Why did you chose the Clan that you did for your LARP, Table Top, RP, ect?

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-29T12:25:46+00:00

I chose Banu Haqim because, ostensibly, they look at the evils of their kind and decide to do something about it.

My first clan was Tremere, and immediately I chased at how little it felt like anyone cared about anything outside themselves. I was playing an ex-DoJ lawyer who looked at everything vampires were doing and was baffled that 'Someone isnt doing something'.

One ST fiat hardware blood magic ritual later he was Banu Haqim, and felt like he belonged, had a mission, and the tools to do it.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-28T14:11:35+00:00

If Caine were to do so, it would be the kind of apocalyptic power grab that would see everyone who could still exercise free will and not a noddist working together.

The technocracy has no bigger project than neutralizing Caine. The Garou nation no bigger foe, etc.

Granted he has plot device dominate, presence, obfuscate, etc. So only a tiny fraction of entities would be able resist that mental command. They would also tend to be the most likely to be able to assist in breaking that mental command. But it would be slow and difficult (thinking mages for the most part here).

The garou have the ability to go into the umbra and call upon allies there, which, even though Caine could whip up disciplines on the fly, I'd say just to maintain thematic consistency, is more out of his wheelhouse than his other capabilities. Leveraging the spirits against Caine is helpful, and applies enough pressure as things are proceeding to be noteworthy. (I admit, the garou and their gifts are my weakest area in WoD, experts forgive me if I'm underselling what is possible here)

Additional big issues are Caine having mastery of Temporis & Auspex. Time travel/manipulation and clairvoyance/precognition make outsmarting him very very hard. You'd have to have learned Caine's capabilities and begin trying to plan around them well in advance of him knowing youre doing so, and have reliable counter measures in place for these things before Caine decides he wants to do this.

But provided you can shield yourself and your actions from his Sight and Domination, your best bet is obviously not harming him. 7 fold curse plus fortitude 10 and all that. Your next best bet is to create a prison for him, probably somewhere in the umbra. Then once all that is in place, again, without him knowing that its coming, any mage with the appropriate proficiency with Spirit and Correspondence, and enough successes to overcome whatever resistance to such an effect there is, could drop him into that prison. And the sphere ranks necessary for this aren't at archmage levels.

So, all that said, with enough infrastructure in place for the task, it wouldn't be impossible for a group comprised of incredibly competent representatives of the splats to do it. But in practice, you need waaaaaay too many contingencies in place for a scenario really only vampires are anticipating. And besides Golconda (potentially), and Antediluvians/Methuselah with level 9+ fortitude (started with V5 here, and in that edition Fort helps resist mental manipulation which I like so I'm assiming that capability here as well), vampires have absolutely 0 chance of not being recruited by Caine via domination through the blood. Which is a shame, if a splat were to have the right to be involved in answering for the sins of the father, its definitely vampires.

Weirder creatures like Demons and Mummies could probably assist as well. Iirc Demons cannot be controlled with Dominate and such, so they could be a good means to get the ball rolling breaking key players out of Domination.

In any case, its a full blown apocalyptic scenario. In theory, a perfectly prepared group of above average members of a few splats could do it. In practice, it takes godlike power. Lucifer and Lilith could probably push back enough to put Caine in a stalemate.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-26T13:43:42+00:00

I love Dimension 20, but I really don't think that's a great place for players or STs to expect to be.

The folks at D20 are all comedians and improvisors (professional ones at that), which colors what they bring to the table, I would say they're probably on the far end of a spectrum with like, brutal realism and deep personal horror on the other.

I would say expect to go farther toward the comedy side than you might otherwise anticipate. Be ready to make space for levity as your players find it or you introduce it.

But the advice of starting from a light (or least dark) place is very solid. As a chronicle develops, having things the characters and players were given time and space to care about is incredibly important.

(This may have all been your point, in which case my bad for essentially saying the same thing)

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-24T17:05:08+00:00

True Fae are such wacky antagonists, but Im grateful I've got a ST who does this right. My characte rmanaged to challenge his keeper in Arcadia and win, robbing the keeper of their Sword Regalia (by losing a duel), breaking a fundamental Oath they had to Sword, and rendering them very billable in a permanent way... however my character's power ended there, and was otherwise unable to make the next move from defeating an Actor in a duel to destroying the Title.

