How would you change VTES? (Part 2)

Blood & Pool "Gains"

There is a moderate amount of controversy over blood gain, pool recursion and pool generation in VTES.  Pool is both your longevity and your purchasing power.  It is a liquid asset which fluctuates.  Many people have devoted some serious brain-power to analysing the blood-pool relationship and I'll just hijack some terminology and define it quickly.

Blood Gain: Putting blood counters from the blood bank on a minion that has less blood than its capacity.
Pool Recursion: Reclaiming the blood on vampires back into your pool (i.e. recurring the pool you have used).  Think of it as the blood equivalent of card recursion.
Pool Generation: Gaining pool from the blood bank via whichever means.
Effective Pool Generation: Gaining an effect which is as good as gaining pool from the blood bank. (e.g. Govern the Unaligned @ DOM is 1 pool recursion and 2 effective pool generation).

Also, for the purposes of this "resources" includes: cards, actions and pool.  The reason for including actions is that most commonly in VTES there are a limited number of rounds (usually around 12) and that most minions act once-to-twice during those 12 rounds.

So onto the thoughts...

Blood Gain

Most blood gain is actually fairly balanced.  There are the "hunt bonuses", "blood from nothing", "super-hunts" and "activity bonuses". 
Hunt Bonuses are cards like Hungry Coyote; you gain an additional reward from your hunt action.
Super-Hunts are cards like Abactor, Restoration, 5th Trad, Renewed Vigor; in a single card they provide a much more significant blood level change.
Activity Bonuses are cards like Perfectionist, Sociopath, etc; you gain blood by taking the actions you already intended to take.
Blood from Nothings are cards like Life in the City, The Rack, Palatial Estate, Hunting Grounds, Giant's Blood; your minions don't need to do anything to gain the blood once the card is in place.

Hunt Bonuses
Most of the Hunt Bonus cards are balanced.  There are some crazy abuse-decks out there that rely on Hunt Bonuses (Hesha Pool Hunter, Kyoko Hunts you All, Rabbat Bloat) but in general they are balanced.  They are often fairly resource intensive, particularly in actions and cards (many of the more abusive tricks require Temptation to really push them over the edge).  I have very little problem with these, I doubt there are many players that do.  And they are usually combined with Blood Dolls/Vessels or sometimes Tribute to the Master to perform a mix of pool recursion and some pool generation.

Super-Hunts
There are a fair number of 'super-hunts' out there: Abactor, Restoration, 5th Trad, Renewed Vigor, Vulture's Buffet and so on.  Most of them are fairly balanced, require specialist minions (e.g. Princes, Bloodline Vampires, etc) or Fortitude (I think that blood generation should be an aspect of Fortitude at least as much as damage prevention, but I do think that Freak Drive might have been a bridge too far but it has been around since time-blot... so that horse has truly bolted).  Few people have issues with Super-Hunts because of the card requirements; this adds in opportunity costs and card resources costs.

Activity Bonuses
Activity Bonuses are almost exclusively the domain of Archetypes.  Perfectionist, Sociopath and Capitalist come immediately to mind.  Again, there are very few of these that cause problems but there is one key one that comes to mind which causes problems: Voter Captivation.
Voter Captivation
Voter Cap is the most problematic activity bonus card.  Vote decks will be taking vote actions constantly as their primary ousting method.  This card has the potential to not just act as pool generation (at PRE) but also as blood generation (at pre & PRE).  This is well and truly at the top of or beyond the power curve.

Blood from Nothing
Most of the 'blood from nothing' cards are master cards.  Mostly HGs, The Rack, The Coven, and so on are not considered problematic.  Life in the City has never really appeared on anyone's "Overpowered card list". Giant's Blood and Lilith's Blessing are the ones which have been the recent targets.  And in my mind, the problem with these cards has been with their interactions.
Giant's Blood, while dramatic, is not really a huge issue.  It's always been 'dramatic' when combined with pool recursion (e.g. Minion Tap, Villein, Blood Doll, Vessel).  With the introduction of Villein, most decks found it worth putting both cards into a deck so they could potentially have a free minion and the blood of that minion for free as well (ignoring the opportunity cost and 1 trifle + 1 MPA).  With Lilith's Blessing, this trick because varied with a discipline card which has given the Weenie deck some more roids, as you can get around the problem of superior disciplines in your Master Phase (without the usual opportunity costs) and recur the cost of the minion.

Pool Recursion

Pool Recursion is the classic way of reducing the effective cost of minions.  Minion Tap and Govern the Unaligned have been around since date-blot in VTES (just like Voter Cap...). There is a reason why most starter decks ever printed in VTES (after the original sets) contained copies of Blood Doll.  It's just a solid generally useful card which allows some micro-management of your pool and minions' blood.  I still suspect that Vessel is strictly inferior to Blood Doll (and that Vessel's only advantage is its Silver-Bullet function) and know that many will disagree with me.

I am firmly of the opinion that most of the problems with Pool Recrusion come indirectly from the "Blood from Nothing" cards and Voter Captivation.  The classic Cap'n'Tap deck (Call KRC, Voter Cap to refill, drain the minion low with Minion Tap in the next MPA) is not only stable but basically adds a very strong pool recursion trick with a 'bottomless' source of Blood from Nothing.

Pool Gain

Most actual Pool Gain (e.g. take counters from the Blood Bank directly to your pool) requires:

1. A bleed action (Kindred Spirits, Social Charm, Legal Manipulation) OR
2. A political Action (Political Stranglehold, Autarkis Persecution, Consanguineous Boon, etc)

Now few people have issues with these cards.  I suspect that realistically Kindred Spirits is undercosted (it gains pool at inferior where most of those pool-gaining bleeds require 1 blood and/or Superior disciplines or Bloodline disciplines like [dai]); so I'd be tempted to make it cost 1 blood.

Pool gain, I don't really have a problem with it.  There are the Pander, Weenie [pre] decks and a few other things that can potentially exploit Con Boon, but the entire deck sets up for that and I don't want to obliterate deck-archetypes but level the playing field between most decks and add some 'across-the-game' yardsticks.

Powerbase: Montreal (and the Clan PB:Ms) are solid cards and often stolen/contested when the appropriate decks appear.  PB:M is pretty balanced in general and is often used as 'bait' to force interactions, which is just fine by me. 

The Clan PB:Ms could be used more 'strategically'.  For those clans with traditionally few ways of defending (e.g. Assamites, Gangrel-Anti, FoS) they could benefit from a little 'balancing' with a Clan PB:M.  At the moment, its mostly Sabbat Clans (except the 'Camarilla' clans Gangrel, Toreador and Tremere) who gain the benefit of these and I suspect it is because they were the 'weak clans' in the earlier sets. 

Effective Pool Gain

Again, Effective Pool Gain is easy to identify. Public Trust, Enchant Kindred at PRE, Legal Manipulations at DOM, Undue Influence and so on.  Few people have issues with these either.  Most of them cost or have quite a few requirements.  The only card I think worth attention is Govern the Unaligned and I think that it possibly should have just been Scouting Mission and not its current printing.  If it stayed as it is, I don't mind.