| 1 | [[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vampir2_3400.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:200:Are you afraid yet? You should be.]] |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | ->''A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror.'' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | The tabletop roleplaying game that started the TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness line. Creator/WhiteWolf, the game's publishers, subverted many tropes of roleplaying games from the late 80s by making the player characters monsters (as opposed to heroes who hunt them) and installing a KarmaMeter that makes violence a dubious solution in many situations. In this game, players take the roles of vampires (aka the Kindred, aka the Damned), undead beings gifted with eternal (un)life and superhuman power, but forced to endure compulsive bloodlust and the manipulations and predations of seemingly all-powerful elder vampires. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | The game presents the players with a finicky moral puzzle: committing too many evil acts feeds the EnemyWithin (the animalistic urge that vampires call the Beast), endangering your Karma Meter and threatening to transform you into an unthinking monster, but the nature of vampirism and vampire society makes being a saintly do-gooder not only difficult but dangerous, and in that precarious balancing act -- "Beasts we are, lest Beasts we become" -- lies much of the challenge of the game. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Vampires are divided up into clans (loose "families" of related vampires with similar habits and traits), who in turn congregate in sects (broad -- and warring -- political parties of vampires who don't see eye-to-eye on a vampire's place in the world). The Camarilla, the status quo power holders of the setting who emphasize secrecy and indirect control of the human world, initially boast seven clans in their ranks: the rabble-rousing, independent minded [[HotBlooded Brujah]]; the aloof and wild [[BeastMan Gangrel]]; the bugshit insane [[TheMadHatter Malkavians]]; the disfigured and shadowy [[LooksLikeOrlok Nosferatu]]; the artsy and passionate [[VampiresAreSexGods Toreador]]; the magic-wielding [[EvilSorcerer Tremere]]; and the refined but power-hungry [[AristocratsAreEvil Ventrue.]] |
| 11 | |
| 12 | At direct war with the Camarilla are the Sabbat, a sect of vampire anarchist religious fanatics who say to hell with hiding from humans. Oddly, there are only two clans wholly steeped in the Sabbat (with the rest of the ranks filled by outcasts from their parent clan): the [[WickedCultured wickedly stylish]] [[CastingAShadow Lasombra]] and the [[BlueAndOrangeMorality cold, alien-minded]] [[BodyHorror Tzimisce]]. There are four clans who fancy themselves independent: the Banu Haqim, Middle Eastern [[ProfessionalKiller vampire assassins]]; the Followers of Set, [[TheCorrupter vice-peddling schemers from Egypt]]; the Giovanni, an inbred [[BigScrewedUpFamily family of Italian vampire aristos]]; and the Ravnos, [[TheTrickster nomadic, illusionist thieves.]] |
| 13 | |
| 14 | There are also endless numbers of Bloodlines (lesser "sub-clans" with only a few members) ranging from vampires who look like gargoyles to pacifist healer vampires to vampires who can kill you by singing (really). Also critical to the game is the concept of Generation: Older vampires with lower Generation scores (that is to say, more closely "related" to the mythical first vampire) are the status quo power structure, while younger, high-generation vampires (like the players) are the low-men on the totem pole. Critical to the game's mythology are the dreaded, mysterious Third Generation, vampires so ancient and powerful they may well be {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Masquerade is famous both for the huge wealth of creative material it presents to players...and the stranglingly convoluted metaplot and Byzantine internal contradictions that's made it a bit of a mess much of the time. ''TabletopGame/ChicagoByNight'' stands out as by far the most iconic of the game's supplements. In the early 2000s, White Wolf canned Masquerade (along with all their other World of Darkness games), replacing it with the very similar but more streamlined and thematically broad TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem, but the old game was resurrected in a 20th anniversary edition in 2011, published first by White Wolf, then by Onyx Path Publishing. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | By Night Studios put out a new edition of the game's {{LARP}} version in 2013 under the title ''Mind's Eye Theatre: Vampire The Masquerade'', following its own metaplot. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | A new edition of Masquerade was announced by Onyx Path at [=GenCon=] 2015, following on from where the original run had left off at cancellation, treating the anniversary edition as a "nostalgia edition" that commemorated Masquerade's previous history. However, that got dropped when Creator/ParadoxInteractive bought White Wolf later in 2015 and announced ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition'', which was released a few years later in 2018. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | * ''[[Literature/VampireTheMasquerade Vampire: The Masquerade Novels]]'' -- Novels set in the world of the game. |
| 23 | * ''Series/KindredTheEmbraced'' -- The television adaptation. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[AC:ComicBooks]] |
| 26 | [[index]] |
| 27 | * ''ComicBook/VampireTheMasqueradeMoonstone'' (2001-2003) -- Comics published by Moonstone Books. |
| 28 | * ''ComicBook/VampireTheMasqueradeVault'' (2020-Ongoing) -- Comic book series published by Vault Comics. |
| 29 | [[/index]] |
| 30 | |
| 31 | [[AC:TabletopGames]] |
| 32 | [[index]] |
| 33 | * ''TabletopGame/ChicagoByNight'' (1991) -- Its first setting. |
| 34 | * ''TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast'' -- The Far East spinoff. |
| 35 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheEternalStruggle'' (1994) -- The CardGame. |
| 36 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition'' (2018) |
| 37 | * ''TabletopGame/PrincesGambit'' (2018) |
| 38 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodFeud'' (2019) -- A BoardGame funded by Everything Epic through Website/{{Kickstarter}}. |
| 39 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeVendetta'' (2020) -- A CardGame funded by Horrible Guild through Website/{{Kickstarter}}. |
| 40 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeHeritage'' (2020) -- A BoardGame funded by Nice Game Publishing through Website/{{Kickstarter}}. |
| 41 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeRivals'' (2020) -- A CardGame funded by Renegade Game Studios through Website/{{Kickstarter}}. |
| 42 | * ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeChapters'' (2021) -- A BoardGame funded by Flyos Games through Website/{{Kickstarter}}. |
| 43 | [[/index]] |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[AC:VideoGames]] |
| 46 | [[index]] |
| 47 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeRedemption'' (2000) |
| 48 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' (2004) |
| 49 | * A {{MMORPG}} adaptation was announced in 2006, and spent several years in DevelopmentHell before being canceled in 2014. |
| 50 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeCoteriesOfNewYork'' (2019), a VisualNovel in the V5 setting developed by Draw Distance. |
| 51 | ** ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeShadowsOfNewYork'' (2020), a stand-alone expansion/sequel to the above. |
| 52 | * [[/index]]An ongoing series of [[InteractiveFiction text-based adventure games]] developed by Creator/ChoiceOfGames:[[index]] |
| 53 | ** ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeNightRoad'' (2020) |
| 54 | ** ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeOutForBlood'' (2021) |
| 55 | ** ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeParliamentOfKnives'' (2021) |
| 56 | ** ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeSinsOfTheSires'' (2022) |
| 57 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodhunt'' (2021) A BattleRoyaleGame developed by Swedish studio Sharkmob. |
| 58 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeSwansong'' (2022) A narrative, tabletop rules-based RPG by ''Big Bad Wolf'' the developers of ''VideoGame/TheCouncil'', which will have the player taking on three separate viewpoints of three different protagonists. |
| 59 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeJustice'' (2024) A VR game about a Banu Haqim assassin out to avenge his lost sire. |
| 60 | * ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines2'' (TBA, tentatively December 2023) |
| 61 | [[/index]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | It also has a number of official WebVideo playthroughs: |
| 64 | [[index]] |
| 65 | * ''WebVideo/LAByNight'' hosted by Jason Carl |
| 66 | * ''WebVideo/NewYorkByNight'' hosted by Jason Carl |
| 67 | * ''WebVideo/SeattleByNight'' hosted by Jason Carl |
| 68 | * ''WebVideo/ChicagoByNightTheSacrifice'' by Klara Horskjær Herbøl |
| 69 | [[/index]] |
| 70 | ---- |
| 71 | !!This game features examples of: |
| 72 | |
| 73 | * AbusiveParents: Most sires fall into this bad habit. Sometimes they're really trying to be good mentors, but it's just not in a vampire's nature to have a truly mutually beneficial relationship with one of its own kind. Of course, a great many others are openly abusive and manipulative on purpose. The Nosferatu Antediluvian Absimiliard hates his clan and created a race of semi-sentient monsters to wipe them out. |
| 74 | * ActualPacifist: Obviously varies from character to character, but the Salubri healer caste's Disciplines are all geared toward healing and they can only drink blood from willing victims, so your archetypal Salubri will probably be one of these. |
| 75 | * AddedAlliterativeAppeal: The Baali Dark Ages clanbook is full of this. In reference to the founder of the Salubri clan mentioned above, an AlliterativeList: ''‎"Gentle Saulot. Philosopher. Pilgrim. Pacifist. Passionate. Pathetic. Of what use are his meditations on pity and purity now, I wonder?"'' |
| 76 | * AddictionDisplacement: A common event among ghouls who lose their source of vampire blood. |
| 77 | * AffablyEvil: The Tzimisce are often the nicest, most personable vampires one will meet -- but in reality, they use it as a trap, and are actually the most sadistic of any vampire clan. When called out on BodyHorror, they'll chuckle and reply "You ain't seen nothing ''yet''", and ''demonstrate''. |
| 78 | * AlmightyJanitor: Caine. The thirteen Antediluvians are sleeping EldritchAbomination entites, each possessing tenth-tier powers of their three clan disciplines that are ''all'' capable of causing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. It is pretty clear that, should these malicious beings ever awaken, they will immediately take over and/or destroy the world. Meanwhile, their creator, Caine, possesses tenth rank in [[AllYourPowersCombined every single one]] of their disciplines at once, plus the unique ability to spontaneously invent entirely new disciplines, but he has been harmlessly WanderingTheEarth for millenia, apparently completely disinterested in acquiring any sort of worldly power, unlike more or less any other kindred, who all sooner or later crave to claim a smaller or larger part of the world as their domain. |
| 79 | * AlwaysABiggerFish: |
| 80 | ** If you're a mortal, there's a vampire. If you're a vampire, there's always your elders. And even if you're the biggest badass in your city, well, vampires aren't the only things walking around out there. Near the top of the food chain, there are Methuselahs, whose tight and invisible control over their descendants cannot be stopped even by Torpor. Above them, there are Antediluvians, who are bloodthirsty demigods lusting for absolute power. Above them, there are [[BiblicalBadGuy Caine and Lilith]]. |
| 81 | ** Additionally, vampires fare poorly against the supernaturals of the two other big World of Darkness games. A frenzied werewolf can rip apart a group of vampires, and unfortunately for the socially isolated vampires, werewolves are ''pack hunters''. |
| 82 | ** "Wormwood", one of the apocalyptic scenarios in the ''Gehenna'' sourcebook, features this realization as a major component in the vampires' fate. Even the greatest of the Kindred -- princes, Methuselahs, Antediluvians, Caine himself -- learn the hard way that even such beings as they, for all their power and cunning and ancient wisdom, are insignificant compared to the might and will of God. If the Creator decides that the vampires' time on Earth is up, then that's the way it's going to be, and even the greatest, darkest and vilest of the Kindred shall be helpless before His judgement. |
| 83 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: Played straight with the Baali, who are basically all Satan-worshipping psychos (and aren't even available as player characters). Usually subverted with the Sabbat, who tend to run on BlueAndOrangeMorality. |
| 84 | * AlwaysNight: Of course. A significant contributor to vampire depression. |
| 85 | * AncientConspiracy: Vampires in general play this role to humanity. There are also multiple conspiracies within their own society. |
| 86 | %%* AncientTomb: Obviously. |
| 87 | * AndIMustScream: |
| 88 | ** Inflicting these on people is basically the average Tzimisce's hobby. |
| 89 | ** Some truly ancient vampires are stuck in this state, trapped somewhere but unable to either escape or die for often magical reasons. |
| 90 | ** Also the fate of a vampire staked through the heart; they're left paralyzed, but aware of their surroundings. In fact, a common method of execution is to stake the victim through the heart, then leave them outside to when the sun comes up, unable to move to safety. A somewhat less common method of ''torture'' is to stake a vampire, let them run out of blood until they're a desiccated husk, give them just enough blood to revive, and then repeat the process all over again. |
| 91 | * AnimalEyeSpy: Animalism 4's ability. |
| 92 | * AnimalsHateHim: Animals can tell (usually by scent) that a vampire is unnatural and even the friendliest dog will react badly to the average vampire by default. Vampires can overcome this by training in the Animal Ken skill or taking ranks of the Animalism discipline. Another way of making friends with a ''particular'' animal is feeding it vampire blood, which will make the creature your ghoul. |
| 93 | * {{Animorphism}}: Shapeshifting into animals is a specialty of Clan Gangrel, but any vampire can learn to do it if they want to invest the time and effort. |
| 94 | * TheArtifact: |
| 95 | ** Clan Gangrel was created to tie "werewolf" legends into vampires back before TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse was thought up. Nowadays their "hat" is a more generic ShapeShifter nature. |
| 96 | ** Clan Tremere was originally tied to TabletopGame/ArsMagica (which has a House Tremere in its version of the Order of Hermes). Later re-purposed into TabletopGame/MageTheAscension, with its version of the Order of Hermes. |
| 97 | ** In general, most of the bloodlines and independent clans were "one trick ponies" to show off cool new vampire powers and then became an albatross around the setting's neck. Probably most notable with the True Brujah bloodline, whose signature Discipline revolved around ''time travel''. |
| 98 | * AscendedDemon: Golconda, the maybe-real, maybe-not Nirvana state that supposedly relieves vampires of most of the worst elements of their own nature--if you can discover the secret, that is. |
| 99 | * AssholeVictim: Most vampires, honestly, which is why players needn't feel ''too'' bad about engaging in a little bit of intrigue and backstabbing of their own to build a power base. In fact, as a participant of vampire society, sooner or later someone ''will'' come after you for one reason or another, so even characters of a generally harmonious and peaceful disposition can easily justify striking at another kindred (and potentially seizing their assets) as an act of preventive self-defense. |
| 100 | * AstralProjection: Auspex 5. |
| 101 | * AttackSpeedBuff: Celerity grants the vampire extra actions per turn to attack, move, and perform physical tasks. |
| 102 | * AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: The Cathedral of Flesh is almost exactly what it sounds like -- a mass of constantly-mutating living flesh large enough to serve as a literal cathedral. It is essentially semi-sentient Vicissitude that was created by the 4th generation Tzimisce Yorak, which later turned on its creator. It pops up in various places in the metaplot including Transylvania and New York City as a cool location to do battle, including in Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. |
| 103 | * AuraVision: The Auspex discipline has the ability to do this among its powers. Particularly useful for spotting those vampire "cannibals" who have diablerized others. |
| 104 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: Vampires don't really elect their leaders, and any ambitious vampire needs to be proficient in several disciplines and have combat experience to stay undead. Asskicking is the only thing equal to authority in the more combative clans such as the Brujah and Gangrel, and in the Sabbat. |
| 105 | * AxCrazy: |
| 106 | ** The Sabbat vampire sect is infamous for being full of AxCrazy young vampires who off humans (and often other vamps) for fun. Older Sabbat members are generally those vampires who lived long enough to grow out of this and into calm and calculated monstrosity. |
| 107 | ** Any vampire in a frenzy is a mixture of this and BrainwashedAndCrazy, due to the influence of the EnemyWithin. |
| 108 | * BackFromTheDead: Although Final Death is supposed to be, well, final, there are special cases. For example, a diablerized elder may [[spoiler:reassert himself as the dominant soul in the vampire(s) who killed and drained him]]. |
| 109 | * BadBoss: More abstract parts of fluff, such as descriptions of vampire society in core rulebooks, imply that most vampire elders treat their progeny and other underlings like this. Specific examples of elders provided by city books are ''usually'' much more rational and prefer to mix carrots with sticks. |
| 110 | * BatOutOfHell: The fourth level of Protean allows a vampire to turn either into bat or wolf form. |
| 111 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: |
| 112 | ** And Cain was [[MonsterProgenitor the first vampire]] (spelled Caine when referring to him as a vampire). Many other people from history and mythology were/are vampires too, from Helen of Troy to Houdini. Rasputin was given multiple separate backstories as a vampire, as well as described as a mage, werecreature, and wraith. Generally, the company tried to discourage this kind of thing later on, but at least a little bit of it seems to be inevitable. |
| 113 | ** Often actually zigzagged. Vampires name and style themselves after every mythological thing and being under the sun, from Greek deities and Abrahamic angels to Finnish nature spirits, but they rarely actually ''are'' that particular entity or type of being, leaving open the possibility for its independent existence in the same world. That said, it's not impossible for, say, the deeds of the vampire Odin to end up being attributed to the actual Norse god Odin. |
| 114 | * BelievingTheirOwnLies: The Camarilla's Inner Circle denied the existence of the Antediluvians originally as a means to establish themselves as the strongest vampires in the world. Over time, they forgot it was a lie. |
| 115 | * BeneathTheEarth: |
| 116 | ** Nosferatu usually congregate in sewers, abandoned tunnels and the like. |
