Characters / Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines Player Character

Index | The Player Character | The Camarilla | The Anarchs | The Sabbat | Kuei-jin | Independents | Ghouls | Neutral and Friendly Humans | Human Antagonists | Others | Mod Characters

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The Player Character/The Fledgling

The male and female protagonists at character creation, for each clan. On the left, from top to bottom: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian and Nosferatu; and on the right: Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue.

Nobody tells me what to do... Actually, a lot do, but here's where I get even!

The main protagonist of the game. Originally a random resident of Los Angeles, the Fledgling was embraced by a vampire they were having a date with. Since this was done without permission from the Camarilla, their sire is executed by Prince LaCroix, and only the intervention of Anarch leader Nines Rodriguez saves them from a similar fate. They then have to adapt to their new vampire existence, all while serving as an errand boy to LaCroix, who keeps sending them on suicide missions. The Fledgling's name, gender and clan are all customizable by the player, though the last one can only be one of the seven Camarilla-affiliated ones (Ventrue, Brujah, Tremere, Gangrel, Nosferatu, Toreador, Malkavian).

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Tropes A to H

• Action Girl: If female. By the end of the game, she can cut her way through high-ranked members of almost all of Los Angeles' supernatural factions.
• Ambiguous Criminal History: Smiling Jack lampshades that they knew how to pick locks as a mortal. Also, their former acquaintance Samantha assumes that their disappearance (upon becoming a vampire) was drug-related. If you play any version of the game where you can select the character's history you can even directly choose several variants of a criminal option for various bonuses and flaws.^note  They are: Con Artist, Degenerate Gambler, Eco-Terrorist Hacker, Hard-Ass Chica, Highway Drifter, Cleaner, Union Boss, War Profiteer, Juvenile Hall Disciplinarian. Even a Decadent Enchantress.
  Jack: Not exactly an angel in life, were ya?
  PC: [possible response] I had my moments.
• Animorphism: A Gangrel PC who's fully trained in the Protean discipline can transform into a clawed, werebat-like War Form.^note In the tabletop game pre-V5, this is an even higher-level ability named ••••• •• Shape of Beast's Wrath, that can be used only by Sixth Generation Elders, or those of even lower generation.
• Anti-Hero: Can definitely be played this way. Especially if played as a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who never kills innocents but brutally dispatches their enemies.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A non-Nosferatu, non-Malkavian character can pull one of these when talking to Venus for the first time. When she asks them to "confess", they have the option of admitting they're a vampire, that they have to drink blood to survive or... admit that they voted Republican once. Venus reacts appropriately.
• Asian and Nerdy: The female Tremere PC appears to be Asian-American and the Tremere clan are associated with scholars and occultists.
• Ax-Crazy: An option if you play a Malkavian or character with low Humanity; the latter can actually make non-Ax-Crazy dialogue options unavailable. Bonus points if they literally use the fire axe in fights.
• Badass Bookworm: If willing to put the Experience Points into it, to the extent that your knowledge can impress Beckett, a Badass Bookworm with centuries of seniority.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Depending on the clan. Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue have more upper-class clothing than the other four clans. Toreador and Tremere go for more casual suits, while Ventrue are white-collar personified.
• Badass Longcoat: The male Malkavian's white pimp coat. Female Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue have some sort of elegant coat. The male Ventrue's heaviest armor is a suit with a Waistcoat of Style and a leather ankle-length trench coat.
• Badasses Wear Bandanas: As a Brujah, you start the game with a bandana and have access to some potent combat Disciplines.
• Bad Powers, Good People: All PCs count as this by virtue of being vampires if you chose to play them as good guys, but the Tremere especially stand out, since their signature ability, Thaumaturgy, involves disturbing Blood Magic like ripping people's blood out or making it explode.
• BFS: An option via Console Commands, the player character can wield the Buster Sword-esque Sheriff's sword. With the +Patch you can get it legitimately during the final battle against the Sheriff.
• The Beautiful Elite: True to their clans, the Ventrue and Toreador PCs have this vibe, and thus are the only clans which Gary will rant at about wanting to destroy their beautiful faces.
• Blessed with Suck: They're stuck in a perpetual bloodthirsty nocturnal existence at the bottom of the undead totem pole with countless enemies; and have to sever all ties with their old life for the sake of the Masquerade. On the other hand, see Cursed with Awesome.
