V5 Vampire Companion

[Dwight]

I think he's also forgetting that the Monomancy has to be authorized by a local bishop or archbishop, can't just drop the M word and then it's fangs out.

Having unauthorized duels to the death results in a vist from the local templar.

[CTPhipps]

I think he's also forgetting that the Monomancy has to be authorized by a local bishop or archbishop, can't just drop the M word and then it's fangs out.

Having unauthorized duels to the death results in a vist from the local templar.

It's also virtually unheard of for it to be refused. Take Bishop Ecaterina the Wise who got challenged out of nowhere by a random Neonate and was told, no, you absolutely have to do it.

[Pleiades]

Remember the Vinculum doesn't prevent monomancy and that's, "I feel like this fellow Sabbat member has to go." The Vinculum also doesn't provide loyalty to the SABBAT.

It provides loyalty to your PACK members and the Sabbat you share with..

I don't know how I missed that

> Remember the Vinculum doesn't prevent monomancy

it does,

you got it backwards, it's "monomacy does not prevent vinculum" instead,
you're still subject to vinculum in monomacy

it's also a canon tactic used by sabbat elders, if they want to nulify some hostility one sabbat or sabbat pack has towards them,
they make some arrangement with whoever is handling the vinculum during gatherings and set-up a vinculum with said hostile party (Archons and Templars)


> It provides loyalty to your PACK members and the Sabbat you share with..

yes, and in sabbat gatherings, the vinculum usually extends outside of pack boundaries (Archons and Templars, again)

of course, certain individuals or packs may insist on restricting their vinculum to packmates,
but that usually comes with its own set of problems,
your access to such sect gatherings will be more limited (like sascha vykos having to leave gatherings early to avoid problems),
distrust from other packs, and whatever hostility they have towards you would make it difficult for you to organize a mass defection

[Taggie]

My Sabbat Players Guide said the Tzimisce would grab well-dressed people to be Shovelheads. It was the Tremere Antitribu who never did War Parties.

I thought I mentioned outside of crusade, my bad. Yes they do indulge in shovel head creation, as part of mass embrace attacks. But get with the program or get turned into a novelty pipe for.the cathedral organ kicks in then.

[troy70]

I liked what I have read so far.

[Taggie]

Just have to be more than their Pack and they're also a bunch of ancient dark mystics. You can't tell me they don't know a demon or two to help.

Since Oblivion is a branch of necromancy now, and deals with the shadowlands abyss not the far umbra... that possibility is gone, their are no demons at the far end of Oblivion any more, that mystery is solved, it's just like in wraith, Cosmic Horror is banned in V5, you know that. So nope, they don't know any demons, unless they have gone out of clan to find them.

[CTPhipps]

Since Oblivion is a branch of necromancy now, and deals with the shadowlands abyss not the far umbra... that possibility is gone, their are no demons at the far end of Oblivion any more, that mystery is solved, it's just like in wraith, Cosmic Horror is banned in V5, you know that. So nope, they don't know any demons, unless they have gone out of clan to find them.

Are you a fan of Demon: The Fallen? If not, allow me to explain.

The Neverborn are Judeo-Christian Demons above Oblivion and the Labyrinth is where they were imprisoned. It was a really clever bit of world-building, IMHO.

Linking the Lasombra to Oblivion explains their pseudo-Catholicism, demon-worship, and ties to the Underworld.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Have you forgotten the importance of Zoroastrianism to Lasombra? The Lasombra just like religion. If it weren't for the Setites it'd be their jam. Given their fixation on Ahriman, it'd just be weird to go all "Judeo-Christian" on us.

[Chris24601]

Have you forgotten the importance of Zoroastrianism to Lasombra? The Lasombra just like religion. If it weren't for the Setites it'd be their jam. Given their fixation on Ahriman, it'd just be weird to go all "Judeo-Christian" on us.

Sometimes I feel like CTPhipps spends more time trying to spin the lore to make the retcons make sense than the people writing the actual books do.

The thing that makes the most sense to me is that V5 is basically happening in a parallel universe (some of the Mage books covered the idea of each line happening in parallel realities where many things were the same, but others different, in order to explain some of the variances between the game line canons). V5 is the reality right next door to the V20 universe and while its close, there are differences (Thinbloods having alchemy instead of weak disciplines for example, some clans having slightly different clan disciplines/banes, etc.).

