Vampire weapons help!

[Longbow520]

Ok so i'm playing my first game of Vampire the Masquerade 3rd edition in a little over a week. My character is a Tremere using a switchblade, a smallish 9mm pistol and a Sten submachine gun. Can someone recommend some stats for pre One World of Darkness weapons?

[Chen]

Thaum 3 lets you drop your gen. Principle Focus of Vitae Infusion lets you store up blood in objects you can then eat to gain the blood back (coins are pretty convenient for this). Those two together can almost let you not worry that much about physical stats since you can pump WAY faster than the vast majority of vampires (unless you're fighting high elders/Methuselahs or something in which case you're boned anyways). Also assuming you have sufficient downtime to make the coins of course. Dex and Wits allows faster initiative and Dex is almost always the better one to pump first since it controls dodging and hitting as well as indirectly damage since the more you hit with the higher the damage is.

[JeenLeen]

In short: good Dex, and choose the weapon with the lowest difficulty to-hit

My experience is that Dex is basically the most important stat for combat. If you have Potence or--more likely in your case--plan on boosting your Strength via blood (which, as noted above, should be easy with the right Thaumaturgy), then your base Strength isn't that important. If going melee, use blood to boost your Strength & your Dex. If going ranged, boost your Dex so you have extra successes to add to damage.
I've generally found that it mattered more to hit the foe than to have a lot of base damage dice. (This is especially the case if you have extra successes to add, a la Potence or Mage's Forces magick.) Thus, I'd think generally using your switchblade (difficulty 3 or 4, right?) would be better than your pistol (diff. 6?).

Constitution is also important for Soak, so that you are hit, you can hope to avoid taking too much damage, but you can augment this with armor (assuming you can buy some). Still, better to boost Dex so you don't get hit in the first place.

Also, in the metagame, most vampires despise and distrust Tremere. Some of it is history about how the Clan came about, and a lot of it is fear and mystery surrounding Tremere magic. But the end of it is that you are probably low on the social scale. Likely above Brujah, Nosferatu, and Malkavians, but not on par with the Ventrue and Toreador. So dumping Social stats probably won't hurt you too much, allowing you to focus on Physical and Mental.

However, if you can contact the GM, ask him about what type of game they plan on running and what the mixture of social scenes vs. combat will be. Also check on how easy it will be for you to learn Thamaturgy: it might be as simple as having the time to train, to as complicated as a quest to earn the favors to just start learning a new art.

[Longbow520]

I don't know exactly how this would factor in but i'm a 8th generation vampire. From what i can glean generation is really important to most clan members. i have 3/5 in charisma and appearance and 4/5 in manipulation. Dose generation make any differences except amount of blood and social stigma?

[Anonymouswizard]

Dose generation make any differences except amount of blood and social stigma?

In short no, but those reasons are important enough to make reasonable storytellers consider a limit to starting generation (either bumping it up a bit or putting a cap on it, as you see fit). In general up to three dots of the generation background is reasonable, as all it does is allow you to store an extra Blood Point per dot, which while useful isn't a massive deal in the long run. However 9th Generation and lower are able to spend more Blood Points per turn, which is a massive boost as it allows you to use multiple Discipline powers that require BP or pump physical Attributes faster, and if you can get to 7th gen or lower you can raise Traits to a maximum of your Generation Background (Generation+1 in earlier time periods, maxing out at 10 when you hit gen 3+). Also while generation will give you a boost when it comes to clans like the Ventrue and Tremere (and I think the Toreador? I'm away from my Vampire books*) clans like the Brujah and Gangrel are more likely to respect age and/or accomplishments over generation.

(As a side note one of the things I like about Requiem is the fact that BP6+ vampires are incredibly rare due to feeding requirements, although there's still a decent number of old vampires around. Therefore raw power has less to do with prestige than accomplishments, a BP5 Daeva may be respected, but so is the Elder who came out with Dominate 5 and a bunch of rare Devotions)

For weapon stats I recommend using the closest generic in the corebook. The 2e player's guide definitely has a lot more stats for guns, but at the end of the day they provide little benefit beyond because several weapons are just strictly better.

