Merit and Celerity Questions

Are you allowing the merit additional discipline (5pt) ?
How/why is there a house rule of 3 actions for advance celerity instead of a total of 4 actions? Gordon was explaining it to me and I would like something a little more concerete.

Someone else mentioned the additional discipline merit to Jon the other day... His response was that he didn't like it. It takes away from the challenge of creating a powerful characters within the established paradigms. (Yeah, Tremere are glass cannons starting off, but if they could just add fortitude to their list of in clan disciplines, everyone would be playing them.) There are ways of expanding your choices, but they are limited to keep the game balanced. Besides that, the Additional Discipline merit is a house rule (not published in any White Wolf material).

As for the Celerity, the second basic and second intermediate levels do not grant additional actions. Celerity 1 allows you to forgo the "Normal Round" to perform a preemptive action, just as it did in the past. Essentially moving your "Normal Round" up in the initiative order. Celerity 3 allows you to perform one follow up action and Celerity 5 allows for one more. So in total you have three actions: The Preemptive Normal, then the first and second Follow up actions.

Ian summed it up pretty well, but let me add a little depth into it.

As far as the Merit: Additional In Clan Discipline: It is not in the House Rules for the game, so currently I can state that characters do not have access to that merit at this time.

Celerity: I’ll try to explain a little more and give my reasons.
Celerity 1 = preemptive action (old school). Celerity 3 = preemptive action + normal round action. Celerity 5 = preemptive action, normal round action and after normal round action. Celerity 2 and 4 aid characters by boosting their movement & dodge ability and initiative & defense respectively.

Reason: 1) I wanted almost all the disciplines to have 5 levels. This gives the players more depth in their disciplines and it’s uses, it lets me add in improvements WW made without losing other things about a discipline and it allowed me to add to and create discipline levels that hopefully flow well with the powers and can be enjoyed throughout the game setting.

Reason : 2) The end all, say all of Celerity. If you didn’t have it, then game over for you buddy. After Reason 1, thinking of making 5 rounds of combat …MADNESS …then with a brand new combat system base in initiative? INSANITY! The twinkyness of characters running around using Celerity 5 … the annoying possibilities stagger the mind. So 3 actions a round I believe will very much level the playing field, not only with the non-combat discipline PCs and primary role-play PC types, but with other supernaturals that hopefully will be gracing my PC files and not just my NPC files once the game gets able to support them.

I must think about these things on a broad spectrum, especially if character creature versatility will be into play in the future. Hope that answers your questions satisfactory. If not, just let me know.

JR/

Its just new. A lot to get use to. After reading the house rules a second, third, and forth time the 2nd and 4th levels of celerity are growing on me. I like the free dodge abilties. I like the extra movements and higher initiatives. I'm bringing in a character with celerity 4 and I need to know it backwards and forwards.

I'm definitely a fan of Jon's reasoning behind downtweaking Celerity a bit. All those extra actions also bog down combat, and make it no fun to be one of the non-Celerity folks in a mass battle.

Mangus, something for you to consider: If that 4th level of Celerity doesn't get you another action, consider just coming in with Celerity 3 and using those extra 3 freebies to round out your character a bit. It could be a point in another discipline, a bump in your ability stats, gen drop, willpower...

I need some inspiration to be honest. I could round out my character, but I am really unsure of what I want. :/

Well, as far as inspiration goes, it shouldn't be much trouble for you. You played a game I've run before, and always found your way before, whether suggested by others or not. If you're unsure, I'd suggest playing fun, but with the capabilities to be a supporting character until you get back into the swing of it. Then once you get the overview down, you can make a character that you see an interesting goal that would be fun to achieve. Or, like Blake would always state, "If you're bored, find someone to hate."  

The weakening of Celerity (and Potence in my games) helped balance the game in my opinion and I am glad that the same has been done for this game. There are way too many min/max types out there and they can ruin a game if allowed.