and the Tzimisce would get pissed off bad and turn you into a living rug if you mentioned that the Tremere are the master blood sorcerors, Tzimisce Koldunc sorcery also predates Tremere blood sorcery.
Ventrue new bane Hierarchy would have been perfect if it was just high-clans...since it's every vampire I find it strange that a Ventrue would bow down to a Nosferatu on the basis of higher blood potency, or a Banu Haqim. With that being said Implant Suggestion...love it!
That Hecata compulsion of Morbidity is really cool in is immediate effect! The More Forms of Play is very useful for those of us just starting out and considering alternative play styles. Thanks for the book review 🖤
The Toreador bane of Agonizing Empathy is a fascinating one, though I think it's more appropriate for Salubri. Also the Ventrue "Hierarchy" bane is great, but would fit better on Tremere. Especially ones who still have a Pyramid mindset!
well Ive been playing vampire on and off for say 30 years now so I think these new vampire curses can be added to the existing clan curse, like the regular clan curses are the most common say 75 to 90 percent of the clan have them but there is that 10 to 25 percent who have for some odd reason a different curse, and the reason can be played out, in fact the reasoning can be a adventure uinto itself.
you know Pursuer really is just perfect for my "Trackmere" build, i mean Unerring Pursuit is in clan for tremere while you got Illuminate Trail of Prey and Sanguine Watcher. Add in the new "not blood shield from Bloodlines" power and the Bladed hands ritual for that added edge and there you go. But yeah I'm real happy to see Caitiff finally get some love, they're like 5E's paladin in a way, you can do a lot of interesting things with them but people are too biased by the past editions to really give them a chance, plus they really are just the prefect LGBT+ analog too so i have to love them.
Wrt the idea of Kindred *influencing* rather than outright controlling the mortal world, there's actually an entire revised book on the subjects: The Gilded Cage. I'm using it for one of my PCs who's playing a judge, & it has entire chapters on ways to influence mortal spheres like social parties, politics, the financial sector, underground crime. It's highly recommended. I'm also glad we got more for the Duskborn. Their "mix n match" V5 treatment has really put those lil' tragedians on the map as something I might actually play, so I'm glad to see them get more support & be a consistent part of V5's design. -- Vivi Vendetta (they/them)
Thanks for your in depth and enthralling insights; you've been a great guide on the mechanic and lore - not to mention you're fantastic in "Stich of Fate" (I just started)! I can't wait to fawn over the PDF but I've already adopted the "Survival Instincts" bane for my self-possessed Gangrel character concept and I love the idea of bursting through brick walls with "Wrecker" like Morpheus in the Matrix! Spelling aside, the Player's Guide seems like it's adding further nuance, options and clearer instructions which can only be a good thing.
@ChaoticNight it is. I didn't realize you had none of the other books. Depending on the clan you choose you're going to be missing a lot of things still especially rituals and ceremonies. And if Lore is important you're not going to have any of that either. This you can create a character that's essentially bare bones. Additionally you can't play the game with just this book it doesn't have the rules to play. You're going to have to at least get the core book
@@adamrandaustin For a moment I thought this was taking an approach similar to Requiem where it helps creating vampire stories without the metaplot bagage, but it was disappointing knowing it didn't have any rules. Thank you for clarifying it.
I don't know how I feel about Caitiff being able to take a merit that makes them borderline day walkers tbh. Thin-bloods being day walkers makes sense since they are pretty much just one step above ghouls and revenants but Caitiffs are still full blooded vampires they just dont have a clan. So they should still have all the weakness as well as all the strengths of other vampires, this merit could get even crazier if the Caitiff has Fortitude to. Probably gonna ban this merit at my tables personally for balance and lore reasons since this merit pretty much makes your kindred Blade or Alucard or any other op dhampir in pop culture.
I thought so too at first but the cost to do that for a caitiff is to take a point of aggravated willpower damage regardless you still take superficial damage if anything that reminds me of vampires in pop culture that walk around in the day layers and layers of clothing so they don't get hit by any ray of sunshine while they're moving around and with blacked-out cars and all that stuff but your point is very valid friend I would honestly ban The death proof merit for them
Personally I could see making this work, kind of like thinblood merits and flaws, where your required to take an equal number of dots in a caitiff flaw to take them.
