combat rebalancing

Their corner case is in their requirements.

There are the following clans with Potence in-clan and hence likely to use IG:
Brujah
Brujah Anti
Nosferatu
Nosferatu Anti
Osebo
Guruhi
Lasombra
Giovanni
Blood Bro

There are the following clans able to use Death Seeker:
Salubri Anti

There are the following clans with Chimerstry in-clan:
Ravnos

The are the following clans with Animalism and Auspex in-clan:
Tzimisce

There are the following clans with Maleficia in-clan:
(None)


So yes, they are corner case in comparison with Immortal Grapple because they are comparatively difficult to access.

GreyB wrote:

S:CE as it is now, can practically cancel 2-5 cards, in many respects a lot better than DI or a Sudden Reversal.

Kinda. In practice, the better/more popular(*) combat decks have tended to evolve into:

- "definitely"(**) being able to smack you in the chops, so they're happy to play Torn Signpost up front

- not playing that many cards up front, such as, say, a Celeritous gun deck maybe playing a maneuver to top up the gun's maneuver when you annoyingly play Swallowed by the Night to come back to close. Or in a different way, an aggro-poke deck holding its Claw until after both players have chosen strikes

- short chain/very efficient combat. So even if you are playing cards up front, you're either not losing that many (guns feature here too, but so might - say - Stickmen), or you're playing cards that are super efficient (Carrion Crows is probably my favourite). Guns in a low maneuver environment can be fun because Psyche! can get you right back in there, with your built-in maneuver to use all over again.

Even a Torn Signpost pot/cel deck can be reasonably efficient up front, unless you see a lot of players packing a mix of maneuvers and S:CE. (Does happen, but not ubiquitous.)


A number of the less effective combat strategies tend to be the ones that rely on more cards up front to make themselves more useful, like having to go to range (without a nice gun to maneuver them), and play the strike, often with a cost, before seeing the S:CE. Or they're quite card intensive, such as - if they additionally strike - needing a strike card for each strike. And those are both relatively painful even in a world of little-to-no S:CE, because you can still dodge the strike and have DI-ed several up-front cards. Or they just have to use a lot of cards, like in the old favourite Mages on Speed - Thau/Cel, used to be considered fun back in the day, but blurring+2-3 Theft of Vitae is a tricky deck flow to manage.

Also, some of the less useful/less popular combat strategies require more effort for less pay-off (e.g. cards that are more expensive, cards that don't let you stack up a damage bonus easily on top etc.), using more complicated/more annoying crypts.


Thinking idly - because I mentioned Mages on Speed - I wonder what Thaumaturgy combat would look like in a world where there was some mechanism so that you could 'equip' some of the Thaumaturgy strikes somewhat like a gun.


(*) There are some strategies that turn up a bit, without necessarily being super awesome. Aggro-poke has a history of turning up a fair bit but being relatively easily countered, for example,

(**) Yeah, obviously, there are things decks can do to disrupt you with unusual cards. But you come in with a heavy-combat IG deck, you're pretty certain you smack people down.

Personal Spellbook
Equipment
1 blood (?)
Requires Thaumaturgy
As a +2 stealth undirected action that costs 1 blood and untaps the vampire, you may put a Thaumaturgy card from your hand on this equipment. The vampire with this equipment may use each Thaumaturgy card on this equipment once per turn as if it was in your hand.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Personal Spellbook
Equipment
1 blood (?)
Requires Thaumaturgy
As a +2 stealth undirected action that costs 1 blood and untaps the vampire, you may put a Thaumaturgy card from your hand on this equipment. The vampire with this equipment may use each Thaumaturgy card on this equipment once per turn as if it was in your hand.

I was trying to work out what it would look like in my head, and this is sort of in the area I was thinking, but the implementation would - I fear - cause other problems, principally around card ratios. How many do you have in the deck to pull it (with or without Magic of the Smith), and how reliable is it? The untap is a nice touch, though.

I was somewhat torn between three options:

1) A few specifically-designed Thaumaturgy "guns" - the name in my head is "ritual". That way, you can control (from a card design perspective) which effects get the permanent treatment. Like maybe you'd be fine with a perma-Theft or a perma-Soul Burn, but not so much easy access to a perma-Flames of the Netherworld, maybe. My concern here would be that you end up with the same problem guns have, which is that people don't like wasting the action on them. Maybe you could toss in a free untap, or an untap at the end of the turn type effect. Or maybe it could be a combo card (combat/action, say), but that feels annoying.

2) Something along the lines of Spellbook.

3) Something along the lines of the V:TES wording of Torn Signpost which was a strike granter, rather than a strength setter. So you end up with something like "For the rest of combat, this vampire can strike: steal some blood, usable at long range." Although that only really helps Cel/Tha decks, rather than just plain Tha.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Personal Spellbook
Equipment
1 blood (?)
Requires Thaumaturgy
As a +2 stealth undirected action that costs 1 blood and untaps the vampire, you may put a Thaumaturgy card from your hand on this equipment. The vampire with this equipment may use each Thaumaturgy card on this equipment once per turn as if it was in your hand.

As much as I think throwing out a bunch of new card ideas is not helpful to actually re-balancing combat because it is a distraction, here is another template idea for a card to make thaumaturgy combat better:

Thaumaturgic Ritual
Combat
1 pool
Only Usable Before Range is Determined
tha: Put this card on your vampire in combat with up to two combat cards that require thaumaturgy from your hand, ash heap and/or library. You may play these cards as if from your hand. When combat ends remove Thaumaturgic Ritual and any remaining cards on it from the game.
THA: As above, but up to three combat cards requiring thaumaturgy.

That ritual just ensures you burn through your THA Combat faster.
The idea that James was kicking around was something I've used before: Fast Wizards. I ran one using Menele and the Tremere with Cel. Drum of Xipe Totec was a part of it as well.

The biggest issue was: running out of combat cards. And considering that a number of those vampires with that skill set are Princes and 'proper old' vampires (8+ cap)... it is surprising that they wouldn't be able to stand around all day and Theft of Vitae.

I find cooking up card concepts to be a way of seeing if the game-need people might be seeing has a reasonably viable solution.