Coming Up with a Stat Block for Phyre

[Anvos]

This came up in another thread where something this long didn't seem appropriate, thus I've decided to spin this off into its own thread, since it might be something fun. Given the Ability Tree tab in the menu seems to imply we won't have a full on stat/character sheet, I thought it might be something interesting to have a thread on what we'd think the base stat block for Phyre looks like if you made it in V5.

For purposes of guessing how much xp Phyre as an elder would have we had to dip into V20 and 500 xp seemed a reasonable number for a kindred who was active for 300 years.

Feel free to post your own ideas of what the stat block for Phyre would look like.

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Now my personal logic behind the stat block below is that Phyre as a solo PC, rather than somebody with a coterie would likely be somebody with a combat tilted generalist stat, and skill spread, and I tried to incorporate what we already knew of her out of clan disciplines. I get in general V5 tends to favor specialization with strong pools, vs a lot of decent pools, but this metric to me seems to get flipped on its head when your dealing with a kindred who is a bit of a wanderer and thus likely didn't have large/long term coteries to rely on to allow specialization.

Further I think it honestly just makes sense, when realistically stating an elder, that any elder who stays active for prolonged periods of time, will very likely know the basics of most things, just due to general unlife experiences, given a realistic character can't 100% control when they gain enough knowledge and general life skill to justify a Dot 1 in something. Let alone we can see from many NPCs that min-maxing your stats is more of a player thing than general kindred thing.

Finally in general I think many people miss three key things when stating elders
1. That the average kindred an elder will be interacting with aren't other elders, even before the Beckoning.

2. Attaining Dot 4/5 in Primary Stats and Skills should be hard tasks, given your learning/developing to be the equivalent of the best kine in that category.

3. The way to fight specialist neonates isn't to meet them in a knock down drag out fight, but to have the versatility to hit the specialist in the skills and stats their weak at, so you win without risking major aggravated damage and burning through vitae on flashy powers.

Estimating a Stat Block for Phyre

500 XP

Name: Phyre, The Nomad, Slayer of Cairo

Possibly Armenian or an abbreviation of a name ending in phyr.

Generation: 8th

While not a V5 player generation it would make them match the Bloodlines 1 PC’s estimate. Also V5 puts the average player gen as 1780, and elders on average 6-9, which would imply embraced in the 1620s Phyre would be below 10, but you need to be embraced before 1300 for lower than 8 to be average.

BP: 3

Gen 8/9 would put them starting at 2 and 3 centuries up and a century in torpor would make their base BP +1, assuming Phyre didn’t diablerize anybody.

Humanity: 5

Given ancillae lose 1 and Phyre is considered somewhat jaded compared to Fabien it seems likely Phyre’s unlife would average out to 4/5 as an elder.

Predator Type: For making the xp math easy I’m going with this one likely changes based on clan to let Phyre start with a 3rd level discipline and due to their lifestyle Phyre isn’t picky.

This one is honestly a pickler for how to handle, and obviously for gameplay purposes Phyre will be following the you can hunt how you like regardless. Protean for the slow fall would have made sense, but none of those predator types that give this make sense for an Elder with The Nomad as a moniker. Likewise we can fairly well rule out the predator types that would give Phyre a prey exclusion to all kine.

Advantages: For simplicity probably best to just consider these spread between Reputation, Status, and a Custom Lore Sheet for this Ritual’s Effects. Makes sense since Phyre is obviously rebuilding the rest, given they woke up on the wrong end of the world.

Strength: Dot 2 +1 (15xp) = Dot 3
Dexterity: Dot 3 +2 (45xp) = Dot 5
Stamina: Dot 4
Charisma: Dot 2 +1 (15xp) Dot 3
Manipulation: Dot 2 +1 (15xp) Dot 3
Composure: Dot 1 +2 (25xp) = Dot 3
Intelligence: Dot 3
Wits: Dot 2 +1 (15xp) = Dot 3
Resolve: Dot 3

Now here we run into an issue of Phyre being an individual, rather than a custom character, thus instead of specializing them to maximize one clan we must consider a starting human that would have stats that appeal to all 4 clans.

With this in mind, and given their implied active history for 300 years it seems like the simplest stat to make Phyre’s strong stat would be Stamina, since that one is fairly clan neutral and a healthy kine is always a boon due to not having to gamble if the embrace will fix their issues.

The Weak Stat is a bit more of a tricky one. Between Banu Haqim and Tremere we can fairly well rule out Intelligence, Resolve, and Strength as the weak stat thanks to Blood Sorcery. Strength and Dexterity also doesn’t make sense as the weak stat when Slayer of Cairo is another moniker. Ventrue, Brujah, and Tremere we can rule out Charisma and Manipulation, due to their value to Dominate and Presence. Thus were down to Wits and Composure, however given Wits has value to Obfuscate and Theft of Vitae, along with more general usefulness I’m going with Composure would be Phyre’s weak starting stat.