Well, you know, it's your game. You can decide what to allow or not at your table. The advantage of treating TTRPGs as guidelines and not RULES is that you can see modularity as options to customize your game, not just things for PC building.
as for masters of the blood, well the Assamites aka Banu Haqim have been masters of blood sorcery a LOT longer than the Tremere have been. However the Tremere are good at advertising.
*Edit* just discovered you cant preorder in the UK. Sad times. This is the book ive pretty much been waiting for since about a year after v5 released. Sounds amazing. I had a Caitiff who owned a bar and carved out part of the cellar to hide thin bloods in so that merit sounds interesting
I'm not a fan of this edition. I'm an old school Vampire player going back to 2e. There are parts of the 5e system I like (the Hunger system, for example), but over all, I think the system sucks. With that said, I still might pick this book up and try to adapt it to a V20/5e hybrid for my game, eventually. Your review of this book most certainly has given me some inspiration for doing so. Thanks for the review.
The reference to Masks makes me so happy that game is so fucking awesome!!! The Brujah are definitely the Bull if they were Masks characters. My next Masks character I play should be a vampire lol
The Tremere Bane only bugged me initially until I saw it only affected Blood Surges so Blood Sorcery is still as easy to use as it was before. Also, a correction. The idea of multiple Banes can exist within the same game as they have a flaw called Twice Cursed where you can have both. My reading is that if the setting of your game causes problems for the original Bane you could opt to say the default is the alternate but that doesn't mean you can't have both in the same game. Also also, I LOVE that they clarified the Lasombra one. It's now closer to how I originally interpreted it and arguably even better than that. Also also also, as a Hecata player that didn't care for the Giovanni flaw for some characters this new one fits at least one of my characters SO MUCH BETTER. The character I'm mainly thinking of was written before V5 and I just kept trying to figure out how they fit in the new version and I just figured they were written off as just not fitting but with every addition to the game they fit in better and better and this actually simulated some of the flaws I took for the character
I still wish they would change Hecata Oblivion. The Hecata powers are way too powerful and the Ceremonies should not be a choice but should require weaker powers as the trade-off for wanting Ceremonies
Going back to Oblivion Ceremonies I wish they would give Oblivion its own thing like how Blood Sorcery has a focus on Warding I think it could be interesting if Oblivion had something like Summoning. I'm not certain how you would divide that by level except maybe level one let's you summon the last thing they saw, level two summons a wraith, level three a spectre, level four a shadow of Oblivion, etc
What made you choose the name of Strange Adventures? Always curious to see why people choose the names of their channels :D Me? I wanted to focus on Quests as in narrative design/story design in TTRPG and video games and ruined as a double-meaning of ruining south (failing forward) as well as “rune” for being magical and related to language too.
Quick question, if you were to get one vampire book to story-tell with, would you recommend this one first? Could you actually start storytelling with just this book or just one book?
If you've never played vampire before and have no other books, get the core rule book. It will be much more useful for a storyteller. This book is to give more tools to players rather than Storytellers
@@StrangeAdventures I've played before and I've listened to probably a million hours of all the games, like your thin blood Chronicles any of huddy's stuff the, all of the Pod by night and roll for it and pretty much anything vampire related :-) so I can see how some of the rules are applied over all those times and during the games, but it's different when you have to create your own! I did watch your video about the kind of pre-created games like Chicago by night or La by night, as well as played through all the choose-your-own-adventure kind of games, which helps a lot of lore but really figuring out the scene and the time. And how much depth one would want to go is tricky. Could you make a video on like the scope of starting a campaign? Forgot to mention, thanks, I will get the corebook first then. All these new bits are sooooo cool though!
This actually looks like it's worth the buy. Just not a full 50$ + more with shipping though. Here's hoping i can buy it at a discount at my local hobby store sometime in the future.
Hey! Serious question. I know you’re a lover of the Tremere. Do you have any issue with 5e blood sorcery and rituals? (Just for clarity, I love 5e, not a power gamer, and feel the previous thaumaturgy versions got out of hand) VtM, though not a combat centric RPG like D&D, is still a story about monsters, and combat happens. I feel Tremere wouldn’t of made it a year if their magic was this impractical to use in combat. It’s an easy fix! Nothing needs to be changed. Just adding some simple “scene long” or even “one shot” combat rituals you could pre-prepare would work, and the rouse check system would expertly nerf the power players from spamming fireballs all over the place. Yes I could just homebrew this, but I wish WoD would give me one book with rituals that can make me useful to my coterie in an UNEXPECTED fight.
