95: Fortitude?

I really want fortitude to be good for something other than Freak Drive, but it just doesn't come close to other common disciplines. What does Fortitude do(other than Freak Drive)?

1) Prevent Damage(a hundred different ways, it seems)

Other disciplines can do this now(i.e. Rego Motus, Sideslip, Skin of the Adder, etc). While Fortitude does this better than other disciplines, how often is it really needed? If someone plays S:CE or dodge against you, you often can't even cycle the card. If you are at range and wave, the card is often useless, too. When someone does hit you, you might have a prevent card that isn't the right fit(i.e. soak vs agg poke, skin of steel vs environmental damage) or is too expensive(i.e. armor of vitality vs multiple strikes, hands for 1). You may not have enough prevent in hand at one time to make a serious difference(i.e. indomitibility vs hands for 3).

2) Make you unblockable

DOM/for powerbleed depends on Daring the Dawn at least some of the time to get actions through. If you really like to play Vignes and your friends will tolerate it, good for you. I find it boring and a little shameful to bleed people unblockably repeatedly every outing.

3) Misc. often ignored abilities

-Make your damage aggravated via Dawn Operation
-Gain 2-3 blood with Restoration
-Treat Agg as normal with Skin of Night
-Bleed while tapped for +1 or +2 and to go torpor/burn with Force of Will
-Even lesser known abilities to reduce bleeds, leave torpor(wait, you're playing damage prevention..), not go to torpor(yet) when you normally would(again, you're playing fortitude, right?), cause an ally's action to fail, etc. Nothing world ending.

Other than Freak Drive, fortitude is mostly a combat discipline. Card economy is something to consider for your combat cards. How many Majesties do you need in a deck just to protect your minions? Usually one per combat and at the cost of one blood, plus it only requires basic pre to use. With damage prevention, it depends on how much damage you are taking, from how many sources, and over how many rounds. If it's unpreventable or if it's blood stealing, prevention is worthless. For these reasons, damage prevention is fairly inefficient as a combat strategy, when it is usable at all.

In what ways does fortitude have an edge in combat?

-It hoses Taste of Vitae when you prevent all the damage
-You can't play Pulled Fangs or Disarm if your damage is prevented
-Aggravated damage is much less effective with it also has to be in the 2+ range to send vampires to torpor
-Indomitability, Unflinching Persistence, and Hidden Strength give some combat prowess, in addition to protecting your minion.
-Damage prevention is(usually) played later in combat, so you may get to save the card or at least not tip your hand before your opponent does.
-You often don't need to prevent damage to survive a combat, so it may be OK to use fewer prevention cards than you think you'll have combats.

What does that really leave us with?

I think that damage prevention can function best in intercept combat in moderate quantities. If you block someone and they S:CE, just save it for the next action you block. Prevention *can* work in various other deck archetypes(i.e. rush/disarm, lawfirm(as backup against IG), toolbox), I just see it as either the archetypes have problems, or the use of prevent does. I have a lot of fortitude cards(that are not Freak Drive) sitting in boxes that I'll find a use for someday; when, I don't know.