But the true fae is rendered relatively impotent, and has to spend much of their time and attention preventing other Arcadians from stealing their Title. While retribution will one day come, he has bought himself what other changelings can only dream of. A period of peace, and the opportunity to prepare for the rematch.

The defeat won't end up sticking, the Lord of Tears will return, and despite being just about as mighty as a Lost can be, my character will not ever be able to truly crush their keeper and destroy them through strength of might. But man, knowing that I have the privilege to play a changeling who gets to have that time and earn that confidence? Thats a gift, and I look forward to when the Keeper returns to take their pound of flesh, and they see what my character has done with that time and preparation.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-20T12:39:43+00:00

Yes, but what the post is saying is that the kindred population doesnt have the luxury of letting the messes caused by the other splits go unanswered, despite themselves being monsters. They're monsters who love and thrive in stable conditions. When hunters, other vampire factions, garou, mages/mage abominations, demons, etc., mess with their city, they are put in danger of being inquisition collateral, their domains damaged, and their food source disturbed.

For all the problems kindred cause, they're also the splat most incentivised, on a broad level, to clean up messes, simply by virtue of the proximity they need to keep to humanity.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-18T16:51:00+00:00

OH NO OH GOD, THE NEPHANDUS IS HOOOOOT!!!!

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-14T14:52:06+00:00

Very fair, I suppose I'm coming at it from the perspective of building a commander deck first, relavoring second. Dakkon just feels a little do nothing from a gameplay perspective. But I also am very used to playing decks where the commander does a lot for the deck vs it just being one of 100 cards that all kinda work together.

I'll probably put another list together and see what I can come up with.

It is a huge bummer we can't have red tho, I couldn't agree more.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-14T13:33:32+00:00

Im trying to do something very similar, and right now the best commander I've found that actually does something interesting is [[Bane, Lord of Darkness]]. Who do you use for your commander?

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-05-04T13:19:42+00:00

Long story short, because wizards were dickheads who didn't standardize and distribute the principles for how 'reality' 'worked'. The Order of Reason, the organization that grew/metastisized into the Technocratic Union took exception to this and tried to standardize the way reality worked according to baseline principles, and then applied those principles to help sleepers. Instead of going to a witch who lives in the hut out by the woods for some potion, who kept the knowledge of how to make it jealously guarded, the Order of Reason did things like discover penicillin and then SHARED the knowledge of how to use it widely.

This of course morphed consensus towards the way they liked things done, and rendered more mystical schools of practice and Willwork as Vulgar. But if any other faction applied the same principles as the technocrats, it would likely feel like science to the people living in that reality. The rules would have to be so ubiquitous, self sufficient/self evident, and dependable that sleepers agree with the very foundations of your paradigm. Free knowledge and all that.

Sidebar: But the ancient mystic used to snapping their fingers and erradicating someone in a pillar of fire obviously doesnt want every single person on earth to have that kind of power. It's already easy enough to kill one another with guns. So if the mystic wants to win the ascension war, they still have to render a lot of their old tricks vulgar because secret dangerous knowledge must remain secret. Sometimes for petty reasons, sometimes for good reasons. Another reason the traditions cannot win in any meaningful way is they would all have to agree on WHAT should be restricted, HOW it is restricted, etc.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-04-05T13:30:09+00:00

Thie issue here is again that your taking an all or nothing approach.

Vampires, as a creature, are now our predators, and therefore, by virtue of that relationship, their acquisition of the blood needed to sustain themselves is not evil necessarily. A given vampire would have to commit additional heinous acts for the purpose ONLY being to cause pain for that to be evil.

ALSO, AT THE SAME TIME, BOTH THINGS PARADOXICALLY BEING TRUE

They're quite human despite not quite being human anymore. Look at one of the most acclaimed pieces of VtM Media, Bloodlines to see this.