Now I vehemently disagree with the chose one idea, as it adds so many potential possibilities, when you don't default know a kindred's weakness by knowing their clan. Not to mention so many of them feel like they could be loreful natural derivatives that arose in the clan over the ages, and/or through a clan's attempts to subvert their bane. Not to mention some of the banes just plain can't have existed for elders and low gens, since they wouldn't be at all the same clan and some plain aren't a meaningful bane for them.
Also v5 ruined my beloved Tzimisce. making them undead hoarders instead of the trans vampirism/ post vampirism seekers of evolution through pain and metamorphosis. I wish they would retcon the v5 crap.
Always nice to see more predator type options. They (along with merits/flaws) are what I consistently crave more of.
I think the new banes could be a really good way to give flavor to different bloodlines/decent of x, so they feel different from baseline clans
Thanks for the review! We put a lot into this book for the community and to expand play.
and the Tzimisce would get pissed off bad and turn you into a living rug if you mentioned that the Tremere are the master blood sorcerors, Tzimisce Koldunc sorcery also predates Tremere blood sorcery.
Ventrue new bane Hierarchy would have been perfect if it was just high-clans...since it's every vampire I find it strange that a Ventrue would bow down to a Nosferatu on the basis of higher blood potency, or a Banu Haqim. With that being said Implant Suggestion...love it!
That Hecata compulsion of Morbidity is really cool in is immediate effect!
The More Forms of Play is very useful for those of us just starting out and considering alternative play styles.
Thanks for the book review 🖤
I love how you review the book without just reading parts of it!!! Thats amazing!! Keep up the good work.
Multiple Banes? Who would pick that 😉❤
I might have already 😆
The Toreador bane of Agonizing Empathy is a fascinating one, though I think it's more appropriate for Salubri. Also the Ventrue "Hierarchy" bane is great, but would fit better on Tremere. Especially ones who still have a Pyramid mindset!
No reason you couldn't mix and match them. I know I plan too
well Ive been playing vampire on and off for say 30 years now so I think these new vampire curses can be added to the existing clan curse, like the regular clan curses are the most common say 75 to 90 percent of the clan have them but there is that 10 to 25 percent who have for some odd reason a different curse, and the reason can be played out, in fact the reasoning can be a adventure uinto itself.
you know Pursuer really is just perfect for my "Trackmere" build, i mean Unerring Pursuit is in clan for tremere while you got Illuminate Trail of Prey and Sanguine Watcher. Add in the new "not blood shield from Bloodlines" power and the Bladed hands ritual for that added edge and there you go.
But yeah I'm real happy to see Caitiff finally get some love, they're like 5E's paladin in a way, you can do a lot of interesting things with them but people are too biased by the past editions to really give them a chance, plus they really are just the prefect LGBT+ analog too so i have to love them.
Utility Tremere, roll out!
What about that potence power that's definitely not from blood hunt
" the Bladed hands ritual for that added edge" I see exactly what you did there...And I am slightly mad about it! 😀
Wrt the idea of Kindred *influencing* rather than outright controlling the mortal world, there's actually an entire revised book on the subjects: The Gilded Cage. I'm using it for one of my PCs who's playing a judge, & it has entire chapters on ways to influence mortal spheres like social parties, politics, the financial sector, underground crime. It's highly recommended.
I'm also glad we got more for the Duskborn. Their "mix n match" V5 treatment has really put those lil' tragedians on the map as something I might actually play, so I'm glad to see them get more support & be a consistent part of V5's design.
-- Vivi Vendetta
(they/them)
recently found you through discovering you on tablestory's Leech, ive already finished it- on to stitch of fate!
As always, great review. Gotta say I love your take on the Bane Variants.
Thanks! Appreciate that from a fellow WoD youtuber :)
MK is Mark Kelly.
Thanks for your in depth and enthralling insights; you've been a great guide on the mechanic and lore - not to mention you're fantastic in "Stich of Fate" (I just started)! I can't wait to fawn over the PDF but I've already adopted the "Survival Instincts" bane for my self-possessed Gangrel character concept and I love the idea of bursting through brick walls with "Wrecker" like Morpheus in the Matrix!
