Clan tzimisce is the least interesting clan

[SetiteFriend]

But do you get my point that absurd behavoir amd bad decisions isn't exactly out the norms in v5?

It's still not comparable. "They wrote an offensive section in a book, so it makes sense that they'd publish it exclusively in Swahili" , "They wrote an offensive section in a book, so it makes sense that they'd add chimerical damage as a game mechanic" or "They wrote an offensive section in a book, so it makes sense that they were originally changing the setting to Morrowind". How is "They wrote an offensive section in a book, so it makes sense that they were originally only having Thin-Bloods".

True they did ad a lot of bloat to feeding but the game design intent is quite clear-streamline to personal horror, less 'gimmicks'. Then you've got this extra set of rules for a completly different supernatural stapled on. They even get a quirky gimmicky power set.

"Completely different supernatural" "Despite this, your thin-blood character is still fundamentally a vampire, and unless otherwise stated follows the same rules as other vampires in this book."

It isn't pedantism, your argument is they're a new thing and that's why they get a load if stuff theyre not. They had unique mechanics for 23 years they're not a new thing either mechanically thematically or plot wise. They're just incredibly favoured this edition.

They stick out strongly, distinct mechanics and thematic differences from all other player options in a edition which trimmed that put for everyone else.

Of course it is pedantism, I've clarified time and time again that I meant the mechanics of Thin-blood Alchemy and their Merits and Flaws being a new thing, not TBs per se.

Also, since they've had unique mechanics for 23 years, it makes less sense that their mechanics being expanded means V5 was originally about them?

Expanding on the above, the TBs having some different themes is intentional and part of why they get additional focus. Again, New editions sometimes try new things. Just because V5 cuts down on stuff doesn't mean they can't expand on old stuff too, adding new mechanics and systems, as I mentioned before.

It isn't but it feeds into how focussed v5 is on thin bloods we're seeing this stuff pop up three years in. I could pick other examples but I went for the most extreme to make my point

They should have ignore Thinbloods then? Even though they are, following old metaplot even, supposed to be more common each night? They should have given them this focus you talk about in the corebook and then completely ignored them for the rest of the edition?

Plus, they get 1 dedicated cult, 1 dedicated loresheet and 1 Path, plus a handful of formulas.

Big chunks of writting and supplementary unique mechanics.

Which makes since full-bloods have more in common with each other and so need less dedicated text to them.

And again the idea that V5 was originally only been about thin-blood is clearly a baseless rumor. I have read the developers talk about things that were changed over the course of V5's development, like the Ministry originally joining the Camarilla, but TB being the main focus was never even mentioned.

[Kharnov]

I'm sorry I should have been clearer here. I was referring to the gangrel and Protean. if the core clans are the player clans protean qualifies since its uniquely gangrel and leans into animal clan gimmick.


I was also referring to v5 blood sorcery rather than previous Ed Thaumaturgy. Were it feels more like a series of blood based powers than a magic rule set.

I do think you make a fair point about the fact that all of the other Disciplines found among the "Core" Clans can be found among multiple Clans. But Protean is more than just an "animal" power, it's a "shapeshifting" power, which is a pretty broad category, and a common archetype in vampire fiction. I think in this case they're just kind of painted into a corner, and don't have any "Core" Clans that they can give it to where it is as or more thematically appropriate than Disciplines they already have.

Having taken a bit of time to look up the new V5 Blood Sorcery, I find the decision on how they've chosen to handle it... interesting. In most respects, they have simply made it more like the Blood Sorcery Disciplines found in VtR, where most of the wide array of powers available are exclusively found in Rituals, which I do like; it draws a greater distinction between "regular" Disciplines and Blood Sorcery. In recent years I've become more appreciative of having magic in games be treated more like how it was historically depicted, requiring preparation and ritual rather than just being a grab-bag of powers you can toss around at a moment's notice.

But unlike VtR, they have given the Discipline itself a set of powers that don't require you to learn Rituals in order to use it, and those powers are indeed focused around blood and vitae specifically. I think this is supposed to represent two things. Firstly, the Path of Blood was frequently described as the Path that most Tremere were taught first, before branching out into other kinds of sorcery. And secondly, Blood Sorcery is also being used as a replacement for Quietus, which was also a Discipline with blood manipulation as its primary gimmick. It seems a bit clumsy to me, and I find it a bit odd having Blood Sorcery be a universal among the Banu Haqim when it was originally supposed to be the focus of just one branch, but I can see what they were trying to do.

