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Topic: Vampire Bloodlines: Redux (Read 3665 times)
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Since I am currently trying to break my WoW addiction, I have been trying to find some thing to hold my attention for more than an hour. I have decided to give Vampire Bloodlines another shot. Now that there are some patches for the buggyness that ruined it for me before, I am excited to try again.
Now, I need class advice. Err.. race? Anyway. What I want is a character that will have a decent chance at the story, and not just "Me Smash" through every thing. But I do want to be able to do some serous damage. As I like fighting. Last time I started as a Gengral, but I wasnt down with the rasta look. Might try this again. I also tried a Tremere, but I was constantly getting my ass kicked.
Any ideas?
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Daydreamer
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Try a melee specced Toreador (SP? Too lazy). Mix Alacrity and melee skills with seduction to taste. Yum.
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Immaginative Immersion Games ... These are your role playing games, adventure games, the same escapist pleasure that we get from films and page-turner novels and schizophrenia. - David Wong at PointlessWasteOfTime.com
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Malkavian 4 lif.
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Kail
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2858
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Try a melee specced Toreador (SP? Too lazy). Mix Alacrity and melee skills with seduction to taste. Yum.
Really? My characters don't seem to get any mileage out of seduction at all, save for a few girls in the nightclubs who donate blood (and Persuade seems pretty limited, too). Celerity is awesome in combat, though, and Auspex is handy for the sneaking missions. I heard that Tremere are supposed to be pretty badass if you lean on their Thaumaturgy skill, but I haven't got any very far yet.
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Astorax
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Try a melee specced Toreador (SP? Too lazy). Mix Alacrity and melee skills with seduction to taste. Yum.
Really? My characters don't seem to get any mileage out of seduction at all, save for a few girls in the nightclubs who donate blood (and Persuade seems pretty limited, too). Celerity is awesome in combat, though, and Auspex is handy for the sneaking missions. I heard that Tremere are supposed to be pretty badass if you lean on their Thaumaturgy skill, but I haven't got any very far yet. I don't know about the second one, but in the first one, Theft of Vitae basically won the game...you could steal all their blood, so they couldn't use any special powers (if they were garou or mortal, they just died) and then use it to either fuel your powers, or just jack your stats through the roof and beat on them with your fists...you'd have plenty of blood for healing and such, and they don't have any to heal themselves...not to mention they usually frenzied due to lack of blood so they wouldn't even use weapons, etc...
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TheWalrus
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4321
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Seduction is fucking useless. Get persuade. I went firearms, just because I hate the damn camera angle when it goes melee.
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vanilla folders - MediumHigh
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
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I've probably played with more VtmB specs than anyone on this board, having gone through the game 6 times so far. If you have any question about any skill or clan, I'm your guy. :-D
Persuade is the best of the "social" skills. The main use of Seduction is being able to feed conveniently in clubs, but it's not that hard to feed in the streets or in combat zones as long as you don't mind working for it.
If you like fighting, go with a Toreador or a Brujah, and take Celerity. Celerity is the most powerful discipline in the game when it comes to combat. If you go Brujah, I'd recommend going full Brawl since you get a bonus to it. If you go Toreador, take either Melee or Ranged. Melee does more damage on average and doesn't require you to buy ammo, but some of the boss monsters absolutely require ranged weapons to defeat, so there are benefits and drawbacks either way.
Don't be a dilettante. It's tempting to try a little of every skill, and early in the game it works great, but the farther along you get the more you'll find that having lots of "average" skills is completely worthless. (For example, having a few dots in Persuade early in the game will open up a lot of things to you, but later in the game anything less than 8 will do nothing at all.) Choose a few strong areas, preferably ones that complement each other, and pump points into them mercilessly. Max out at least one of your Disciplines, and again, pick one that complements your other skills. For example, Potence and Ranged is a bad combo. Auspex and Ranged is a pretty good combo. Potence and Melee is a wicked combo. Dementation and Persuade is a bit redundant. Et cetera.
Of course, all of this is assuming you want to min/max and "win" with minimal effort. It can also be a lot of fun to take a "difficult" character concept and see where you can go with it. The game's actually fairly flexible for the most part, with the exceptions being things like the boss fights where combat is the ONLY way through (sigh).
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Daydreamer
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Erm, I meant persuade, my bad. I forgot which skill was which there for a while.
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Immaginative Immersion Games ... These are your role playing games, adventure games, the same escapist pleasure that we get from films and page-turner novels and schizophrenia. - David Wong at PointlessWasteOfTime.com
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Sam,
How would you spec a Gengral, a Tremere and a Malkavian? How are Malkavians in combat?
