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White Wolf Devlog 1: Merits & Flaws

So I was making a better combat system for World of Darkness[a] games, and eventually started remaking the whole thing.

[a]

Overview

Merits are stupid. Merits are gone.

Let’s look at the merits, and keep in mind the golden rule when designing a game

It’s not complete when nothing can be added. It’s complete when nothing can be taken away.

Let’s look at what we can take away:

List Analysis

Acute Sense

This adds a -2 difficulty to rolls which rely on a particular sense.

Min-maxers will argue this counts for combat, fail that argument, but proceed to apply a -2 difficulty to every Perception roll.
Nobody with any sense will take ‘smell’ as their sense - they will take sight or hearing, then apply it to everything.
It’s stupid: we already have specializations, which can add a bonus to Perception for a particular sense.

Eat Food

The ability for a vampire to eat food is an excellent way to avoid Masquerade breaches, and the rules don’t cover this sort of thing elsewhere. It’s an individual glitch which won’t break any games, but can become invaluable when used correctly. It adds depth to any character, and story, and could even become an interesting quirk for any NPC.

This merit’s excellent.

Efficient Digestion

The vampire gets +1/3rd of a blood point when feeding. This adds nothing to any story - nobody will go ‘wow, where I can drink a mortal and do these things, he can drink a full mortal and do additional things’. It will never influence the story, it simply becomes a bonus to keep track of.

Short

your running speed is one-half that of a normally proportioned human.

So the Dexterity Attribute becomes half as useful for running, meaning you can’t out-run any danger. No limitations on other Physical Attributes mean we could be dealing with someone with Strength 5: a little person potentially becomes the world’s champion dead-lifter, but unfortunately still waddles like a penguin.

Worst of all, the story now has a vampire-midget. There’s no way to tell a serious tale of gothic-horror with a vampire midget. This is worse than when Steven King wrote about aliens who make you fart.

Addiction

If the DSM can cover smoking cannabis, then addiction can be covered under Derangements.

Probationary Sect Member

You have betrayed your sect, and now they hunt you.

Okay, so can I play a Follower of Set and not take this flaw? Presumably any Brujah can be in the Sabbat without other Brujah hunting her, but could any Lasombra become a member of the Camarilla without attempts on his life?

The answers have already been largely determined in the lore, so asking a player if they want to enforce this really violates the basic lore.

Natural Leader

Why bother making a second system to cover Leadership rolls? Why not a second system for every Ability? This really feels like pointless page-filler.

Why does this add a -2 difficulty, whereas “Natural Linguist” adds +2 dice?

Conclusion

Merits and Flaws don’t pull their weight. Occasional good ideas slip in, but really add nothing. If someone really wants to play a deaf character, they still can, and the Storyteller is free to add bonus experience points from the beginning to make up for the character’s difficulty.