• Body Horror: A Nosferatu fledgling, natch. Notably, the female Nosferatu seems to have turned out even worse than the male.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: As a Malkavian, you're a babbling lunatic in weird clothes, yet disconcertingly competent. If you can decipher the babble, you can even pick out major plot points well in advance. A big one is that the Cab Driver is possibly Biblical Caine himself, so your character is fearful.
• Bullying a Dragon: A dialogue option makes the fledgling threaten to kill Therese, even when Therese is from sixth generation and at least several decades older, while the fledgling at that point in the game is still very green.
• But Not Too Bi: Regardless of the gender of the PC, the majority of seduction options (and all major romance-able characters) are female in the base game.
• But Thou Must!: Although some cases are Justified:
  • The game does give you the option to turn down LaCroix's orders and even flat-out insult him in the process, but should you do that, he will just use Dominate to force you into executing them anyway.
  • Ditto for Therese Voerman, who shrugs off your attempt at Dominate if you're playing Ventrue or Tremere, forcing you to agree to her side-quest.
  • You can declare for the Anarchs as soon as you meet them after Santa Monica. Your first instructions are to pretend you haven't, since a spy the Prince thinks is his personal pawn is invaluable.
  • When the Mandarin asks you to enter the room in what is obviously a trap, you actually get multiple dialogue options to refuse, but he merely analyzes your distrust as part of his studies and makes it abundantly clear that you don't have a choice.
  • Some builds force the player into actions they have no agency in. For instance, a Toreador will always react to Gary Golden by calling him the ugliest thing they've ever seen, even if the Toreador never showed that kind of prejudice towards the other Nosferatu characters.
  • The Malkavian may realize that they are being manipulated by Knox, but they still have to do the mission if they want to get the extra experience.
• Butt-Monkey: The hero is treated like this by just about every other vampire, except perhaps Strauss and Nines. The Malkavian in particular gets more and more upset about this as the game progresses and various highly-ranked vampires send them off to do their bidding before they give the hero what they need.
• Casanova Wannabe: If you try to choose a seduction dialogue without having enough points in that skill you will end up looking like this, in fact you may end up looking like this even if you have enough seduction points, but you choose the wrong dialogue options anyway.
• Celibate Hero: Possible depending how you play, as the only actual sexual encounters you have are entirely optional. Generally, the PC doesn't have sex, but will likely end up seducing at least a few of the available blood dolls in the game. It will, of course, be for blood rather than sex, with the seductee left with the impression that something sexy took place, which, in a way, it did.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: What happens if you play a Malkavian; all your dialogues options are modified to speak entirely in apparently nonsensical metaphors.
  • All Malkavians are one to some extent or another, but Jeanette will mention that the PC Malk has it particularly bad.
• Chick Magnet: With the right choices and/or a high enough seduction stat, the Fledgling can get the attention of Jeanette, Velvet Velour, Romero, Officer Chunk, Heather (though in her case this is due to her link as a ghoul), Nadia Milliner and multiple unnamed NPCs. The Clan Quest Mod even gives the opportunity to date a Kuei-Jin lady.
• Combat Pragmatist: Can be played as one, especially with a clan which has Obfuscate. Nosferatu can engage in lots of sneak attacks and hit-and-run tactics with heavy melee weapons. Malkavians can cast Dementation while still invisible, causing enemies to kill each other, or cause them to drop dead on the spot.
• Combat Stilettos: Female Toreador and Ventrue wear these, and don't break a sweat swinging swords and axes in heels. The female Tremere actually has the tallest heels of any character on her third outfit, although to be fair they are block heels rather than full-on stilettos.
• Cute Bruiser: The female Brujah is quite pretty, but with her Super-Strength and Super-Speed, she more than qualifies. Generally speaking, the female PCs all count, as they're all shockingly powerful for fledglings and pretty cute—save for, of course, the female Nosferatu, who was arguably hit with the ugly stick harder than her male counterpart.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Most of the Malkavian's silliness is actually them subconsciously knowing exactly what's going on and being unable to communicate it. Or alternatively having no idea what's going on and still rattling off truths.
• Cultured Badass: The Toreador and Ventrue characters both present this image, and any character can be played this way with the right investment of experience points.
• The Dandy: The male Toreador, especially with some of his more eccentric fashion choices.
• Dark and Troubled Past: No matter how you build your character, they will know something about lockpicking (Jack even lampshades this in the tutorial after the lockpicking segment, "Not exactly an angel in life, were ya?" and you don't really have an option to deny it). It's also probably a bad sign that when Sam finds you and wonders where you've been she automatically assumes it has something to do with drugs.
