Part of the reason for this is game balance. Think of the Cam as a really flexible MMORG with some specific rules. While it might be easy to get torches in real life, in the game that makes things not fun for all the players. You don’t have access to that “ability” within the game…

in requiem party stores and smoke shops no longer sell lighters, bars have no matches, and tiki torches are outlawed

while in forsaken…
silver jewlery stores don’t actually carry silver

while in lost…
that wraught iron fence isn’t really iron…

and in all of them, a sturdy metal tube designed to have high velocity shrapnel pushed out the end are ruined by, err, having high velocity shrapnel pushed through…

however a vampire that wants pure silver jewlry and prolly get as much as they want.
it gets even worse if you’re playing with jewlers or people who blacksmith in their spare time
“i’m sorry bob, the jewlery you, the person, made in an hour requires top and global approval for your character to have. ”

the point of a weakness to a common item is that its, well, common, and a weakness.

i’m surprised that wooden stakes and sunlight don’t require approval levels.

greg us200709635

Further, the attribute pool boost rule is just an example of the addendum covering for a problem that could be more reasonably fixed. There are dozens throughout the addendum.

Forsaken form bonus: patch to fix the fact that our draw mechanics suck

Forsaken success doubling on opposed gifts: again, patch to fix the fact that our draw mechanics suck.

I’m sure if i wanted to re-read the addendum and its 4 appendices, I could find more examples.

The bottom line is this: We want an addendum that reads like a settings document with relevant rules alterations, not like a list of patch notes from an MMO.

No one is going to say that the ST staff have not put in herculean effort to get us this far, but each step relies on each other step. Broken draw mechanics lead to xp glut to compensate. Broken draw mechanics + xp glut lead creative players to write and get approved custom mechanics to add even higher bonuses. Broken mechanics + xp glut + bad custom mechanics leads to patching as more and more loopholes are found and fixed.

We have to fix the base problems, then the more esoteric problems will be easier to handle.

#1, the message wasn’t to you, it was to the original post

#2 The Vitae thing i’m talking about is the one that they have highlighted as an example, about the physical augmentation.

The Geth have a discipline that allows people to come in with higher blood potencies then normal, thus, you can be BP 2 and walk in with BP 10. and being able to use your new blood pool to go off and waylay people at because you are able to go off plunge more more blood into physical attributes without a problem (say you have 2, you’d be able to pluge as much blood as possible to get 10 strength on top of your 5 vigor, 5 melee, specilization in swords, and your +4 sword with a +5 Legionaires blessing on it, which will give you a 35 on your damage roll, roll a 2, take 5 damage! Since we are damage capped at 5).

This limits that, so Strength 2 guy can only have a strength of 7 and not 10, to hack at you with his greatsword.

#3 My national addenda stuff was about the orignial post

Maybe I should start going off and saying “replyto original post” when I respond to this stuff.

I don’t know which particular rule you are talking about. But i was talking the rule that says the bonus to any physical attribute pool gained through the use of vitae has a maximum of +5 or your unmodified ATTRIBUTE x2, whichever is higher. As far as I know, a rule relating to vitae use to boost BP does not exist as you can’t boost BP with raw vitae expenditures.

Yes there are a number of powers that allow boosted bp on a temporary basis. Yes, some glorious cheese monster would gather up a coalition of persons with those powers to use them upon himself. However, if we want to emphasize balanced development, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply say that the limit of boost is the unmodified attribute x2 or include the bonus in any relevant bonus cap. My question was which was simpler, remembering an if/then statement or remembering a simple maxim? Or, simply include the bonus derived from the boost in the max bonus cap?

And, yes I have looked at the US addendum, and the UK one. Most of the items included in them are exactly what they should be, slight variations in approval levels. But the original topic was about the general and global addendum. I would be willing to be that looking at the various addenda, that most of the national ones are pretty much on target.

The issue comes when they include rules clarifications that make perfect sense, but aren’t added into the main addendum. The main addendum is the item being criticized. It probably does its job 50% of the time, but when it fails at it the other 50%, that doesn’t work.

That’s why it was NATURAL unmodified BP or +5. whichever is HIGHER.

Even in the oWoD, the UK (due to it’s size more then likely) tended to playtest things before it moved to hte US. Sure I”d like to see some fighting styles brought in over here that would fit my characters greatly.

I also see the need for various national addenda. If you actaully stopped and LOOKED at the US addenda, the only things the US addenda does further clarify things that people don’t understand (though there has been discussion about the interpetation of Ob and imbued items), or say that certain things are a higher or lower approval level in the US.

Technically, you can get away with going off and printing the US addenda without the Camarilla addenda and you’d still be fine.

We all wished we lived in the UK. Your addendum is like two pages. I skimmed it real quick. I agree with the resilience part too. I don’t care enough about obten, but i’ll just assume your clarifications are on point.

Clearly, as you said, most of it is spent describing approvals and approval level information specific to the UK. I would say that the UK Addendum works, and well.

The Form Bonus rule could be negated in all addenda if we could get a draw system that worked correctly. But, I also don’t blame you for not using it because it tends to make “Werewolf: the Forsaken” in the “Werewolf: What do I get to hit next?”.

Absent having to deal with stuff that could be handed off to global or is in “playtesting”, the UK Addenda is 90% or more of what they are talking about.

I’m not certain I agree with the specific suggestions offered here to improve it.

I waffle on the National Addendum issue. I feel it lives the National games more ownership and a measure of protection against particular rules in the GA that make less sense to affiliates. I know in Canada, the Status rules had to be modified just on the basis of *scale*. I may be playing the highest ranked Nosferatu in Canada with a mighty 2 Status, and there just ain’t that many players around if I wanted to get more.

Then again, most of the “protectionism” at the border doesn’t stem from the Addendum itself IMHO, so I’m not sure how much power the document really has.

David L.

We have 19 items in our addenda.

One is a limited scale playtest.

9 are things you don’t dispute we need – different approval levels due to country specific cultural issues, such as gun law.

9 are changes or clarifications which could be in a Global addenda. But the reasons for these vary – some are not in the addenda due to it’s length restrictions (our Obtenebration clarification). It doesn’t change any rules, but just saves us a ton of time and I put it there so I didn’t lose it on some list archive somewhere.

Meanwhile, other changes, such as the approval level for renown, change to resilience, Damnation City and NPC use restriction were introduced because of one of two reasons;

1. Because the needs of the Global or US chronicle differed from that of the UK chronicle – as an example, Damnation City merits weren’t cleared due to concerns of US VST workload and the difficulty of tracking the impact of the downsides of the merits. Jon was quite happy for me to clear them in the UK addenda to see how they work.

2. Because I think Global are just plain misreading a rule (resilience)

3. Because our smaller chronicle had encountered some specific abuses I wanted to stamp on which were either not seen as significant enough to merit a global change, or it was quicker and easier for me to throw it into the UK addenda.

In short – the UK reads our addenda. It’s available for people who proxy over. And the process for it getting approved involves 10 people, and needs a consensus of one (me). The process for getting something into the international addenda probably involves something in the region of 30, and needs consensus from the group as a whole.

I really don’t think a difference of 9 changes, which make the UK addenda move from ‘cultural changes’ to ‘addressing local problems’ is such a huge difference as merits enforcing a change.

For that matter, it’s currently not possible for that change to be enforced, due to the rules the UK works under.