[SetiteFriend]

Same reason why we can say the Anarchs were already the heroes since 1st ed. Subtext. While the text does not directly says that you should play this or that or that there is a hero or a villain, it heavily implies possibilities and gives hints to the best "solutions" for the many "problems" it presents, along with rules that mechanically reward specific goals even if it never say you should take those goals as yours.

1st and 2nd editions paint a bleak existence for Vampires because they directly say that Vampires do politics and power plays, but the Jyhad is ultimately an unwinnable game. But the subtext is clear that not playing the Jyhad is an option and that you can "win the game" through that. V5 paints a world of even more terrible vampires than before struggling against equally terrible hunters, but Thin Bloods, while persecuted by everyone, get to bypass every single big obstacle and have an actual shot at achieving meaningful and lasting good for themselves or others.

Vampire has always been shock full of subtext, and isn't particularly subtle about it. But if you just take everything you read at face value you may indeed not see it, as it is still subtext.

Anarchs are certainly less heroes now, and Thin Bloods have different themes, a slightly easier shot at a mortal life and redemption being one of them.

But the V5 is not about being the good guys at all. "Perhaps your character tries desperately to hold on to vestiges of human morality despite the sordid demands of vampiric existence. Or maybe they have already adjusted their morality to their new condition...Using this game to explore moral questions and immoral acts can be interesting and emotionally meaningful."

But I'm still waiting for the text (or subtext) that somehow supports this "You are intended to play people who are barely vampires, fighting the REAL vampires. You are intended to play someone who barely has any powers, but also barely has a bane and has high humanity, who fights the vampires by exploiting the subtle advantages of having high humanity and barely any bane."

[monteparnas]

I'm sorry I should have been clearer here. I was referring to the gangrel and Protean. if the core clans are the player clans protean qualifies since its uniquely gangrel and leans into animal clan gimmick.


I was also referring to v5 blood sorcery rather than previous Ed Thaumaturgy. Were it feels more like a series of blood based powers than a magic rule set.

Oh, my bad.

But Protean is more of a case of badly written power than purposefully non-broad. Shapechanging is as much a traditional vampire power as possible, and Protean tries to cover all the spectrum of iconic transformation through its 5 levels. So I wouldn't really say it is a unique and niche gimmick, despite it being made unnecessarily rigid to the point of Snake-Themed Protean having to be mechanically its own Discipline.

Requiem 2nd edition did it perfectly, and the V5 mechanic works far better for Protean, but its design purpose was clearly more aligned to the other main Disciplines.

Of course it is pedantism, I've clarified time and time again that I meant the mechanics of Thin-blood Alchemy and their Merits and Flaws being a new thing, not TBs per se.

It isn't in the sense that none of those mechanics is really new, despite you still claiming they are. None of the themes, either. ToTb had it all, all those mechanics (or equivalent ones just as detailed, but in need of a heavy update, which they got), all those themes. There's nothing new at all about them in V5 except being more common (which was expected).

That said, though:

Also, since they've had unique mechanics for 23 years, it makes less sense that their mechanics being expanded means V5 was originally about them?

I agree with this and personally I'm not aggravated by them in any way.

While I do agree completely with the reading that the game is strongly centered on them, their depiction and rules by themselves, especially in the core, do not bother me and I actually liked a lot the idea of eliminating Generation differences among Thin Bloods (making them into kind of baseline, you can't really go lower than that). This last one, by the way, is the single rule on TB that is really new and unique to V5, and I think was a good idea for both lore and game design.

But I'm still waiting for the text (or subtext) that somehow supports this "You are intended to play people who are barely vampires, fighting the REAL vampires. You are intended to play someone who barely has any powers, but also barely has a bane and has high humanity, who fights the vampires by exploiting the subtle advantages of having high humanity and barely any bane."

You'll keep waiting because it is by definition subjective enough that you can't see it if you keep taking direct assertions at face value. It is kind of a reading you don't make and aren't willing to make.