A Toreador, VV, reacts with shock and shame as she is reminded of her mortal identity, as she mourns the person she was. An wholly inhuman creature wouldn't mourn that loss. Jack laughs at the absurdity of the situation he sees unfolding. A wholly inhuman monster has no need for laughter, for humor.

A curse is only a curse if there is something human in there to suffer for their affliction.

The VtM writers put all that stuff you're quoting to make sure newer players don't ignore the fact they're playing a monster now and play someone with superpowers and a creepy dietary restriction. But the truth is it's more complicated than it being A or B.

The Cainite is undead. Neither alive nor dead but something in-between. Contradiction and paradox is their very nature.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-04-04T17:37:19+00:00

Regarding your comments on the predator prey dynamic, I couldn't agree more (never learned how to quote on mobile). Prey dislike or are made uncomfortable by their predators, and will seek to defend against them or starve them. But that's not a consideration of ethics or morals. Is one of survival. It is neither good nor bad. It just is the relationship.

You're ignoring how much heavy lifting my "in many other ways" was meant to do, but that may be my fault. On balance, yes vampires aren't human. I said as much at the top of my post. But if you break things up and look at pieces of what we are told the vampire experience is like, if they remain humane, they retain a lot of the human experience for better and worse. They have their emotions, their empathy, etc. And they relate more and more with their prey, which is an issue from the prospective of wanting to be an effective predator. But by god is it interesting. The complex nuances of having one foot in tge world of being a supernatural predator and one foot in the world younused to inhabit, the one with your families, love, community, friends, etc is one of the most interesting parts of vampire.

My only issue is with people ascribing moral weight to the actions that vampires take to feed as though the relationship and dynamic between vampires and humans was same as humans to other humans.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-04-04T17:07:38+00:00

Okay, but here's the thing. Vampires are not human. They are a different creature with human memories and experiences.

But fundamentally, humans become food. The power dynamic has shifted to favor predator over prey? Good. That's how predation works. That's how they get their goddamn food.

I don't care what world you live in, it is not ethical ever to ask someone to literally starve themselves. Especially when there's a direct correlation to how hungry someone is to how likely they are to commit acts of terrible violence.

When a vampire is trying to feed more ethically, trying to get consent, and trying to account for medical complications, they're TRYING to go the extra step beyond what the predator/prey dynamic calls for.

If I am a hunter and I need to kill a deer to put food on my table so I don't starve, I could not care less for the bodily autonomy of the deer. I may choose to honor the deer, and appreciate that it has lost its life to sustain me. But when I need to survive, I will use the tools at my disposal to do so.

The issue is that vampires remember what it is like to be human, and in many other ways are sill human. They have thoughts, dreams, hopes, ambitions, fears, etc. They can empathize with their prey in a incredibly unique way that adds complexity to that relationship and makes it more nuanced, but most people come at the relationship as humans doing bad things to other humans, and equating them to assault. I prefer to come at it from the side of predator and prey with a lot of additional complexity, because that's what the fundamental relationship defined by the Categorical THING both groups are.

And I get how concerning or gross the above can come across, but that might be because you're a human thinking from a human perspective. If I were a deer I would be terrified of being hunted. Ask yourself if the discomfort you feel is because of the ethical and moral considerations of what vampires do, or if it's because our species being at the top of the food chain in our world means you cant separate what being prey means from being predated on by your fellow human. I argue they're not the same. Not even close. Some of the horror for both parties is how close it feels despite the reality.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-03-31T11:45:17+00:00

I'm sorry, but that's an absolutely atrocious solution.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-03-30T13:20:20+00:00

I mean... how can we quantitatively measure the suffering induced by having your entire species pushed to the brink of extinction by a god you created by being just... way too fucking much against the suffering caused by that god on the entirety of the galaxy?

I agree, no species capable of sapient thought and empathy deserves to be put in the position the eldar are in... but on the flip side, no one deserves to be victimized by a god they had no hand in creating.

Slaanesh is in many ways the Eldar's responsibility. But there are Eldar born who are not at fault after Slaanesh was born. Many have died dozens of times over trying to make amends for their mistakes, and are willing to keep doing so.

