Combat is very all-or-nothing, and all the Disciplines in the world won’t help if you can’t win the combat roll.

If you want to have any sort of real skill at a particular task, you probably want to have at least 6 dice. It is difficult to succeed with small dice pools without spending Willpower, and even that option is off the table if you’re hungry. V5 requires a relative lot of successes.The article below is pretty long, so here are some high points to keep in mind: We also have a video version, if that’s more your style. And it’s a letdown to realize that the array of dots on your sheet won’t let you do that.īelow you’ll find an examination of some basic mechanical concepts of V5, and how they might affect a character, then a brief rundown of the various attributes, skills, disciplines, and backgrounds, with a focus on what is likely to come up in a chronicle and what else you need on your character sheet to make it work. In general, this sort of guidance is agnostic to character concept – there is no inherent conflict between character competence and character concept.Īnd, all other things being equal, I think most players want to be able to pull off awesome things at some point, even in a chronicle that is mostly drenched in angst. It’s another thing to create a character who isn’t combat-capable even though you wanted them to be.

It’s one thing to create a character who isn’t combat-capable because that’s your concept. I think that it’s relevant to be able to make sure that your character concept is embodied in the dots you actually put on the sheet. But I still think that this sort of examination can be helpful. And they will be absolutely correct in the general notion that story and concept come first. Let me preface this article by acknowledging that there are going to be some number of readers who find the entire concept of focusing on mechanics when creating a character to be offensive in some way.

Vampire the maskerade