| 117 | ** Beneath New York, [[AncientEvil once lay a horror more terrifying than any Nosferatu.]] It was thought by the Nosferatu to be a Nictuku, a childe of Absimilard, the Nosferatu Antediluvian. Only [[spoiler: Lambach Ruthven]] knew the truth. It was the [[spoiler: Tzimisce Antediluvian]]. He tried to tell people what was in there, but [[CassandraTruth no one believed him...]] Then it pulled itself together... and left to meet with its "siblings". |
| 118 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: The Salubri are the nice, level-headed, holistic and often genuinely good-hearted vampires. Naturally, they're almost all dead. They can steal your soul, however. |
| 119 | * BewareTheSillyOnes: The Malkavians can sometimes be childish or amusing, but messing with them is a very bad idea, as [[MindRape causing insanity]] is only one of the many tools at their disposal. |
| 120 | * BewareTheSuperman: |
| 121 | ** The Antediluvians. |
| 122 | ** Superhumans such as elder Kindred may not rule over the human race directly, but they still exert ruthless power over the humans and younger Kindred around them. |
| 123 | ** In ancient times, Caine and his children ruled over humans in the First City, which was far from an urban paradise. |
| 124 | * BiblicalBadGuy: Most prominently Cain(e), the first vampire, but Lilith shows up as part of his backstory, and Elimelech ([[AscendedExtra a minor character from the Book of Ruth]]) is one of the leaders of the Sabbat. |
| 125 | * BigScrewedUpFamily: |
| 126 | ** The Giovanni in a nutshell. They sire exclusively from the extended family; incest, necrophilia and domestic abuse are just the tip of the iceberg. |
| 127 | ** All the revenant families to some extent. On a sliding scale, the Grimaldis are the "best", in that they're on the level of a "normal" family of selfish, backstabbing political schemers, while the Bratovitches are the worst, a clan of violent, incestuous cannibals straight out of a hillbilly horror flick who disgust [[EvenEvilHasStandards even their Sabbat masters]]. |
| 128 | ** ''All'' kindred to an extent. The Embrace doubles as both an adoption and a rebirth into a new family (with the fresh vampire becoming a 'childe' to their vampiric 'sire'), lineage and familial relations are valued highly and vampire society is basically structured around a mix of feudalism and familial-tribal politics. |
| 129 | * BilingualBonus: Lots of words have origins in other languages. The shadowy clan is called Lasombra, which means shadow. Also, "Bruja" (that is, Brujah) is Spanish for witch. There's also the Toreador, which is Spanish for bullfighter. The game also pilfers old French words: Diablerie ("devilry") and Ventrue ("potbellied"). |
| 130 | * BlackAndGreyMorality: To be expected with a game about a VillainProtagonist. The developer of ''Swansong'' explicitly says the player will have to make GreyAndGreyMorality choices. |
| 131 | * BlackComedy: The Sabbat's hyper-violent tendencies are occasionally played in a {{Comedic Sociopath|y}}ic manner. For instance, there is spinoff material saying they like to host [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons D&D campaigns]]... using real mortals under MindControl as their player characters and Tzimisce-made BodyHorror creatures as the monsters, needless to say with actual combat to the death. |
| 132 | * BlessedWithSuck: This seems to be the general idea: Incredible power at the cost of your humanity. |
| 133 | ** This is very much true for characters with the True Faith skill. Characters with even a single dot of True Faith can ward off or injure vampires with holy symbols. Characters with five dots can reduce a vampire to ash simply by walking into a room. However, the game specifically states that even one dot of True Faith is the kind of bone-deep, life-defining belief that permeates everything you do, and gets you fast-tracked for either sainthood or a burning at the stake. This, in turn, means that your world view can very easily come across as BlueAndOrangeMorality to those who don't share your beliefs, and makes interacting with you a chore to all but the most tolerant. |
| 134 | * BloodBath: One of the sacred rites of the [[ReligionOfEvil Sabbat]]. Although it isn't about rejuvenating youth or beauty, like in other depictions, but more a ritual of baptism and consecration interpreted through the Sabbat's "Crusades-era Catholicism on PCP" lens. |
| 135 | * BloodMagic: Thaumaturgy, the most flexible discipline, and the foundation of Clan Tremere's power. |
| 136 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: Some vampires abandon the Humanity KarmaMeter for Paths of Enlightenment, which substitute human morality for a code of ethics more compatible with vampiric existence. The books even recommend only letting advanced players follow a Path of Enlightenment, as they are so ''weird'' compared to traditional, humanistic morality, and tend to be a lot harder to follow. |
| 137 | ** Anyone with the True Faith skill tends to fall into this, since True Faith symbolizes a truly fanatical level of devotion to whatever that character's belief system is. |
| 138 | * BodyHorror[=/=]{{Biomanipulation}}: |
| 139 | ** The Tzimisce power of Vicissitude allows them to craft flesh and bone like clay and even graft on body parts from other creatures. |
| 140 | ** Nosferatu and Gargoyles get to watch themselves physically turn into actual monsters, and for Samedi the part of undeath that keeps them from deteriorating doesn't really kick in for a few months, leaving them as half-rotted corpses for eternity. The Harbingers of Skulls, meanwhile, after centuries in the Underworld, have ended up looking like shriveled corpses. |
| 141 | ** It's not detailed all in one place, but there's some seriously unwholesome things going on behind the scenes of the Tremere Council of Seven. It seems that Tremere's body has turned into a gigantic white slug while his mind plays Musical Chairs with his lieutenants. |
| 142 | %%* BoomHeadshot: With a shotgun? Bad news for a vampire.%%What is? How? |
| 143 | %%* BrownNote: One use of the "Dementation" discipline.%%Is? |
| 144 | * ButtMonkey: The Caitiff, a "clan" of thin-blooded vampires who have no actual clan. They're considered trash by other vampires. |
| 145 | * CainAndAbel: The Biblical ones, although here Caine became the first vampire as a result. Also, a number of clans vs. other clans, any clan and its ''antitribu'', and the Ventrue and Lasombra clans get this feel a lot in the flavor text. "Brothers' Keepers," "mirror images/dark reflections," etc. |
| 146 | * CannibalismSuperpower: Diablerie, the act of devouring the blood and soul of another vampire, is primarily used by vampires to gain power above what is normally possible for their generation. One of the few genuinely taboo practices in most vampire societies... though of course, it happens anyway. |
| 147 | * CardCarryingVillain: The Sabbat don't even pretend that they're anything other than monsters, but those on the Path of Evil Revelations really take the cake, here. In fact, it's literally a sin on the Path of Evil Revelations to feel compassion or remorse. |
| 148 | * CarnivorousHealingFactor: DownplayedTrope. In all editions, [[NotUsingTheZWord Kindred]] regenerate by drinking blood — 5th Edition has Rouse Checks, which have a 50% chance of failing and raising a vampire's Hunger by 1, while previous Editions use a Blood Points mechanic. Hunger can be lowered and the Blood Points replenished by drinking blood and not doing so greatly increases the risk of going into a Hunger Frenzy. |
| 149 | * CastFromCalories: Vampires can spend Blood Points on vampiric abilities; they must then recharge their Blood Pool by snacking on some mortal. Thaumaturgy is a bit of an extreme case, as it is unpleasant to burn away one's vitae for the use of a spell, so much that success is determined by willpower alone and a botch causes a loss of a permanent willpower point. |
| 150 | * ChainsawGood: Talbot's Chainsaw is a legendary and very powerful weapon. The chainsaw is also present in the card game and quite devastating. Sabbat members enjoy regular old chainsaw mayhem as well. |
| 151 | * CharmPerson: The Presence power. It is easier to resist than Dominate but affects vampires regardless of generation. |
| 152 | %%* TheChessmaster: Almost every elder vampire gets to that age by being one. |
| 153 | * ChineseVampire: The Kuei-jin. They are a different species of monster with relatively little in common with Cainites. |
| 154 | %%* CombatSadomasochist: Toreador ''antitribu''. |
| 155 | %%* TheCommandments: The Traditions. |
| 156 | * ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Natural for most vampires. Although it might take a few centuries, this eventually leads to loss of Humanity. Vampires with high Humanity are better off avoiding contact with others for this reason. |
| 157 | * ConspiracyTheorist: Many of them turn out to be right after all, in essence if not in details. |
| 158 | * CorruptChurch: In the Middle Ages, the Cainite Heresy was a plot to subvert the Catholic Church with vampiric rites and beliefs. The Inquisition had great success in stamping it out, thanks to the Anarch Revolt distracting (and killing) the leaders of the Heresy. |
| 159 | * TheCorrupter: |
| 160 | ** The specialty of the Setites, whose entire ReligionOfEvil revolves around this. They will use sex, drugs, and lies to corrupt both vampires and humans. The Path of Cathari is another evil belief system that encourages corruption. This doesn't sound that bad, until you read Black Dog books such as Montreal By Night, and realize just what that entails. Centuries of Setite influence on Constantinople's Toreador might be the main reason for that clan's degeneration. Likewise, the Baali influence on Carthage's Brujah resulted in the clan embracing violence instead of philosophy. |
| 161 | ** A curse from the Baali is also the reason the perception of the Banu Haqim went from "wise and removed judges of Kindred" to "blood-thirsty diablerist assassins". This was toned down in later editions. |
| 162 | * TheCorruption: |
| 163 | ** Vicissitude in a nutshell. Non-Tzimisce can acquire the discipline only after drinking some Tzimisce blood, and the process of leveling it up utterly corrupts body and soul. [[spoiler: Also, if Tzimisce is alive in the Gehenna scenario you play, you're pretty much screwed.]] |
| 164 | ** Some of the Baali's Daimonion powers manifest as this. |
| 165 | * CoverBlowingSuperpower: Some disciplines are unique to a single clan, and an outsider should have a watertight alibi after using them. For example, Obtenebration is a Lasombra clan discipline, and except for the handful of Lasombra ''antitribu'', knowledge of the discipline marks you as Sabbat. |
| 166 | * CrapsackWorld: The World of Darkness in general is one of these in a nutshell. There ''are'' some small glimmers of hope, but you must work hard just to keep yourself from sinking into ever-greater depravity. |
| 167 | * CrazyPrepared: The best way a Tremere or Tzimisce neonate can survive fights (except for avoiding them altogether) with challenging enemies. Advanced Vicissitude turns a Tzimisce into a close-combat monster and Thaumaturgy can be used to set enemies on fire, but until then both clans lack any straightforward combat disciplines. Unless the right body alterations are made or rituals prepared beforehand, the vampire will be dusted. |
| 168 | * CreatureHunterOrganization: Vampires have at all times had to deal with being hunted by humans aware of their existence. While [[PunyHumans individual vampire hunters]] are rarely more than a nuisance, groups of organized hunters can potentially pose a bigger threat, and even worse are the organisations that have the backing of an official government. |
| 169 | ** The clandestine Society of Leopold has been the longest standing organisation, enjoying varying degrees of unofficial backing from the Vatican and even the Pope himself through the centuries. Although the Society has its blind spots, such as not being entirely knowledgeable about vampires, and holding belief in quite a few of the myths about them, they are still a massive pain in the butt for any vampires whose activity they investigate, as their members tend to have [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve True Faith]], which gives them quite an advantage against vampires. |
| 170 | * CreaturesByManyOtherNames: The titular vampires call are called various things, the most common being "the Kindred", "Cainites", "Licks", and "the Damned". |
| 171 | * CrossMeltingAura: Powerful Baali vampires can do this. |
| 172 | * CurbStompBattle: Trying to fight Ur-Shulgi or the Ravnos impersonating Caine from Berlin By Night. The text essentially says "you lose" without any dice rolls if you try to fight them. |
| 173 | * CursedWithAwesome: Much of the game's lore and writing emphasize the horror of being a vampire who must cling to their humanity, lest they become a mindless Beast. Quite a few player groups, however, downplayed (or outright ignored) this, because vampirism also means being nigh-immortal and having cool powers! |
| 174 | * CurseThatCures: When you are turned into a vampire all injuries, illnesses and disabilities disappear. However, now you are at the bottom of the pecking order surrounded by vampires who want to use you as a pawn and aren't shy about killing you if it helps them, must prey on humans to survive, can be smelled out by werewolves who will hunt you with prejudice and have to pretend you're human while dealing with the "burns in sunlight" thing. |
| 175 | * DarkerAndEdgier: One of the founding principles for the game when compared to its then-competitors, aka D&D. |
| 176 | * DarkestAfrica: The Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom supplement paints unlife in Africa as quite different. |
| 177 | * DaywalkingVampire: Sunlight is deadly to vampires, with some exceptions: |
| 178 | ** The maxed-out Protean discipline can resist it for short periods of time. The Gangrel Beckett, for instance, is known for having once ran the length of a football field under scorching sun. |
| 179 | ** The Children of Osiris also have an ability called Ra's Blessing at high levels of Bardo which allow them to walk in sunlight for a short time. |
| 180 | ** High enough fortitude could theoretically allow a vampire to resist the sun for an indefinite period of time, though mechanically the player would eventually make enough bad rolls throughout the day that the vampire would eventually die. [[spoiler: The Ravnos Antediluvian had such high Fortitude that he had to be destroyed by sunlight focused using orbital mirrors (this comes after surviving a nuke and three ''very'' old eastern vampires).]] |
| 181 | ** Thin-Bloods with High Humanity get the Blush of Life and can be up one hour before sunset and one hour after sunrise. |
| 182 | ** Borderline example: Some powerful vampires can achieve this by temporarily suspending their vampirism. For instance, there is an insanely costly Necromancy ritual which turns them back into a human for a day, and high levels of Dominate let them possess and live through the bodies of their human servitors. |
| 183 | * DeadAllAlong: Some of the Antediluvians turn out to be this in ''Gehenna'': [[spoiler: Veddhartha (Ventrue)]], [[spoiler: Set]], [[spoiler: Troile (Brujah), not exactly dead but trapped in salted earth at Carthage, unable to rise]]. |
| 184 | * DeadPersonImpersonation: Thanks to Obfuscate, Vicissitude and the secluded unlifestyles of most elders, this is common in the Jyhad. The Sabbat once managed to hit a member of the Camarilla's inner circle and replace him with an impostor; and though the other members noticed immediately, they did not move against him for some time to feed the Sabbat false information. Kemintiri, a Setite Methuselah on the Red List, impersonated the Ventrue justicar for decades. There are also other critical secrets: [[spoiler: Melinda Galbraith, Regent of the Sabbat, has been assassinated. The Tzimisce who discovered the body took her form to avoid being killed as a scapegoat; it's only a matter of time before he is discovered.]] [[spoiler: Hardestadt, the 5th generation Ventrue instrumental in the Camarilla's founding, was successfully diablerized by Tyler during the Anarch Revolt. His childe secretly replaced him to prevent the project's collapse. Beckett is one of the few privy to this secret, which is why 'Hardestadt' tries to hunt him down]]. |
| 185 | * DeaderThanDead: Diablerizing a vampire is more than administering Final Death -- it also destroys the victim's soul, denying them an afterlife. This is why Camarilla vampires and even Caine consider it to be a crime worse than murder. Ancient vampires can sometimes circumvent this, but they are stated to be game breakers in canon anyway. |
| 186 | * DeathlessAndDebauched: Averted in that most vampires can't eat, are immune to drugs, and rarely have anything that could remotely described as a libido. However, exceptions ''do'' exist: |
| 187 | ** The "Head" character template. See, vampires can't be affected by drugs... but they ''can'' be affected by blood taken from intoxicated victims. As such, the Head is now addicted to feeding on mortal addicts, paying them with their pharmaceutical of choice in exchange for allowing him to drain their blood -- ''so'' hopelessly addicted that it's [[AddledAddict literally the Head's only reason for existing]]. |
| 188 | ** The "Degenerate" was an absurdly depraved individual even before being Embraced; quite apart from injecting cocaine into his penis, he not only [[BrotherSisterIncest got his sister pregnant]] but ''[[ParentalIncest got the resulting daughter pregnant as well]].'' Even as an vampire, the Degenerate still exists in a meaningless whirl of parties, vice, and sex -- not because he actually feels pleasure, but because the Degenerate [[AttentionWhore wants to make himself the centre of attention via taboo]]. |
| 189 | * DecadentCourt: The Camarilla, the main world-spanning sect of vampires, is one big example of this. |
| 190 | * DeafComposer: Any vampire cooks, by virtue of having normal food taste utterly rancid. Unless they have the Eat Food merit, which does allow them to taste the food in addition to not having the food turn to ash in their mouth. |
| 191 | * DealWithTheDevil: Sometimes this is what makes you a vampire in the first place. Sometimes it's what happens when you try to make deals with older (smarter) vampires. A ghoul's relationship to his or her master often takes this form too. Literal deals with actual devils are possible, and they usually turn out about as well as can be expected (Revised strongly discouraged the use of literal demons since it added an element of BlackAndWhiteMorality that undermined the game's central themes). |
| 192 | * DefectorFromDecadence: |
| 193 | ** Inverted. The Salubri turned their backs on the violent lives of vampires, and as a result were largely obliterated. The Salubri ''antitribu'' are defectors ''to'' decadence -- Adonai, their founder, got so pissed off by Salubri pacifism that he stormed out of the bloodline and joined the Sabbat. |
| 194 | ** This is technically one of the reasons why many vampires go Anarch, particularly Lasombra who believe that the Sabbat has become everything the original Anarchs were trying to resist in the first place, only much worse. |
| 195 | ** In general, this is the attitude of any vampire that doesn't fall in line with the bulk of their clan, with the general term ''antitribu'' used to describe them. It cuts both ways -- just as a Ventrue in the Sabbat is considered ''antitribu'', so is the rare Tzimisce in the Camarilla. The only in-game exception are the Lasombra: While out-game descriptions mark the Camarilla part of the clan as ''antitribu'', in-game they resent the appellation and consider themselves the "true" clan. |
