[5E] The Clan Updates

[CTPhipps]

So, we now have all 13 Clans updated as well as a good chunk of bloodlines.

So this is a thread where we actually GET TO CRITICIZE!

(not that we don't elsewhere)

But also approve.

This is a thread for discussing what updates were the best and the worst of 5E. What you liked and didn't like.

[CTPhipps]

The Good

I really think the Tzimisce are the best update for the game and that's going to be a controversial pick at best. I think that they were always sort of hamstrung by the fact they've been tied to the Necroscope franchise as the utterly alien EVIL vampires that wear people's skin. I felt they were kind of a joke in the Modern Nights. I have always preferred the more dark, elegant, and sinister ones as portrayed in the Dark Ages.

However, I will say that the problem with them is they're a little too tied to Romanian legends and depictions that make them a bit of a cariacture. I think that the new versions being "dragons in human form" which are obsessed with owning things and being feudal overlords all across the globe is a more interesting take on them,

The Bad

I think my biggest issue is with The Thin Bloods. I absolutely love that they have a bigger role in the game and am going to applaud a lot of the changes like the fact they're the only vampires who are effectively "alive" and only need a fraction of animal blood compared to most vampires. Plus, they can daywalk and not frenzy. It makes them useful if you want to play a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire.

But I'm not feeling Thin Blooded Alchemy. I feel like they should be able to get at least one Discipline to be able to put 3 dots in or maybe learn 1 dot in any Discipline they want. Thin Blooded Alchemy as a form of Hedge Magic is fine but it seems to be something that I think most Thin Bloods wouldn't have.

The Mixed

I have mixed feelings on the handling of both the Lasombra and Tremere. I think the Lasombra joining the Camarilla was a big and well-justified stunt but I feel like the portrayal would have benefited if it had come with a write up of the 50% or so who had stayed with the Sabbat. Ditto, I think the Tremere Council of Seven being destroyed was a big shake up.

[The Gentleman Gamer]

The Good

Everything I bloody well wrote.

The Bad

Whither Grumbleduke?

The Mixed

Everything I didn't write, because I didn't write it, which ipso facto can't be as good as the material I did write.

[CTPhipps]

The Good

Everything I bloody well wrote.

The Bad

Whither Grumbleduke?

The Mixed

Everything I didn't write, because I didn't write it, which ipso facto can't be as good as the material I did write.

WHITHER GRUMBLEDUKE IS THE BEST!

You are so wrong!

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I like the way the Tremere, Hecata, and Lasombra received the biggest in-game changes. These makes all three clans more playable. I also like the Tzimisce changes, which are less a change in setting than redefining what the clan has always been.

I am ambivalent about the changes to the other clans - because there have been few changes to the other clans.

[MyWifeIsScary]

The Good
It's no secret that V5 isn't my favourite edition, so if we ignore all other editions and just focus on what's good in V5, the Gangrel are kinda the standout winners among the clans. Animalism, Fortitude and Protean are some of the V5 winners, with plenty of possible synergistic options that enable players to really design very different powersets. I'd say the Ventrue, if you ignore the unfortunate 'balancing' of Dominate, also come off as quite interesting; Presence is more well rounded and has never been so powerful and somewhat makes up for the lackluster Dominate.

Mixed:
The Hecata. The schematic for the house is a sound one, but the execution, and then how they've decorated, is a no-no. The Flesh eaters shouldn't be here, for starters. There are some good ideas here, really, I just feel that the place where the Hecata is now would work best as a temporary stop; The necromancers can't stand one-another, naturally, their sect should fracture, and finally we should be able to work them into games as normalized bloodlines that we don't need to think of an excuse for every time we want to put them in the city. V5 has set up the Dominoes, we need to see them fall.
Ravnos- This is just a different clan. They're nothing alike. It's not a bad bloodline, but I liked the Ravnos.
Malkavians- Nothing wrong fluff wise. Weakness is fine. It's just their discipline spread got hit the hardest.

Agonizing:
Tremere.
I see what they're doing, I know why they're doing it. I understand why they're doing it. I know some people like this stuff. But the Tremere... Nobody likes the Tremere, that's how they roll. You're not supposed to like them. They're not supposed to have a number of different groups and you can find one that reflects your values. The Weakness of the Tremere has always been that you're a Tremere wth a giant fucking pyramid behind you, and the strength of being a Tremere is that you've got a giant fucking pyramid behind you. This just takes all that away. I've gone to great lengths justifying the fluff; The story is salvagable. It can be made to work, but I don't like what I've seen so far.
Mechanically they're an absolute disaster. Also, maybe I'm more hardcore than most, but the -we actually researched motherfucking RL wizardry and let those philosophies influence our setting- of prior editions was amazing, and it's sorely missing here.

