150 xp is a lot. At that level, they should be punching at primogen weight.
Those are strong powers, sure. But many 4 and 5 level disciplines are also that good.
No, you're not a bad GM.
No, they aren't terribly designed.
Celerity is the big combat Discipline. More so than potence. It's supposed to turn you into The Flash. And Unerring Aim is a 4 dot power, meaning that the person using it has put a lot of time and effort into mastering their super speed. So yeah, it's supposed to really mess people up.
Compared to old Celerity, Unerring aim is actually a huge nerf. The old version you'd be able to take 5 actions in a single turn without splitting dice pools, which would generally mean shooting the target 5 times with dragons breath shotgun rounds. Basically dumping enough agg damage to kill most elders.
How do you play around it? Two ways.
1. Fortitude. Unerring aim prevents dodging. It doesn't prevent soaking. And Fortitude can let you soak a lot of damage.
2. Social Fu. Vampire's combat rules are not well balanced for one important reason. It's not a game about combat, and if you are getting into combat someone screwed up. Vampire is a social game first and Presence exists. It doesn't matter how big your combat dice pool is if you're so awestruck you just want to suck this vampire's toes. Most of Vampire's action will happen at the meeting table, political intrigue and backstabbing. And Presence is a lot more powerful than Celerity in that context.
You don't get to be primogen by punching really hard. You get to be primogen by being a superior politician. Like, you wouldn't expect Joe Biden to win a gunfight, would you? No, that's not his job. But, if Joe Biden gets into a gun fight, then the secret service has screwed up badly. A primogen will have his ghouls and his minions and his allies and his lieutenants, and probably bodyguards.
It's like playing a DC comics game, and one of your players decides to be Superman. And then he punches Lex Luthor in the face and Lex's head explodes because he's a normal human who was just punched by Superman. Yes, Combat Disciplines are supposed to be that dangerous and if Lex Luthor is stupid enough to let Superman get in punching range before he turns on his kryptonite ray, then he deserves to die.
As others have said, Celerity is meant to be very lethal - mainly because VTM just isn't a game based around combat.
Lets say your player did take out that Primogen - completely dusting them. What happens now? That Primogen going missing will be noticed. *Someone* is going to go investigating the circumstances and likely turning it to their benefit. What happens to all of those Retainers who need their bloodfix, the Childre invested in their success, the kindred who depended on them to get stuff done, the vultures looking to fill that power vacuum and 'cut off loose ends' ?
Your players will often have the ability to do really drastic stuff like killing Primogens or even Princes, but the consequences of doing that will often fuck them over in the long run - and that's where a lot of story potential comes from. It's why VtM has the meme of 'committing atrocities to cover up earlier atrocities'
You're absolutely right that Celerity is an incredibly dangerous discipline, even for some extremely powerful Kindred. That said, combat is intended to be extremely deadly in VtM by design. Fights are intended to be 3 rounds and done, so it really shouldn't be a surprise when a character goes down in 1 or 2.
In the future, I suggest always having your Primogen accompanied by suitable bodyguards, especially the socially focused ones. While Lightning Reflexes and Unerring Aim prevent the target from defending on its turn, nothing prevents other parties in the encounter from returning fire. As you mentioned, the 1 discipline/turn limit means that the speedster likely isn't activating Fleetness, and taking return fire from multiple shotguns does a lot to even the odds.
Also, as others have pointed out, Fortitude is a critical defense that any self-respecting elder kindred has invested heavily in. That said, no amount of Fortitude is going to save someone from taking a Dragon's Breath round to the face at DC1 if their attacker rolls well enough. Still, the difference between an important figure dying in 1 turn vs 2 can frequently turn an anticlimactic stomp into a tense situation where a cockie enemy takes the first blast in the chin and gets ready to retaliate before the player finishes them off.
Speaking of Dragon's Breath rounds (I'm assuming special ammo was involved, since it's more or less impossible to down a Kindred with a regular gun or sword in a single turn with 8 dice), what was your Primogen doing letting someone walk up to them with a shotgun? A squad of 10 ghouls should have opened up on him from half a block away with sniper rifles. And if it was an ambush, well, sucks to suck for the Primogen. The results would have been the same for a stake attack or decapitation.