| 196 | * DemonicPossession: While infernalists mostly seek to overthrow their masters and ascend to demonhood, only one very potent Baali is explicitly mentioned to have achieved this[[note]]Another, Mary the Black, was stated to have later become one of the [[AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Decani]], but she still seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a vampire rather an a HumanoidAbomination[[/note]]. Those that do not end up dead are possessed; both outcomes lead to the soul suffering eternal torment. |
| 197 | * DemonicVampires: Not long after Caine was banished and branded by God, he met Lilith who taught him magic. After partaking in a ceremony in which he drank Lilith's blood from a bowl, he was met by three angels. One by one, each angel offered Caine a chance for redemption and each time [[RedemptionRejection he rejected it]]. With each rejection both Caine and his children are given a curse by a particular angel: Michael curses Caine to fear his living flame, Raphael cursed Caine to fear and to be burned by the sun, and Uriel curses Caine to drink only blood, eat only ash, cling to the dark and to have a body so cold it freezes to the touch. |
| 198 | * TheDescendantsOfCain: Here, Cain's curse was actually [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampirism]], so the modern (Western) vampires are all descended from him by transmission of the curse. For this reason, one name that's used for them is "Cainites". |
| 199 | * DeusAngstMachina: A common, though by no means exclusive, approach to the game. |
| 200 | * DeusExMachina: In ''Nightshade'', the [=PCs=] are just witnesses in the endgame episode -- that's all solved by Antediluvians, divine intervention, and [[BecauseDestinySaysSo prophecy]]. |
| 201 | * {{Dhampyr}}: Introduced in the Time of Judgement books, a dhampyr is the result of a 14th or 15th generation vampire who temporarily reactivated their mortal abilities when having sex. They function the same as a revenant (a human born with some ghoul powers), which led to some uncomfortable questions to those who studied both. |
| 202 | * DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Gehenna scenarios allow a coterie to pull off some of these against Antediluvians, who are weakened by the Withering. |
| 203 | * DisciplinesOfMagic: There are several magic disciplines a Cainite can learn. Three come easily depending on which clan the vampire belongs too; learning another discipline requires more effort. |
| 204 | * DistractedByTheSexy/[[DistractedByTheShiny Shiny]]: Clan Toreador's weakness. It might sound lame until it comes up at the worst possible time, say if it clouds their judgement, or if they're driving... |
| 205 | * DividedWeFall: Deliberately taken advantage of by elder vampires in order to keep the powerful in power and the younger vampires in their place. While this applies to all kindred to an extent, "every vampire for himself" is primarily a Camarilla philosophy. The packs of the Sabbat and gangs of the Anarchs represent an attempt to defy this, as facing down vampire elders with numerical superiority in combat has shown at least a small measure of success. Just don't allow them to start TalkingTheMonsterToDeath on you, or they'll show their TheSocialExpert cred and pull a DivideAndConquer. |
| 206 | * DontMakeMeDestroyYou: A Golconda-seeker attracts the attention of an anonymous master by warning the Sabbat pack attacking him of his age and power. |
| 207 | * DoomedByCanon: In the Dark Ages books, characters are given a Destiny along with the regular info, and many of them meet violent ends. Also, quite a few clans are doomed: the Salubri, the Cappadocians, the Ravnos, and also in Gehenna [[spoiler: the Tremere, the Giovanni, the Setites, and the Tzimisce.]] If you choose to play the Wormwood chronicle for Gehenna instead, [[spoiler:God destroys all vampires except for a handful whom he rewards with mortality.]] |
| 208 | * {{Dracula}}: The most famous Autarkis (independent vampire, outside the sects), hated by both Camarilla and Sabbat. As a mortal seeking to become a vampire, Dracula provoked the 4th generation Tzimisce Tabak into attacking his castle ... while also alerting a Camarilla justicar to the Tzimisce presence. Tabak wiped out the Camarilla force, but in his weakened state was driven to torpor by Dracula's men. Dracula intimidated Tabak's captured childe Lambach von Ruthven into Embracing him, and promptly diablerized Tabak to become 4th generation. |
| 209 | * DuelingPlayerCharacters: A rare example of this trope in a pencil-and-paper RPG comes in ''The Giovanni Chronicles'' adventure books. In book one, the player characters are turned into vampires during a pivotal moment in vampiric history in 1444, then deal with consequences of that event in books two (1666) and three (1848/1882). In the fourth book, the players create entirely new characters, who get involved in a war against factions led by their previous characters, set in 1929. The players don't necessarily have to ''directly'' combat their previous characters—sending neonates up against 600-year-old elders would result in [[CurbStompBattle an extremely short fight]]—but they are intended to act as foils. |
| 210 | * DumbMuscle: |
| 211 | ** Emphatically defied on the clan level, despite the general CompetitiveBalance nature of clan design. Depending on your interpretation, between a third to half of the clans may be called warrior clans[[note]]it's inarguble for Brujah and Gangrel, Nosferatu can be physical monsters when they want to be thanks to [[SuperStrength Potence]], and the Lasombra, Tzimisce, Ventrue and Banu Haqim all have a prominent warrior tradition to one degree or other[[/note]]. However, they're all either some form of WarriorPoet, CulturedWarrior or WickedCultured (Brujah, Ventrue, Tzimisce), TheSpymaster (Nosferatu), or a mix of both (Lasombra, Banu Haqim), not to mention Lasombra, Ventrue, Tzimisce and sometimes Brujah often doubling as TheLeader as well. The BeastMan Gangrel clan seems to fit the the archetype the most, but it's frequently noted that the Gangrel are ultimately connected primarily not by their savagery but by their drive towards ''individualism'' and how they tend to be surprisingly contemplative, intuitive and insightful; in fact, their signature character Beckett is a GentlemanAndAScholar. Finally, it's also worth noting how most vampire clans are based on various social strata or milieus, but there's no single "loyal military" clan. Brujah and Gangrel, the two clans most likely to fight the Camarilla's wars, are also the two clans most likely to rebel against it. |
| 212 | ** Frequently played straight on the individual level. While the clans as a whole defy the trope, singular vampires may have no interest or affinity for their clan's intellectual tradition, or they may be denied a chance to partake in it. The Camarilla during dire times of war and the Sabbat all the time will frequently create vampires en masse whose only purpose is to obey and to fight and die in their wars. |
| 213 | * DumpStat: Appearance is generally the least useful attribute, since unless you have a high Appearance, you're probably not going to do anything that hinges on it to begin with. There are a number of skills that will also come in handy in fewer circumstances than others, such as Music and Animal Ken. However, this all depends on the type of campaign you're in. |
| 214 | * ElderlyImmortal: Those vampires Embraced at an old age. One example in vampire history is the Lasombra Narses, Archbishop of Nod and leader of the Cainite Heresy, embraced at 98 years old. |
| 215 | * EldritchAbomination: Earthbound demons and the Children of the Outer Void (identified with the Earthbound after ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'', but de-linked with ''The Black Hand: A Guide to the Tal'Mahe'Ra''). The most inhuman Antediluvians qualify as these -- Tzimisce is practically Vicissitude itself now, while Lasombra is a creature of the Abyss. |
| 216 | * EmotionBomb: Advanced Animalism powers are of the Anger type; Presence can be used to invoke a wide variety of crippling emotions. |
| 217 | * EndOfAnAge: One of the main themes of Vampire: The Dark Ages is the end of the Long Night, the rule of vampires over humans. The Inquisition and the Anarch Revolt are foreshadowed, and will together drive vampires into the Masquerade. |
| 218 | * TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Gehenna, usually envisioned as the time when the godlike Antediluvian ancestors of the 13 vampire clans will rise to devour their progeny and royally thrash the world in the process. However, various sourcebooks ended up whittling down the Antediluvians who will still be alive by the time of Gehenna. |
| 219 | * EnemyMine: Enemy sects and clans will team up to fight the Baali, who are one of the unambiguously evil factions of the setting. |
| 220 | * EnemyWithin: All vampires suffer from the Beast, an animalistic, id-like force with a hint of supernatural malice, that attempts to compel them into immediately satisfying their instinctive urges, such as consuming blood, fleeing fire and sunlight, or fighting at the slightest provocation, no matter the circumstances. On the other hand, complete removal of the Beast (possible if you suffer a ''[[CriticalFailure botch]]'' with a couple of disciplines) also [[HeroicBSOD robs a Kindred of all willpower and self-motivation]]. |
| 221 | * EnlightenmentSuperpowers: |
| 222 | ** The Salubri. |
| 223 | ** Golconda allows a vampire to learn disciplines without being limited by generation. A roughly 200 year old 11th generation Malkavian in "Cairo by Night" has Auspex 7 thanks to Golconda, which is something only the 6th generation and lower is normally capable of. |
| 224 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: |
| 225 | ** The Sabbat may be ruthless cold-hearted bastards, but they loathe demon worshipers as much as anyone, and will kill any they find. |
| 226 | ** There are some Baali who loathe infernalists too, not least their own kin -- they keep various cosmic horrors asleep by performing atrocities, and the last damn thing they need is some idiot trying to wake the horrors up. |
| 227 | * EvilAllAlong: |
| 228 | ** Saulot thanks to the plethora of {{Retcon}}s since first edition. According to rumours, he was basically a saint who helped the poor, healed the sick, and farted fairy dust, who may or may not have reached a state where he didn't even drink blood anymore. [[TheChessmaster This was all just part]] [[DependingOnTheWriter of the plan to take over the world]] and he might have [[spoiler:created the Baali]]. [[spoiler: Further complicated in Gehenna, in which he is the key to saving the world and mankind and he very rarely survives the apocalypse; he is either destroyed or makes a heroic sacrifice to destroy his fellow Antediluvians]]. |
| 229 | ** Listening to elder Brujah, you would think that the Ventrue destroyed their beautiful Carthage out of spite. Turns out that the Brujah had let Baali into the city, leading to its corruption. The Brujah Antediluvian Troile herself, who had lost her Humanity by this time, took up one of the three original Baali (4th generation) as her lover, and attended the Baali's organ pit ceremonies. Turns out that the Roman vampires had very good reason to attack Carthage. |
| 230 | * EvilFeelsGood: The vampire's "Kiss" (read: bite) is said to feel really good, so much victims can't resist. The exception is the Giovanni: their kiss causes [[AgonyBeam agonizing pain]], which makes it harder to for them to feed. Of course, corpses don't feel pain, and zombies don't need blood... |
| 231 | * EvilFormerFriend: Quite common among immortal monsters. Vampires can rise from torpor to find that their former companions have joined the Sabbat and abandoned Humanity, for example. |
| 232 | * EvilIsNotWellLit: Naturally comes up a lot. Setites hate the light, but the one best associated with it is the Antediluvian Lasombra. |
| 233 | * EvilIsPetty: A few vampires are strong enough to truly wreak havoc and have grandiose plans, but the majority of them whittle away eternity by getting into feuds for no reason and terrorizing a mortal once in a while for shits and giggles. They manage to get bored in a world that has mystery and adventure around every corner. |
| 234 | * EvilSorcerer: The Tremere are an entire clan of evil sorcerers. While their Blood Sorcery is nothing but a pale shadow of the true magick their Clan founders had while alive, they still wield strange mystical powers beyond the Disciplines all vampires have. They also come off as somehow even more evil than the rest of the Camarilla having attempted to genocide one group of vampires and creating another to be their SlaveRace. |
| 235 | * EvilTastesGood: The act of drinking blood is described as incredibly addictive and tempting to vampires. To further the analogy, vampires who are low on blood risk losing self-control and attacking people on sight to get a "quick fix" right now. |
| 236 | * EvilVersusEvil: The default type of conflicts in this game, as vampire factions, with few exceptions, range from "deeply corrupt" to "demonically evil." |
| 237 | * EvilerThanThou: Many Tzimisce, Lasombra and Followers of Set actually take pride at being EvilerThanThou monsters, more often than not of the {{Straw Nihilist}}s variety. |
| 238 | * EvilutionaryBiologist: Tzimisce on the Path of Metamorphosis not only think that vampires are an evolutionary step above humans, but that the vampiric state is the precursor to a 'perfect' life-form. Their aspiration is to turn into a planet-wide organism through Vicissitude, and they experiment constantly for this goal. The results are not pretty, to say the least. |
| 239 | * EyeRemember: One of the Giovanni powers. |
| 240 | * EyelessFace: A Transylvanian Fiend called Noritz has mouths instead of eyes. This is one of the many ways Tzimisce go for the grand effect. |
| 241 | * ExecutiveExcess: |
| 242 | ** The "Mystic Artist" character template started out like this. A wealthy businessman, he was originally a straightforward Work Hard, Play Hard type who liked to drink a little after work to relax. Then he started doing cocaine for an edge at work. Then, despite being married, he started hiring prostitutes to deal with more exotic sexual appetites. Eventually, indulgence became more important to him than work -- or his wife and children, for that matter -- and his pursuit of bigger thrills led him to the Followers of Set; they got him so addicted to vampire blood that he was willing to abase himself in troughs of human shit just for another taste of vitae. In the end, his excesses cost him his job, his money, his family and his self-respect, exactly as the Setites intended. Having been broken of his obsession with worldly pleasures and allowed to see the true nature of the universe, the character has been Embraced into the Followers of Set, and now works as an artist. |
| 243 | ** The "Degenerate" character template of the Giovanni Clan. Though born into wealth and power, members of the Giovanni family have to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their elders if they want to be made vampires -- often in business. However, the Degenerate wanted to make a bigger spectacle of himself, and once he'd earned the proxy kiss and became a ghoul, he started indulging in progressively more grotesque acts of hedonism -- mainly because he enjoyed the attention he gained as a result. By now, nobody in the family can remember the corporate feats that made him worthy of the Embrace; all they can remember are his acts of depravity, from injecting cocaine into his penis to getting his sister and his daughter pregnant. These days, the Degenerate spends his days in a whirl of parties and revels, kept afloat by the family money, unlikely to do anything worthwhile -- corporate or otherwise. For this reason, he's regarded as a failure and an embarrassment. |
| 244 | ** One of the most powerful vampires in Chicago is Horatio Ballard, a 19th-century robber baron notorious for his ludicrously expensive twelve-course meals, regular indulgence in gallons of booze, and morbid obesity. For good measure, his fortune was only secured through a mixture of extremely shady deals and the murder of his uncle; unfortunately for Ballard, his excesses eventually led him to two near-fatal heart attacks before he finally met with Prince Lodin of the Ventrue clan. Even now that he's a vampire and no longer needs to eat, Ballard still enjoys gorging himself on food and alcohol at every opportunity -- especially if it means grossing out his fellow Ventrue. Of course, by this time, Ballard has the advantage of supernatural powers to guarantee his success in spite of his apparent indolence. |
| 245 | ** Maria Kenyon, a minor character from one of the clanbook prologues. A hardworking, well-educated employee well on the way to the upper echelons of management, the long workdays and highly-competitive atmosphere forced her to seek out something that could give her an edge -- namely cocaine. Unfortunately, Maria skipped the Work Hard, Play Hard phase and descended straight into flat-out excess when took her addiction home... and started using crystal meth. Her increasingly erratic behavior led to her being investigated and found out: Maria was fired to avoid a scandal and eventually reduced to being prostituted by her scummy drug dealer. [[spoiler: Her story does end on a disturbingly happy note, as she ends up being "taken in" by the Followers of Set and reborn as a vampire -- with the added bonus of keeping her ex-pimp as a slave.]] |
| 246 | * EveryoneIsBi: Well, not absolutely ''everyone'', and it's not mechanically enforced, but according to the lore, bisexual behavior is extremely common among vampires, especially older ones, both because their massive lifespans lead them to experiment and because their entire sexuality in time tends to [[HemoErotic coalesce solely around blood]]. As befitting the trope, it's not penalized or stigmatized despite the generally Old Testament-style conservative and dog-eat-dog nature of the kindred world and is rarely ever questioned or viewed as unusual. |
| 247 | * FallenHero: |
| 248 | ** The Banu Haqim were originally the Clan of Judges, punishing those who broke the Traditions and fighting the Baali. However, the Baali used captured Banu Haqim in a Dark Thaumaturgical ritual that laid a curse which spread through the clan, making the warrior caste addicted to vampire blood. The result is that the warriors, the majority of the clan, are now ravening assassins with an entire Path based on diablerie. This trait was toned down in later editions. |
| 249 | ** Clan Tremere were {{TabletopGame/Mage|TheAscension}}s of the Order of Hermes while human, but when the magick which allowed them to [[WizardsLiveLonger live longer]] than {{Muggles}} started to fade, they transformed themselves into vampires so they could unlive forever. |
| 250 | * FalseFlagOperation: Sabbat packs operating in Camarilla territory often pretend to be Anarchs. Baali infiltrators also conduct false flag operations to pit Camarilla and Sabbat against each other -- canon states that they fan the flames whenever sect violence dies down. |
| 251 | * FalseInnocenceTrick: The modus operandi of a Samedi who used to be on the Camarilla's Red List. She used Obfuscate and Chimerstry to conceal her corpselike appearance and looked like a small girl to her prey (both vampires and humans). |
| 252 | * FantasticDrug: Vampire blood. In humans, it induces feelings of ecstasy, super strength and speed, and eternal youth. After [[RuleOfThree three]] tastes, a human is "blood bound," becoming hopelessly addicted and usually falling in love with the vampire supplying it. Vampires who are fed three tastes of another vampire's blood become "thralls," utterly unable to resist the will of the supplier. |