And that's ok. It just means that our arguments on the matter will keep passing right through each other because we're just not talking the same language here. I at least won't try to further this line of thought, it would take an effort I'm not willing to make or even sure I can.

[SetiteFriend]

You'll keep waiting because it is by definition subjective enough that you can't see it if you keep taking direct assertions at face value. It is kind of a reading you don't make and aren't willing to make.

Because this is how burden of proof works, you make a random claim and just say the other party just isn't interested in seeing things that way.

And that's ok. It just means that our arguments on the matter will keep passing right through each other because we're just not talking the same language here. I at least won't try to further this line of thought, it would take an effort I'm not willing to make or even sure I can.

Defending someone else's random and unsubstantiated soapbox about Fifth Edition is indeed a fruitless discussion and there is no point in furthering it.

[CTPhipps]

Because this is how burden of proof works, you make a random claim and just say the other party just isn't interested in seeing things that way.

Defending someone else's random and unsubstantiated soapbox about Fifth Edition is indeed a fruitless discussion and there is no point in furthering it.

Take a warning and leave the thread. If you have an issue with a poster, report them.

[Lysander]

I never found the Tzimsce clan boring at all. Just dam hard to play in a worthy fashion in a game.

[monteparnas]

I never found the Tzimsce clan boring at all. Just dam hard to play in a worthy fashion in a game.

What do you think hard about them in play?

[AkatsukiLeader13]

What do you think hard about them in play?

I can't say for them but for me it was being allowed to play them prior to V20 Anarchs Unbound as prior to that I frequently ran into the issue where I couldn't play them as the table would bar Sabbat Clans. Which really only barred the Tzimisce, Blood Brothers, Harbingers of Skull and Salubri Attritubes as everything else had non-Sabbat versions that were allowed. Hell there was one time where I couldn't even play an Old Clan because as far as the ST was concerned, Old Clan Tzimisce were isolationists that stay in Eastern European and would have no reason to be in the USA.

Thankfully Anarchs Unbound finally undid that silly notion that there wouldn't have been Tzimisce that remained Anarch after the Convention of Thorns and that the mainline Clan isn't some hivemind of fleshcrafting fiends.

The other issue I have run into is people abusing or going overboard with Fleshcrafting but usually that's also a case of the player running roughshot over a less experienced ST that could also happen with other Clans and Disciplines.

[Lysander]

I found them hard because of how do you portray a clan member that makes an effort to be a alien monster divorced from human concerns

[AkatsukiLeader13]

I found them hard because of how do you portray a clan member that makes an effort to be a alien monster divorced from human concerns

Except not every Tzimisce is an alien monster just like not every Toreador is an art-obsessed fop nor is every Gangrel some mangy loner that would prefer the wilderness to the cities.

A stereotype does not encompass the entirety of Clan. There are plenty of Tzimisce that aren't vicious monsters or inhuman Metamorphists. Hell look at Dracula. While being an Elder he is less human than younger Kindred, he's not some inhuman monster that lives in a haven made of humans.

[Kharnov]

I found them hard because of how do you portray a clan member that makes an effort to be a alien monster divorced from human concerns

There are two parts to this answer. Firstly, all vampires are, to some extent, divorced from human concerns. They have concerns that are fundamentally inhuman, and there are human concerns that generally do not apply to them. Revenants are the only humans that can come even close to understanding the primal violent rage of a vampire's Beast. They do not need to worry about harm or sickness the way that humans do, because they cannot (themselves) get sick and can heal nearly any trauma that we can imagine so long as they have sufficient vitae. They are extremely resistant to many of the concerns that human beings have regarding the environment, such as hot or cold weather, while also being vulnerable to particular conditions like sunlight that a human would not normally need to be concerned with.

Plenty of vampires outside of the Tzimisce Clan can adopt habits and practices fundamentally divorced from conventional human experience; this is why Nosferatu can set up warrens down in the sewers when the lack of hygiene would be a severe threat to any human attempting to do the same. Depicting the Tzimisces' aspired divorce from normal human concerns can be achieved by looking at what human concerns simply do not matter to them as vampires, and instead focusing on what concerns that the vampiric condition creates: "food and shelter" mean very different things for a vampire than they do a human.