• Deadpan Snarker: The player gets a lot of options to snark in conversation. This goes double for the Nosferatu PC, whose coping mechanism for dealing with their hideous appearance seems to reside mostly in self-deprecating jokes any time a mortal reacts with disgust upon seeing them.
• Death by Cameo:
  • Your sire will always use the model of your chosen clan's opposite-gender PC in the base game.
  • The PC models from other clans apprehend the player after they are embraced and a few attend to the execution of your sire. You have the option to kill them when the Blood Hunt is called on you and L.A.'s Kindred begin hunting you down.
• Death by Origin Story: Your sire gets one line of dialogue before the Sheriff decapitates them. And in a technical sense, you, since your character appears once and has one spoken "line" (a scream) before being turned into an undead vampire as everyone reinforces in the story.
  • The player character is no longer living and can't return to a semblance of the life they had before. This is only highlighted by the Samantha encounter, where letting her know the fledgling still in town and alive results in a masquerade violation.
• Defector from Decadence: You start out press-ganged into the Ancient Conspiracy of the Camarilla and LaCroix eventually shows you the rewards of toeing the party line, especially if you're not Tremere or Nosferatu.^note If you're on good terms with him and not from those clans, he gives you a rather nice condo. The Tremere and Nosferatu PC's will get special accommodations from Maximilian and Gary respectively instead. You can just as easily tell him where to shove his petty favors.
• The Dog Bites Back: Unless you choose to side with either of them, both LaCroix and Ming Xiao will be on the receiving end of this after having treated you as a disposable pawn for the entire game.
  Malkavian PC: Give you a massive chest wound? My pleasure!
• Doom Magnet: Where you go, people die, even if that wasn't what you intended. An example of this you might miss is the Skyline Apartments building, where most PCs establish their second haven. If you bother to complete all the relevant side quests, with the exception of the security guard (whom you can kill) and one of your neighbors (who is The Ghost) you are involved in the untimely demise of every single one of them, leaving you the sole occupant of the entire building.
  • Mercurio directly notes that Santa Monica was quiet before the player showed up.
• The Dragon: The PC has the option of becoming this to Maximilian Strauss, LaCroix (though that doesn't turn out so well) or potentially Nines if you choose to throw in your lot with him and his cause. Andrei as well in the patch.
• Dreadlock Warrior: The male Gangrel protagonist pairs dreadlocks with some potent combat Disciplines.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The attitude of most of the vampires you meet ranges from polite condescension to outright insults, even as your legend grows. Justified: your age puts you at the bottom of the social ladder, you serve the blatantly unpopular LaCroix, and being the unsanctioned offspring of an executed sire functionally excludes you from polite society.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Half of the PC models fit this trope. And Undeathly Pallor affects all of them, even the male Brujah, who's black-turned-ashy-grey.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Your ID on your personal computer is "suckhead", likely referring to your status as a fledgling.
• Evil Is Easy: Played with, depending of the quest, this can be played straight, averted or even inverted.
  • There are some cases where killing a guard is much easier than using stealth to prevent him from seeing you, but that can affect the masquerade that will attract the attention of vampire hunters.
  • This trope is usually inverted, with the skills of persuasion, seduction and others that are similar, being that using them can serve to resolve a situation without the need to fight.
  • In the Venus missions, you have the final option to kill Boris (a Russian mobster) or Venus (an innocent woman). If you decide to kill Boris, you will have to fight with a large number of bodyguards, instead Venus is a weak person without any type of escort who does not even bother to defend herself.
  • In the optional mission to protect Ash, there are two options, the bad one is using a double as a sacrifice or the good one is escorting him through the sewers. Convincing the doppelganger is relatively easy, while escorting Ash means you'll have to fight multiple vampire hunters.
• Expy: The Female Tremere PC bears a strong physical resemblance to Aisling Sturbridge, the signature Tremere with her long dark hair, slim physique, posh outfits and glasses.
• Eye Scream: One of the histories that could be chosen is "Glass Eye". To summarize, the player character lost an eyeball and now wears a glass eye, resulting in a decreased cap for the Perception attribute and a free point in the Intimidate skill thanks to the slight creep factor.
• Fall Guy: LaCroix ends up pinning his own scheming with the Kuei-jin on you, in an attempt to cover up his involvement in the framing and attempted assassination against Nines.