| 253 | ** Also, the blood of other supernaturals -- particularly [[TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming fae]] and [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension "mystic" mages]] -- supposedly work this way for vampires. Results... vary. The blood of the Technocrats augmented by mad science, and their cybernetic minions the HIT-Marks, however... it has the same effect on vampires as [[PoisonIsCorrosive drinking battery acid]] has on humans. |
| 254 | * FantasticNirvana: |
| 255 | ** It is believed that by regaining Humanity and learning to feel remorse again, vampires can attain a state known as Golconda, suppressing the Beast within them and becoming an AscendedDemon. The exact details of how one attains this state are vague, possibly requiring spiritual advise from one of the Iconnu, and the journey itself is fraught with numerous dangers that might end with a failed seeker degenerating into a mindless wight, but achieving Golconda can put the character on a level that few vampires can even imagine; the potential benefits include freedom from frenzying, mastery of Disciplines beyond their limits, massively reduced dependence on blood, and even the possibility of becoming human again. So far, the only vampire to have ever attained Golconda is Saulot... and in keeping with the overall darkness of the setting, he's either dead or has fallen out of Golconda entirely. |
| 256 | ** Members of the Tzimisce clan who follow the Path of Metamorphosis pursue an enlightened state of being known as ''Azhi Dahaka'', and believe that they can attain it through their use of Vicissitude. Like Golconda, the exact nature of ''Azhi Dahaka'' is vague, as are the means of attaining it; some believe that it's an expression of their superiority to mortals, others believe that it's a demonstration of the clan's connection to the Eldest, but the general consensus is that ''Azhi Dahaka'' is a state in which one achieves ultimate separation from nature and becomes an entirely self-sufficient being through the power of will. Once again, only the [[MonsterProgenitor Tzimisce Eldest]] himself has gotten anywhere near this state, and he was diablerized during the Middle Ages. [[spoiler: However, it turns out that the Eldest faked his death and has been preparing himself for Azhi Dahaka ever since: in the ''Gehenna'' scenario "The Crucible Of God", the Eldest reveals that he has attained this state as biological godhood, transcending his body and assimilating the entire human race.]] |
| 257 | * FantasticRacism: |
| 258 | ** The linchpin of the Sabbat's ideology. As openly ruling "human cattle" is beyond their ability, they often make up for this with random atrocities. |
| 259 | ** Caitiff (rare vampires who do not exhibit blood traits of a specific Clan) are treated as sub-vampire mongrels by almost everyone, but they're lucky compared to thin-blooded vampires that did not completely transform into undead -- those are hunted and killed as supposed harbingers of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. One of the major selling points of the Sabbat is that their caitiff are actually recognized as ''their own clan'', the Panders -- and even ''they'' stick the poor bastards with the work nobody else wants to do. |
| 260 | * FantasticSlurs: A lot. The books provide us with derogatory nicknames for every single clan. (Sewer Rat is a rude way to talk about the Nosferatu, Usurper is what you call a Tremere you're mad at, and Lasombra neonates are shovelheads to the impolite.) |
| 261 | * FantasticUnderclass: |
| 262 | ** Vampires that show no sign of clan lineage are constantly on the bottom rung of Kindred society: called "Caitiff", they are often abandoned by their sires and forced to eke out a living without the protection of a clan. Most end up dying young due to lack of guidance or anti-Caitiff prejudice, and those who survive are mostly treated as pariahs unless they manage some nigh-impossible feat of heroism for the Camarilla. Among the Sabbat, a lucky few known as Panders have been grudgingly accepted and united as a clan; however, even Panders are still treated shabbily, regarded as mutts, and given only the dirtiest jobs their masters can think of. |
| 263 | ** Even lower than Caitiff are the Thin-Bloods: essentially vampires of the 14th generation, they are the weakest of all vampires -- and barely qualify as this in the eyes of some. Though they may be blessed with the ability to eat food, produce living children or even walk in sunlight, they rarely get to enjoy these advantages: the Sabbat kill them on sight, believing them to be harbingers of Gehenna. Meanwhile, even vampires who tolerate Thin-Bloods offer them no place in society, and allow them within Camrilla dominions only if they stick to the fringes. |
| 264 | ** Lesser example: During the Dark Ages, vampires were divided into the well-respected and aristocratic "High Clans" and the vampire rabble, the "Low Clans". |
| 265 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Downplayed in that vampires have embraced people from all over the world and have also infiltrated most countries. However, each of the different breeds of vampire has one or two countries/cultures they're obviously heavily inspired by and tend to use as their traditional homeland if possible: |
| 266 | ** Brujah: Carthage and Ancient Greece. |
| 267 | ** Toreador: France, especially the medieval France of ChivalricRomance. |
| 268 | ** Ventrue: Ancient Rome, Germany (particularly the Holy Roman Empire). |
| 269 | ** Tremere: Roughly the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. |
| 270 | ** Gangrel: During the Middle Ages best known for being HornyVikings from Scandinavia, plus generally ancient and medieval peoples viewed as "barbarian", such as the Celts and Mongols. In the modern day, expect a lot of [[MagicalNativeAmerican Magical Native Americans]]. |
| 271 | ** Nosferatu: Russia. |
| 272 | *** Which is kinda amusing as modern idea of vampires (and even the word itself) came from Slavic mythology yet the Nosferatu in the World of Darkness have pretty much nothing in common with Russian mythological vampires. Well, other than being blood-drinkng undead. |
| 273 | ** Lasombra: Iberia and by extension Latin America. |
| 274 | ** Tzimisce: The Balkans and Eastern Europe generally, excluding Russia. |
| 275 | ** Hecata: The Giovanni dominate Italy, while the original Cappadocians were from Anatolia. |
| 276 | ** Ravnos: India, the Romani. |
| 277 | ** Banu Haqim: Persia, parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. |
| 278 | ** Setite/Ministry: Egypt, both AncientEgypt and the modern one, again parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. |
| 279 | ** Salubri: Israel/Hebrew civilization, complete with persecution and diaspora. |
| 280 | ** Baali: Canaanite civilization, as the name implies, also Mesopotamia. |
| 281 | ** Malkavian: The odd one out, other than that they were powerful as oracles in ancient Rome and Greece. |
| 282 | * FauxAffablyEvil: A persona adopted by many vampires. Hallmark of clans with lots of ancient nobility, such as the Lasombra, Tzimisce, Toreador and Ventrue. |
| 283 | * FearlessUndead: Averted. Sunlight and fire can cause a vampire to totally freak out and run away in a frenzy-like state called Rotschreck. Also, turns out there are much scarier things out there than your run-of-the-mill vampire, most of which can inflict AFateWorseThanDeath. |
| 284 | * FeralVampires: The Brujah and Gangrel clans have different versions of this as their respective [[GangOfHats hat]]- {{Bomb Throwing Anarchist|s}} {{Warrior Poet}}s and wilderness dwellers capable of VoluntaryShapeshifting through their connection to [[HorrorHunger the Beast]], respectively. Additionally, any vampire can become this if they reach Humanity 0- while [[OurWightsAreDifferent wights]] do possess animalistic cunning, their minds are those of beasts. |
| 285 | * FictionalDocument: ''The Book of Nod'', ''The Ericyes Fragments'', ''The Prince's Primer'' and ''Revelations of the Dark Mother'', which all underwent {{Defictionalization}}. All were referenced and dwarfed by the ''Encyclopædia Vampirica.'' |
| 286 | * FighterMageThief: Played with. Characters are loosely grouped into physical, mental, and social specialists. In addition, all the major vampire clans of the present are descendants of Caine's first three childer, Irad the Strong (fighter), Enoch the Wise (mage) and Zillah the Beautiful (thief, indicating especially the socialmancer variety). However, not all clans have the ancestry you'd expect given their archetype. For instance, the scholarly Cappadocians are Irad's brood and Clan {{T|heBeautifulElite}}oreador notably descends from Enoch, ''not'' Zillah. This three-lineage class-type arrangement is also sometimes associated with specific disciplines. In particular, Enoch's offspring, as information-seeking types, are said to have [[SuperSenses Aus]][[AstralProjection pex]], Zillah's brood possess [[{{Invisibility}} Obfus]][[{{Glamour}} cate]], which has both stealthy and social purposes. Meanwhile, Irad's childer have won the SuperpowerLottery, being associated with all the disciplines which increase physical prowess or authority, harkening back to the "fighter as leader" archetype. |
| 287 | * FightingFromTheInside: Possession, Presence and Dominate can be resisted and even overcome, but this takes a lot of Willpower and some serious creativity. |
| 288 | * FirstTimeInTheSun: A possible ending for your repentant character in the Gehenna scenario [[spoiler:"Wormwood" has you confront the sun as a human once again. This is an example of {{Cue the Sun}} as well.]] |
| 289 | * FlatEarthAtheist: |
| 290 | ** The Camarilla in general dismiss the idea of Caine and Gehenna. |
| 291 | ** Recurring {{NPC}} character Beckett the vampire archaeologist refuses to believe the more magic or religion-oriented vampire mythology. He's wrong about that. Usually right about everything else, though. |
| 292 | ** Malkavian Dr. Netchurch does a lot of scientific tests on vampires (which science can't fully explain), studies thin-blooded seers, and knows that certain sites and individuals imbued with great faith repel vampires like himself. Of course there are perfectly rational explanations for all that... |
| 293 | * FliesEqualsEvil: The hallmark of the Baali. Some of them worship Lords of Disease, and most of them can use swarms of flies to do their bidding. Attracting insects is also available as a Flaw. |
| 294 | * FoodChainOfEvil: Some of the really old low Humanity vampires can only find nourishment from vampiric vitae, and since drinking it without killing the victim creates a blood bond, they go all the way. Those vampires who believe in Gehenna fear the day when the Antediluvians arise to consume their childer. |
| 295 | * ForScience: The stated motivation of many of the Tzimisce. And the stuff they're willing to do For Science curls the hair of ''other vampires''. |
| 296 | -->'''Jack:''' A Tzimisce? No kiddin'! Those are some creepy evil bastards. Ran into one down in Mexico, had this whole village of experiments, like nothin' you ever seen in a movie. Sick, sick shit. |
| 297 | ** Only really true of some Tzimisce -- their motivation is more often toward a greater understanding of their BodyHorror discipline Vicissitude, the Path of Metamorphosis or both. Metamorphosis regards sharing information as a sin -- if you aren't able to find out a secret then you aren't entitled to be given it. |
| 298 | ** Dr. Netchurch's motivation. By inflicting the same injury every time to test subjects and measuring their need for blood, he has discovered the blood point, which he terms VEU (vitae effectiveness unit). Netchurch responds to allegations of unethical practices by stating that every test subject has signed a disclaimer and is happy to participate. What the Malkavian doctor does not realize is that he unknowingly Dominates others to become test subjects. |
| 299 | * ForcedAddiction: In this game, [[FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct vampire blood]] is highly addictive, and drinking the same vampire's blood three times makes the drinker slavishly devoted to the vampire. Less-moral vampires take full advantage of this through force or [[TamperingWithFoodAndDrink guile]], since it's a quick and easy way to recruit [[TheRenfield human minions]]. |
| 300 | * FourIsDeath: Cappadocius was diablerised on the fourth of April, 1444: 4/4/1444. |
| 301 | * FromBadToWorse: And then From Bad To Worse again. With TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt on the horizon, that's the most logical direction of plot development, really. |
| 302 | * FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire: Mentioned in the original Clanbook: Tremere, St. Germain was an accomplished healer and alchemist who did generally good things and was never witnessed feeding. In fact, it is rumored he created an elixir to provide himself sustenance. Though linked to Clan Tremere, he is thought to be something much older. |
| 303 | ** This was also the schtick of many Healer caste Salubri, with a lot of them taking on such roles as the village healer, benevolent priest, community spiritual advisor or charitable stranger. |
| 304 | ** Adherents to the ''Dark Ages'' Road of Heaven Path of Enlightenment, where there are rules specifically for punishing evil and against causing harm to the innocent, sometimes play like this, with the more active ones becoming a SerialKillerKiller. Not surprisingly, Saulot, founder of the above-mentioned Salubri clan, was said to be the founder of this Path. |
| 305 | ** Besides the Salubri, some Clans are more prone to this than others, though hardly on a clan-wide level. It's probably the most common among Brujah, Toreador and Thin-bloods. Banu Haqim also count to an extent; they're not particularly friendly to humans, but are heavily encouraged to just leave them be (unless they are willing thralls to vampires, in which case all bets are off). The Nosferatu too are considered among the most empathic vampires, when they're not enjoying their new role as boogeymen or taking revenge on the world for treating them as outcasts. |
| 306 | * FrozenFashionSense: Quite common among ancillae and elders. Some of the oldest Methuselahs have never gotten used to this newfangled invention called clothing. As pointed out in the Revised Edition core rulebook, this can make them easily-identified (though not always easy to kill) targets for hunters -- after all, a vampire wearing 18th-century clothing in a modern dance club is ''definitely'' going to stand out. |
| 307 | * FunnySchizophrenia: A holdover from the very first edition, when Clan Malkavian was all about playing pranks on people and talking to faeries. Later editions' attempts to focus on the tragedy and seriousness of mental illness were often overshadowed by players playing "wacky" vampires. In LARP parlance these "wacky" Malks are often referred to as Bunny Eared Malks, Fluffy Malks, or Fish Malks (as in, "I walk up to the Lasombra and smack him in the face with a fish"). |
| 308 | * FurAgainstFang: The natural enemies of the vampires are the eponymous creatures from the sister game ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse''. |
| 309 | * GambitPileup: And ''how!'' Many campaigns have become entirely self-sustaining (the Storyteller only serves as referee) because of this. Probably the best part is the occasional mention that the entire Jyhad, the long-running game of control and conquest between vampires, may have started as a ''practical joke''. Oh, Malkav... |
| 310 | * GangBangers: A very common starting enemy in most chronicles. Good as expendable {{Mooks}}, and little else. They are to VTM what Orcs and Goblins are to D&D. |
| 311 | * GeniusBruiser: The Brujah were originally philosophers. Not so much these days. |
| 312 | * GeniusLoci: |
| 313 | ** A particularly horrifying version: many Tzimisce use their fleshcrafting power to create lairs that are at least partially made out of the still-living flesh of their hapless ghouls. |
| 314 | ** And then there's the Tzimisce Antediluvian, who figured the ghouls were hogging all the fun and became the bedrock of one of the biggest cities in the world. Poor [[BigAppleSauce New York]]. |
| 315 | %%* {{Glamour}}: The Presence discipline. |
| 316 | * GlamourFailure: Quite a few examples. Animals are agitated by the presence of vampires without the Animalism discipline or Animal Ken skill. Clan weaknesses give many vampires away. Most of them are also unable to keep food down, or approach fire. While Obfuscate may be used to conceal appearance or go invisible, innocents, children and those with True Faith can see through the glamour. A vampire can only roll as many dice for a Self-Control check as they have blood points available; a particularly hungry vampire will likely lose control when presented with a source of blood sooner rather than later. |
| 317 | * {{God}}: The Abrahamic God plays a large role in the setting's backstory, although He is fairly distant in the present, as He was the one to mark Caine in the first place and curse him to become the first vampire. In "Wormwood", one of the apocalyptic scenarios in ''Gehenna'', He returns to the fore after deciding that vampires need to be gotten rid of for the good of humanity. |
| 318 | * AGodAmI: The Antediluvians. Almost every single one of them is afflicted with this trope, and they have the power to back it up. |
| 319 | * GodGuise: A chronicle in Berlin By Night revolves around the appearance of an extremely powerful vampire who claims to be Caine. Investigation by the player coterie reveals that [[spoiler: he is actually a 5th generation Ravnos being controlled by the Setites, who uses his level 8 Chimerstry to become a {{Reality Warper}} performing miracles]]. |
| 320 | * GodzillaThreshold: The Ravnos antediluvian awakening and going on a rampage is this for...pretty much everybody. The Technocracy throws everything they have at it, and orders their people to make no attempt to limit casualties, either their own or civilian--the ''only'' thing that matters is taking down Zapathasura, and if everybody involved dies, so be it. (For context, the normal amount of acceptable civilian casualties for a Technocrat operation is 0.) |
| 321 | * GoodAllAlong: The Banu Haqim were originally portrayed as blood-thirsty monsters hated and feared by the other clans, but the revised clanbook put a much more nuanced spin on them as warriors against evil. Although later books tried to tone this down a bit, the Banu Haqim are still the clan with the healthiest attitude towards humans, mostly ignoring them altogether. Their Path of Blood has avoiding killing mortals as a main tenet, so most of the clan's violence is directed towards other vampires. |
| 322 | * GoodIsNotNice: Standard characterization for any FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire who manages to survive for longer than a few weeks, except ''maybe'' the [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth Salubri]]. |
| 323 | * GoodShapeshiftingEvilShapeshifting: Though vampires rarely qualify as clear-cut heroes, two Clans possess shapeshifting powers: the Gangrel have the ability to become animals like wolves and bats, their powers gradually accelerating to becoming mist, soil, or even fire - their choice of strictly natural forms cementing their nature as anti-heroes. The Tzimisce, on the other hand, have the ability to [[{{Biomanipulation}} warp their flesh by touch]], allowing them to not only disguise themselves as human beings, but also transform into armor-plated killing machines, animate puddles of blood, and giant carnivorous bats - easily identifying the Tzimisce clan as a villain faction even if you aren't aware of their ''other'' [[ForcedTransformation unpleasant]] [[ColdBloodedTorture habits]]. |
| 324 | * GothicPunk: Pretty much the UrExample and the TropeNamer. |
| 325 | * GroupedForYourConvenience: Each Clan has its own traditional abilities and personality types. A great deal of variation is possible, but vampires do tend towards Clan-determined stereotypes. |
