Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

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Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
Role-playing game published by White Wolf
Rule System	Storyteller System
Authors	Kenneth Hite, Mark Rein·Hagen, Matthew Dawkins, Juhanna Peterson, Martin Ericsson, Karim Muammar
First Publication	2018
Essential Books	Vampire: The Masquerade Core Rulebook

The premier vampire RPG rises once more from its resting place once more. Although subject to many skubtastic debates, this new edition has found popularity with newcomers to the series. This edition is usually abbreviated as VTM V5, or just V5, to differentiate it from D&D 5E.

The rules are lighter now, gas tank vampires are no more, and as always the clock has edged closer to midnight (AKA Gehenna).

Modern Fluff

The quick and dirty summary is that the Camarilla has weakened, some clans switched around in the sects, and the Sabbat are fighting Camarilla elders in the Middle East in the Gehenna War. Also, the inquisition is back and now has connections with the alphabet soup agencies because the NSA got into Schrecknet, revealing kindred society to a degree. This led to such events as the Tremere Vienna Chantry getting blown up and the Camarilla forgoing the use of modern technology for sensitive communication. The Second Inquisition believes kindred suffer from "the blank body virus", named for the absence of body heat seen when a vampire walks in front of a thermal camera.

All the above has led to kindred cities being run by much younger kindred than usual. The stranglehold elders had has loosened as they are summoned to the Middle East by a psych-spiritual call known as the Beckoning. There are a lot more thin bloods too, and most full-blooded vampires still don't like them.

Rules

V5 uses a dice pool system made up of D10s. The number of dots you have in skills, stats, and other modifiers are added together. The total is the number of D10s rolled for a test. If you get enough high results you succeed.

The unique part of the new rules is the hunger dice system. This replaces the blood points system (AKA gas tank/mana pool vampires). When waking up each night or using some disciplines you must make a rouse check by rolling a D10. A roll of 6 or higher is a success, and hunger does not increase. If the result is less than 6, hunger increases by one. Hunger ranges from 0-5, but the only way to get to 0 is to feed on a person until they die, otherwise, the minimum is 1. Hunger dice replace a number of dice in each test equal to your current hunger. Depending on the successes and failures in a roll and how much of each come from hunger dice, a beastial failure or messy critical could occur. This could result in giving in to a compulsion or behaving inhumanly, such as biting and starting to feed on someone that you meant to just attack.

Some of the attributes have been swapped out (notably appearance, the most useless attribute in wod), the abilities list is trimmed slightly, and morality has been changed, aping the touchstones system from VTR and allowing players to decide the commandments that actually matter to the character instead of choosing between generic humanity or begging the storyteller to allowing them to use a Path of Edgelightenment.

Disciplines work a bit differently now. A standout difference is amalgam powers. They require dots in two disciplines to be accessed. In the wake of this, some disciplines have been reduced to a couple amalgram powers that require dsiciplines the clan has as standard (making serpentis a variant of protean with some presence requirements, Chimestry is now a presence and obfuscate amalgram etc). This has provoked a lot of passionate debate. In addition, there are now normally multiple powers for each level of a discipline that you must choose from (or pick a power from a lower level, and 6+ powers have been scrapped (some wrapped into the upper levels of the discipline, others just purged). As a result the disciplines are all limited to 5 dots, preventing someone from getting every power from a discipline.

Books

• Core Book: It has the rules, GMing guidance, some statblocks for NPCs, items, coterie creation, etc. Clans: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavians, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, Ventrue, Caitiff, and Thinbloods.
• Anarch Sourcebook: Anarch lore and rules for playing The Ministry (formerly the Followers of Set).
• Camarilla Sourcebook: Camarilla lore and rules for playing the Banu Haqim (formerly the Assamites).
• Fall of London: Chronicle set in 2012 about the eradication of kindred in London by the Second Inquisition.
• Chicago by Night: Sourcebook for running games in Chicago. Contains the rules for playing Lasombra.
• The Chicago Folios: Even more stuff about Chicago.
• V5 Companion: A free PDF with rules for Ravnos, Salubri, and Tzimisce. Also includes a section regarding how vampires of each clan feel about coteries along with a clan coterie merit available to be purchased at character creation. Section 3 has rules for playing mortals and ghouls. The final section contains errata and rules updates to be included in future printings (but not the upcoming July 2021 Renegade Games reprint, for some reason).
• Cults of the Blood Gods: All about vampire religion. Includes a bunch of existing cults as well as rules for making your own as a GM. Includes rules for the Hecata, the new necromancy clan that was formed by a merger of Giovanni, Cappodician, Nagaraja, and a few others in 2018. They are the last remaining independent clan.