Spelling aside, the Player's Guide seems like it's adding further nuance, options and clearer instructions which can only be a good thing.
As someone new to the whole Vtm its a good thing this book came out. Cause i had no idea where to start.
It won't help that much your shortchanging yourself by not getting the other books to create a character
@ChaoticNight it is. I didn't realize you had none of the other books. Depending on the clan you choose you're going to be missing a lot of things still especially rituals and ceremonies. And if Lore is important you're not going to have any of that either. This you can create a character that's essentially bare bones. Additionally you can't play the game with just this book it doesn't have the rules to play. You're going to have to at least get the core book
@@adamrandaustin For a moment I thought this was taking an approach similar to Requiem where it helps creating vampire stories without the metaplot bagage, but it was disappointing knowing it didn't have any rules. Thank you for clarifying it.
banes it says to replace all but i would rather it be a choice for the player and down to the individual character.
Already pre-ordered and now impatiently waiting to get the book.
New Animalism! Yay! Now my only wish is that Nburu should be incorporated into Animalism in some way.
I don't know how I feel about Caitiff being able to take a merit that makes them borderline day walkers tbh. Thin-bloods being day walkers makes sense since they are pretty much just one step above ghouls and revenants but Caitiffs are still full blooded vampires they just dont have a clan. So they should still have all the weakness as well as all the strengths of other vampires, this merit could get even crazier if the Caitiff has Fortitude to. Probably gonna ban this merit at my tables personally for balance and lore reasons since this merit pretty much makes your kindred Blade or Alucard or any other op dhampir in pop culture.
I thought so too at first but the cost to do that for a caitiff is to take a point of aggravated willpower damage regardless you still take superficial damage if anything that reminds me of vampires in pop culture that walk around in the day layers and layers of clothing so they don't get hit by any ray of sunshine while they're moving around and with blacked-out cars and all that stuff but your point is very valid friend I would honestly ban The death proof merit for them
Personally I could see making this work, kind of like thinblood merits and flaws, where your required to take an equal number of dots in a caitiff flaw to take them.
Well, you know, it's your game. You can decide what to allow or not at your table. The advantage of treating TTRPGs as guidelines and not RULES is that you can see modularity as options to customize your game, not just things for PC building.
Love your take on all this info, thanks for sharing.
as for masters of the blood, well the Assamites aka Banu Haqim have been masters of blood sorcery a LOT longer than the Tremere have been. However the Tremere are good at advertising.
i need to get this book.
*Edit* just discovered you cant preorder in the UK. Sad times.
This is the book ive pretty much been waiting for since about a year after v5 released. Sounds amazing. I had a Caitiff who owned a bar and carved out part of the cellar to hide thin bloods in so that merit sounds interesting
Your awesome dude and awesome video big fan of vampire of masquerade
Thanks a ton!
I'm not a fan of this edition. I'm an old school Vampire player going back to 2e. There are parts of the 5e system I like (the Hunger system, for example), but over all, I think the system sucks. With that said, I still might pick this book up and try to adapt it to a V20/5e hybrid for my game, eventually. Your review of this book most certainly has given me some inspiration for doing so. Thanks for the review.
How so?
The reference to Masks makes me so happy that game is so fucking awesome!!! The Brujah are definitely the Bull if they were Masks characters. My next Masks character I play should be a vampire lol
The Tremere Bane only bugged me initially until I saw it only affected Blood Surges so Blood Sorcery is still as easy to use as it was before.
Also, a correction. The idea of multiple Banes can exist within the same game as they have a flaw called Twice Cursed where you can have both. My reading is that if the setting of your game causes problems for the original Bane you could opt to say the default is the alternate but that doesn't mean you can't have both in the same game.
Also also, I LOVE that they clarified the Lasombra one. It's now closer to how I originally interpreted it and arguably even better than that.