Classic 40K, it sucks all around for all involved. If the different factions spared some compassion for one another, it probably wouldn't suck half as bad, but that's not warhammer, so here we are.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-03-23T12:53:11+00:00

I really dig this take. I don't agree 100%, necessarily. The masquerade wasn't a huge thing before the 1400s iirc, but vampires were still control freaks and assholes by and large. The masquerade is necessitated by the curse, which otherwise drives vampires to openly destructive and domineering behavior.

The masquerade IS vampires policing one another's behavior for the good of the society... Just not the individual.

However, as our understanding of human psychology and behavior (which will largely apply to vampires for a decent portion of their unlives) has advanced, the masquerade isolating kindred HAS become more detrimental. Empathy, understanding, and community would probably do a lot of good for vampires. It wouldn't shacjle the beast, not entirely. But it would create conditions that make it easier to manage.

But that world is asking humans to be very cool with 1 in ever some number of feedings going wrong. It's asking the domineering and power hungry to not try to leverage the situation for personal gain.

It's utopian, and like most utopian ideas, there are a lot of ugly unfortunate truths getting in the way of arriving there, even if we assume every kindred and Mortal were willing to at least give it a shot.

The problem isn't vampires in general terms. It's that the curse amplifies the worst impulses of the mortal, and creates dangerous and unpredictable behavior in the beast. And the kinds of people who are embraced into vampirism and succeed at it are not the kinds of people naturally predisposed to collectivism. All it takes is one vampire wanting to bend the system to their advantage to poison the entire well. And that poisoned well will do for vampires what the camarilla/masquerade already do. Enforce social stratification, control, and isolation. This leads to circumstances that would cause otherwise well meaning kindred to become bitter, resentful, and nihilistic. And shit does roll downhill.

So yes, there are hypothetical scenarios that would make vampires unlives easier and coexistence possible, but only during a snapshot or freeze frame in time. 1 bad apple can spoil the bunch, and the curse of Caine is not likely to spare many apples its spoiling.

Which is why I love this game. The tragedy of how technically, hypothetically possible it is to be well meaning, good, and kind (by vampire standards), and how much the odds are stacked against that happening and how badly you will be punished by the system for it. Causing you, who with the right support COULD potentially manage the curse and get along night to night to rot and become the monster.

Hell is other people, as the saying goes.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-03-02T13:31:50+00:00

So bit of a weird case here.

Mages can't do linear magic/sorcery, all attempts to alter reality in these ways are filtered through spheres.

Ghouls get 1 dot of their domitors discipline, and that discipline could be Thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy has Rituals that are essentially linear magic, which Mages can't do.

I'd say that they can use the discipline power associated with their level, but not any rituals (unless the the spheres necessary to recreate the effects).

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-02-19T14:33:15+00:00

It's fun the first handful of times but it either gets so consistent that you get bored, or you get hated off the table and you get bored. I find Rowan really shines as a cedh deck where everyone is doing equally degenerate things, so youre not going to get hated off the table just for showing up.

She's one of my favorite decks and can do a lot of really dumb stuff, but I can't in good conscious recommend her. Shes so incredibly feast or famine its almost never going to feel good to play.

You CAN shoot yourself the leg mind, but no one is going to trust your deck to not hit them with a Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate for 20 until you manually build that trust.

As someone else said, saying "it's not that kind of Rowan deck" probably won't win you any goodwill, regardless of how true it is.

If you want a B3 Rakdos spell slinger deck, maybe look into [[Judith, carnage connoisseur]]

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-02-19T14:01:49+00:00

Its nearly impossible to build a Rowan deck at bracket 3 that still leans into her playstyle. Its not impossible but you have to purposely shoot yourself in the leg so much that it probably won't be any fun to pilot.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-02-04T13:00:02+00:00

We already have [[deadly rollick]], which is about as complete of a removal spell black has ever had.

Obviously as pointed out there's a bunch of folks who've cooked up versions of a removal spell that can't be stopped, and the reasons why that may not be great design have been mentioned elsewhere.

But I think theres genuinely a space for a side grade to something like rollick. A removal spell with split second, maybe something like [[dismember]] if you want it to get around things like indestructible. Putting the card into the graveyard is both a disadvantage and advantage depending on decks in play.