Clans

Banu Haqim

• Antediluvian - Haqim
• Disciplines - Blood Sorcery (get fucked Tremere), Celerity, Obfuscate
• Primary Sect membership - Camarilla
• Clan Weakness - Vitae Addiction (once you taste a drop, you just can't stop)
• Clan Compulsions- Judgement (if someone goes against your personal ideals they're compelled to punish them)

Following the shitstorm that is the beckoning dragging the elders and the sabbat to the Middle East, the Assimites (really named Banu Haqim, with Assimites being a name that westerners called them) petitioned to join the Camarilla, which the Camarilla needed after the Brujah and Gangrel fucked off in the midst of feeling unappreciated and ignored, so it works out for both of them. In addition, Ur-Shulgi stopping the Tremere curse of vitae allergy is still canon, and they got the last laugh by wiping out the tremere's ability to blood bond (which, in fairness, the Tremere were overdue getting truly slapped down for their bullshit). Otherwise they're still the prime "executioner/assassin" clan, and most are likely to be some kind of law enforcement or even former military. Their old signature discipline of Quietus got nixed into blood sorcery, reactions are mixed to positive.

Brujah

• Antediluvian - Troile
• Disciplines - Celerity, Potence, Presence
• Primary Sect membership - Anarchs
• Clan Weakness - Prone to frenzy
• Clan Compuslions - Rebellion (gotta fight whatever the status quo is, even if its a system that works or even benefits them)

Still the same mix of idealist philosophers preaching about politics and entitled kids who wanna fight "the man" for imposing rules without understanding why the rules are there or even an idea of what to replace those rules with. Finally gave up the goose and just joined the Anarchs wholesale, though some still reside in the Camarilla. Still generally a slave to their emotions and will likely never be happy in any system they are a part of, but hey, at least now they can play paintball with 9mm handguns and know they have freedom, while they fight and kill each other every night in gang warfare.

Caitiff

• Antediluvian - None
• Disciplines - Varies (pick 3 at gargen)
• Primary Sect membership - Anarchs
• Clan Weakness - No in clan disciplines (though all disciplines cost 6X xp costs) and being considered lesser by most other kindred.
• Clan Compuslions - None

Not a clan, more the absense of a clan. Through quirk of blood sometimes a newly embraced vampire just doesn't show any traits inherant to their parent clan. Generally considered a mark of shame, they usually get the short end of the stick and are afforded little actual respect. As a result, many of them join the anarchs, which while a shitshow at times they're often at least less likely to get completely disregarded. As is to be expected, no 2 caitiff are alike. Luckily for STs, with the end of clan unique disciplines and the birth of amalgrams, there are no more "Thaumaturgy, Visissitude and Chimestry" discipline spread kindred being made, albeit people making vampires emulating another clan to get the unique amalgramswithout the clan weakness is still a thing, its just more costly to do so (as it takes 2 discipline slots instead of 1). STs should still feel free to tell those powergamers to fuck off.

Gangrel

• Antediluvian - Ennoia
• Disciplines - Animalism, Fortitude, Protean
• Primary Sect membership - Anarch
• Clan Weakness - After frenzying, they begin to generally appear more bestial (sounding or looking more animalistic), these often fade in time, but can make them a walking masquerade breech in time
• Clan Compuslions - Acting like an animal (short tempter, compulsion to snap and fight people and generally being fucked in social situations at times)

The fluff from V20 still holds true, and they have still fucked off the Camarilla in preference to independance, albeit with any clan, exceptions exist. Still your group of nomadic and slightly aloof drifters, probably more so after they left. Funnily, since V5 changed protean, they're no longer the go to "fighters" now, as feral claws no longer do aggravated damage. The various bloodlines that spawned from the Gangrel are still around somewhere, just with bloodlines no longer really a thing, they don't get much of a look in.