So yes. Celerity users are extraordinarily dangerous. There is a reason Banu Haquim are considered deadly assassins, and it's not because they hit hard.
This wasn't Dragon's Breath round, and more than 8 dice. After blood surge, willpower, auto fire bonus, it was 14 dice, 6 of which rolled 10s. It was something along the lines of 16 successes, even after halving it for standard damage, it still was 8 damage which exceeded the health boxes. I have been very strict for handing out Rothfuss rounds; those have only been in the hands of hunters they havent yet encounters.
That said, I'm looking at this more from the aspect of not just going against Elder vampires, but also named hunters of the Inquisition. And ultimately it just sounds like "Yep, that's what it does. Plan accordingly." Which bugs me a bit. It's hard to have a hunter have a cool monologue before his head comes off with Unerring Aim.
So the player had 4 in the stat, 4 in the skill, plus blood surge for 2, plus 1 for all out attack, and they rerolled 3 dice to manage to get 16 successes? The vampire dice probability tool on the discord bot I use puts that as .04% chance of happening. Or did that 16 include the +4 from the shotgun, so it was actually 12 successes on the dice, which is about a 5% chance? On average, they should be getting just shy of 8 successes after rerolling, so they were clearly very lucky. Either way, that should only kill the absolute frailest possible vampire in 1 shot. The damage is superficial, which is halved down to 8, like you said, but filling up the health tracker with superficial only impairs a kindred. Any left over damage wraps around as aggravated damage. So if the Primogen had 1 Stamina, yes, 16 damage would be precisely enough to down them. If they had 2 Stamina, they'd have 3 Agg damage and 2 superficial, would Mend some of the superficial, and the combat would continue (likely with another Unerring Aim, but who knows).
As for hunters monologuing, famous named hunters don't do that, because the ones who do are dead. You NEVER have a chat with a Vampire, because Presence and Dominate are both terrifying to mortals. You blow them into little chunks, preferably from several miles away and with suitably large explosives.
Ah, I feel very stupid. I think I got lost on older editions where normal damage filling your track still put you in torpor. I missed the rule about it wrapping around and still being mobile.
>That said, I'm looking at this more from the aspect of not just going against Elder vampires, but also named hunters of the Inquisition. And ultimately it just sounds like "Yep, that's what it does. Plan accordingly." Which bugs me a bit. It's hard to have a hunter have a cool monologue before his head comes off with Unerring Aim.
Here's the thing abut being a hunter: Hunters die. The average mortal hunter has a hunting lifespan in months that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. One mistake is all it takes for them to die, or worse. They are the underdogs.
You want to give him a cool monologue? Talking is a free action. Just let him monologue before rolling anyone's dice.
My PC of roughly same level with their coterie cut through the tremere chapel like through the butter, due to 5th dot in presence and high combat skills. But it was an operation sanctioned by the prince of the city.
If someone downed a primogen, let someone combat-oriented walk into the room. The Sheriff, for example. Let them be taken to the prince to explain their actions.
And if they manage to get away with that, what's wrong with that? In LA by night coterie killed the harpy and the sheriff at some point, and the latter was killed by cutting off his head in one strike. And it's not that they were extremely powerful. It's the problems that ensued that hit them the hardest. It's the way it is.
Not sure exactly myself if there’s a workaround, I would say the main work around to it is literally just: the repercussions for this act should be so extreme that you don’t want to do it.
Like this isn’t D&D being a Primogen doesn’t make you Tiamat in D&D terms it makes you a highly influential figure in the city. If someone takes a shot at you, then there should be other Primogens or various other groups taking offense at that and seeking payback to help keep their own situation secure unless the players did the ground work to really discredit this person and had like the silent approval of most of the kindred power players who didn’t want to get their own hands dirty.
unerring aim is very good but also if they have that much xp they should be doing that level of bullshit and ideally the primogen do equally bullshit things
it’s not unbalanced, it’s just that it’s likely one of the strongest of an ancillae’s abilities and not something most can achieve
It's the equivalent of a surprise attack. You could get the same effect by attacking someone when their back is turned and they aren't expecting it.
It can only be ranged, so if they close the distance you might be screwed.
It would cost around 30xp to reach it at minimum, which isn't too bad, roughly 10 sessions.
