Jaysen Knight#
Jasper Phillips wrote:
'Anyway, the real reason I'm writing: What's the big deal with Skin of
Night, and Flesh of Marble? Why not just use Skin of Steel? As I
understand
it Flesh of Marble goes off after any other damage prevention, so you
have to take at least one damage...'
There are many types of damage in the world, let's see how the FoM
and Skin of Night combo stacks up...
1. Celerity Multi-strike Decks
Brujah or Toreador grabs gun or signpost and whacks away
endlessly.
FoM/SoN all damage is reduced to one point and since you get
to choose which point you take, only an all aggro. damage strike
would cause the FoM any trouble....which is why the SoN.
Fortitude Skin of Steel stops all at a cost of 1 blood
Advantage - slight advantage to Fortitude due to the two small flaws
that FoM has - which I will get to later.
2. Press Decks
Someone has grappled you hard and just won't go away, or the
Tremere returneth deck.
FoM/SoN see deck #1 for explanation, with the caveat that you can
save your SoN for that aggro. damage round you know is coming.
The FoM works every round on all strikes.
Fortitude if you are relying on Skin of Steel be prepared to
spend a lot of blood to avoid taking damage, if not, you may
be using a lot of different FOR cards to handle the differing
situations you are anticipating.....doesn't it suck when you
need a Skin of Rock and only have a Superior Mettle handy?
Advantage - The combo has a slight advantage here, even given its
two flaws (wait for it).
3. Multi-Strike/Press Decks
Them damn Brujahs and Assamites. Sometimes available to
Gangrel,
Toreador and Tremere (among others).
FoM/SoN see deck #1 for explanation, with the caveat that you can
save your SoN for that aggro. damage round you know is coming.
The FoM works every round, and the number of strikes you face is
frivolous info.
Fortitude I just hope you have lots of it in your deck.....
Advantage - The combo cleans up here.
4. Steal your Blood Decks
What do you do? Neither type of damage prevent works here.
Advantage - none.
5. Quietus/Thaumaturgy immune to FOR prevention decks
Do I have to write anything?
Advantage - The combo rules.
6. Retainer/Extra damage decks
That damn Gangrel with the Murder of Crows, Carrion Crows,
and Aid from Bats...or that damn Tzimisce and his acidic blood,
etc.
FoM/SoN works an all damage - even the extra damage that sneaks
up on you like multiple Pulled Fangs....and you always have the
SoN to make that one point of aggro. that does get through
a single point of regular damage. As noted by others, this is
especially good against Dawn Op decks or Wolf claws, etc.
Fortitude you had better have lots of multi-purpose FOR cards,
because those Carrion Crows don't care how steely your skin is,
and neither does that Ghoul Escort with the Zip Gun/DBR.
Advantage - The combo rules.
There you have it, basically the FoM/SoN combo is awesome...however,
did I mention two flaws?
1. PRO/FOR works best, and unless you play Gangrel there aren't too
many clans around that pack superior capabilities in both
disciplines. You need sup. PRO so that you can take that one
point of regular damage from the pissed off Brujah while you ignore
the aggro. as he Pulls your Fangs out. You need sup. FOR because
that weenie Gangrel may only have a 1 hand damage Wolf Claw, and
you need to stop it if you are down to no blood and don't want
to go to torpor.
2. If that pissed off Brujah rips your arm off instead (Disarm),
because he took no damage while you took at least one...well
that just sucks.
Well, there you have it. A powerful combo that can be beat but rarely
is. Comments are welcome, I realize that there are many combat deck
styles but this combo covers most of them.
My beliefs are such:
1. Because more vamps pack the FOR discipline, and FoM is a rare
card that requires a subtler understanding of damage dynamics (for
lack of better phrasing), FOR will always be the favored damage
prevent discipline.
2. Because most combat decks follow a certain theme (such as those
mentioned above) you will rarely face a deck that is truely
prepared for the FoM/SoN combo.
Basically, when I brought out FoM for the first time I was THE dominate
combat deck in our playgroup for almost three full months (and we
played a lot of combat). The only thing that stopped me was our
adoption of a house rule in addition to the errata. To whit:
1. Without the errata, FoM reads that you can stop all but one point
of damage with the FoM, and use other damage prevention on that one
point - you take no damage.
2. With the errata, FoM stops all but one point of dmg., only you
basically get to choose which one. i.e. I will ignore the 4 points
of aggro. and take that 1 point of regular.
3. With our house rule, FoM stops all but THE LAST point of
damage, and since aggro. damage is counted last...guess which
point you take? Which is why you need Skin of Night (Jeff Dai
noted that possibility to me one game session...thank you Jeff).
I hope this helps Jasper, and anyone else who wondered if those FoM's
they had in their dust heap were any good or not. And since this is
the best analysis of anything in the game that I have ever done, I
would appreciate it if any of you archivists out there, who liked what
I said here, would take it and put it on your site. Take it, it is
yours, my recompense is the joy of sounding almost intelligent....
for a while at least:)
Thanks,
Jaysen