Hacata

• Antediluvian - Cappadocius/Augustus Giovanni/Hecate (their Antediluvians gets diablerised a lot)
• Disciplines - Auspex (or dominate), Fortitude, Oblivion
• Primary Sect membership - Independant (kind of a sect of their own, its dumb, see below)
• Clan Weakness - Their Kiss hurts like a motherfucker, looks bad and heals slowly (can trade out for looking like 2 flavours of corpse, or needing to eat flesh as well as drink blood).
• Clan Compuslions - Being morbid and spookily fortelling someones death (telling that someone is sick or their recklessness will catch up with them someday).

After the death/disappearance of Angustus Giovanni, and a 500 year agreement with the camarilla coming to a close, the Giovanni reunited with the Cappadocians remnants (the clan they stole their clan status from), the Lamia (the Cappadocian's assistants) the Samedi (vampires that look like rotting corpses, and implied to be either a Giovanni experiment or a Cappadocian offshoot) and the Nagaraja (a clan of double fucked vampires who eat peoples flesh as well as blood, and happen to have skill in necromancy) to form a weird blend of sect and clan called the Hecata. Necromancy, while rolled into the discipline Oblivion, is still effectively there, albeit they can also access some lasombra powers in the mix. The subsequent ritual and agreement unified their flaw into the giovanni's painful bite, though some still have their old flaws in some manner. People have mixed opinions on both of these changes, and it is often considered to be the most sloppy change that V5 implemented. But hey, at least now you can have a necromantic vampire without having to run them as an incestuous cousin fucker or walking corpse.

Lasombra

• Antediluvian - Lasombra
• Disciplines - Dominate, Oblivion (obtenebration by any other name), Potence
• Primary Sect membership - Camarilla (yes, I know)
• Clan Weakness - Their reflections and video images are all distorted and fucked up (but wont hide their identity), also technology reacts weirdly with them
• Clan Compuslions - Being OCD perfectionists, if they fail a test they gotta reattempt it to get it right.

The shitshow in the east has caused many Lasombra to get out of the Sabbat and join up with the Camarilla, often delivering their elders as a peace offering. Undoubtably still trying some kind of power play (given the long spanning rivalry with the Ventrue) though the Camarilla is still happy to have them aboard in the wake of their show of good faith (stop laughing). Their old power of obtenebration has been rolled into one of the new disciplines V5 spawned, albeit with the most defining powers (arms of the abyss, hopping from shadow to shadow etc) made into amalgrams. Their bane has also been changed, and now instead of just not casting reflections/images on cameras (a weakness that too many used to their advantage to break into places), now technology is just screwly around them with microphones don't pick up their voice properly and images of them are distorted but still recognisable as them, not to mention security system seem to pick up their weirdness better. As a result, Lasombra often have a ghoul or two doing their phone calls).

Malkavian

• Disciplines - Auspex, Dominate (dementation is here), Obfuscate
• Primary Sect membership - Camarilla
• Clan Weakness - They all nuts in some form. Some can still function, while others are too far gone and institutionalized.
• Clan Compuslions - Going completely delusional (akin to a break from reality)

Malkavians are still the same crowd of absolute nutjobs, ranging the gamut of mental illness, still running the whole spectrum of typical embraces. Still having annoying players trying to create lolrandom chaotic stupid makavians because "LOL SO CRAZY!!1!". The only real change besides the addition of their compulsion (which isnt really anything special) is the dissolution of dementation as its own discipline, with their more unique powers being rolled into amalgrams for both Auspex (for extrasensory powers) and Dominate (for straight mindfuck abilities). Meanwhile lore wise they changed very little, and haven't done much new of significance or suffered any major setback.

External Links

• VTM News Page
• World of Darkness wiki