For character stats, if this is going to be a combat game then your exact build will differ from a social game, but for the combat section of the game my basic understanding is Dex>Str=Sta. Essentially Dex can play a roll in both offense (attack rolls, very important) and defence (dodging or parrying, takes an action per defence so be prepared), while Str only increases weapon damage (which Dex does half as efficiently) and Sta only increases soak (lovely unless the enemy is doing Aggravated Damage). So a high Dex build will generally win in a combat unless other factors are involved (such as Celerity, which breaks combat into little pieces).

On the other hand, if you plan to use Thaumaturgy for combat (and if you're going to be fighting lots of vampires this is your best option because you can use Lure of the Flames or whatever the path is called) Willpower is all important (it's important enough that you should probably bump it to 6+ anyway, but if going for a mage build I'd recommend getting it to 10 ASAP). It's what you roll for all magic rolls, and Willpower points can be spent for an automatic success. Just boost Dex and put points into the Dodge skill and you should be fine. High mental stats will probably allow you to use rituals better, but unlike Paths where you get a dot in your primary per Thaumaturgy dot the ability to know rituals is almost entirely GM-dependent.

* same for my Mage and Wraith books.

[Longbow520]

Ok my game is going to be more focused on taking over gangs of humans. Thanks!

[fishyfishyfishy]

Dominate is your friend then, as it creates "friends". Dominate 2 is generally worth it starting out. Who needs a gun when your friends have guns and will stand in front of you?

[Longbow520]

Its definetly worth it, that and the teleport ability!

[Anonymouswizard]

Dominate is your friend then, as it creates "friends". Dominate 2 is generally worth it starting out. Who needs a gun when your friends have guns and will stand in front of you?

As a general rule, psychic disciplines are much more useful than physical disciplines. Dominate is a very useful hammer, Presence is closer to a scalpel but can be useful, Auspex is REQUIRED if you want to reliably see through Obfuscate, Obfuscate is mainly invisibility with a few tricks, and so on. While specialty disciplines might be powerful, only Thaumaturgy is strictly more useful then spending the points on standard disciplines (note how the Ventrue are not only regard as the ultimate social manipulators but have both Dominate AND Presence, just pick up some contacts and allies and you're good to go*). While Obtenebretion has a variety of good tricks I'd actually rather take the Nossie's Animalism and Obfuscate or the Ventrue's Dominate and Presence, they make long term planning much easier.

As a Tremere you get three good disciplines in-clan, and if you want Out of Clans I recommend spending the seven freebies now and getting the first dot to avoid the Blood Bond (because if this is V20 you're susceptible to those, and I recommend all storytellers either use that weakness or their choice of the Salubri or Tzimisce ones). Auspex is probably the least useful, but can be great with the right ST, Dominate makes you lots of friends, and Thaumaturgy is awesome on a plate (discover if your storyteller is going for classic 'vampire with magic' Tremere or the 'vampire wizard' Tremere, it'll change how easy it is to learn lots of paths).

Oh, on backgrounds, as a Tremere make sur eyou have a Mentor or Ally who can teach you Thaumaturgy. It might limit the paths you can learn, and the ST might require you to do favours, but it cuts out some of the legwork. Resources can also justify some weirder items or weapons, and then Allies, Contacts, and Retainers are just useful. If you're not getting any OOC Disciplines I highly recommend just spending all your Freebies on Willpower and Backgrounds, those can be hard to raise in-game.

* Of course Herd, all Ventrue want Herd, but it's not useful for social manipulation.

[Mr Blobby]

I can't help but say... a Sten? If my memory serves me right, they haven't been made for about 70 years. And the wartime models weren't really built to last. The magazine sticking out the side also makes it hard to conceal under a coat while loaded too.

Unless you're in a historical chronicle or a nation with real strict firearms controls [such as the UK], I'd ditch it for something a bit more modern.