Just bad
Lasombra- Oblivion's just bad, and the weakness is nonsense. The defection just shouldn't work.
Tzmisce- The nuance is gone. The camp is also gone. What's there to love? (Edit: actually the bane is good, the rest is terrible tho)

I Hate it
Thin-Bloods- If they can't normally use disciplines AND don't know shit, they can't survive at all as vampires. Thin blood alchemy is metaphysically wrong because the vampire state itself is alchemy and they're incomplete and.... Like, they're halfway between ghouls and vampires, but instead of being mechanically halfway between ghouls and vampires, they're something entirely different? Also thin blood alchemy's just... you're mixing your blood with baking soda? Chaos magic isn't just fucking shitting in buckets and then wearing them on your head while singing your favourite Queen songs to work miracles. If you're going to give us new magic, don't do it by showing your absolute contempt for magic. And they gain a clan by eating up? The whole thinblood writeup just strikes me as so.... not World of Darkness.

[AkatsukiLeader13]

The Good:

The Tzimisce are easily at the top of the list for me, as little as we finally got of them. Though I will say that I do have some issues with them. Mostly their new discipline spread and using Dominate+Protean for Fleshcrafting.

At a close second is the Hecata. While I know plenty dislike the merging of the Bloodlines of Death into something that's one part Clan, one part Sect, one part Cult, I love them. For starters it adds some real interesting politics to one of the most organized Clans of the setting that they sorely lacking. Sure you could have local Giovanni doing their personal scheming but now we have some real factionalism within the Clan that can really play well into chronicles.

Though I will concede that the inclusion of the Nagaraja (as all the other Bloodlines had ties to the original Clan of Death) is a bit of an oddity and maybe doesn't entirely work.

But also one of the things nice things about their write-up that I think the Giovanni were long overdue for is them taking about how the Clan can interact with the Sects as well as how individual members can join non-Hecata coteries.

The Mixed:

The Ravnos. They feel very one step forward, one step back. I supposed part of it could be blamed on how short the Companion is and that it came out long, long after other books that could have given some pages to flesh them out more.

The Bad:

The Thin-bloods. Like CTPhipps, I'm not a fan of Thin-blood Alchemy. Though I'm also not a big fan of Thin-bloods period and them getting into the V5 Rulebook while six of Clans didn't and it years to get them all, has long left a bitter taste in my mouth. So I'm not exactly an unbiased person when it comes to them.

The Salubri. While I was never the biggest fan of them, I did like their chapter in Lore of the Bloodlines, especially getting away from the Seven being the extent of the Healer Caste outside of certain parts of the world. So naturally when the Companion basically dialed them back to what they were in the early days of VtM, complete with omitting the other two Castes (to say nothing of the possibilities in this changing modern world to see a reunification of the Castes) was frustrating.

Finally, that it too so damn long for us to get all thirteen Clans. While there has been many questionable decisions in V5, that we didn't get all 13 Clans in Rulebook or failing that, all of them by the second V5 book, was one of the worst in my eyes. It's made many of the books since the Rulebook feel incomplete, missing important important parts.

I get the appeal of trying to go back to the early days of VtM, to try and capture some of that old charm but VtM has long moved beyond those nights. Cutting out half the Clans after years and years of us having access to them and have gotten used to the world with all 13 Clans around was stupid move that hindered the development of the V5 world.

[Spencer from The Hills]

The Good:
Brujah
I like what's been written about their manipulative side. Anarch has lots of ideas about involvement with fringe political groups, which aren't all attribute to Brujah, but they fit well enough.
Malkavians
The interest in blood properties, self-medication and kine with overlooked minds are fun touches. The gatekeeping prerequisites over dementation is annoying like several amalgams, although I've no complaints about the power itself. The only old dementation power that I'm sorry to see missing is passion. Without the requirement to assign a mechanically defined derangement, I find it tempting to not even bother presenting a recognisable mental illness, rather simply deciding how they act and feel when the bane kicks in.
Banu Haqim
They're almost a fixture of the Camarilla now, whereas they look more like guests in previous editions. As I've suggested for several clans, they could be detailed further in a book that isn't directly about them, in their case one about Ashirra or even a specific Ashirra domain.
Ministry
I suspect that I'm choosing to interprete the Ministry in my own preferred way rather than sincerely taking them as written. Sometimes it sounds like a super cult with a lot of black sheep and sometimes it sounds like any other decentralised clan. I'm glad that one their three disciplines isn't themed around snakes, corruption and Egyptian mythology any more. I kind of want to use them as a louche alternative to Toreador; maybe a missired Brujah is more appropriate. As with Banu Haqim, their inclusion into a sect simplifies their inclusion, as main characters, into games based within that sect.