Im still bummed out we could only be Camarilla clans, as my two favorite are Tzmech and Lasambra. I really wanted to be Lasambra.
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
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The differences between the clans are actually fairly minimal. Each clan has a unique selection of disciplines and one or two unique bonuses and drawbacks. So there are potentially multiple answers to the question "how would you spec a Malkavian" - you could still go for a stealth-heavy approach, a combat-heavy approach, or a social-heavy approach.
That said...
Malkavian: Dementation ROCKS. It's useful both in combat and conversation. Max it out. If you want to go stealthy, Obfuscate is obviously handy. If you want to be combat-heavy, consider combining Ranged and Auspex, since Auspex makes ranged attacks more accurate when active. (Auspex also enhances Computer Use, so if you want to get really synergistic, take some of that too.) I played my Malk as entirely unsubtle and ignored Obfuscate entirely, opting instead to handle every hostile situation with Bedlam, Auspex, and guns. It was fun.
Tremere: The only thing that really makes Tremere unique is Thaumaturgy, and halfway through the game Tremere characters have the opportunity to get an item that boosts those disciplines' damage, so put some points into that. Once you get the hang of it, powers like Blood Salvo make a great replacement for ranged weapons, so you can pretty much skip the Ranged skill and focus on Melee instead. Melee + Thaumaturgy = WTFPWN! I rounded my Tremere out with smatterings of stealth, scholarship, and persuasion, but there wasn't any particular reason for that other than that they just seemed to "fit" with a mage type.
Gangrel: I just went with maxing out all of the disciplines first thing. Fortitude is insanely useful at high levels (you can pretty much ignore bullets completely), high level Protean makes you do quite a bit of damage in melee, and the high level Animalism powers work in a pinch as ranged weapons if necessary. Get Brawl to complement your Protean war-form. Intimidate is fun and fits the Gangrel persona, but you don't get any particular bonuses to it, so do something else if you prefer. Maxing out your disciplines and combat skills will take up most of your xp anyway.
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Ok, a few more questions. In a lot of RPGs unarmed is a horrible skill, is it actually usful in bloodlines? Basically what you listed is what I figured, except I had guns on my Termere. I planned on maxing Thaumaturgy. I specced my Gengral just like you said, with heavy unarmed and Protean, but it didnt seem to do very well.
Now I just have to decide on a clan and stick with it. Its like CoH. Character indecision.
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eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
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Sam,
How would you spec a Gengral, a Tremere and a Malkavian? How are Malkavians in combat?
Im still bummed out we could only be Camarilla clans, as my two favorite are Tzmech and Lasambra. I really wanted to be Lasambra.
Go Malkavian, the combat is trivial no matter what you pick, and Malk's get all the best lines, and are the only clan who can talk to traffic signs. If you wanted to min-max (heaven knows why you would), brujah with swords is easy mode. I found unarmed/ranged Malk works fine, from your special powers, focus on your obfuscate in the early game, dementia mid game, auspex last. Pick a couple of socials/skills to raise exclusively exclusively, they all unlock little plot tricks if taken up to decent levels , but none are essential. No matter what you pick you'll want to spec all your disciplines, either unarmed or a melee weapon, ranged weapons if you don't have a decent ranged discipline (most classes do, and note that the only really important ranged weapon is unaffected by ranged skill), and one social skill - it doesn't matter which. It's really hard to screw up character building though. Also don't worry too much about screwing the plot, the game features tried and tested rpg 'Single-obvious-and-unavoidable-decision-point'(tm) technology, and you'll know it when you see it. The side plots are much more sensitive to early decisions affecting outcomes. But the outcomes never really restrict options down the line.
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"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
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Your bare hands aren't quite as good as the very upper level melee weapons, but they're by no means worthless in a fight. When combined with Potence or Protean, Brawl is right on par with Melee.
In addition, your Brawl skill is what determines your success when trying to feed in combat, and this can sometimes make or break you, especially when fighting large numbers of human opponents. It's tremendously useful to be able to grab one assailant and use him as a bullet shield while draining him dry. As a Discipline-heavy Gangrel this is particularly handy, since your Disciplines use a lot of blood, and you'll want to replenish yourself during the fight to keep them going.
If you want to be a combat badass, though, it's all about Brujah. Celerity + Potence = LUV.
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eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
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nm, post above said it better.
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"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
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Rodent
Terracotta Army
Posts: 699
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MALKS! Though they might present you with more then one spoiler is you're smarter then a carrot.
Brujah/Tremere/Ventrue for "easy mode", for a challange, try Nosferatu.
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Wiiiiii!
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
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The Malk dialogue is RIDDLED with obscure references to future events, but you probably won't understand them ahead of time unless you already know the game's plot from having played through once before. I really dug that.
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