| 326 | * GunsVsSwords: Definitely in favor of swords, which can inflict lethal damage, while vampires are very resilient to gunfire. A competent swordsman is a much more serious threat to a vampire than a sharpshooter. |
| 327 | * HairTriggerTemper: The Brujah's clan weakness. Also true for any low-Humanity vampire, and a possible flaw that can be taken at character creation. |
| 328 | * HeavySleeper: A consequence of low Humanity. Some Sabbat vampires cannot bring themselves to rise from sleep even if their haven is on fire. |
| 329 | * HellOnEarth: What would happen if an OmnicidalManiac Baali vampire managed to succeed in using the "Open the Way" power. Fortunately, this ritual is so complex, costly and likely to fail that it never worked in the few times in which it was attempted[[note]]When ''Clanbook: Baali'' laid the actual mechanics for attempting the ritual out... well, let's just say it [[NintendoHard may be the hardest thing in the entire game]] to pull off[[/note]]. And [[TooDumbToLive those who tried it]] got what was coming to them. |
| 330 | * HemoErotic: For vampires ''and'' their victims, feeding is an even more sensuous pleasure than sex. |
| 331 | * HeroWithBadPublicity: The six surviving Salubri healers (if you believe they actually exist). The Tremere [[HeKnowsTooMuch want them dead]], so they convinced the Camarilla of the supposed horrible crimes committed by the "soul eaters". |
| 332 | * HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: The vampires may have run society from the shadows since time immemorial and had a hand in everything from Rome to modern politics... But it's explicitly stated that the Third Reich was all human-made. Not necessarily out of any moral consideration, mind you, but rather that they hate the idea of their food source killing itself off. |
| 333 | * HiveDrone: The Blood Brothers bloodline, created by vampire sorcerers to serve as shock troops, consists of groups of vampires that can share their senses and abilities and communicate telepathically. The process by which they’re created also destroys their creativity, individuality and personality. |
| 334 | * HiveMind: It's strongly suggested that Malkav currently lives in the head of every vampire of Clan Malkavian as the Malkavian Madness Network, and it's normally tuned down. When he turns it ''up'', things get... weird. |
| 335 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: Caine cursed the Antediluvians (minus the virtuous [[TokenGoodTeammate Saulot]]) with curses that stemmed from their own nature. This was passed to their childer. |
| 336 | * HolyBurnsEvil: Potent True Faith can do this. Areas with high Ambient Faith ratings generally cause great discomfort to Kindred; but vampires with low Humanity and self-control can actually be destroyed by them. The Baali's bloodline weakness makes them particularly susceptible to this. Of course, True Faith is rather rare in the World of Darkness... |
| 337 | * HonorBeforeReason: The Path of Honorable Accord is a vampire code much akin to that of a samurai or medieval knight... with all the challenges this would impose in a modern environment full of backstabbing conspiracies and ancient monsters. |
| 338 | * HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: Cappadocius ignored his childer's objections and embraced Augustus Giovanni, a depraved and ambitious man who would eventually diablerize him and destroy his clan. |
| 339 | * HorrifyingHero: The nicest player characters can at best become this. The sourcebooks make it clear that, even in Golconda or at very high Humanity, a vampire is still an undead monstrosity. |
| 340 | * HorrifyingTheHorror: Even the most depraved vampires fear the Tzimisce, sadistic flesh crafters whose atrocities cannot be cured, and the Baali, demon worshippers who can re-embrace vampires into their bloodline. |
| 341 | * HorrorHunger: A major theme of the setting. A sufficiently hungry vampire might Frenzy for blood, attempting to feed on ''anyone'' in reach, be it their best friend, their sire, or a random bystander on the street -- with drastic consequences to the vampire's sense of humanity, their immediate survival, or both. It's also explicit that even the most careful and conscientious vampires will inevitably end up killing ''someone'' via feeding. The hunger for blood only gets worse with age, as elder vampires eventually can only derive sustenance from ''other vampires.'' Of course, to avoid the risk of a Blood Bond, they routinely go all the way to [[YourSoulIsMine diablerie]] on their victims. But what about the truly ancient vampires? If your elder needs to drink vampire blood, what would ''his'' elder need to drink? |
| 342 | * HumanityEnsues: |
| 343 | ** One theoretical possibility for a vampire that achieves Golconda is to become human again. Canonically, it's never been known to happen; whether a player could achieve it is left to the Storyteller's discretion. |
| 344 | ** The climax of the "Wormwood" Gehenna scenario, if your vampire was "good" enough. [[spoiler:Poor Ferox...]] |
| 345 | * HumanoidAbomination: While many elder vampires are weird, the Banu Haqim Methuselah Ur-Shulgi doesn't even pretend to anything resembling humanity. It is genderless, looks like a scarred, burned child, its thought processes are completely incomprehensible to lesser beings, and the rules for fighting it can be summed up with "[[HopelessBossFight You lose]]." |
| 346 | * HypnoticEyes: Dominate powers. Also the first level of the Setites' special magic, which is called "The Eyes of the Serpent." |
| 347 | * {{Hypocrite}}: |
| 348 | ** Camarilla elders will punish diablerists with horrible deaths and ban the practice in strongest terms -- but quite a few of them got to where they are the very same way. In general, elder vampires don't tend to have any ''moral'' objections against diablerie. They're trying to discourage it because they don't like competition from younger vampires getting ideas, and because they don't want to be the ones becoming food. Although, younger, high-generation vampires diablerizing older, low-generation ones tends to result in the elder taking control of the diablerist's body, [[HypocriteHasAPoint so younger vampires should be discouraged from trying anyway.]] |
| 349 | ** The Sabbat despises the Camarilla for (among other reasons) being nothing but a pyramid scheme of arrogant elder vampires. Yet the Sabbat, too, is a rigid hierarchy with their own undead elders on the top. |
| 350 | ** The Anarchs hate the Camarilla for similar reasons, although, again, that doesn't stop the older members of the Anarchs from treating their youngest the same way. |
| 351 | * IAmAMonster: Really evil (or just inhuman) vampire factions tend to use alternate {{Karma Meter}}s based on this trope, so that they may wreck shit and do [[invoked]]{{Squick}}y stuff without the degeneration that traditional Humanity-based vampires would face. |
| 352 | * IDoNotDrinkWine: Vampires, for the most part, cannot eat or drink. Their digestive systems are dead (with the exception of blood), after all. Part of the learning process for neonates is how to convincingly ''fake'' eating and drinking. The "Eat Food" Merit lets you actually eat and drink, and even taste it again -- but you still can't ''digest'' it, so you're going to have to throw it up later that night. |
| 353 | * ImAHumanitarian: The curse of the Nagaraja bloodline. They have to consume human flesh along with blood to gain nourishment. |
| 354 | * IHateYouVampireDad: Even when a new vampire isn't created purely as a servant, and doesn't mind his new condition, his relationship with his sire often goes sour sooner or later, because vampires have centuries to get sick of each other and their unlifestyle greatly facilitates distrust and paranoia. |
| 355 | * ImmortalGenius: Some elders have spent centuries mastering their chosen fields of study and have achieved a level of mastery that mortals can only dream of, especially in the case of clans with a scientific or scholarly bent -- such as the Tremere and the Tzimisce. In various ''Gehenna'' scenarios, both Lord Tremere and Saulot demonstrate such impressive knowledge of magic and strategy that the only thing that can trump their plans is another Antediluvian [[spoiler: most commonly [[EldritchAbomination Tzimisce]].]] Meanwhile, in "Fair Is Foul", the ancient CourtMage Mekhet has devoted so many millennia to studying magic that he has mastered ''all'' forms of blood magic. |
| 356 | * IncomprehensibleEntranceExam: Some clans prefer to test their potential members before Embracing them, and given the need to uphold the Masquerade, few candidates ever realize that they're being tested at all until they become vampires -- and even if they do become aware of being part of a test, it's not uncommon for them to be tricked into believing that they failed. Two such clans, the Lasombra and the Followers of Set, often go out of their way to deliberately ruin a potential member's life in any way they can -- sabotaging their careers, undermining their relationships, crushing their hopes, even leading them into addiction -- but for different reasons: the Lasombra are determined to Embrace only the strongest, and the tests are designed to weed out any who cannot withstand hardship; by contrast, the Setites want to completely break their "students" and show them the true nature of the universe. |
| 357 | * InescapableHorror: In the Gehenna scenario "The Crucible of God" [[spoiler:Tzimisce becomes this]]. |
| 358 | * IntrinsicVow: A creature under the effect of a Blood Bond tries to obey its Regnant's wishes, but will not follow orders that violate its core principles. |
| 359 | * IResembleThatRemark: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Clan Brujah's]] weakness is being more susceptible to frenzy. When other vampires mention this weakness, it often makes them mad enough that they go into a frenzy. |
| 360 | * ItCanThink: A big part of what makes wights (vampires who have lost themselves to [[EnemyWithin The Beast]]) so dangerous is that they are cunning, feral predators and not mindlessly violent zombies. Archons are sometimes deployed to handle the situation, particularly if the wight happens to be [[ThisIsGonnaSuck a powerful, centuries-old vampire]]. |
| 361 | * JackOfAllTrades: |
| 362 | ** Encouraged because vampires are generally solitary creatures and trust is hard to come by, so you may not always have a coterie-mate to depend on for a particular skill. Elders and Methuselahs, while they still have recognizable specialties, tend to lean towards MasterOfAll[[note]]Expect the average Elder to at least be capable of handling themselves in a fight, well-educated in various fields (particularly the vampiric condition), comfortable in twisting a social situation to their advantage, in possession of high-level Disciplines (including some not of their own Clan), aligned with some powerful allies, contacts and/or underlings, and in possession of a steady source of income or two[[/note]], because of their absurdly long lifespans and because you can't preserve your existence that long if you don't have access to multiple alternative ways of solving problems so you never are without at least some solution. |
| 363 | ** Characters with a social and/or mental focus can still be this in a pinch because all vampires are capable of sacrificing large amounts of blood to great bolster their physical capabilities (and only those). In a similar vein, contributing to the adaptability of Elders and above is just how flexible high-level Disciplines become in their possible applications. |
| 364 | * KarmaMeter: One of the major sources of angst is the fact that you ''will'' lose points on your Humanity KarmaMeter. It's practically the entire point of the game in many ways. |
| 365 | * KickTheDog: The Nosferatu sometimes take Cleopatras, their term for beautiful humans they think are too arrogant, and make them Nosferatu, something which [[DisproportionateRetribution inevitably makes]] the victim [[BodyHorror horribly deformed]]. This is slightly surprising as the Nosferatu are noted to be on average one of the nicer Clans. |
| 366 | * KillItWithFire: Theoretically, this is the next best thing against vampires after sunlight. In practice, supernatural beings, including other vampires, can and often do have better means of vampire-slaying... although white phosphorus grenades are still not to be underestimated. |
| 367 | * KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: Standard operating policy for every sect (albeit a bit more reluctantly in the Sabbat's case). |
| 368 | * KissOfTheVampire: A vampire's bite is actually called "the Kiss," and is described as being unspeakably pleasurable for both vampire and victim. Except for the Giovanni. Their clan weakness is that their bite hurts ''more'' than it reasonably should. |
| 369 | * KnightTemplar: The Society of Leopold falls into this category, an uber-Orthodox Catholic secret society routinely described as the modern Inquisition. |
| 370 | * LevelDrain: There is a Thaumaturgical ritual called Quenching the Lambent Flame which raises a vampire's Generation to 13. Elder Baali have a Daimonion power that lowers Humanity or Path rating. |
| 371 | * ALighterShadeOfBlack: The best you can hope to be as an undead bloodsucker. |
| 372 | ** On an organisational level the Camarilla are so far from "the good guys" it's almost funny but the rules they enforce on their members for reasons of PragmaticVillainy ''does'' make things significantly easier on humans in their territory than in Sabbat held cities. |
| 373 | ** In most characterisations of the oldest of the vampires Caine is a selfish wretch who invented murder and whose stubbornness led to vampires existing to begin with (and in TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen his invention of murder was what led to the Fall going from essentially an impassioned debate to an all out cosmic war) but most of the harm he's caused after killing Abel was unintentional, making him the lighter shade to his much more actively malevolent Antediluvian grandchilder. |
| 374 | * LightningBruiser: Celerity grants super-speed; Potence grants super-strength. Brujah have both as clan disciplines, and naturally have a reputation as lightning bruisers. |
| 375 | * LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Starts kicking in for elders and fully in effect for Methuselahs. Level 5 Celerity, Melee and Potence make a physically-oriented vampire a Tremere ancilla's worst nightmare. However, beyond level 5 the law of diminishing returns is in effect, so that moving really really really fast is not worth the XP. In contrast, sorcery takes centuries to master, but then allows a Methuselah to cast curses on entire clans or destroy bloodlines, rendering most physical stats irrelevant. The exception is Fortitude; you can never have too much Fortitude. |
| 376 | * LiteralTransformativeExperience: |
| 377 | ** The Nosferatu clan have a particular hate-on for attractive individuals with attitude problems. As a result, it's not uncommon for such figures to be Embraced and forced to endure the transformation into a hideously-deformed Nosferatu -- sometimes with the justification of teaching the "Cleopatra" a lesson, sometimes just [[ForTheEvulz for laughs]]. Whatever the case, the few Cleopatras who don't end up self-destructing may eventually mature into responsible, level-headed members of the clan in full support of its mission... and in time, they may end up Embracing Cleopatras of their own. |
| 378 | ** The Tzimisce clan have the power to alter and transform their bodies with the unique Discipline of Vicissitude, either making themselves inhumanly beautiful or deliberately monstrous. However, the use of the Discipline is tied with the practice of disregarding human perspectives; the more they experiment with the transformation of their bodies, the more they progress along their unique Path of Enlightenment. Consequently, the oldest Tzimisce bear only a remote resemblance to human beings and possess viewpoints that are almost incomprehensible even to other vampires. |
| 379 | * LiteraryWorkOfMagic: Dracula influenced Stoker's writing as a "parting gesture" to Kindred society. In ''TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem'', meanwhile, the Ordo Dracul, a vampire society Dracula founded, are suspicious of the book's origins--it seems too much of a ContrivedCoincidence--but ultimately don't know what's up with it. |
| 380 | * LivingDollCollector: Depraved masters of Dominate. The Tzimisce. Mortals in third stage vinculums. People under enough Majesty. Really, we could go on all night. |
| 381 | * TheLoinsSleepTonight: VampiresAreSexGods? Unfortunately, male vampires can't get it up, and female vamps can't orgasm. The Blush of Life can help out in this area. |
| 382 | * LooksLikeOrlok: Nosferatu have a tendency to take on the "Orlok" look in official artwork (especially since the concept of the clan is inspired by him). Tzimisce who screw up using Vicissitude on themselves (or who just have the desire to look that way) also can end up looking like this. |
| 383 | * LordBritishPostulate: Most famously found in the Rules for Fighting Caine: "You lose." However, this isn't limited to Caine; Antediluvians and Methuselahs are, in general, not given stats because any coterie of random [=PCs=] has no chance against living gods with Disciplines in the 8-10 range, and the game designers don't give them stats for precisely this reason. Such characters only die when [[{{Railroading}} the plot demands it]]. |
| 384 | * {{Lunacy}}: The Malkavians as the Clan of the Moon. |
| 385 | * MagicalHomelessPerson: |
| 386 | ** The [[SneakySpySpecies Nosferatu Clan]] often has connections to the poor and homeless of any city they have a toehold in, often recruiting vagrants as [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier Ghouls]] by getting them addicted to Nosferatu blood, blessing them with vampire [[MagicByAnyOtherName Disciplines]] and immortality while also cursing them with a hint of the distinctive Nosferatu ugliness. In a few cases, some homeless folk ''are'' Nosferatu, having been Embraced in accordance with the Clan's attachment to outcasts; the "[[ShellShockedVeteran Vet]]" and "Derelict" character templates are prime examples of this. |
| 387 | ** In the ''Gehenna'' scenario "Fair Is Foul," the sixteen-year-old homeless girl [[MacGuffinSuperPerson Lyta]] is soon revealed to be a {{Dhampyr}}, having been born with limited vampire powers; ever since she was unofficially adopted by Myth/{{Lilith}}, she's also been experiencing nightmarish prophetic episodes. Furthermore, she's being safeguarded by seven homeless beggars, all of whom turn out to be incredibly powerful vampires working for Lilith, including a master shapeshifter, the [[TheArchmage greatest blood mage in history]], {{Ma|dGod}}lkav's reality-warping sister, and the original [[TimeMaster Brujah Antediluvian]]. |
| 388 | ** Any character with 0 Resources qualifies too. 0 Resources means the character has no home, vehicle or other assets; they own 20$, whatever clothes they are wearing, and, if the Storyteller is kind, a weapon or small item of sentimental value. |
| 389 | * ManipulativeBastard: Vampires are ''very'' prone to {{Manipulative Bastard}}ry. Easily available MindControl powers, the demands of the {{Masquerade}}, and the endless manipulative struggles of the Jyhad all help to push them further in this direction. |
| 390 | ** The richest clans with the greatest influence over mortals are the Ventrue, Tremere, Giovanni, and Lasombra. [[PersonalityPowers Guess which of the 13 clans have Dominate as a clan discipline.]] |
| 391 | * {{Masquerade}}: |
| 392 | ** Camarilla vampires have codified this into an explicit Tradition, with {{Permadeath}} penalty for violating it. Other vampires also maintain it, even if some of them are very vocal about their hatred for it. |