The Mixed:
Gangrel
I think they need more culture. A lot of it could be shared with kindred of other clans who live in their coteries/packs. I also think that Earth Meld is substantially lacking compared to its VtR counterpart. It makes internal sense that a whole body transformation is more advanced than a partial one and that doesn't extend to clothes, but if it were that much easier, the ability to survive without a haven could a bigger part of the clan's identity.
Lasombra
One of the old stereotypes about them said that if everybody thinks that your a good manipulator, how good you can be? These Lasombra sound so self-serving and insincere that it's a wonder anyone tolerates them, even next to other kindred. At least Dark Ages editions had plenty of earnest Keepers.
I think that their access to obtenebration as vampires should be more justified. I've recently been toying with the notion that Oblivion itself is nothing rather than the first and last realm of the cosmos, but I'm guessing that couldn't adequately explain aspects of it, like how "nothing" could be used to pick up objects.
On bright side, I do like what Shadows of New York had to say about them.
Toreador
That bane is brutal, but it has interesting cultural implications. Ideally, you want shape anywhere you need to use disciplines and avoid places where you can't do that, which is probably almost everywhere. That leaves them in very gilded cages, which makes their loyalty to the Camarilla understandable. I'd rather their base instincts be more base, but they've been something like this in every edition, excluding Ishtarri and Revised antitribu.
Tzimisce
They exceeded my low expectations and evoked some concepts that I hadn't previously considered, but I can imagine how those of you who liked Tzimisce in the first place could feel constrained by the possessive theme.
And they need the revenants back. The Sabbat book might be a good place to do that.

The Bad:
Ravnos
Well they're not culturally problematic or pigeon-holed, but tricksters? Dare devils? Rogues? I don't see the point. I could say the same about chimerstry in any of its iterations. This is the one I prefer in previous editions. But I was never fussed about them anyway.
Compulsions
With so many clans, some of the compulsions are bit too specific for my taste.


The Rest:
I haven't decided about these because either I haven't given them the attention that they deserve (Nosferatu, Ventrue and thin-bloods), I think I need more detail (Tremere), I'm not invested enough (Salubri) or I like the Giovanni so much that I can't criticise their clan in good faith. I'd only disapprove if the Giovanni were killed off, white-washed or if their Mafia stereotype was confirmed; bonus disapproval points if they were specifically based on Italian-American stereotypes. Damn Fianna.

[Garygeneric]

I guess I'm going against the grain, but I am not a fan of the Tzimisce revamp at all. I feel that swapping Auspex for Dominate removes the clan’s history as erudite seers and mystics with a thirst for knowledge, while a clan-wide mastery of Dominate adds a level of redundancy in Sabbat Leadership with Lasombra (making Lasombra a redundancy in both sects now), and undermines/deletes their millenia-forged legacy of control through fear and mastery of blood bonds.

The compulsion sounds like a stereotypical Ravnos vice, which I thought we were trying to get away from.

Speaking of Ravnos, not a screaming fan of the their changes, either. I feel the "Obfuscate & Presence combo because they are sneaky, smooth talkers" schtick was already repetitive with two clans.

Other than those two, I have no complaints about the clans in V5.

[CTPhipps]

I admit, I have mixed feelings on the Ravnos update because I didn't think the clan was broken as of RAVNOS: REVISED. I felt like they were properly updated by expanding them to be a clan that incorporated the Indian Rakshasa myth. I've always disliked the European centrism of the game and incorporating another alternative to the Caine myth (the Followers of Set otherwise standing alone) felt like a good thing.

However, I admit have a bigger reason to dislike the Ravnos update in the fact that I think they've royally stepped into what I loved about the Malkavians. Ever since Second Edition, I've always been a fan of the idea of them as tricksters with their "pranks" being designed to strike at the haughty and powerful.

Now the Ravnos has seemingly taken this role and it annoys me. What do the Malkavians do then?

[AkatsukiLeader13]

I admit, I have mixed feelings on the Ravnos update because I didn't think the clan was broken as of RAVNOS: REVISED. I felt like they were properly updated by expanding them to be a clan that incorporated the Indian Rakshasa myth. I've always disliked the European centrism of the game and incorporating another alternative to the Caine myth (the Followers of Set otherwise standing alone) felt like a good thing.

However, I admit have a bigger reason to dislike the Ravnos update in the fact that I think they've royally stepped into what I loved about the Malkavians. Ever since Second Edition, I've always been a fan of the idea of them as tricksters with their "pranks" being designed to strike at the haughty and powerful.

