Rather than thread necro'ing: Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info I figured we should open up a new one, now that the full PDF has finally hit.
Anyone else have this, yet?
So... I got the PDF when it first released. It's got a nice, easy to look out layout... but for fuck's sake, the Bookmarks are a god damned mess and a half. They're seriously not tied to chapter headings properly, link to strange places on pages, and even their organization is like what you'd see on some scanned copy of an obscure RPG book you downloaded off of Limewire in 2003. It's garbage. It's really not very professional looking. I can't believe that a product went out like this. I will be spending time with my PDF editor to completely redo them and that's balls.
Now, with that major gripe out of the way...
We open to 30 pages of memos, clippings, correspondences, etc. to help prime us for what the book is and what it is about. This strikes me as very CoD. I would have expected a more short story form introduction. This isn't a critique of that choice, it just struck me as notable. The only thing I will say is that 30 pages of it seems excessive in the long run. That page count could have gone to other meat in the book itself.
I'm not going to try to do like a full review like Theno's doing with Changeling. I probably won't read every bit of the book all at once, but rather the interesting tidbits. We've already covered most of the new lore info, in regards to the Beckoning, the state of the Sabbat and Camarilla, etc. Nothing really seems to stand out as new in that, from what I've read so far.
Disciplines are nifty. Having multiple powers at some levels is a cool addition, but I was only skimming, and don't know yet if or how one has access to multiple powers of a level of a discipline. Or how one might purchase the Amalgam powers, for that matter.
Humanity seems... I'm torn on it. Overall, it seems good and it seems to do the trick nicely of conveying everything that they want it to be. I do have a hangup though, in the mechanics versus fluff aspect of it. Basically it works like this. You have a track of ten. Your humanity fills up from the left side. You get stains for violations of Humanity, that fill in from the right. At the end of the session, however many spaces on the track are left empty is how many dice you roll to check for degeneration. So, if you have 6 humanity... you take 2 Stains, at the end of the session, you roll 2 dice (for the two empty spots) to see if you lose a dot of humanity.
The problem is that you're rolling to feel remorse. This leads to... Well, let's say I have 9 humanity. I get a stain. I have NO unchecked humanity on the tracker. I have no dice to resist degeneration. Even if I have a chance die (I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think you always get the chance die), this leads to one inherent problem in the fluff of it. It means that Humanity 9 mother fuckers are god damned sociopaths who are almost completely incapable of actually feeling remorse. I understand exactly why the mechanics are the way they are. It should be easier to degenerate at Humanity 9 than it is at Humanity 3. But this also means that the Humanity 3 character has a lot more opportunity to feel remorse for his actions. In a way, this translates to lower Humanity = More empathy in a weird way.
Character creation is nice. Not having to divvy up points, but rather just assign them makes it easier and prevents min maxing. That said, I still hate that they have stuck with a multiplier XP system, instead of learning how CoD/2E does things. With as much else as they've learned (physical disciplines that have varying abilities and aren't stupidly OP. Blood potency, etc), I wish that they'd have learned to get away from multipliers before all of that.
Also, after seeing all the disciplines and stuff that causes Rouse checks, I almost think that the Hunger mechanics, while sexy af, might wind up being a bit too restrictive in play. You're going to be looking at a bare minimum of 2 Rouse checks to function like a normal person every night (one to wake and one to Blush so you can check your phone), so this will likely set you at a 2 or even 3 Hunger dice right at the get go at the start of each night. Also, heaven forbid you take agg damage. You get to wake up to all the Rouse checks, all the time, and it seems entirely too possible to wind up going into torpor over as little as 2 or 3 agg damage due to exceeding 5 hunger dice at awakening. I'm waiting to get a chance to play to make the final judgment on that, though.
Feeding is fucking rad. It's very abstract in the immediate, but the whole thing with getting emotional resonance from the blood while feeding, and how that fuels and enhances your disciplines... genius. I love it.
What I absolutely don't love? We're back to books dictating when and how vampires can have sex. At pretty much anything under Humanity 9, the book says that you can't even actually have sex with the Blush activated, but you can "fake it" with like a charisma check. This shit is completely unnecessary and inherently repressed and is going to be the first rule that just sits completely ignored. I don't understand why they might have thought that this... well, that it was worth even officially addressing. But whatevs.
Anyway, if anyone else has it, I'd like to hear your take, or maybe you can start a full on review.