• Fate Worse than Death: If you betray everyone by siding with Ming Xiao, she rewards you by sparing your life when she runs the rest of the Kindred out of the city... by chaining you to the Sarcophagus and dumping it into the ocean. She doesn't kill you, but you'll sure wish she had.
• Fiery Redhead: Possible, if you play as a Toreador and choose the snappier dialogue options.
• Femme Fatale: Certainly possible for female PCs if you use seduction, and play as a more malicious character.
• Femme Fatalons: The female PCs (Toreador and Ventrue especially, who have unique nail colors instead of the standard black) have long, manicured nails that can be seen during lockpicking. It can be a rare example of this on a mostly good-aligned character, depending on how you played.
• Fragile Speedster: Toreador can be played this way, since they have Celerity and not much in the way of strength-boosting or direct defensive power. There's even a history that enforces this approach.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: While many of the protagonists have lots of piercings and dress, at best, like very fashionable grunge-rock fans or goths, and at worst, in straight-up Rainbow Pimp Gear, it is quite possible to roleplay them however you like.
• Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire: While the PC is frequently put into very unsavory situations, it's quite possible to come off as a decent, reasonable person with a troublesome condition in a harsh, unreasonable world.
• Funny Schizophrenia: The Malkavian PC is one, arguing with stop signs and being a Deadpan Snarker. The darker aspects of the condition are explored with the Voermans and the Malkavian Primogen... which is how a Malkavian PC could end up in a hundred years or so.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Fledgling's abilities and skills progression do not reflect that of the tabletop game, thanks to simplified character creation, accelerated Experience Points rewards, and being at a lower Generation than is standard for the tabletop game. Lampshaded by several characters remarking how unexpectedly resourceful and potent the Fledgling appears to be.
• Gay Option: A female PC can have some kind of sexual encounter with Jeanette Voerman, while the patch allows a male PC to do the same with Romero.
• Glass Cannon: A melee-focused Nosferatu becomes this thanks to their disciplines. They have Potence and the last level of Obfuscate will triple that damage, destroying most normal enemies in one blow. But despite that, they lack a defensive discipline besides invisibility, making it harder to tank or dodge damage compared to other clans.
• Good Is Not Nice: It is perfectly possible to have a score of 10 in humanity, but still be kinda generally rude to people. Specifically, there's a quest in which you have to intimidate a human in order to save his life.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: You can train up your hand-to-hand combat. Some clans can augment this with Super-Speed, Super-Strength, or Absurdly Sharp Claws.
• The Grotesque: Nosferatu protagonists, to the point where ordinary humans flee at your sight. Though plot-important ones will just make shocked (or sometimes oddly appreciative) comments upon meeting you, speculating that you're into extreme body modifications, a burn victim, etc...
• Guile Hero: If the player character is good at conversational skills, a lot of quests can be completed just by wits alone. Zigzagged when the last two or three missions of the game are straight combat with limited potential for even stealth in the dungeon crawl and none at all during the boss fights.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Downplayed, but that's the implication of the "appearance" stat that plays heavily into your overall seduction stat. Having a high seduction stat will actually cause Nadia to stammer upon meeting you.
• Heroic Seductress: Any PC with a high enough Seduction score can get their way through situations using their charms, especially if you are playing a Toreador. Female PCs can also complete a quest by sleeping with Romero. Depending on their morality, they might be closer to The Vamp.
• He Knows Too Much: LaCroix will decide you are this after your encounter with Ming Xiao outside of Hallowbrook Hotel, as you know about his very, very treasonous alliance with the Kuei-jin.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: If you play with the mods The Final Nights or Camarilla Edition, there will be a squad of hunters on the Skyline Apartments third floor. The player character's haven is just one level above.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Can prove to be one if you side with Ming Xiao or LaCroix, the former who betrays you immediately the minute you give her what she wants and the latter who probably will the very moment you can no longer challenge him. Backing either requires you to essentially overlook the several attempts both characters have already made on your life by that point. You can even tell the cabbie that LaCroix has the city's best interests at heart.
• Horrifying Hero: Even if you play as the nicest, most kind-hearted vampire ever, the fact remains you are a blood-drinking undead abomination. Especially true for the Nosferatu, Gangrel and Tremere PCs.