Now the Ravnos has seemingly taken this role and it annoys me. What do the Malkavians do then?

I agree for the most part. Though I've had some issue with the idea of Malkavians as tricksters mostly because of the bad ideas it can give players about the Clan. But then I've long become paranoid about having player have little experience with declaring they want to play a Malk because of some early horrible Fishmalk encounters I've had.

And it's another reason why I find the removal of the full 13 Clans from Rulebook to be so frustrating. The V5 Companion write-up would have been more tolerable if it had just been the Clan write-up in the Rulebook with later books adding to it. Like I recall the Camarilla book talking about their recent in-roads in India. If we had the Ravnos from the start, that would have been a perfect setup to talk about the Indian Ravnos. In fact, I would have had the Indian Ravnos join the Camarilla like the Banu Haqim did, with a more detailed write-up on that branch of the Clan present in that book. Perhaps even an alternate Clan Compulsion for them.

But then I could say the same for the Lasombra, Tzimisce and Hecata as well.

[False Epiphany]

However, I admit have a bigger reason to dislike the Ravnos update in the fact that I think they've royally stepped into what I loved about the Malkavians. Ever since Second Edition, I've always been a fan of the idea of them as tricksters with their "pranks" being designed to strike at the haughty and powerful.

Now the Ravnos has seemingly taken this role and it annoys me. What do the Malkavians do then?

Malkavian tricksters are crazy and want to show people the true nature of reality through their pranks. Ravnos tricksters are vagabonds and grifters who sucker people with illusions. They want to conceal rather than reveal the truth.

Both clans are tricksters, but the Ventrue, Lasombra, and Tzimisce are all aristocrats. Arguably the Giovanni too. Some degree of overlap is inevitable with 13 clans. Instead of trying to make each clan do different things, which I think is an exercise in futility, it's better to have multiple clans do similar things differently.

[Chris24601]

As someone who approaches V4 mostly from the angle of "what can I poach for my V20 games" here's my perspective on the winners and losers of V5's clans...

The Good:

Assamite/Banu Haqim: hate the name change (those in the Cam are rejecting Haqim), but appreciate that moving Quietus under the auspices of Blood Sorcery (a pretty easy change to make even in V20) eliminates the need to present the castes as separate bloodlines.

Toreador: The change to their bane from "get lost in a fugue state whenever beautiful things turn up to "suffer penalty to discipline use if not surrounded by beauty" (with the fugue state aspect being worked into the Clan Compulsion) is a big improvement whether in V5 or adapted into V20.

Tzimisce: I'd personally have made Vicissitude into a path of Blood Sorcery and made the clan disciplines Animalism, Blood Sorcery and Protean so like the Assamites/Banu Haqim you eliminate the mechanical need for separate bloodlines and make the New vs. Old Clan a purely cultural element with both the body sculptors and Koldun employing Blood Sorcery in ways that are different culturally, but still connected. The main thing I love about the update is the revision to the Clan Weakness to make it both more meaningful (the charge need not be just native soil) and that instead of degrading checks, its degrading willpower which is slightly more manageable. It also makes them basically the Anti-Ravnos in that their bane requires them to maintain a stable location, while the Ravnos bane requires them to NOT establish roots.

Ventrue: The main thing I like about the V5 update is again the change to the clan weakness. Changing it from "gets nothing without feeding on prey type" to "must spend willpower to feed on a non-prey type" makes them slightly less ridiculous, particularly given some past examples whose prey type amounted to a single person or otherwise very limited group that would be hard to maintain long term. It also makes it a bit easier to run a chronicle with a bit more travel where not having their chosen prey available meant that Ventrue would be utterly incapable of feeding. Now its just difficult vs. impossible.

The Bad:

Ravnos: Its great that their bane is all thematic and all, but at a certain point campaign playability has to enter the decision making process and being unable to set down basic roots without burning to death makes Ravnos far more difficult to integrate than most other clans. Its either going to be a major pain in the butt or not come up at all. It's also the only bane I physically changed from V5 in adapting the new ones into V20... switching from possible agg damage to willpower loss (making it the opposite of the Tzimisce) for staying in one place too long.

Thinbloods: I don't even quite know where to begin other than "WHY!?!" Thinblood Alchemy is the single best argument for V5 occurring a parallel universe to the previous material as it so utterly contradicts everything we've previously been presented about the thin-blooded. Throw in "gain a dot in a discipline based on what I last ate" and "can't actually permanently learn disciplines" and they just feel like a foreign invasive species instead of a logical offshoot of previous VtM lore.