| 393 | ** A lesser version of this already existed during the pre-modern days, called the Silence of the Blood. The main difference is that people did still believe in vampires back then, so it was less about not letting them know of the existence of vampires and more about not letting them know their ''location''. So long as it did not invoke massive, open counter-hostility, vampires were also, with regional variation, allowed to breach it at their discretion. That said, if they did, they would often pose as deities or ancestral spirits or the like, rather than simply admitting to vampirism outright. |
| 394 | * MaximumHPReduction: Vampires can regenerate from most forms of damage with ease, but aggravated damage (sustained from fire, sunlight, supernatural attacks, and holy relics) is another matter. It takes both time and harrowing amounts of blood points to heal aggravated damage. |
| 395 | * MedicalHorror: The Path of Death and the Soul. |
| 396 | * {{Metaplot}}: Oh so much. ''Beckett's Jyhad Diary'' is basically one big guide to the game's pre-5e metaplots and how to make use of them, with a few twists of its own thrown in there. |
| 397 | * MightyWhitey: The majority of Ebony Kingdom Ventrue like to think they are this. |
| 398 | * MinMaxing: Mostly averted. Traits, Skills and Disciplines are all taken into account to determine success in Feats, and since boosting one of these to level 5 is really expensive XP-wise, the smarter choice is to spread your XP around to maximize versatility. Furthermore, disciplines often require good abilities and skills, such as requiring you to "roll Stealth + Dexterity" (for example), so a well-balanced character works best. |
| 399 | * MindControlConspiracy: Elders use their powers of Presence and Dominate very liberally to enforce their wills, thinking themselves at the top of the Jyhad. Most of them are quite unaware that their grandsires and even clan founders are very much in charge and using them as pawns in their proxy wars thanks to even higher levels of these disciplines. |
| 400 | * MindRape: Malkavians can inflict crippling insanity through the Dementation discipline. High-end Dominate powers can mold your head into any configuration of the vampire's choosing. |
| 401 | * MirroringFactions: For all of the Camarilla's [[SophisticatedAsHell Civility]] and the Sabbat's "You're a monster, ACT like it" mentality, much of the rules that govern the Camarilla also govern the Sabbat, they just come about it from different angles. For instance, the Camarilla's masquerade is in place to keep mortals from finding out about vampires and mobilizing accordingly. The Sabbat employs a similar law, but with the justification that they're better than mortals anyway and don't need to associate with such rabble. |
| 402 | * TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: An ancient's tomb in the "Diablerie: Britain" chronicle has, among other traps, a mirror enchanted to reflect the Beast's true form. Vampires with high Self-Control can overcome the shock and avoid Rotschreck; but since diablerists already have low Humanity and Self-Control, the mirror is quite effective. |
| 403 | * TheMissingFaction: The lost/extinct vampire clans: the Cappadocians and the Salubri. The Giovanni and the Tremere filled in the power vacuum they left behind in the Final Nights. Coincidentally, they both usurped the previous clans' positions. |
| 404 | * MissingReflection: The Lasombra don't leave images on cameras and mirrors. |
| 405 | * MistakenAge: You should NEVER try to judge a vampire's power by their looks; that teenage girl might just be an elder. This is one of the reasons why vampires don't simply attack each other on sight: they have no way of knowing how old or experienced the other is. |
| 406 | * MistakenIdentity: It's possible to take several clan weaknesses as flaws, which can result in other vampires misidentifying another's clan. Depending on the situation, this could be a boon or a severe drawback -- if you're a Camarilla vampire that has the Lasombra clan weakness, be ready to explain. A lot. |
| 407 | * MonsterProgenitor: Caine is the first vampire. |
| 408 | * MoralMyopia: ''Extremely'' common among vampires, as psychologically distancing themselves from human herds makes their night-to-night unlives so much easier. |
| 409 | ** It exists within clans, too. The Lasombra, the Giovanni and the Tzimisce are utter bastards to each other, but if anyone ''dares'' try treat them the way they treat everyone else, God help them. |
| 410 | * MuggingTheMonster: Mugging a vampire is generally a bad, bad mistake. Vampires themselves can have their short OhCrap moment when their own victim turns out to be an urban werewolf. |
| 411 | ** Attempting to diablerize an Antediluvian is a very bad idea, because even if you somehow succeed, there's a good chance that they will simply take over your body. When a vampire publicly announces the successful diablerie of an Antediluvian and then disappears or goes into torpor, it generally means something very bad has happened to them. Unless you are already 4th Generation (one step below the Antediluvians); Troile, the 4th Generation Brujah, apparently managed to pull the "eat the vampire dad" successfully. |
| 412 | *** [[spoiler: Shame that the Brujah Antediluvian knows [[TimeTravel Temporis]]...]] |
| 413 | * MugglesDoItBetter: Individual humans ignorant of the existence of vampires are all but helpless if they find themselves confronting one, but humans in very large numbers, humans with powerful modern weapons, and humans educated in the ways of the undead can pose quite a danger to the average vampire indeed. This, of course, is why the Masquerade exists in the first place. |
| 414 | * MurderMakesYouCrazy: Murder is one of the fastest ways to lose Humanity, and by the time vampires get to Humanity 1, they will be barely coherent monsters rambling in their blood-soaked havens. |
| 415 | * MusclesAreMeaningless: Blood Buff and Potence are magical means of raising strength, so there's no way of telling how strong a vampire is by their looks. A Lasombra embraced as a teenage girl might just lift a car and bash you over the head with it. |
| 416 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: According to one story, the first people Caine turned were a pair of perfect lovers whom he wanted to give immortality as a gift to absolve his previous sins. Heartbroken that they were not going to be able to have children, they committed suicide together. Caine was so upset [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain that he forbid anyone to speak their names]] and refused to embrace anyone else for many years. |
| 417 | * NakedNutter: |
| 418 | ** In the original Nosferatu clanbook, the character template "Leatherface" is depicted as completely naked except for the crude mask of bandages he wears. He's also soaked in blood and carrying around a severed head. |
| 419 | ** According to the Baali clanbook, the Baalites were born when an unknown Cainite stumbled upon the city of Ashur and slaughtered all but three of them in progressively more hideous ways. The remaining three he Embraced by pouring his blood into the city's sacrificial well and throwing the dying trio in after it, creating the first Baalite vampires: when they finally emerged the next night, the three Fledglings were caked in gore from the corpses in the well and "howling with unquenched fury and madness" -- and according to the accompanying image, naked as well. |
| 420 | * NinjaPirateZombieRobot: |
| 421 | ** The Tremere are wizard vampires, and the Giovanni are [[TheMafia Mafia]] {{Necromancer}} vampires. |
| 422 | ** In general, much of ''Masquerade'' was put together before the greater World of Darkness came to be, leading to things like the aforementioned vampire mages, as ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'' was not yet a thing, and even later on, it appears to have been designed with the idea in mind of being a standalone comprehensive take on most of popular mythology. Therefore, if you can think of a particular mythological creature, there's a good chance there is a breed or cult of vampire somewhere claiming to be that creature in addition to being a vampire. |
| 423 | ** To give some further examples, the Lhiannan are vampire dryads, the Ahrimanes vampire valkyries, the Daughters of Cacophony vampire sirens, the True Brujah vampire time travellers, the Banu Haqim are literally TheHashshashin [[RecycledInSpace but as vampires]], and the Nephilim, Angellis Ater and arguably Salubri are vampire angels. |
| 424 | * NightmareFace: The Tzimisce, Nosferatu, Samedi, Harbingers of Skulls and some Gangrel. |
| 425 | * NintendoHard: In terms of the sheer number of dice-rolling and prep work needed to pull off, "Open the Way," the level 10 ability of Daimonion introduced in Clanbook Baali, may just be the hardest thing in the game to attempt, assuming the Storyteller is generous enough to even allow a player to try. First, you need to be a Baali (the clan [[HatedByAll every other clan considers kill-on-sight]]). Then, you need to be third generation, or somehow able to use a ten dot ability some other way. That's right, you need to somehow become the equivalent of an Antediluvian, usually only seen during Gehenna scenarios. Then, your character needs to chant, uninterrupted, for forty-eight hours. Keep in mind, that's forty-eight hours ''straight,'' meaning you're going to need to make several willpower rolls to not fall asleep during the daylight hours. Once the prep work is complete, the ritual itself involves a sacrifice of [[invoked]][[MoralEventHorizon one hundred innocents]], with untainted souls; have fun using Sense the Sin on all of them to make sure one of them doesn't have any skeletons in their closet that can mess up your ritual. Oh, and they all must have at least [[IncorruptiblePurePureness four points of Conscience.]] And for the grand finale? Spend '''nine''' points of permanent Willpower against a Willpower roll with a difficulty of ten -- meaning, [[LuckBasedMission you've got one shot at this]] -- in an attempt to summon an EldritchAbomination into the world. During all of this time, if anyone else at the table has ''any'' sanity, they should be [[RaceAgainstTheClock going all out]] [[AttackAttackAttack to try to stop you]]. If you succeed, congratulations, your character is no longer playable due to DemonicPossession, and you've probably just started something even worse than Gehenna, something the [[WhatTheHellPlayer Clanbook itself]] [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]]. |
| 426 | * NoImmortalInertia: Ghouls who ingest vitae are immortal as long as they can keep ingesting vitae on a regular basis. But if their vitae is cut short after they've exceeded a normal mortal's lifespan, they will age very quickly until they die or find more vitae. A ghoul who is more than a couple centuries old will ''instantly'' crumble to dust if they run out of vitae. |
| 427 | * NormalFishInATinyPond: 6th and 7th generation vampires are only mid-level by vampire standards, but since lower generation vampires are often incredibly rare to the point of being considered legends, then 6th and 7th generation vampires are often be the strongest and most influential vampires most people can come across. |
| 428 | * NoSavingThrow: Unless you have Fortitude, you cannot soak aggravated damage (fire, sunlight, vampire claws, supernatural effects). |
| 429 | * NobleDemon: Vampires on the Path of Honorable Accord are in contrast to their brethren in the Sabbat. They place honor and chivalry foremost, never betray allies, and never go back on their word. Background books state that they prevented the Sabbat from disintegrating in its early days and drafted its only 'laws', the Code of Milan. Of course, their chivalry does not mean that they are any nicer to ''humans'', but it bears mentioning that (unlike many other Paths of Enlightenment) they view killing ''needlessly'' as a terrible sin. |
| 430 | * NonStandardGameOver: Falling all the way to 0 Humanity results in a vampire (who's little more than an animal by this point) becoming an NPC under the Storyteller's control. |
| 431 | * ObfuscatingInsanity: A common tactic for Malkavians is to act even crazier than they really are. |
| 432 | * {{Objectshifting}}: The Tzimisce possess the clan-unique Discipline of Vicissitude, allowing them to shape flesh like clay; given that the clan has a rather shaky grasp of morality, it's not unknown for their servants to end up getting sculpted into furniture, decorations or even wallpaper -- all while still alive and fully conscious. One Tzimisce fleshcrafter boasts that, even after losing all traces of humanity, his fainting couch is still capable of crying when sat on. |
| 433 | * ObviousRulePatch: |
| 434 | ** Turning a werewolf into a vampire is a transparently bad idea but it's also pretty much an inevitable one. After some half-starts and ill-advised avenues that threatened to create walking Game Breakers, the rules were eventually bent into such a shape that the feat is still possible on paper but incredibly (and fortunately) difficult to pull off. |
| 435 | ** When the creators broke down and allowed [[HalfHumanHybrids dhampirs]] into the game, they made a rule more or less banning them from [[SuperpowerLottery combining with any other supernatural type]]. |
| 436 | ** Celerity was, briefly, almost the only power a vampire needed to become a walking cyclone of melee badassery, and was eventually nerfed. |
| 437 | * OmnicidalManiac: Quite a few, although most are fringe groups or lone lunatics with little chance of success. The Giovanni, oddly, have a master plan that means merging the worlds of the living and the dead--exactly how well this would work out for them isn't clear, since they never pull it off. |
| 438 | * OneStatToRuleThemAll: Generation is a potent thing indeed. Once a vampire gets a sufficient number of Generational brackets over you, there's basically no way to beat them without resorting to downright unfair methods. On a more mundane note, few attributes are as powerful as Dexterity, which is used for attacking and defending in combat as well as most physical challenges. |
| 439 | * OnlySaneMan: Beckett, the Kindred historian and archaeologist. Too bad he's wrong about Caine and the Antediluvians being just a myth. |
| 440 | * OutsideContextProblem: The Kindred have a great number of prophesies and theories concerning the end times and the Final Nights, and a great many schemes, plans and contingencies laid aside for that eventuality. In "Wormwood", one of the apocalyptic scenarios in the ''Gehenna'' sourcebook, absolutely none of this comes to pass -- the end times come unannounced, bereft of any of the signs the vampires spent centuries watching for, in a way that none of them predicted, because God has made up His mind that the Kindred have overstayed their welcome on the Earth. One night, the eldest vampires begin to notice a loss in power, and forty nights later every vampire on Earth is dead; many go to their final end never understanding what is happening to them. |
| 441 | * OurGhoulsAreCreepier: There are three different meanings to the term "ghoul". The foremost usage indicates living drinkers of vampire blood or vitae. Another usage, spelled "ghul", is for an independent creature that hunts humans for their flesh. The third usage of "ghul" is a term of insult against vampires used by mummies. |
| 442 | ** As per ''Ghouls: Fatal Addiction'', ghouls are living beings who drink vitae, thereby gaining some of the powers of a vampire and some of the weaknesses. For instance, one perk is that the aging process stops, but only as long as a ghoul drinks vitae regularly. Would their supply stop, they revert to their true age, which is deadly for a ghoul past their natural lifespan. Another example exclusive to animal ghouls is that they grow beyond their species usual size, which also reverts without vitae. Most ghouls exist as carefully selected and devoted servants of the vampires that nourish them, whether those vampires are good masters or not, but there are also self-made ghouls who hunt vampires for their vitae like vampires do humans for blood. There are two notable variants of ghouls: fleshcrafted ghouls and revenants. Fleshcrafted ghouls belong to Clan Tzimisce, who use their powers to mold the ghouls' flesh to suit combat and not much else. The szlachta are the enhanced soldiers, the vozhd consist of many bodies fused together, and the fleshweld ghouls look like regular soldiers but can fuse together at will. Clan Tzimisce also is big on revenants; more than any other clan. Revenants are born ghouls bred from made ghouls over multiple generations. Revenants generate their own vitae and aren't dependent on a vampire, but are loyal servants still because that's the family business. |
| 443 | ** As per ''Tribebook: Silent Striders'', ghuls are Arabian creatures that take the forms of beautiful women to trick travelers and eat them. |
| 444 | * OurSoulsAreDifferent: There are a few subtle hints that the [[EnemyWithin Beast]] is the closest thing a Kindred has to a soul. |
| 445 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: 13 clans plus umpteen extra bloodlines plus the Kuei-jin means there's almost no subtype of vampire myth or trope that goes unexplored... and quite a few that you'll frankly never see outside of the World of Darkness. |
| 446 | * {{Ouroboros}}: The clan symbol of the Tzimisce. |
| 447 | * PassiveAggressiveKombat: The Camarilla. Half the people present are trying to be angry without offending anyone, and the other half are trying to get the first half to frenzy just for lulz. |
| 448 | %%* {{Permadeath}}: Called "Final Death", InUniverse. |
| 449 | * PickyPeopleEater: Ventrue are inherently limited to only feeding on a limited group of potential victims as a clan flaw; other vampires can take the flaw at character creation. |
| 450 | * PinballProtagonist: In "Crucible of God," this is part of the point of the adventure; as it says, "the player characters become Destiny's bitches." The active players are Antediluvians who the player characters cannot possibly hope to oppose, and the player characters either act as minions of more powerful vampires or just try to survive while the world gets wrecked, culminating in being railroaded into an ending where [[spoiler: they have to ask God to kill Tzimisce for them. If they don't, the game expressly says that ''nothing they do matters''.]] |
| 451 | * PlayingSick: "Schere's Disease" was created to mimic vampire symptoms and to be used as a cover story, explaining why someone burns in sunlight and needs to drink blood from a medical perspective. The Schere Foundation was likewise created to give out false information about the disorder and provide medical credentials for individual vampires who might need them. |
| 452 | * PopulationControl: The Camarilla is usually very strict with the population of Kindred, so every Kindred must always ask permission from a prince if they want to Embrace someone. The punishment for Embracing someone without permission is death for the illegal childe and their sire. |
| 453 | * PowerBornOfMadness: Clan Malkavian and their Dementation Discipline. |
| 454 | * PowerCreep: In the earliest editions, the Tremere were supposed to be unique, powerful and feared for their access to vampiric sorcery. By the end of the pre-V5 era, ''every'' non-Camarilla clan had a sorcerous tradition of some kind. |
| 455 | * PowerPerversionPotential: This game does not stop at "potential". In-universe, the most common uses of Dominate, Presence, and Blood Bonds are to essentially make sex slaves (blood slaves, really, but the difference is largely academic). There was even an official erotic novel. It may not be canonical, but White Wolf did publish one. |
| 456 | * PowerParasite: Diablerie, which involves [[CannibalismSuperpower eating the soul of someone]] if you want to get their powers. It's a ''serious'' crime, even for vampires of this setting. |