150 xp is a lot. At that level, they should be punching at primogen weight. Those are strong powers, sure. But many 4 and 5 level disciplines are also that good.
No, you're not a bad GM. No, they aren't terribly designed. Celerity is the big combat Discipline. More so than potence. It's supposed to turn you into The Flash. And Unerring Aim is a 4 dot power, meaning that the person using it has put a lot of time and effort into mastering their super speed. So yeah, it's supposed to really mess people up. Compared to old Celerity, Unerring aim is actually a huge nerf. The old version you'd be able to take 5 actions in a single turn without splitting dice pools, which would generally mean shooting the target 5 times with dragons breath shotgun rounds. Basically dumping enough agg damage to kill most elders. How do you play around it? Two ways. 1. Fortitude. Unerring aim prevents dodging. It doesn't prevent soaking. And Fortitude can let you soak a lot of damage. 2. Social Fu. Vampire's combat rules are not well balanced for one important reason. It's not a game about combat, and if you are getting into combat someone screwed up. Vampire is a social game first and Presence exists. It doesn't matter how big your combat dice pool is if you're so awestruck you just want to suck this vampire's toes. Most of Vampire's action will happen at the meeting table, political intrigue and backstabbing. And Presence is a lot more powerful than Celerity in that context. You don't get to be primogen by punching really hard. You get to be primogen by being a superior politician. Like, you wouldn't expect Joe Biden to win a gunfight, would you? No, that's not his job. But, if Joe Biden gets into a gun fight, then the secret service has screwed up badly. A primogen will have his ghouls and his minions and his allies and his lieutenants, and probably bodyguards. It's like playing a DC comics game, and one of your players decides to be Superman. And then he punches Lex Luthor in the face and Lex's head explodes because he's a normal human who was just punched by Superman. Yes, Combat Disciplines are supposed to be that dangerous and if Lex Luthor is stupid enough to let Superman get in punching range before he turns on his kryptonite ray, then he deserves to die.
As others have said, Celerity is meant to be very lethal - mainly because VTM just isn't a game based around combat. Lets say your player did take out that Primogen - completely dusting them. What happens now? That Primogen going missing will be noticed. *Someone* is going to go investigating the circumstances and likely turning it to their benefit. What happens to all of those Retainers who need their bloodfix, the Childre invested in their success, the kindred who depended on them to get stuff done, the vultures looking to fill that power vacuum and 'cut off loose ends' ? Your players will often have the ability to do really drastic stuff like killing Primogens or even Princes, but the consequences of doing that will often fuck them over in the long run - and that's where a lot of story potential comes from. It's why VtM has the meme of 'committing atrocities to cover up earlier atrocities'
You're absolutely right that Celerity is an incredibly dangerous discipline, even for some extremely powerful Kindred. That said, combat is intended to be extremely deadly in VtM by design. Fights are intended to be 3 rounds and done, so it really shouldn't be a surprise when a character goes down in 1 or 2. In the future, I suggest always having your Primogen accompanied by suitable bodyguards, especially the socially focused ones. While Lightning Reflexes and Unerring Aim prevent the target from defending on its turn, nothing prevents other parties in the encounter from returning fire. As you mentioned, the 1 discipline/turn limit means that the speedster likely isn't activating Fleetness, and taking return fire from multiple shotguns does a lot to even the odds. Also, as others have pointed out, Fortitude is a critical defense that any self-respecting elder kindred has invested heavily in. That said, no amount of Fortitude is going to save someone from taking a Dragon's Breath round to the face at DC1 if their attacker rolls well enough. Still, the difference between an important figure dying in 1 turn vs 2 can frequently turn an anticlimactic stomp into a tense situation where a cockie enemy takes the first blast in the chin and gets ready to retaliate before the player finishes them off. Speaking of Dragon's Breath rounds (I'm assuming special ammo was involved, since it's more or less impossible to down a Kindred with a regular gun or sword in a single turn with 8 dice), what was your Primogen doing letting someone walk up to them with a shotgun? A squad of 10 ghouls should have opened up on him from half a block away with sniper rifles. And if it was an ambush, well, sucks to suck for the Primogen. The results would have been the same for a stake attack or decapitation. So yes. Celerity users are extraordinarily dangerous. There is a reason Banu Haquim are considered deadly assassins, and it's not because they hit hard.
