Negative traits for Vampires

[MickeX]

I'm trying to figure on what points people disagree about the vampire team, and came to think of three:

1. Is it important to get a vampire team fielding several vampires into the official rules? I don't think so, but others may.

2. Should a vampire team be a major team, or an odd, underdog team? I'd prefer it if it they would be about as common as halfling teams are nowadays, for fluff reasons and because I think there is a lack of underdog teams in BB. Another reason is that there is always a risk of overpowering a new team - especially one with the kind of fluff this one has - and making a mistake in that direction is much worse than making in the other direction (underpowering it). Others may very well disagree.

3. Are the kind of important dice rolls we get in OFAB making things more exiting, or disturbing the game by deciding who wins in a few simple rolls? I'd say the latter, but then again, I'm among those who are sceptical about the most dramatic results in the KO-table too. Others like it more chaotic. (For those who wants several vampires on the team, it would be possible to solve this through replacing OFAB with less numbers, higher prices and double progression.)

4. Come to think of it, there may be a fourth one: to me, a vampire team is a nice chance to create a kind of team I'd like to see anyway, the "one super guy - rest crap"-team, lending the words from Morg. As long as it's a bit underpowered I think it'd be fun and interesting to play, and add some new tactical thinking to the game. But this too is a matter of taste.

5. Quoting Pariah, "I think the AG 4 is unnecessary. They should be AG 3." That's another possible difference. To me, it seems like a reasonable argument to get a team with several vampires without overpowering them.

6. Are Glory and Not worth it changing the game too much? To me that's an obvious risk, but I haven't really tried it out. I'm just a bit worried that every coach will have to learn some pretty specialized tactics to counter the vampire team. I don't want playing vampires to be too much of a different game compared to playing other teams.

Micke

[Darkson]

I just thought of a negative trait we can use.

Stake: Every member of the opposition team knows you're coming, and is kitted out with stakes (no, not the T-bone style Bob). If a vampire is ever "killed" on the injury table they are dead, dead, dead - no re-rolls, no nothing, just a smal pile of dust on the pitch.




And what happens if the weathers sunny, do the vamps cower in the dugout?

[Mestari]

Galak:
Your comparison is pretty far fetched and would perhaps indicate that you didn't read my original suggestion too carefully. The point is not the vampires going first, the point is about the ball-carrier making a daring attempt on his own before anyone else! With 1/2 chance of failing the roll, the opponent can easily prepare for that and make it more likely that the vamp will fail his glorious attempt, thus causing a TO and practically handing the ball over to them!


However, I must agree with MickeX that the MeMe-skill is not sufficient - because it restricts the team simply on offense - the team would be way too good on defense.
A modified suggestion below:

Me! Me!- skill (all vampires have this)
---------------
If the player is in possession of the ball in the beginning of the team turn, roll a d6. On 1-3 proceed as follows:
-The player declares either a blitz or a move action (coach decides).
-He attempts to move as far towards the opposing end zone as possible using all his movement plus any GFI squares he's allowed to take
-Every square he moves must move him one square closer to the EZ unless that's impossible, in which case he blitzes through or laps around.
-Coach is not allowed to move him into "traps" that prevent him from moving onwards

If the team doesn't have the ball, throw a d6 for the closest (to the ball) Me!Me!-player in the beginning of your turn: on 1-3 proceed as follows:
-if the ball is free, the player moves to pick it up using the shortest possible route, and then proceeds as if he failed the roll while holding the ball above.
-if an opponent has the ball, the player moves to blitz him using the shortest route possible. If the ball is released and free, he continues as above


"My massster"-skill (thralls have this)
-----------------
If the player is in possession of the ball in the beginning of the team turn and there is a Me! Me!-player within hand-off distance from the player, roll a d6. On 1-3 proceed as follows:
-The player makes a Hand-off action, moves next to the closest Me!Me! player and hands off the ball to him.


So my aim with the vampires would be:
-an underdog team with powerful players - underdog status achieved by making certain that about 1/2 of your turns begin with one of your vampires going insane with the lust for personal glory and starts attempting something that he'll probably fail.

