Builds for Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption

[Runestar]

Having a little free time to myself this week, I recently reinstalled V:tM Redemption and and replaying it. Currently just finished the 1st encounter with Lucretia, though I am getting a little bored of my character.

I am surprised at the effectiveness of Potence + Feral Claws early on. Mecurio went down surprisingly fast (always had a lot of problems with him in the past). Think it is because vampires don't really resist aggravated damage that much compared to normal weapons. I had Wilhelm solo the early part, so Christof and Serena didn't really play much of a role.

He currently has 70 manipulation, and maxed out potence, feral claws, fireball, theft of vitae, blood healing, call lightning and ice prison (though not in that order). Not quite as effective as I envisioned him though, society of leopold gave me a bit of problems because I wasn't willing to to use theft of vitae on the humans.

Thus, I am wondering what sort of builds you have tried out before and would like to share, as well as your experiences with them? Also, how did you spec Serena? I don't use the pause button at all because of its inconvenience, if you need to take that into consideration.

Thanks all and fire away. :smallsmile:

[Runestar]

So no one has played the game, or no one remembers how they played it?

I am wondering if there are any fun ways to round out the party. Wilhem makes an excellent tank, to the extent I can simply solo with him (which I find easier to manage than 3-4 characters running amok and spamming power/wasting blood). I had Christof pump manipulation so I could afford better gear early on, but this makes him seem like a guest star in his own game...:smallconfused:

[MickJay]

It's been a while since I've played... as far as I remember, the game went quite smoothly if you tried balancing the stats at first, and then went with high dex+str for effective melee (with Potence, Celerity and Fortitude). Celerity is really good, regardless of build. After getting high melee (and the blood-draining sword), I'd start investing into one of the mental skills necessary for one of the "magic" disciplines. Presence is quite good, but a rain of flames from the sky (or necromancy) are pretty sweet as well.

Can't really suggest anything for Serena, I've had problems with her as well. I've tried helping her develop necromancy and make her a competent ranged fighter.

One neat trick you can do is to equip blood pool boosting items (ideally all five of them) before "advancing" to the next rank. The blood pool increase will be larger, since the game increases it by a percentage, and the "temporary" points count toward that as well. Same works for diablerizing the Setite priestess , if you don't mind the humanity drop. If you've done everything "right" until that point, you can still get the best ending.

Guns are underwhelming (especially in the hands of the NPCs, who fire burst weapons in single shot mode...), I was sticking with melee. One or two of the NPCs had something to shoot, though (to avoid overcrowding in the front line). Ivory bow or flame crossbow later on worked pretty well.

[Lady Tialait]

I usally just power through, sucking the blood out of everything vampire to keep my blood pool filled. Max out Feeding, and for Serena, max out feeding and Auspex, you want to get that at least to spirit's touch, it's very convenient.

Other then that, I can't really remember the game much.

[Runestar]

Thanks all for your responses.

There aren't really that many magical items in the game, so I found lugging a few scrolls of spirit touch more than sufficed. Though 1 point there can help save that few inventory slots.

I dunno, I find the view and interface is not really conducive towards controlling multiple PCs (problems with scrolling), which is why I tend to just have 1 active and let him bulldoze through. Most of the time, a feral claw+potenced wilhem more than suffices. I would really like to use Serena more, but disciplines like plague cloud and summon spectre really drain her blood, not to mention how indiscriminate she is in its use.

How is hands of destruction? Worth the humanity hit? The only person who could learn it was Serena, but that was already towards the end of the act, so she didn't get to use it at all.