Hecata: Not so much for the Giovanni as all the other cultures appropriated via the merger of the other bloodlines into one giant potpourri that for some reason ended up with the Giovanni clan weakness but the Cappadocian discipline spread... except Oblivion sucks. The Loresheets feel like weak consolation in V5, but this is one of the "I'm just going to ignore this one in my V20 game as long as possible" elements.

Lasombra: I know their own flaw could be weaksauce, but increased difficulty using modern tech, plus the horrid Oblivion rework combine to make this not good. I adapted the change about looking weird both in mirrors and through cameras into my V20 adaptation, but left the tech penalties off and kept Obtenebration because it doesn't suck.

Nosferatu: Not a fan of the change to the class weakness basically making it harder to use their signature Obfuscate to actually disguise their appearance.

The Meh:

The Brujah, Caitiff, Gangrel and Setites/Ministry didn't change appreciably so not much to say there.

Malkavians: I tend to prefer the Dominate Malks to the Dementation Malks in V20 mainly because Auspex + Dominate already give you 90% of the tools Dementation does, but with greater flexibility overall... so making the Dominate Malk discipline standard is an improvement to me. The downside is that the bane is a lot harder to apply in V20 until I figure out a way to incorporate compulsions into V20 in a reasonable way.

Tremere: Version differences on Blood Sorcery/Thaumaturgy I consider a separate issue from the Clans proper and the change to their bane from being easier to blood bond to having a harder time creating them is just very 'change for change's sake' for me... hence meh.

Salubri: I've legitimately never seen a Salubri played or attempted to add one as an NPC to these are more just "Meh" by reason of don't care enough to even fully read the entry.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Ah, I forgot a few factions

Meh- Salubri- Don't care for it. Wasted a good chance to give us the warriors. Also feels like someone who only had a cursory glance at the old clan wrote this up; the Salubri are more than this. No effort involved.

Agonizing- The Setites
They've adapted to the absurdities of the V5 metaplot pretty well; throwing most of the Setites behind the Anarchs is a good and interesting development. What I can't stand is this absolutely absurd two-party split, both taking up the opposite and most extreme ends of Heresy. Yeah, both sides are Heretical. Imagine 90% of political thought just decided to flock to the extremes of either destroying all computers or uploading our brains into machines, and nobody thought up a middle ground. That's this setite split. You're either against Set by willfully misinterpreting his philosophy or you're against Set by siding with a bunch of heretics who're following radically different faiths; either way you're an apostate. And thus 100% of those formerly within the Settite faith are now apostates... Whut? I feel this is more to reflect some American reality of bipartisan political lines, but it doesn't work at all for a religion. Some really bone-headed stuff.

Bad- "Banu Haqim"
Coming off a prior edition, this is just terrible; the caste system they've worked so hard to establish is uprooted, Quietus is magic even though they've been weird about magic and... Yeah.
In V5, it's just meh. I have reservations about the use of a new Arabic name for a clan that's supposedly half-diversifying and half-hating Islam; it's just backwards, perhaps a little pretentious. I will give credit where credit's due; The new logo is an improvement; It's nice to have something I can casually draw.

[adambeyoncelowe]

I, like some others, have imported the bits I like into V20. I've scrapped the rest.

I went with the Ravnos weakness reducing Willpower rather than agg damage. The latter is just too deadly. Other than that, I like their new write-up.

I sort of like the new Tzimisce flaw, but I feel there's definitely a loss of a lot of good thematic stuff for the clan as a whole. As such, I use the old flaw with the V5 version being for the Old Clan. I use the Discipline spread from V20, but if I used V5 rules, I would just make it be Animalism, Auspex and Blood Sorcery (with Vicissitude as rituals, given the length of time they take anyway; this also allows Kolduns to use the same spread).

The Salubri weakness seems too harsh, as well. I'd go with the V20 version for the Healers and Warriors.

I'm not sold on the Hecata yet, or the Camarilla Lasombra. The Hecata thing feels too neat and the Lasombra thing feels too forced, even with the lengthy rationale for why it happened. But then again, I also think the Gehenna War thing is iffy, and sort of trivialises the conflicts in the Middle East (i.e., all the vampire religious fanatics have gone there to blow themselves up in an edition that otherwise goes to great lengths to walk back harmful stereotypes).

The Ministry I'm ambivalent about. I would never make them Anarch, for instance, but I don't mind the move away from Conan-esque evil serpent worshippers. I've made the serpent faction more explicitly Biblical/Gnostic, so the main Setite faction can be affiliated with the Typhonic Beast (as in V20DA). I know that's sort of been the direction since Revised anyway, but then we still had all the evil snake powers until DA offered alternatives.