About the complexity of the above rules: when you think about them, they're really not that complex:
1.Take the closest vamp to the ball or the ball-carrying player
2.roll a d6
3.On 1-3 move him either (depending on the situation)
....a)to hand of the ball to a vamp
....b)towards the EZ
....c)to get the ball

It's actually really simple. And it certainly restrict the effectiveness of the team!
Think about a ST team advancing in a cage with Guard players around: every second turn one of the vampires attempts to dodge into the cage and blitz the ball-carrier as their first action in a turn!

[GalakStarscraper]

Galak:
Your comparison is pretty far fetched and would perhaps indicate that you didn't read my original suggestion too carefully.

I read your original suggestion carefully and I was responding to this later quote:

The Greater Glory (for me) -skill, even though it is an excellent skill as such, is not sufficient to deal with the vampires.

What I'm basically trying to say is that I don't think we need an incredibly long wordy negative skill to balance the Vamps (both your skills and the ones from the MBBL2's Albion team are too long and wordy), AND I disagree ... I think it is sufficient to deal with the Vampires (thus my example about the Chaos team to put this in perspective).

Leave the team as it is in BB Mag #4 and just make the Vampires go first before the Thralls. Just leave it at that. I'm betting that this single change alone would have the desired impact.
1) Its simple (really simple)
2) It preserves a lot of the master/servant concept that seems to be supported in the thread.
3) Don't even need a special skill, just make it a team rule.

I just think the skills proposed before are too much. If you make the Vamps go first, I think you'll have the balancer and flavor without the complexity.

Galak

[Marcus]

My thoughts:

I've always thought that strategic negative traits (Take Root, OFAB) were far more of a copout than tactical negative traits. If a player has negatives I want them to take place on the pitch. The case with Vampires is somewhat ludicrous as all it means is that you just plug the gaps with thralls. I playtested the vamps + thralls team heavily under 3rd edition and I couldn't lose a game.

I'd like to see the following:

1 Lord
0-2 Vampires (Childer, if I may nick a bit of terminology from White Wolf)
0-14 Thralls

This seems far more sensible, you have a max of 1 Lord and his progeny. You're not going to get 7 vamps together to form a bloodbowl team IMO and regardless of the fluff, that many vamps is just obscenely good. 4 Vamps + 1 Lord are basically unstoppable in the hands of any decent coach.

Replace OFAB with the following:

Code: Select all

[b]Ancient Weakness[/b]

Vampires are more likely to be found lurking in the shadows or behind hordes of armies.  It's rare that a vampire comes out from behind the scenes and risks his or herself for personal glory.  Despite their great physical strength and speed, a bloodbowl stadium is a dangerous place for a vampire:  sunlight, stakes, garlic, water-balloon throwing goblins; all threaten to drive aspiring vampire players back to Eternal Sleep.

To represent this, all Vampires who recieve Casualties during a match, add 2 to the roll on the Casualty Table  Instead of the normal table of 1-3, badly hurt, 4-5 seriously injured, 6 dead.  Vampires would roll on the following table:

1:  Badly Hurt
2-3 Seriously Injured
4-6 Dead

This team would play out something a little like everyone's favourite 2 Wardancer/10 Lineelves style of team where the Wardancers become supermen and the lineelves pick up nothing. Plus there is the added fear of losing your stars due to the disgusting number of weaknesses Vampires expose themselves to when they come out of the shadows and onto a football pitch.


Being the kind of guy to put my money where my mouth is I might try to get a good solid playtest in against Ian or Del or someone else I usually have trouble beating. Test out the BB mag 4 rules and try out a couple of other suggestions.

[Mestari]

Well Galak, I have to agree you with the fact that forcing the vampires go first is a lot simpler rule than the one that I proposed. However, I wouldn't say that my suggestion is that complicated. Also it certainly does make the vamps a lot less effective.

Still, given the fact that those vampires are really good, I'm not sure if your suggestion really is enough to keep them in check.

Would you care to give more specific examples of how this will hinder the team? Examples that would counter the claim shown below

Claim: "With ST4 and AG4 the vamps don't need the thralls so much that the team will be hindered enough by forcing the vamps to move first, especially after the vamps get a few skills."

I'll try to find time to play a test game or two with both proposals. I hope that you consider mine too, as apart from the fact that it needs about twice as much text as most skills do, I think it's an excellent rule.