Now how to divide our 3s. A character having only 3 starting willpower seems like it would cause too many issues so I have to see a 3 to Resolve, and you rather need resolve to be successful at learning Blood Sorcery. It just becomes a lot harder to justify a Tremere or Banu Haqim embracing somebody without above average intelligence, and somebody intelligent would be a plus to both Ventrue and Brujah thus the second 3 goes there. Now the last 3 is harder to place as having above average Charisma would help any prospective childe stand out, but I ended up leaning Dexterity, given its implied Phyre had a very combat filled road to becoming an elder and since their combat style involved more dodging.

Disciplines

In Clan 1: Dot 3 +2 (45xp) = Dot 5
In Clan 2: Dot 1 +4 (70xp) = Dot 5
In Clan 3: Dot 5 (75xp)

Auspex: Dot 1
Celerity: Dot 1
Fortitude: Dot 1

Seems likely to account for all Phyre’s having Auspex for xp equality Phyre would have basic levels of 1 Inclan Discipline of the Other Three Clans. Thus these 3 would account for 14 XP

Protean: Dot 1 7xp

Skills

Given we need to account for somebody who would appeal to 4 separate clans I think we can rule out the specialist stat spread. I personally prefer Balanced for building a character, but once we account for Phyre being somebody from before the Industrial Revolution, Jack of All Trades rather makes sense to start with.

Athletics: Dot 3 + 2 (27xp) = Dot 5
Brawl: Dot 2 +2 (21xp) = Dot 4
Craft: Dot 1 (3xp)
Drive: Dot 1 (3xp)
Firearms: Dot 1 +2 (15xp) = Dot 3
Melee: Dot 2 + 1 (9xp) = Dot 3
Larceny: Dot 1 (3xp)
Stealth: Dot 2 +1 (9xp) = Dot 3
Survival: Dot 2 (Tracking)
Animal Ken: Dot 1
Etiquette: Dot 1 (3xp)
Insight: Dot 1 +1 (6xp) = Dot 2
Intimidation: Dot 1 +1 (6xp) = Dot 2
Leadership: Dot 1
Performance: Dot 1 (3xp)
Persuasion: Dot 1 +1 (6xp) = Dot 2
Streetwise: Dot 2
Subterfuge: Dot 2
Academics: Dot 1 (Classic Literature)
Awareness: Dot 2 +1 (9xp) = Dot 3
Finance: Dot 1
Investigation: Dot 2 +1 (9xp) = Dot 3
Medicine: Dot 1 (3xp)
Occult: Dot 1 +2 (15xp) = Dot 3
Politics: Dot 1 +1 (6xp) = Dot 2
Science: Dot 1 (3xp)
Technology: N/A

To begin with to preface this outside direct physical combat skills I don’t really see Phyre having a 5 in any skills to represent their century out of time. Technology likewise gets a 0, since it’s a skill that doesn’t make sense for Phyre to have any relevant frame of reference for. Medicine and Drive almost got a 0, but being a kindred who lived through WWI it seems likely they would have a 1 Dot in both.

The Jack of All Trades 3, went to Athletics, since it seems to fit with Stamina 4 as Phyre’s strong stat.

Just threw something out there for specialties, just because every kindred gets them and we don’t know enough about Phyre to do more than a random guess.

Total XP Spent: 500

Side Note: Why Steam do you not have buttons to make formatting posts easy?

[Clever Name]

Interesting take. I agree with a lot of your reasoning, but there are some things I'd do differently.

For one, I wouldn't give her drive. Minor quibble, but just because cars existed circa 1920, doesn't mean she was in any big hurry to learn how to drive. And I think having even a single dot means you're semi-skilled, rather than just possessing a bare minimum of familiarity with using an average car. If I recall the 'drive' description correctly, even with 0 dots you can still drive a car, you just can't do any kind of trick driving or maintain control at high speeds.

I would say Phyre's weakest attribute would be charisma or manipulation. I do not envision her ever being a smooth operator. I know that isn't how you reasoned it out, but I'm saying just by looking at her conversation with Willem. Even if you picked the 'nicer' dialogue options, there's not much subtle about her delivery or her intentions.

Charisma can be positive and negative, I guess (one inducing people to like you, one inducing them to fear you), so I would settle on her having poor manipulation. Since manipulation is, technically, the social equivalent of dexterity.

[Clever Name]

The glide and telekinesis that we see in the warehouse are probably identical in functionality to what we saw with HSL's version of our starting specialty powers.

They'll either explain them as some kind of thinblood voodoo we picked up from Fabien, or they'll just gloss over rule clarity and nebulously explain that we 'learned a few tricks' over our centuries of unlife.

If we ever see some form of 'nebulation', we'll know for sure they reused those particular HSL ideas, and they won't really apply to any V5 discipline in tabletop.

[Anvos]

Drive was one of those stats that I only really justified as Phyre having thanks to living through WWI. Plus then you'd need to remove another Dot 1 to not end up with leftover xp. Kindred also tend to have earlier access to such things, and if Lettow a Medieval Polishman could be an early adopter of learning to fly an elder having Dot 1 in Drive made sense.