Treat V5 like the Post-Crisis DCU vs. V20/Pre-Crisis DCU and it'll all make sense.

[Spencer from The Hills]

Have you forgotten the importance of Zoroastrianism to Lasombra? The Lasombra just like religion. If it weren't for the Setites it'd be their jam. Given their fixation on Ahriman, it'd just be weird to go all "Judeo-Christian" on us.

Christianity has several major motifs that exist in Zoroastrianism; they have a lot more in common than simply being religions. In this case, Christianity has demons and Zoroastrianism has daevas. Their origins and roles in the universe might not match, but both could be misinterpretations of entities that interest Lasombra.

[CTPhipps]

Have you forgotten the importance of Zoroastrianism to Lasombra? The Lasombra just like religion. If it weren't for the Setites it'd be their jam. Given their fixation on Ahriman, it'd just be weird to go all "Judeo-Christian" on us.

None of which impacts that Oblivion is tied to the literal Elohim of D:TF.

Sometimes I feel like CTPhipps spends more time trying to spin the lore to make the retcons make sense than the people writing the actual books do.

The thing that makes the most sense to me is that V5 is basically happening in a parallel universe (some of the Mage books covered the idea of each line happening in parallel realities where many things were the same, but others different, in order to explain some of the variances between the game line canons). V5 is the reality right next door to the V20 universe and while its close, there are differences (Thinbloods having alchemy instead of weak disciplines for example, some clans having slightly different clan disciplines/banes, etc.).

Treat V5 like the Post-Crisis DCU vs. V20/Pre-Crisis DCU and it'll all make sense.

That seems silly and wrong given the lengths people like the good folk at OPP have gone to in order to incorporate the lore of Beckett's jyhad Diary and V20 into V5.

Also, the fact that V5 is written in large part by the same writers as V20.

Mind you, I don't mind gaming retcons because I don't consider them as things that need to be justified in universe. Vicissitude and Obternation should never have been treated as more than a variation of vampiric power to begin with. There was too much focus on making them unique, IMHO, when all vampire Disciplines should be weird and stylized to the Kindred themselves.

[JezMiller]

Sometimes I feel like CTPhipps spends more time trying to spin the lore to make the retcons make sense than the people writing the actual books do.

The thing that makes the most sense to me is that V5 is basically happening in a parallel universe (some of the Mage books covered the idea of each line happening in parallel realities where many things were the same, but others different, in order to explain some of the variances between the game line canons). V5 is the reality right next door to the V20 universe and while its close, there are differences (Thinbloods having alchemy instead of weak disciplines for example, some clans having slightly different clan disciplines/banes, etc.).

Treat V5 like the Post-Crisis DCU vs. V20/Pre-Crisis DCU and it'll all make sense.

As a fan of GURPS Infinite Worlds and one of those apparently rare people who likes both V20 and V5, I find that appealing.

Just to complicate things, my persona headcanon uses the Mind's Eye Theatre background for the V20 "worldline". I'm not a LARPer but the latest MET Vampire: The Masquerade book is probably the best and most comprehensive background resource I've ever seen. (It's also beautiful).

[IllithidActivity]

Mind you, I don't mind gaming retcons because I don't consider them as things that need to be justified in universe. Vicissitude and Obternation should never have been treated as more than a variation of vampiric power to begin with. There was too much focus on making them unique, IMHO, when all vampire Disciplines should be weird and stylized to the Kindred themselves.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I feel like a lot of the mid-level lore (so the stuff that was added in after all the establishing lore, when the setting was understood and people wanted something new) ended up being cheesy and convoluted to a degree that would be ridiculed if it were released now, but was accepted because there was no precedent for it to go against. V5's policy of simplifying Bloodlines, Disciplines, and all the fiddly add-ons that got a full writeup because it fleshed out books pushes things back to where the system started, but people act as though their toys are being taken away because they don't have baked-in lore of Vicissitude being some alien virus or whatever. Forgetting that you can always treat vampirism as some alien virus or whatever.

Honestly I feel similarly about the entire expanded World of Darkness, like Vampire came out first and the gimmick is that there's this supernatural world beneath that which is known, whose inhabitants have great power and could ruin society if they so chose. And then they published Mage and Changeling and Wraith and for each of those we got another instance of "Oh you thought the Vampire world was the wild one? Oh no, the Vampires think they run the show but actually they're small potatoes compared to the Flavor of the Month."

It's the Worf Effect in an RPG setting.