| 457 | * PragmaticVillainy: |
| 458 | ** The main difference between the Sabbat and the Camarilla is that the Sabbat use their vampire abilities to be the biggest dicks they can. The Camarilla favor a lower profile; not because they're not also dicks, but because it's easier to manipulate others if you're not a ''raging'' dick. |
| 459 | ** The Camarilla don't pursue the Path of Humanity because it's the morally right thing to do, but because it's the only Path which brings with it the ability to convincingly pass as human. That it makes it really easy for them to present themselves as the good guys that way, especially to impressionable neonates, is just a nice bonus. Additionally, because Humanity is somewhat pacifistic in nature, it inhibits the violently rebellious sentiments of a Prince's subjects, making it easier for a ruler to stay in power. |
| 460 | * PrematureEmpowerment: |
| 461 | ** This often happens with people being Embraced (turned into a vampire) without being asked first, then being taught how to act in their new lives. |
| 462 | ** It's a standard procedure of the Sabbat, which performs mass Embraces, with the victims being buried and those who dig themselves out being brought into the group. |
| 463 | ** The adventure "Blood Nativity" is about a group of people being Embraced simultaneously and being forced to fend for themselves without any training. Those who survive can join vampire society. |
| 464 | * {{Pride}}: Everything Tremere ever did, which caused massive, ever-lasting shifts and rends in vampiric society, came about because he never admitted failure. One wiki sums up every one of his actions with "It half-worked". |
| 465 | ** Also Caine himself. The Book of Nod reveals that he was offered forgiveness and release from his curse by God three times and each time refused because doing so meant submitting to another's will. There are even hints that that offer is still open, that Caine could redeem himself and all other vampires at any time, but still refuses to accept forgiveness until God asks him for forgiveness first. |
| 466 | * PrimalPolymorphs: |
| 467 | ** Efrain Sortano (AKA the Zookeeper) of ''Mexico City By Night'' is a surprising case of this, given the Tzimisce clan's reputation for [[ClassicalMovieVampire Old World nobility]] and [[ProudScholarRace scholarly pursuits]]. One of the few non-Gangrel to have learned Protean, his mastery of both the Discipline and Vicissitude allows him to become almost any animal imaginable. These days, he prefers to live exclusively in animal form and doesn't even remember what he looked like in life; in fact, he's so enamored with animal life that his territory is the zoo in Chapultepec Park - hence his alias. |
| 468 | ** In the ''Gehenna'' scenario "Fair Is Foul," one of the seven Apostates serving Lilith is a master shapeshifter by the name of Ikopabe. Believed to be either a Gangrel Methuselah, the forefather of the Akunanse legacy, or even the MonsterProgenitor of the Laibon, he's not only mastered Protean but an African shapeshifting Discipline, Abombwe. And as his profile reveals, he's ''very'' primal: he loves to hunt, struggles to comprehend lying, abides by a strict code of honour, and almost never speaks... and when he does, it's in an ancient African dialect that only Lilith and the other Apostates are [[TimeAbyss old enough to remember]]. |
| 469 | * ProphecyTwist: The rise of thin-blooded vampires is supposed to herald Gehenna, the vampire apocalypse, so a lot of vampires' reactionary plan is to kill then en masse. The catch? ''Killing them'' is precisely what instigates the end of the world. |
| 470 | * PsychicSurgery: Tzimisce. ''Seldom'' used for healing. |
| 471 | * UsefulNotes/PunicWars: In the setting, Carthage was founded by the Brujah as a city where vampires of all clans could walk openly among humans. A rivalry with the Roman Ventrue and their Malkavian and Toreador allies developed into a proxy war; and eventually the Romans directly attacked Carthage and razed it to the ground. The Brujah and the Ventrue have been at odds ever since. This is listed as the first true war of the Jyhad, rather than conflicts between individual vampires and their broods. |
| 472 | * ThePunishment: Vampires came into existence as a result of God's curse on Caine, presumably aimed at making Caine repent. As you can guess, this worked about as well as most examples of ThePunishment. |
| 473 | * {{Railroading}}: |
| 474 | ** The Metaplot may or may not try to do this, depending on the GM and fan. But one example that just jumps from the book to beat you to death is in '''New York by Night''', where the writer pretty much orders you to explore the ''deep meaningful theological discussions'' between two hunters (a young angry man with a crippled sister (Mike and Zhanna) and a ex-security guard (Bobby)), that your players should stop the game to pay attention and if they die, that they should lose Karma points instantly and brutally. |
| 475 | ** The choo-choo is written directly on the page in Crucible of God's "Masquerade's End" episode. |
| 476 | -->Please note that this episode involves grossly unfair treatment of the players’ characters. The characters become Destiny’s bitches. At every stage, examine the characters’ actions for ways that things might go wrong and make matters worse — and have that happen. In particular, remember that you, as Storyteller, can make Cainite powers fail at any time. |
| 477 | * RankScalesWithAsskicking: Vampires' supernatural powers, as a rule, grow and develop with age, and positions of authority are usually occupied by old vampires. It also bears mentioning that Princes (and other vampire overlords) who can't kick ass tend not to remain in authority for long. |
| 478 | * RealMenWearPink: The Brujah ''antitribu'' wear purple as a sign of clan affiliation. Mind you, they are generally considered the Sabbat's shock troops. Badass indeed. |
| 479 | * ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Vampires stop aging at the moment of their transformation, which leads to this trope. And often to [[invoked]]{{Squick}}. |
| 480 | * RecycledInSpace: There are settings for the Dark Ages, [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Victorian Age]], the FarEast, and DarkestAfrica. |
| 481 | * ReligionOfEvil: The Followers of Set. Their whole faith revolves around corrupting others, including each other. Their special KarmaMeter includes options like the Path of Ecstasy (sample moral precept: "To resist temptation is a great wrong") and the Path of the Warrior (sample moral precept: "You are a warrior; do not hesitate to kill"). |
| 482 | * ReligiousVampire: Not counting the Followers of Set ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin who worship Set]]) and the Baali (who worship demons), there are a few vampires that practice traditional mortal religions: |
| 483 | ** Saulot was one of the Antediluvians and regarded as the most faithful Cainite to God. He established the Road to Heaven (known as "Via Caelis" among Christians and "Tariq-el-Sama" among Muslims), a path that teaches vampires to control their Beast through religious devotion. |
| 484 | ** The Lasombra were heavily involved with the Catholic Church and used it to [[CorruptChurch advance their schemes]], most notably the Spanish Inquisition to root out rival factions. One of the most well-known examples of this trope is [[SinisterMinister Archbishop Ambrosious Luis Moçada]], who viewed legitimately viewed vampirism as a gift and saw himself as God's instrument. |
| 485 | ** Played with the Giovanni, who are nominally Catholic, but all they do is pay lip service to the faith. Still, because of their strict traditions, atheism is considered grounds for excommunication. |
| 486 | ** The Ashirra, the dominant Middle Eastern sect, is based on adapting Islam to the vampiric condition, although it does accept (and respect) members from the other Abrahamic faiths. |
| 487 | %%* ResistTheBeast: |
| 488 | * {{Retcon}}: Along with a ContinuitySnarl worthy of any comic timeline. Each new edition changes things and the flavor of the verse (even the 20th anniversary edition -- it may not update the metaplot, but it still changes things up). There are splats that confound, sneer at or simply invalidate others, and the sheer amount of rumors is frankly ridiculous. There is a reason why Vampire is synonymous in RPG circles with metaplot... and railroading. |
| 489 | * RevivingEnemy: A tried-and-true combat tactic of the Ravnos and Ventrue. They can survive massive damage thanks to Fortitude, but like to play dead until their foe thinks he or she is done and walks away... |
| 490 | * RichReclusesRealm: In ''Havens Of The Damned,'' wealthy Malkavian slumlord Harriet Perkins has made an entire neighbourhood her domain, having exploited the events of the Great Depression to buy every house within a few blocks of her mansion and convert them into cheap apartments for the poor -- providing her with victims that nobody would ever miss. In the decades since then, Harriet has become so reclusive that she's refused to leave her mansion for ''any'' reason whatsoever -- instead ghouling all her surviving relatives into doing the work of acquiring victims for her. Worse still, she's an incorrigible hoarder and cannot bear to part with anything she's touched, believing that it contains a piece of her soul; anyone attempting to sneak into the mansion will find it both extremely messy and extensively booby-trapped. |
| 491 | * RiseFromYourGrave: The Sabbat rite for siring. The embraced human is hit over the head with a shovel and buried. Those with strong wills manage to dig themselves out; the less fortunate fall into torpor. This was originally a Cappadocian tradition before adoption and perversion by the Sabbat. The Cappadocians would aim for the opposite effect: only those with enough willpower '''not''' to burst out of the grave in hungered and terrified frenzy were deemed suitable for the clan. The ones who panicked or frenzied were put down immediately, while those who endured were dug out and inducted into the Clan proper. |
| 492 | * RodentsOfUnusualSize: Vampire blood allows animals to grow far beyond normal size; naturally, the Nosferatu use giant ghoul rats (and even alligators) to defend their sewer lairs. |
| 493 | * RomanticizedAbuse: Often, the relationship between vampires and ghouls. And between vampires and pet humans. And between vampires and other vampires... |
| 494 | * RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Varies on an individual basis, however the two "kingly" Clans, Ventrue and Lasombra, do pride themselves on this, with the Ventrue being ''noblesse oblige'' types, while the Lasombra are extreme meritocrats who are all about AsskickingLeadsToLeadership. |
| 495 | * RuleOfSeven: |
| 496 | ** The Tremere like to organize themselves around the number seven, with each leader responsible for seven subordinates. In practice, since there aren't enough Tremere around to realize this ambition, only the top of the pyramid obeys the rule of seven. |
| 497 | ** In some versions of the healer Salubri, there are said to be only seven of them at any time. |
| 498 | * RuleOfThree: |
| 499 | ** Three drinks of a vampire's blood binds the drinker to that vampire's will. |
| 500 | ** The Antediluvians (progenetors of the modern clans) were the third generation of vampires. |
| 501 | ** The second generation consisted of three vampires. |
| 502 | * {{Sadist}}: The Toreador ''antitribu'' are undeniably this. In the Revised Edition of Guide to the Sabbat, they "find human suffering, pain, and cruelty beautiful" and "take pleasure in the torment of others and reveling in the gore with which they surround themselves." Even some of the other Sabbat [[EvenEvilHasStandards find them disgusting]], believing that the "Perverts" are [[ForTheEvulz only interested in suffering for suffering's sake]] rather then a specific purpose. |
| 503 | * SaltTheEarth: When Troile realized during the Battle of Carthage that the Brujah had lost, she embraced her 4th generation Baali lover and together they melded into the earth. The Ventrue had the Romans salt the earth to prevent them from rising again; however, there are mentions in the V20 books of an ancient Baali presence stirring in the ruins of Carthage... |
| 504 | * ScaledUp: Setites' powers revolve around turning into snakes. Gangrel can turn into any predatory creature, but a significantly powerful one can turn into a ''dragon''. High-end Vicissitude powers such as Zulo war-form and Chiropteran Marauder allow the Tzimisce to turn into powerful beasts with a nightmarish aspect. |
| 505 | * SealedEvilInACan: |
| 506 | ** The level 5 Serpentis power allows a vampire to take out its own heart so that they are immune to staking and some other forms of attack; powerful Setites usually keep them in canopic jars. |
| 507 | ** The Children of the Outer Dark are {{Eldritch Abomination}}s the Baali are supposed to keep asleep by performing monstrous atrocities. Problem is, there's the occasional Baali (or other infernalist) who gets it in their head to wake them up, or risks doing so by accident... |
| 508 | * SeamlessSpontaneousLie: Of the supernatural sort; an advanced Auspex power allows a vampire to make up intricate stories on the spot. |
| 509 | * SeeTheInvisible: To pierce through Obfuscate, a vampire needs an Auspex level greater than or equal to the level of the Obfuscate power. Low-level Obfuscate powers fall to careful observation and some logical thinking. |
| 510 | * SexyPackaging: The cover of the first Tzimisce splatbook combines this with CoversAlwaysLie. It displays a voluptuous and scantily clad blonde woman in a sexy pose. Fitting the horrifying nature of the Tzimisce, the back cover shows something [[VaginaDentata much less sensual]]. |
| 511 | * ShadowArchetype: The ''antitribu'' aligned with the Sabbat generally embody the worst characteristics of their parent clan and take it up to eleven. Sabbat Brujah, nicknamed Brutes, are super-violent frenzying shock troops who torture their victims [[ItAmusedMe because they can]]. Sabbat Toreador, nicknamed Perverts, can only see beauty in ugliness and pain, and do horrible, horrible things to humans. Ventrue ''antitribu'' are a variation; they are dubbed "True Ventrue" and tend to be KnightTemplar types, complete with codes of honor, which nonetheless require shedding copious amounts of preferably main-clan-Ventrue blood. |
| 512 | * ShatteredSanity: The emblem of Clan Malkavian is a shattered mirror, symbolising both their fractured minds and the fragments of deeper truths they see. |
| 513 | * SheIsTheKing: The Camarilla title of Prince and Anarch title of Baron are gender-neutral. |
| 514 | * SinisterNudity: |
| 515 | ** [[HumanoidAbomination Ur-Shulgi]] of the Banu Haqim is a terrifyingly powerful Methuselah of the Clan who likes to emphasize just how inhuman he's become over the course of his millennia-long unlife by refusing to wear clothes except on special occasions. For added horror and revulsion, ur-Shulgi is an eyeless UndeadChild CoveredWithScars. |
| 516 | ** The Baali Clanbook kicks off with a Baalite [[UndeadChild child vampire]] brutally torturing a PedophilePriest he hopes to recruit, beginning with an OrificeInvasion of live maggots and rapidly escalating to BodyHorror. In both the narration and the accompanying images, the kid is completely naked (groin out of view, thankfully) and covered in scuttling insects that routinely crawl in and out of the boy's orifices. |
| 517 | *** In the same Clanbook, Baalite vampires from various points in their history are occasionally depicted nude in the accompanying images, usually while committing atrocities and made to seem as inhuman as possible. |
| 518 | ** In keeping with the Gangrel Clan's image as animalistic and borderline-FeralVampires, their revised Clanbook features several images of them naked, usually while caught in the act of fighting, feeding, or just looking really creepy. One of the most notable is an image of the clan's [[MonsterProgenitor Antediluvian]], [[PhysicalGod Ennoia]]: she's nude except for a few vague {{Censor Shadow}}s around her breasts and groin, and of all the disrobed Gangrel in the book, she at first appears to be the most human... except for the fact that she's [[TheBeastmaster flanked by two huge wolves]] and her face is so hidden by shadows that it appears [[TheBlank almost featureless]], making her come across as a HumanoidAbomination - which she is. |
| 519 | ** In the revised Lasombra Clanbook, the character template "Angry Young Man" [[note]]also the book's viewpoint character, Andrew Emory[[/note]] is depicted naked except for the mass of {{Living Shadow}}s pooling around his groin; as a [[FullyEmbracedFiend dedicated member]] of the Sabbat, his nudity is meant to demonstrate his increasing distance from humanity. |
| 520 | ** Tzimisce are not above casual nudity, in keeping with their nature as [[PosthumanNudism terrifying vampiric posthumans]]. As such, their Revised Clanbook features an image of a lone Tzimisce wading through the mud of a WWI-era battlefield, surrounded by corpses, completely naked except for a few shadows... and ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou looking right at the reader]].'' |
| 521 | * SkinToneDisguise: Vampires [[LooksLikeOrlok (with the exception of the Nosferatu)]] look completely human except for their skin being as pale as the corpses they technically are. A basic vampiric ability common to all [[VampireVarietyPack vampire clans]] is to expend blood to make them appear like living humans (also warming their otherwise room temperature bodies as a bonus). |
| 522 | * SlidingScaleOfVampireFriendliness: The best are coldly indifferent to humans. The worst, well... |
| 523 | * SlobsVersusSnobs: The Toreadors (Snobs) and the Nosferatu (Slobs). |
| 524 | * SlowlySlippingIntoEvil: A feature of the game. Most vampires have a [[KarmaMeter Humanity rating]] that can fall if they commit evil acts -- and they have a [[EnemyWithin Beast always pushing them]]. The lower Humanity falls, the more extreme acts a vampire has to commit to trigger further degeneration. |
| 525 | * TheSocialDarwinist: Clan Lasombra practically monopolizes this trope with all the factions within it implementing social darwinism in both their behavior and laws. They are completely unapologetic in their goal of creating a world where the weak are made to be subservient obeying the strong. |
| 526 | * TheSociopath: There's a Nature/Demeanor literally called Sociopath a player character can have. It basically means that [[TheSocialDarwinist the character believes that only the strong survive, and the weak deserve whatever harm they get.]] |
| 527 | %%* SociopathicHero: Among the favorite tropes of clan Brujah. |
| 528 | %%* {{Sourcebook}} |
| 529 | * {{Splat}}: Thirteen clans, plus a number of lesser bloodlines, plus books for the three main social groupings (Camarilla, Sabbat, Anarchs)... |
| 530 | * TheSpock: The True Brujah value education above all else, but are also cripplingly unemotional. |
| 531 | * StagesOfMonsterGrief: All over the place. Some highlights: Most Camarilla vamps are {{Fully Embraced Fiend}}s, with the occasional [[AscendedDemon Golconda seeker]]. The Sabbat and Tzimisce in particular are fully into embracing their sadistic natures. |
| 532 | * StickyFingers: Each Ravnos has an irresistible vice as their clan weakness. Kleptomania is a very common choice among players. |
| 533 | * StrawNihilist: |
| 534 | ** The Camarilla actually suppresses this mindset, as it is detrimental to the {{Masquerade}}. The Sabbat and some other groups embrace it. |
| 535 | ** The Path of the Feral Heart, followed mostly by Gangrel and the rare Brujah and Nosferatu, has acceptance of the Beast as its main tenet, and so most adherents fall into this category. |