Plus my guess for why Phyre spent a century napping is like Aila living through WWI burnt Phyre out on dealing with the modern world, though less clinically depressed as Aila, and more just wake me when things have stabilized.

[Clever Name]

Originally posted by Anvos:

Plus my guess for why Phyre spent a century napping is like Aila living through WWI burnt Phyre out on dealing with the modern world, though less clinically depressed as Aila, and more just wake me when things have stabilized.

A hundred years is a long time, though. I can see skipping 20-30 years, waking up to see what's what, then going back to torpor. But a full century uninterrupted?

Could be that she was staked or her humanity was so low, she couldn't even try to wake up sooner.

[Anvos]

Well if your going to take a long term torpor your going to do it in 50 year chunks to get that BP decrease to make unlife easier. Waking up in 1970s wouldn't make things much better when you quickly hear about the Cold War and how the USA and USSR almost caused an apocalypse multiple times.

..............................

Something also in favor of Phyre and kindred in general having drive and autos early is remembering that the automobile freed kindred from the age old question of "How do I convince this horse to drink my blood?" (so it will calm down instead of being freaked out having a kindred ride it)

[Clever Name]

Originally posted by Anvos:

Something also in favor of Phyre and kindred in general having drive and autos early is remembering that the automobile freed kindred from the age old question of "How do I convince this horse to drink my blood?" (so it will calm down instead of being freaked out having a kindred ride it)

Just mix the blood in with honey, apple, and oats. Horses will eat anything like that.

Or... just hire a carriage and driver.

[Gesuma]

I am not so sure that 500xp make any sense(from the look of it there are no stats anyways and they talk about unlocking previews skills she had), but then I have no clue about the PnP games.
So are we ignoring that the gameplay reveal showed XP gains, 10 each kill with a showing of getting quickly close to 500xp?
Eh maybe it have no relevance and if you feel so, just ignore this post...

[Mhorge]

Originally posted by Clever Name:

Originally posted by Anvos:

Plus my guess for why Phyre spent a century napping is like Aila living through WWI burnt Phyre out on dealing with the modern world, though less clinically depressed as Aila, and more just wake me when things have stabilized.

A hundred years is a long time, though. I can see skipping 20-30 years, waking up to see what's what, then going back to torpor. But a full century uninterrupted?

Could be that she was staked or her humanity was so low, she couldn't even try to wake up sooner.

I think it depends on the state of Phyre as they lay in torpor. If they were staked in the heart then they wouldn't be getting up, and that was my impression from the first Chinese Room trailer when they talk about 'Awoken vampire' to the backdrop of a vampire that was staked and used in part of a building foundation/pillar?

[Mhorge]

Originally posted by Gesuma:

I am not so sure that 500xp make any sense(from the look of it there are no stats anyways and they talk about unlocking previews skills she had), but then I have no clue about the PnP games.
So are we ignoring that the gameplay reveal showed XP gains, 10 each kill with a showing of getting quickly close to 500xp?
Eh maybe it have no relevance and if you feel so, just ignore this post...

Good pick up.

I imagine that prior to the actual game start we might be able to choose or select some sort of character archetype to follow that I imagine will play into the clan.

The actual numbers probably don't mean anything at the moment, which might mean the levelling up system will be different

[Anvos]

Originally posted by Gesuma:

I am not so sure that 500xp make any sense(from the look of it there are no stats anyways and they talk about unlocking previews skills she had), but then I have no clue about the PnP games.
So are we ignoring that the gameplay reveal showed XP gains, 10 each kill with a showing of getting quickly close to 500xp?
Eh maybe it have no relevance and if you feel so, just ignore this post...

Given the game clearly its't using the TTRPG leveling system, how much xp Phyre gains through the game is rather irrelevant, especially when the leveling tab is called an Ability Tree.

500 xp was just a workable number, based on V20 Elder creation xp, for purposes of being able to do this experiment of what would Phyre's default stats potentially look like if made in V5, given it seems unlikely now we'll have a full character sheet stat customization when playing the game.

[Gesuma]

Originally posted by Anvos:

Originally posted by Gesuma:

I am not so sure that 500xp make any sense(from the look of it there are no stats anyways and they talk about unlocking previews skills she had), but then I have no clue about the PnP games.
So are we ignoring that the gameplay reveal showed XP gains, 10 each kill with a showing of getting quickly close to 500xp?
Eh maybe it have no relevance and if you feel so, just ignore this post...

Given the game clearly its't using the TTRPG leveling system, how much xp Phyre gains through the game is rather irrelevant, especially when the leveling tab is called an Ability Tree.

500 xp was just a workable number, based on V20 Elder creation xp, for purposes of being able to do this experiment of what would Phyre's default stats potentially look like if made in V5, given it seems unlikely now we'll have a full character sheet stat customization when playing the game.

Hmmm... Now I want "background selection" to be setting up stats like that for Phyre, I love planning for my games... ^_^ Oh well..