[Mr. Sanity]

I really like the suggestion for having 1 (possibly 2) Vamp on the team, and the rest being that vamp's servants. I think that a team with 4+ vamps is very overpowered, considering that they have good MV/AV and excellent ST/AG and very useful skills right off the bat, with a drawback that is only *mildly* annoying. The BBM4 team is way too powerful in comparison to all the other "stock" teams.

I'd rather face a team of Ogres without BoneHead than face the current Vamp team.

[Zombie]

Also please remember that OFAB now per BB Mag #4 doesn't need rolled at the beginning of a drive if you failed the roll the last drive.

So if you have 6 Vampires and 2 drives per a half ... the break down would be:

1st drive: 3 Vampires play
2nd drive: 4 Vampires play
3rd drive: 4 Vampires play
4th drive: 4 Vampires play

The old OFAB would have been 3 each drive, the new one would give you an extra Vamp per a drive with 6 on the team.

Galak

Add Greater Glory and Not Worthy to the team in BB Mag #4 and I'll accept it.

Actually Galak, it would be 4.5 players on average for every drive after the first one. So with 5 drives for example, you could have something like this: 3, 5, 4, 4, 5.

The previous OFAB rule was <b>much</b> better.


EDIT:

Actually, now that i think about it, we're both wrong. The first drive, the show up rate is obviously 50% as anyone can see. The second drive, it's 75%. The third drive, it's 62.5%. The fourth drive, it's 68.75%. With an infinite number of drives, it would eventually end up at 66.67% for each subsequent drive. That's statistically speaking of course, not true for every game. The more show up for any given drive, the fewer are likely to show up for the next.

So the end result is somewhere between what you presented and what i've just given above before editing.

[Zombie]

For the record, at the moment, my favorite alternative would be a mix of most of the propositions made so far.

Basically, you take the rules from BB mag 4, bring vampires down to 0-2, get them rid of off for a bite. Make vampires and vampire lord go first.

This seems balanced, interesting to play with and against, and interesting to manage long term (i don't like no apoth for thralls or higher injury rates for vampires).

[Longshot]

No Vampire Lord in the roster would be fine for me.
And the 4 Vampires have off a bite of course.

[GalakStarscraper]

For the record, at the moment, my favorite alternative would be a mix of most of the propositions made so far.

Basically, you take the rules from BB mag 4, bring vampires down to 0-2, get them rid of off for a bite. Make vampires and vampire lord go first.

This seems balanced, interesting to play with and against, and interesting to manage long term (i don't like no apoth for thralls or higher injury rates for vampires).

I could live with this. But Zombie and I have long agreed on balancing effects for Vamps back to the old 3E days.

Galak

[Zombie]

I could live with this. But Zombie and I have long agreed on balancing effects for Vamps back to the old 3E days.

Galak

Have we? I don't remember this. Actually, i don't even remember knowing you back in 3rd ed days. With age, my memory isn't quite what it used to be, so you may be right.

[Marcus]

I could go with this moving first lark provided we were only looking at 3 vampires max. I think that would balance out nicely. Any more than 3 Vamps, regardless of negative traits, and I'd probably still throw my toys out of the cot.

[manusate]

Basically, you take the rules from BB mag 4, bring vampires down to 0-2, get them rid of off for a bite. Make vampires and vampire lord go first.

This seems balanced, interesting to play with and against, and interesting to manage long term (i don't like no apoth for thralls or higher injury rates for vampires).

I could live with that too. It´s the best sugestion so far, methinks.

[Jiriki13]

Well, I had a similar problem in my league. I saw the supposedly new vamp team and said what the hell. I thought that team sucked and was way too powerful. I think OFAB is okay, I just think that vamps need to be adjusted. Check out my vamp counts team idea in another post in this section for what I came up with. It is still a work in progress and the teams don't have those stupid vamp lords or thralls. I would like to know where thralls come from. I could find anything in the vamp counts book about thralls except for vampire thralls and from what I read they are just the weakest type of vamp. Anyway, my teams feature other undead players such as skellies, zombies, ghouls, and wights.
Check it out and let me know what you guys/gals think.

Dave