whether that's making guns limited in duration, making them do less damage in some circumstances (e.g. close range), making them only usable once per round / not usable with Celerity additional strikes etc.

The basic situation is that there are various pretty decent combat strategies in V:TES at the moment, whether for aggressive combat as the main string of your deck, short-chain combat, different favours of bruise-bleed / combat as a toolbox element, a handful combat cards as a surprise in your deck (e.g. the !Malk deck including 2 copies of Coma) etc. Picking some at random, these might include:

- pot/cel Immortal Grapple
- ...and various other forms of Immortal Grapple (e.g. weenie POT, Blood Brothers)
- Stick men
- weenie Fortitude or weenie Animalism
- Tzimisce using some Vicissitude (e.g. Tzimisce walls, Tzimisce bruise bleed)
- flung junk (I think Crimethinc: Bolachas Maria from October last year is hilariously awesome)
- various multi-rush decks, such as Tariq Rowan Ring
- Celerity guns and/or Auspex wall guns
- various wall decks that don't use guns, such as Howler walls with a chunk of Animalism

Possibly think of some interesting and fun decks, but which probably aren't super-competitive too:
- some amusing/precarious Ravnos Horrid Reality decks (which can use big guns, but might instead use Flamethrowers etc.)
- a variety of mild bruise strategies, such as including a small clutch of WWS and/or Targets to upset people who block you expecting to take 1 hand damage who are now taking three
- some Protean-based decks (although aggro-poke is tricky to carry off well).


Now, some guns are certainly very good now. But it's not at all clear that if you make guns worse that melee weapons will suddenly shoot up in popularity - because there are are a whole bunch of non-melee weapon strategies that will carry on working pretty decently. If Aus/Cel Magnums stops being a strong deck, it seems far more likely that the people playing it will switch to a different deck altogether than that they'll switch to an Aus/Cel Baseball Bat deck - because generic melee weapons will still suck compared to Immortal Grapple, to Stickmen, to weenie Fortitude, to weenie Animalism etc., and all the other strategies that are better than them right now.

On the specific point of limiting guns to once per round (particularly with Celerity), I'd also point to superior Psyche! Against a lot of decks (without incidental presses), guns won't mind much if their 'additional strike' comes from an actual additional strike or from reaching the press step, playing Psyche!, getting their maneuver back, and going again.


Additionally, on a point of "not making the game less fun for people" - if people currently enjoy their gun decks and those guns decks aren't themselves problematic in some way, torpedo-ing the gun decks is a good way to piss people off. There's almost certainly no problem with significant changes to cards/strategies if those cards and strategies are broken (e.g. some unstoppable bleed deck) or horrifically problematic for the game, but gun decks at their current strength do well without in general dominating the entire combat scene. It's just that they're generally better than any non-WWS melee weapon strategy - but probably pretty competitive compared to a bunch of other viable combat strategies.


If you want melee weapons to see more play, the better option is to make melee weapons better somehow. Maybe it's a generic rule tied to the "melee weapon" keyword. Maybe it's new cards. Guns get a maneuver, which - amongst other things - limits the vampire's ability to take damage somewhat. Perhaps, for example, melee weapons could do something similar but in a different way:
(*) Find a better wording for "...which is not a Weighted Walking Stick..." if you prefer.

Perhaps there could be an interesting option for melee weapons for decks that lack Celerity for the additional strike:

I'm not suggesting that either card would make melee weapons into a NAC-winning sensation overnight - but it strikes me as a better way to go than making guns worse.

brettscho wrote:

I not sure if you disagree with the idea posted (if so, no problem!), or if you are asking for clarification. If the former, then no need to read on. Glad you are enjoying the game as it is. But if you are asking for clarification on the idea that was suggested and is being discussed, then the essential concept is that guns (usually) save you cards by having a maneuver built into them and that melee weapons (usually) save you cards or actions because they can be equipped for free during the pre-range step of combat. Of course, the creator of this idea should step in and correct me if I've stated the idea incorrectly.

Glad people are talking about it, I'll be very curious to see what the VEKN designers have in mind (or if they reasonably decide to side step melee weapons for now)!

I get what is being discussed, it's just an inane discussion in my opinion. Would you rather pay zero blood/pool to get trumped by S:CE and Immortal Grapple, or pay >= 1 pool/blood to get trumped by S:CE and Immortal Grapple? The concealed weapon effect is not going to accomplish anything because most melee weapons are just too costly. Now, if the ideas was to give Bastard Sword a concealed weapon effect and also make it cost zero blood/pool, we'd be on to something...

TwoRazorReign wrote:

Now, if the ideas was to give Bastard Sword a concealed weapon effect and also make it cost zero blood/pool, we'd be on to something...

(Argh, misclicked. Retyping.)

Weighted Walking Stick already does basically that and is already very good. It most obviously turns up in Stickmen decks, but is found in a variety of other places too. It's already pretty good. This would just be a direct upgrade for such decks - instead of getting a temporary card for free, they get a permanent card for free.

That doesn't, to me, seem to be doing much to make the game more interesting, diverse etc., nor does Stickmen (in particular) seem in need of an upgrade like this.

For effects like this, I'd much rather see something go via library-based tech that can be tuned towards particular clans, sects, disciplines, keywords. e.g. a !Salubri/Valeren card that helps out, a card shared by the Nos and !Nos make use of their underworld information and contacts etc.