[MyWifeIsScary]

That seems silly and wrong given the lengths people like the good folk at OPP have gone to in order to incorporate the lore of Beckett's jyhad Diary and V20 into V5.

If only... ah... I'll rephrase that.
Nobody should have to go to great lengths to get something to "work". If V5 didn't make such wild leaps of faith it'd be very easy for v20 fans to convert to the new religion.

Also, the fact that V5 is written in large part by the same writers as V20.

V20 has a lot of writers and the quality is all over the place. Lore of the Bloodlines is a completely different animal to Lore of the Clans, even if don't talk about the subjective value of quality. LotC gives us a text faithful to the earlier clanbooks for v20, LotB to varying extents re-imagines almost every bloodline into something the authors thought would be cool. Just because someone wrote something in the V20 era doesn't mean V5 is the brainchild of OG vampire writers.

Mind you, I don't mind gaming retcons because I don't consider them as things that need to be justified in universe. Vicissitude and Obternation should never have been treated as more than a variation of vampiric power to begin with. There was too much focus on making them unique, IMHO, when all vampire Disciplines should be weird and stylized to the Kindred themselves.

People aren't learning new things, they're not special, they're just unlocking the potential denied to them by a vindictive demiurge. All souls are equal, and you're all in prison with the illusion that they are not.
Sorry I just find the Setite/Tremere Gnostic/Hermetic outlook so much more compelling and fiting of 'gothic punk' than some 'you're special and have unique powers so you get to stand higher than a few people' thing that v5 is doing. Your humble opinion is, in my arrogant dickery opinion, anathema that devalues the punk aspect of the setting.

[Chris24601]

That seems silly and wrong given the lengths people like the good folk at OPP have gone to in order to incorporate the lore of Beckett's jyhad Diary and V20 into V5.

BJD always felt more like trying to shoehorn V5 concepts they knew were coming into V20 the same way the tail-end 3.5e D&D books were basically testbeds for 4E mechanics.

As to being basically the same teams;

V20 Core Authors: Justin Achilli, Rose Bailey, Matthew McFarland, Eddy Webb

V5 Core Authors: Kenneth Hite, Mark Rein•Hagen, Matthew Dawkins, Juhanna Peterson, Martin Ericsson, Karim Muammar, Karl Bergström, Jennifer Smith, Jason Andrew, Jason Carl

I don’t see a single author in common there. Now I’ll admit that this has changed of late with Justin Achilli coming back on board and directions seeming to be changing... but most of the complaints about hard to justify events that you spend a lot of effort contorting things to justify came from the earliest days of V5 where the creative teams weren’t at all the same.

Basically, the team now is working to clean up the lore mess left by the previous teams from early V5. To borrow another DC analogy; the current team is trying to pull a Rebirth on the New52 that was early V5 and I commend their effort... but it’s still a lot easier to justify the early stuff as an alternate reality than to try and claim everything was always leading to the retconned V5 setting.

As to retcons not needing to be justified; I heartily disagree. One of the things I pride myself on is my 25 year old Mage campaign where every PC has existed in the same continuous universe (even when the current group decides their current characters have finished their stories, the new PCs enter the same universe that’s been affected by the decisions of all those who came before.

Retcons that mess with the universe make it more difficult to maintain such continuity. When a core part of your Vampire campaign is a Ravnos who’s resided in Boston since practically it’s founding now suddenly needs more than half-a-dozen havens scattered around the city to not burn to death in their sleep its a problem. When your Thin-blooded characters suddenly lose their disciplines and get some nonsense Alchemy ability it’s a problem.

When characters can’t have Chimestry without also having Presence (and cuts into your options for Obfuscate or that you must have Dominate to use Viscissitude and lose Protean options because of the way Discipline and Amalgam rules work, there’s a problem if you’re converting from a previous campaign.

When established vampires who’ve been fine without much interaction with mortals for centuries (other than as food) suddenly have to pick up human morality pets or fall to their Beasts there’s a problem with the retcons and claiming it’s the same universe as before.

That’s why I find it just so much easier to say V5 is the next reality over from the previous editions so while some things are similar there, others are very different (like a pair of revenant NPCs in the setting actually making more sense as Thinbloods in the new system). There’s just no way to plausibly connect the previously established setting (again, moving forward in the same setting is a hallmark of my campaigns and one of my players’ favorite elements... seeing the after effects of all their previous PC’s decisions) if I were to convert to V5.