However, the other half of this equation is that most vampires cannot separate themselves from conventional human concerns entirely. Part of this has to do with the fact that most vampires hunt their prey by mingling with humans, which means that they generally need to be good at "faking it" even if they don't genuinely need to worry about things. If you dress like it's the middle of summer in the dead of winter simply because the cold cannot really harm you until it's capable of freezing you solid, you are going to stand out like a sore thumb. Similarly, vampires themselves may not need to care about hygiene for their own sake, but they need to consider the impact that it has on their hunting, from the more humourous example of stinking like an open sewer because showering isn't really necessary for your survival, to the more serious concern of becoming a plague-bearer if you pick up some kind of disease that cannot hurt you but can be passed on to your victims if you aren't careful.

Moreover, I tend to view the Tzimisce opinion that they are fundamentally divorced from their pre-Embrace human condition to be one of their greatest intellectual errors. Given a long enough time period, they can eventually become truly inhuman monsters as old habits and opinions from life are overcome or erased by the habits and opinions that will develop in something with fundamentally different needs. But for the first few centuries of life, habits from your mortal life are likely to maintain an influence on your identity as a member of the undead, especially when some of those habits need to be maintained to keep up your cover while you hunt humans. Eventually you can become a proper Fiend that can stalk humans from the shadows and get the blood you need through the raw power of Disciplines rather than needing to mix and mingle with your human prey, but for a while you're going to need to be able to pretend to be human in order to get close enough to your victims. And even when your old mortal habits fade away, those abandoned mortal habits will still shape how your immortal habits have developed, because growth and change are processes of continuity. The truth is that most Tzimisce simply are not as fundamentally alien to the human condition as they like to imagine themselves, beyond the hoary old Methuselahs that only leave their hidden lairs to drain some unfortunate soul and toss them into a ditch before retiring to their haven to continue pursuing their mysterious goals.

To depict the inhumanity of a Tzimisce, you don't need to imagine something fundamentally Other. You simply need to imagine how something human-like would develop given a different set of needs and priorities; the Tzimisce simply do this more actively than most other vampires.

As a final thought, I imagine that the Tzimisce that are likely to become the most fundamentally different from humanity are the ones that are largely indifferent to it, because the ones actively striving to contrast themselves simply for the sake of it are more likely to simply end up a distorted mirror of the thing they are defining themselves against, rather than truly becoming something different.

[No One of Consequence]

Ironically, as far as Tzimisce being interested in "trans-vampirism"/transhumanism/so forth, one of the better sources of inspiration I found for that angle ended up being the Ordo Dracul book from first edition Requiem. Its material on alchemical mysticism (both external and internal), embodying mystical archetypes, and finding ways to work around certain inherent vampire weaknesses ended up being the sort of things I had always wanted to see certain branches of the Tzimisce and the Path of Metamorphosis focus on.

[monteparnas]

I found them hard because of how do you portray a clan member that makes an effort to be a alien monster divorced from human concerns

The above posts on this are very good, I'll try to simplify it in four strategies:

1 - Don't do it. Unless you really want to go for the Necroscope reference in its most extreme depiction in DSotBH, you don't need to do the alien monster stuff to still deal with any or all the other aspects of the clan that you want, including dealing with clan mates that are already there;

2 - Overdo it embracing the difficulty, A.K.A. make a poser, someone who isn't nearly there but tries hard to pretend. Bonus points if the character go over-the-top on inhuman behavior to throw others off, and then hides to puke and cry;

3 - Go for detachment first and only add to it when you feel like it. Most "alien thought" in fiction is just the character being detached as if others were just artificial, as robots, dolls or something. Chose one metaphor and literally use it as a mental shortcut, every time you want to delve into the detachment stop and picture the other characters as if they were literally that (dolls, robots, imaginary) for yours;

4 - Look for inspiration on tales of people that stand off in the way that interests you the most. It may be some mental condition like Autism or OCD, it may be Cultural Shock, it may be the effect of some drug. But for this my best suggestion is to chose carefully and then dive into your chosen inspiration, not just copy a trope, movie or stereotype, but actually reach for the people that go through that and learn about them from them.

You can also simply read Necroscope to copy the source material, if it is your thing.

[Lysander]

Thanks for some of feedback folks.