| 536 | * StrongerThanTheyLook: A vampire's physical strength is disconnected from their physical appearance, allowing them to gain SuperStrength no matter what they look like. Pumping blood into your Strength, gaining levels of the Potence disciple, or simply upgrading your Strength stat over time can all grant you strength well beyond your appearance. |
| 537 | * StrongerWithAge: Vampires of older generations are much stronger than those of younger generations, to the point that those merely a few generations younger than the first vampire Caine are still pretty much PhysicalGod. |
| 538 | * SuperpoweredEvilSide: Subverted. Losing control to the Beast does not make you meaningfully stronger (as you can already buff your physical stats with blood points whenever you want) and the mindless frenzy associated with that is a major disadvantage more often than not. |
| 539 | * SwarmOfRats: A tactic commonly used by the Nosferatu; other users of Animalism can also pull it off. |
| 540 | * TakeThat: The original Brujah clanbook has a premade character with the archetype of "Fake Rapper." He's a white poser obviously riffing on Music/VanillaIce, whose record label infamously put out a phony autobiography claiming that he had gang ties. The character has no streetwise or combat abilities. He is contrasted on the next page by a "real" rapper who looks more like Dr. Dre and has the kind of stats you'd expect from a legitimate gang-banger. |
| 541 | * TearsOfBlood: Although possible, very few vampires would be driven to it. One Flaw a character can take is [[WoundThatWillNotHeal Stigmata]], which is usually a wound or injury of some sort, but can manifest as bleeding from the eyes. |
| 542 | * {{Telepathy}}: Auspex 4. |
| 543 | * ThematicSequelLogoChange: The stylized logo of the first edition remained unchanged all the way to the 20th Anniversary version of the game. This finally changed with the announcement of ''[[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition the fifth edition]]'', which added damage to the font and the frame around the word vampire as a way to emphasize the changes in the status quo of the setting, like the rise of the Second Inquisition. |
| 544 | * ThirdEye: The Salubri. It's linked to their special Discipline so much that any other vampire who manages to learn more than the first level will start growing one, too. |
| 545 | * ThirteenIsUnlucky: There are thirteen clans (not including Caitiff and ''antitribu''). Further, unless a player spends points during character creation, all player characters are thirteenth generation vampires. |
| 546 | * ThisIsAWorkOfFiction: Most ''Vampire: The Masquerade'' books come with one of these disclaimers. The book on Thaumaturgy states that the spells don't work, while the one on Paths states "You are not a vampire". |
| 547 | * ThouShaltNotKill: A chapter in ''Sins of the Blood'' advises a vampire seeking Golconda to refuse to kill humans for ''any'' reason. This is less strict with vampires, however: The section mentions that wights (whose KarmaMeter has zeroed and who have become no more than animals) are best given a MercyKill, and it also includes a letter (implied to be from the viewpoint character's mentor) advising him that he shouldn't feel guilty about killing a bunch of Sabbat to protect the mortals they were attacking, because the shovelheads chose their path. |
| 548 | * ToWinWithoutFighting: The proper way to play the Jyhad. Attacking a vampire is always extremely risky, since clever ones keep some strong abilities secret. Physical violence is also frowned upon unless in the right context. The most dangerous vampires prepare schemes covering decades that result in humiliation or destruction for the enemy. In any case, why would you need to fight a vampire if you can just manipulate the city council into demolishing their haven in the middle of the day? |
| 549 | * TooGoodToBeTrue: The Salubri were easily demonized by Tremere propaganda because Kindred believed they were too ''nice''. |
| 550 | * TokenGoodTeammate: The true Salubri, whose fate smacks of TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth. |
| 551 | * TorchesAndPitchforks: Were surprisingly effective during the Inquisition. Turns out that a large mob wielding fire is a match for most vampires. |
| 552 | * TouchTheIntangible: A rare few bloodlines and Disciplines allow communication and combat with ghosts and spirits, something beyond most vampires' abilities. |
| 553 | * TownWithADarkSecret: Pretty much every setting in the game is guaranteed to have a sleeping Methuselah or trapped demon secretly manipulating events and playing elders like pawns. In the Dark Ages supplements, expect a Baali coven to show up. |
| 554 | * TheTragicRose: Appears in one form or another on the covers of the corebooks. Also, the clan symbol for the Toreador. |
| 555 | * TreacherousAdvisor: A few foolish or power-hungry princes enlist help from the Setites. It turns out as well as you'd expect. |
| 556 | * TreacherousQuestGiver: The norm in this game. No vampire will just pat you on the back and reward you; they mean to use you. |
| 557 | * TreasureChestCavity: Tzimisce with fleshcrafting can do this. |
| 558 | * TruceZone: Elysium, those officially declared social hotspots where vampires gather and are forbidden from (direct) conflict. |
| 559 | * TrueCompanions: More or less forced on Sabbat packs. Essentially, each member binds themselves to the pack in order to prevent domination by others. While members of the same pack don't necessarily ''like'' each other, the supernaturally enforced loyalty ensures personal differences have little or no impact on a pack's warfighting ability. |
| 560 | * UndeadChild: "Child" is an available flaw. As one FauxtivationalPoster puts it, "In due time your name may cause shudders among the Kindred... but mortals will always ask why you're up so late on a school night." |
| 561 | * UndeadTaxExemption: Discussed and justified, in vampires frequently using their powers of mind control and their own skills at politicking to set these up. One preferred method of PassiveAggressiveKombat involves finding ways to revoke your rival's Undead Tax Exemption. Lampshaded in ''The Book of Nod'', where one of Caine's proverbs is "in all times there is a Caesar, pay him his due," and the annotation notes that one of the biggest modern threats to the Masquerade is the IRS and tax evasion by vampires. This is part of the reason why the Ventrue are in charge of the Camarilla as they have all the business and government influence needed to handle this type of problem. |
| 562 | * UndeathlyPallor: Gets worse as a vampire ages (except for the Banu Haqim, who grow darker, at least until 5e). The Blush of Life is a vampiric ability that allows a vampire to look hale and healthy, but the cost in blood points is tied to Humanity. Humanity of 8 and above can do it for free; each level lower than 8 costs an extra point. There is a flaw that prevents Blush of Life from being used, making this enforced; the Cappadocians universally had it as a clan flaw. |
| 563 | * UndergroundCity: Many of the larger Nosferatu warrens. |
| 564 | * UnfinishedBusiness: One of the reasons ghosts exist. The Giovanni exploit this by doing horrible, horrible things simply to produce wraiths so they can enslave them. |
| 565 | * UnholyGround: The demonic entity Kupala is bound within the soil of Eastern Europe. |
| 566 | * UsingYouAllAlong: The norm. Make the assumption that every NPC is secretly under an elder's control, and that every quest you perform benefits some other vampire who has been manipulating you from the start. |
| 567 | * {{Uberwald}}: Transylvania in the World of Darkness, of course. |
| 568 | * VampireHunter: Come in normal and Imbued varieties. The best of them, armed with True Faith, supernatural powers and modern weaponry, can maybe take down an ancilla if they're lucky and CrazyPrepared. However, they are a serious threat to neonates, and their numbers have started growing rapidly, so that they will eventually outnumber their enemies. |
| 569 | * VampireMonarch: Caine, though he's not particularly interested in ruling his vampiric descendants. That task falls to the Antediluvians. |
| 570 | * VampireVarietyPack: Possibly the TropeCodifier, using a whopping ''thirteen'' clans to make sure they really covered all their bases when it comes to vampire myths -- and when that proved insufficient, started introducing [[TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast new types of vampire altogether]]. |
| 571 | * VampiresAreRich: Many of them are. As the corebook points out, between being ReallySevenHundredYearsOld and having MindControl powers, it's not that hard for a vampire to accumulate lots of cash. The Ventrue and the Giovanni also tend to recruit people who are already very wealthy into their clans. |
| 572 | * VampiresAreSexGods: There's no actual sex, but this trope is what the Presence Discipline is all about. It's a Clan Discipline for the Toreador and the Followers of Set, naturally. Whether or not vampires can have sex seems to vary, but the general consensus is that even when they can have it, they don't really enjoy it. It's a good means to an end sometimes, though. |
| 573 | * VampireBitesSuck: The clan curse of the Giovanni, the Lamia bloodline in Dark Ages, and also a Flaw that can be taken by other Kindred. Also a natural side consequence of the Nagaraja clan weakness (needing to [[ImAHumanitarian devour actual flesh]] as well as blood). |
| 574 | * VampireProcreationLimit: In order to produce a vampire, the sire must exsanguinate a human to the brink of death, then feed them a few drops of vampire "vitae" and make a huge effort of will to revive them (represented by the permanent loss of a [[HeroicWillpower Willpower dot]], which must be bought back with ExperiencePoints). Feeding vitae to a healthy human temporarily empowers them as a Ghoul instead. |
| 575 | * VampiricDraining: Unlike Cainites, the Kuei-jin can obtain nourishment by draining chi from living breath or even simply from their general area if they're advanced enough. |
| 576 | * VampiricWerewolf: The ''World of Darkness'' forbids mixing templates by default, so werewolves who are Embraced by vampires usually just die. The unluckiest ones become Abominations, {{Tortured Monster}}s who have most of the powers of both creatures but are at constant risk of [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie falling to the Wyrm]]. |
| 577 | * VillainHasAPoint: The Sabbat monologue about fighting the Antediluvians when they're not torturing people. Turns out that having your Antediluvian destroyed in the past is the one thing that gives you a shot at surviving Gehenna. Unfortunately, the Sabbat are too busy being AlwaysChaoticEvil to have any kind of functional system for fighting or even finding Antediluvians. When the actual Ravnos Antediluvian showed up, the Sabbat was absolutely worthless in opposing him. Same thing in the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Gehenna scenarios]], where, upon realizing the End Times they have been preparing for all this time have actually begun, the Sabbat ''almost immediately'' manage to completely destroy themselves in yet another self-cannibalizing civil war. |
| 578 | * VillainProtagonist: The Kindred are not {{Friendly Neighborhood Vampire}}s. Vampires can be as good or as evil as any human, but it's tough to stay a nice guy and also stay alive (or undead) in the World of Darkness. |
| 579 | * VillainWithGoodPublicity: |
| 580 | ** The Camarilla. They're nearly as bad as the Sabbat when you get down to it, especially the upper echelons, with Princes tyrannizing and diablerizing to their heart's content because they can get away with it, but they've done a fantastic job of pretending the whole "humane vampire" thing was their idea and is what the sect is all about. In large parts, you have [[TheBeautifulElite Clan]] [[FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire Toreador]] to thank for that, being the excellent propaganda artists that they are. |
| 581 | ** The Anarchs. They tend to be popular amongst younger Kindred for their ideals of fighting against the oppressive Camarilla. [[FullCircleRevolution However, they prove to be just as oppressive]] [[RevolutionariesWhoDontDoAnything if not more so as the elders]] [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized they claim to combating]]. Also, their leadership tends to boil down to whoever is the oldest and has the most power and influence, [[{{Hypocrite}} just like the Camarilla]]. |
| 582 | * VillainousBreakdown: Vamps who let their karma meter slide too much may end up in this as well, as will those who run afoul of powerful Malkavians. |
| 583 | * VolatileSecondTierPosition: All tiers of vampire society are fraught with danger, but ghoul lieutenants arguably have it the worst, especially the Ventrue ones. A good retainer is worth their weight in gold, but no matter how valued they may be, they're still glorified slaves addicted to vampire blood and expected to lay down their lives for their domitors if necessary. Ventrue ghouls are often deliberately whipped into a frenzy of asslicking and backstabbing in their efforts to please their domitors. Those who fail to perform don't live long enough to enjoy the benefits of ghoul immortality ''or'' the Embrace. |
| 584 | * WarmBloodBagsAreEverywhere: When vampires are hungry, this can lead to frenzy. |
| 585 | * WarriorPoet: Older members of the Brujah clan have tendencies toward this. Younger members tend to be less cerebral and more smashy. |
| 586 | * WasOnceAMan: One of the main themes of the game. |
| 587 | ** Though all vampires technically qualify, vampires tend to find keeping the facade of humanity up becoming more and more difficult as they grow older and more powerful, and truly ancient vampires tend to morph into... something else. For example, the Tzimisce Antediluvian exists as a MeatMoss in a metropolitan sewer system, and the Lasombra and Malkavian Antediluvians only exist as disembodied consciousnesses. |
| 588 | * WeakToFire: Along with sunlight, fire is the one thing all vampires fear, and with very good reason -- it is one of the few things capable of causing aggravated damage to vampires, and being attacked with it or being near it can cause a vampire to fall into Rötschreck, the Red Fear, which can only be wrought by fire and sunlight. This is a direct result of the Curse of Caine. |
| 589 | * WeakenedByTheLight: The clan weakness of the Followers of Set. |
| 590 | * WeaksauceWeakness: As there are thirteen vampire clans, never mind multiple bloodlines, and each of them has a unique weakness, some examples of this trope are inevitable. Not having a reflection simply isn't in the same league as being an obviously hideous monster, incurably insane, or at the mercy of great beauty. |
| 591 | * WeDidntStartTheFuhrer: Notably averted. Earlier editions of the game, at least, made a point of stating that vampires were in no way responsible for the Holocaust. |
| 592 | * WhamEpisode: The Week of Nightmares, depicted at the end of the Time of Thin Blood book. The Ravnos Antediluvian wakes up and goes on a rampage in Bangladesh, causing the entire Ravnos clan to go insane for a week trying to kill each other and anyone else around, spitting out dangerous illusions. Three of the most powerful Eastern vampires try to stop him, conjuring a hurricane to block out the Sun. The hurricane prevents the [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension Technocracy]] from using their orbital mirrors, so they launch a dual-plane (Skinland/Shadowland-affecting) nuclear weapon. It kills the Kuei-jin and hurts Ravnos. The hurricane dissipates and the Technocracy hits Ravnos with their mirrors of doom, which may not have worked if the Kuei-jin and the nuke hadn't hurt him first. In the wake an entire clan is near dead, the Antediluvians are clearly real and other consequences reverberate across all the other games. |
| 593 | * TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed: Zig-Zagged. The metaplot builds up to Gehenna, and finally it happens... then gets walked back for fifth edition. |
| 594 | * WoundThatWillNotHeal: One flaw can give a character one, which will seriously hamper at least some part of their lives. In addition, this is yet another creepy BodyHorror move that a Tzimisce can pull with Vicissitude. |
| 595 | * WretchedHive: Many cities in the setting, especially those controlled by the Sabbat. This makes a city or neighborhood much easier to defend for them, since they have a practically inexhaustible supply of shock troops in the local hoodlums. Camarilla attacks often make use of shock and awe tactics for a speedy victory, since they have no other means of forcing out mass-embracing Sabbat. Inverted when the Camarilla writes a city off. The prince's last acts before retreating consist of letting mortal reformers and anti-corruption types loose. With the city's new Sabbat overlords deprived of resources and blood in the safer, cleaner city, it is ripe for a counter-attack. |
| 596 | * WritersCannotDoMath: The most recent vampire generation in the modern day is the 15th and kindred have been around for at least 6000-10000 years. Also, most Antediluvians were still active in antiquity and that seems to be around the time most of them have started siring. Not only does this mean most of them apparently waited ''millenia'' before making use of their gift to create progeny, it would also translate to each vampire generation only making childer at most every few centuries to result in a total of so few generations. While theoretically possible, with some clans indeed being very picky about whom they embrace, this still rather contradicts the game's main theme of vampire elders being greedy and very callous about ripping mortals out of their lives in order to use them as footsoldiers and pawns in their own games of power, as well as the ratio of embraces we see in the modern day. |
| 597 | * WrongSideAllAlong: |
| 598 | ** After an encounter with a Methuselah, the Gangrel justicar Xaviar realizes that the Camarilla has been lying all along about the Antediluvians. He responds by taking the clan out of the Camarilla. |
| 599 | ** A Lasombra elder of the Sabbat recalls joining the Anarch Revolt after having an audience with Lasombra himself, and recognizing the evil of the creature. |
| 600 | ** On the other side of the line, a Sabbat Lasombra archbishop takes himself and his city over to the Camarilla after growing disillusioned and disgusted with the Sabbat. |
| 601 | * YouHaveFailedMe: Camarilla Lasombra do not brook failure of any sort, and punish it with death. |
| 602 | * YourSoulIsMine: How Diablerie generally works. The twist is that it's mostly "evil" because it's inefficient, not because of the soul-consumption itself (regular feeding on mortals is thought to involve some soul-nibbling in itself). The feeding vampire gains a maximum of one age category, and the victim must be two higher for the practice to reliably result in any gains. So thousands of years of valuable life experience are being lost, with most of the soul 'escaping', and the loss to the community and more importantly your prince's court is often crippling. |
| 603 | * ZergRush: |
| 604 | ** The standard tactic of the Sabbat is to mass-embrace lots of people and throw them at the Camarilla. While these poor shovelheads are slaughtered by the enemy, they also help pin them down while more experienced Sabbat packs wipe them out. Rushes are also the best way to take down a lonely elder, who could easily solo an inexperienced coterie. |
| 605 | ** The Ravnos practicing this in their battles with the Kuei-jin is what caused the Week of Nightmares. Long story short, the Ravnos would mass embrace childer, and send them into battle against their enemies. These increasingly weaker childer would die quickly. The increasing amount of deaths of these descendants is what eventually caused their Antediluvian to wake up. |
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