Also also also, as a Hecata player that didn't care for the Giovanni flaw for some characters this new one fits at least one of my characters SO MUCH BETTER. The character I'm mainly thinking of was written before V5 and I just kept trying to figure out how they fit in the new version and I just figured they were written off as just not fitting but with every addition to the game they fit in better and better and this actually simulated some of the flaws I took for the character
I still wish they would change Hecata Oblivion. The Hecata powers are way too powerful and the Ceremonies should not be a choice but should require weaker powers as the trade-off for wanting Ceremonies
Oh, and I TOTALLY love Grim Reaper. It's exactly the Predator Type I needed in the game
Going back to Oblivion Ceremonies I wish they would give Oblivion its own thing like how Blood Sorcery has a focus on Warding I think it could be interesting if Oblivion had something like Summoning. I'm not certain how you would divide that by level except maybe level one let's you summon the last thing they saw, level two summons a wraith, level three a spectre, level four a shadow of Oblivion, etc
What made you choose the name of Strange Adventures? Always curious to see why people choose the names of their channels :D Me? I wanted to focus on Quests as in narrative design/story design in TTRPG and video games and ruined as a double-meaning of ruining south (failing forward) as well as “rune” for being magical and related to language too.
Quick question, if you were to get one vampire book to story-tell with, would you recommend this one first? Could you actually start storytelling with just this book or just one book?
If you've never played vampire before and have no other books, get the core rule book. It will be much more useful for a storyteller. This book is to give more tools to players rather than Storytellers
@@StrangeAdventures I've played before and I've listened to probably a million hours of all the games, like your thin blood Chronicles any of huddy's stuff the, all of the Pod by night and roll for it and pretty much anything vampire related :-) so I can see how some of the rules are applied over all those times and during the games, but it's different when you have to create your own! I did watch your video about the kind of pre-created games like Chicago by night or La by night, as well as played through all the choose-your-own-adventure kind of games, which helps a lot of lore but really figuring out the scene and the time. And how much depth one would want to go is tricky. Could you make a video on like the scope of starting a campaign?
Forgot to mention, thanks, I will get the corebook first then. All these new bits are sooooo cool though!
Did you get an early copy for review? Do you know when exactly it comes out, early or late june? Thanks.
Yes I did! I believe it goes on sale April 10th for pdf and the physical release after
@@StrangeAdventures Thank you. I will definitely get it on the 10th. I'm gonna start DMing V5 soon, so for me it's a must buy.
with infestation Animalism for Nosferatu finally makes sense
Love new predator types
This actually looks like it's worth the buy. Just not a full 50$ + more with shipping though. Here's hoping i can buy it at a discount at my local hobby store sometime in the future.
Do you know how to get ahold of this when it releases in the UK? Finding wod stuff seems pretty difficult here
I saw it's available for pre-order in the UK from Renegade Game Studios
@@TheLoopyTiger thanks
Hey! Serious question.
I know you’re a lover of the Tremere. Do you have any issue with 5e blood sorcery and rituals? (Just for clarity, I love 5e, not a power gamer, and feel the previous thaumaturgy versions got out of hand)
VtM, though not a combat centric RPG like D&D, is still a story about monsters, and combat happens. I feel Tremere wouldn’t of made it a year if their magic was this impractical to use in combat.
It’s an easy fix! Nothing needs to be changed. Just adding some simple “scene long” or even “one shot” combat rituals you could pre-prepare would work, and the rouse check system would expertly nerf the power players from spamming fireballs all over the place.
Yes I could just homebrew this, but I wish WoD would give me one book with rituals that can make me useful to my coterie in an UNEXPECTED fight.
When does this players guide come out?
My local game store has an eta of 30/6/23
PDF sale starts on April 10th (at least if I interpret the Discord Post on the official Server right). But book sales are in June
@@riken1829 Thanks for the info. Really looking forward to get the PDF.
Teach me sensei; how do I get hired by TCR??
I feel you on the Tremere.
Now I vehemently disagree with the chose one idea, as it adds so many potential possibilities, when you don't default know a kindred's weakness by knowing their clan. Not to mention so many of them feel like they could be loreful natural derivatives that arose in the clan over the ages, and/or through a clan's attempts to subvert their bane. Not to mention some of the banes just plain can't have existed for elders and low gens, since they wouldn't be at all the same clan and some plain aren't a meaningful bane for them.
Neat!
Tzimisce are the true blood sorcerers. The Tremere are just failed mages who had to steal immortality.
Gm .... don't u mean ST....😂
Also v5 ruined my beloved Tzimisce. making them undead hoarders instead of the trans vampirism/ post vampirism seekers of evolution through pain and metamorphosis. I wish they would retcon the v5 crap.
This is not fascinating, the amount of new material doesn't make this book worth the price they're asking for it. Looks more like a cash grab.
Unfortunately you're right. As written it's incomplete and not worth it