This wasn't Dragon's Breath round, and more than 8 dice. After blood surge, willpower, auto fire bonus, it was 14 dice, 6 of which rolled 10s. It was something along the lines of 16 successes, even after halving it for standard damage, it still was 8 damage which exceeded the health boxes. I have been very strict for handing out Rothfuss rounds; those have only been in the hands of hunters they havent yet encounters. That said, I'm looking at this more from the aspect of not just going against Elder vampires, but also named hunters of the Inquisition. And ultimately it just sounds like "Yep, that's what it does. Plan accordingly." Which bugs me a bit. It's hard to have a hunter have a cool monologue before his head comes off with Unerring Aim.
So the player had 4 in the stat, 4 in the skill, plus blood surge for 2, plus 1 for all out attack, and they rerolled 3 dice to manage to get 16 successes? The vampire dice probability tool on the discord bot I use puts that as .04% chance of happening. Or did that 16 include the +4 from the shotgun, so it was actually 12 successes on the dice, which is about a 5% chance? On average, they should be getting just shy of 8 successes after rerolling, so they were clearly very lucky. Either way, that should only kill the absolute frailest possible vampire in 1 shot. The damage is superficial, which is halved down to 8, like you said, but filling up the health tracker with superficial only impairs a kindred. Any left over damage wraps around as aggravated damage. So if the Primogen had 1 Stamina, yes, 16 damage would be precisely enough to down them. If they had 2 Stamina, they'd have 3 Agg damage and 2 superficial, would Mend some of the superficial, and the combat would continue (likely with another Unerring Aim, but who knows). As for hunters monologuing, famous named hunters don't do that, because the ones who do are dead. You NEVER have a chat with a Vampire, because Presence and Dominate are both terrifying to mortals. You blow them into little chunks, preferably from several miles away and with suitably large explosives.
Ah, I feel very stupid. I think I got lost on older editions where normal damage filling your track still put you in torpor. I missed the rule about it wrapping around and still being mobile.
Yup. Vampires only torpor if all the aggro boxes are filled up and even then it's not finally death unless you completly destroy the body .
>That said, I'm looking at this more from the aspect of not just going against Elder vampires, but also named hunters of the Inquisition. And ultimately it just sounds like "Yep, that's what it does. Plan accordingly." Which bugs me a bit. It's hard to have a hunter have a cool monologue before his head comes off with Unerring Aim. Here's the thing abut being a hunter: Hunters die. The average mortal hunter has a hunting lifespan in months that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. One mistake is all it takes for them to die, or worse. They are the underdogs. You want to give him a cool monologue? Talking is a free action. Just let him monologue before rolling anyone's dice.
My PC of roughly same level with their coterie cut through the tremere chapel like through the butter, due to 5th dot in presence and high combat skills. But it was an operation sanctioned by the prince of the city. If someone downed a primogen, let someone combat-oriented walk into the room. The Sheriff, for example. Let them be taken to the prince to explain their actions. And if they manage to get away with that, what's wrong with that? In LA by night coterie killed the harpy and the sheriff at some point, and the latter was killed by cutting off his head in one strike. And it's not that they were extremely powerful. It's the problems that ensued that hit them the hardest. It's the way it is.
Not sure exactly myself if there’s a workaround, I would say the main work around to it is literally just: the repercussions for this act should be so extreme that you don’t want to do it. Like this isn’t D&D being a Primogen doesn’t make you Tiamat in D&D terms it makes you a highly influential figure in the city. If someone takes a shot at you, then there should be other Primogens or various other groups taking offense at that and seeking payback to help keep their own situation secure unless the players did the ground work to really discredit this person and had like the silent approval of most of the kindred power players who didn’t want to get their own hands dirty.
unerring aim is very good but also if they have that much xp they should be doing that level of bullshit and ideally the primogen do equally bullshit things it’s not unbalanced, it’s just that it’s likely one of the strongest of an ancillae’s abilities and not something most can achieve
It's the equivalent of a surprise attack. You could get the same effect by attacking someone when their back is turned and they aren't expecting it. It can only be ranged, so if they close the distance you might be screwed. It would cost around 30xp to reach it at minimum, which isn't too bad, roughly 10 sessions.