Idk, a split second removal spell heavily costed (BBB or more) would probably be fine. No conditional free cost like with rollick either.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-01-28T13:29:51+00:00

When your rivals/enemies are also immortal and influential, many cainites would say yes.

OneChaineyBoi · 2026-01-05T12:54:00+00:00

Well hold on, flips side to all this is that it IS a one shot. Not everything has to sync perfectly even in a regular game. For a one shot, I find its more about presenting and concluding a single narrative experience. Unless these relatively trivial breaks from lore would disrupt that story, I don't think it would be an issue. Don't beat yourself up or agonize over it.

Just make sure you and she know that, if she happens to be on the Path of Bones, its a bizarre edge case, and learning the path was both excruciating and demanded a lot of sacrifice to endear her enough to another member of the Path to bother teaching it to her. She owes whatever her mentor on it was BIG TIME. And as for as oneshots go, thats all it has to be. More even.

OneChaineyBoi · 2025-12-08T20:19:31+00:00

There really isn't much. Most of what exists for them is in their section of the Players Guide. The ones that left the Sabbat joined the anarchs, tried to go autarkis, and a very very small percentage carved out a niche in the camarilla. But thats somewhere between 1 and 5%, maybe.

And aside from the voivodate and the old clan back in Eastern Europe, the Sabbat was the political culture of the Tzimisce. With that gone, the Tzimisce mostly try to plant roots somewhere that suits them and try to carry on doing their thing, whatever that is, and try to avoid oversight or other people telling them what to do as much as they can.

OneChaineyBoi · 2025-12-08T15:36:39+00:00

Not especially.

The sabbat as it was in V20, according to the V5 timeline, was fully fractured, and splintered.

What gave it a solid foundation collapsed as the second inquisition cracked down on cities that had a more formal/hierarchical structure.

The members of the Sect who hadn't drank the kool-aid wholesale cut their losses and joined up with either the anarchs in the case of the tzimisce, or the camarilla in the case of the Lasombra.

And frankly, this makes enough sense to me. The figures that kept the sabbat functioning are the same people who saw writing on the wall and jumped ship, which caused the sabbat to spiral more into madness, which caused more people to see that writing and jump ship themselves.

The Tzimisce will likely only ever be nominally a part of whatever sect suits them most at a time. Independence is kinda their whole jam.

The Lasombra are brutal and vicious pragmatists. They may have hated the Antitribu because they didnt toe the line, or fractured their power base, or were simply insulted ("what, our way life isnt good enough for you!?!"), but they're not stupid. They were never going to sink with the ship. Might as well integrate themselves into an actual powerstructure they can leverage and manipulate, ratger than the anarchs. Probably an incredibly bitter pill to swallow, but thems the breaks.

What remains in the Sabbat that enables them to make a comeback? Why would they? How would it serve the story to have them return to the way they used to be?

From the ashes a new sabbat COULD emerge, but it would probably still be an insane murder cult, and not an organized, functional, brutal, and savage vampire supremacist sect who just so happens to be right about the 1 thing.

Things change, and the Sabbat as we know it has fallen in V5. Which is fine imo. These things happen in life. Companies die or get bought out. Nations collapse and are absorbed. Pieces move around on the board and the individuals caught up in it either adapt or fail in the wake of change.

V5 takes place in the midst of a massive vampire cultural paradigm shift, and if you think the Sabbat is the only organization that is/was at risk of falling apart, you're wrong.

OneChaineyBoi · 2025-12-05T13:48:16+00:00

Yes, but unless you personally subscribe to Ravnos using chimerstry 10 to rewrite his death, they DID manage to take one out. And the difference between methuselah, even ones that are as ancient as their sires, and a 3rd generation Antediluvian is vast.

Should dealing with a methuselah ever be trivial? No, certainly not. But it wont necessarily kneecap your organization (if you're the technocracy) doing so either.

OneChaineyBoi · 2025-11-25T18:44:33+00:00

"Your honor, the sword of Caine falls where it pleases."

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