Tropes I to Z

• Ignored Enamoured Underling:
  • Depending on your dialogue choices, you can can play it like you're this for LaCroix, especially if you follow him until the end. Don't be fooled by being the player character, however, it will work out for you just as well as it usually does for underlings of the Big Bad.
    PC: Watch what you say about my Prince.
  • It can seem like the Tremere PC has a bit of a crush on Strauss, depending on your choices in dialogue. If he notices, he doesn't comment on it, though he will treat you far better than LaCroix.
• Inopportune Impersonation Failure: The game gives the player the occasional chance to suffer from this, most commonly involving persuasion options. For example, during the mission to the Elizabeth Dane, one of the police officers aboard mistakes you for a journalist he'd been paid to allow access to the crime scene. It's possible to play along with this impression, but if you don't have enough dots in persuasion or intimidate to fool him at least twice, your lie will be so unconvincing that he'll immediately sound the alarm.
• Instant Expert: Shows a gradual increase in their skills and Discipline abilities fitting of a video game Player Character, but way too fast for a newly-embraced Fledgling, due to Gameplay and Story Segregation. Wild Mass Guessing includes Gehenna shenanigans or Caine artificially lowering your generation.
• In the Hood: The Gangrel's heaviest armor has one, and it's always up.
• In-Series Nickname: There are some variants, such as "Neonate", and some characters have specific nicknames for you ("Boss" from Gary, "Cammy" from Damsel, "Demon" from Yukie, "Kid" from Nines and Jack, "Cupcake" from Bertram if you are female), but you usually are just referred to as "the Fledgling". Also, if you seduced Chunk in your first encounter, he'll refer to a female PC with a colorful variety of food-related pet names in all subsequent interactions.
• I Know Your True Name: A Malkavian PC will call Velvet by her real name. She's less than pleased.
• I Was Quite the Looker: What little you can see of the Nosferatu PC before their Embrace, male or female, suggests that they were quite attractive in life. Seeking out an attractive and/or vain individual is pretty standard behavior for Nosferatu looking to sire.
• Interface Spoiler: A Malkavian and Rosa — a thin-blood Malkavian — interacting will spell out the entire game. For example, when Rosa frets about the sarcophagus, the Malk crows about it lighting up the night sky, which is what happens at the end of the game — it explodes because it's packed full of C4.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: How much of either part comes out depends on your choices. At one point you need an Intimidation score of 6 to be able to save a human's life without harming the Masquerade. A high Persuasion will only help you send him to his death and cost you Humanity.
• Jiggle Physics: A few of the female PCs have noticeable sway in the chest department, though surprisingly not the clans that'd be expected. Besides the female Malkavian's first outfit, it's actually the Gangrel and the Tremere females who have the most outfits with breast physics.
• The Juggernaut: Either of the clans with Fortitude who max it out can shrug off bullets, blades, and even bombs without much trouble.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: A standard of RPGs everywhere. Also, a Justified Trope in-universe, as vampires are not intrinsically bound by human moral norms aside from Thou Shalt Not Kill (innocents, anyway), so whatever you have to do to survive is considered fair play.
• Lightning Bruiser: Super-Speed lets Toreador and Brujah pull this off; Brujah also get Super-Strength for extra Bruiser with their Lightning.
  • A Gangrel with maxed-out stats can learn Celerity from Beckett. While it's limited to only the first three levels, it's still enough to make them this.
• Living Legend: The "Lone Wolf" ending. According to the cabbie who may be Caine himself, that path is the path of the legendary hero who walks the land alone.
• Looks Like Orlok: The Nosferatu PC, obviously.
• Made of Iron: The PC has this quality, apparently - they just will not die no matter how many suicide missions of decreasing subtlety they're sent on. Every vampire in the city starts to get really scared of you by the end.
• The Mad Hatter: Malkavians are well aware of how insane they are.
• Mad Oracle: Most of the Malkavian PC's bizarre non-sequiturs and quirks of language seem to be them knowing more than they should through supernatural means, often to the point of Leaning on the Fourth Wall. Strauss will warn you to hide that fact, unless you want to be a victim of He Knows Too Much. Jack at one point outright tells you he would have already killed you for that reason if he thought you understood what you were saying.
• Magikarp Power: Especially Tremere, who are quite weak at first with a limit to their physical stats, but when you build up their Disciplines (Thaumaturgy in particular), they're a force to be reckoned with.
• Mighty Glacier: A Gangrel PC with maxed out Fortitude and Protean becomes a virtually indestructible monster that can kill almost anyone in two-or-three hits. But they walk slower than most humans, and lack a proper ranged attack without points in Animalism, since the War Form can't use guns.
  • Learning Celerity from Beckett can upgrade the Gangrel to full Lightning Bruiser status, though.
• Mistaken for Junkie: Some NPCs will sometimes view the speech of a Malkavian PC as if it was some stoner rambling.
• Mistaken for Subculture: A Nosferatu fledgling's monstrous appearance makes them a walking Masquerade violation, but their Friend in the Black Market Trip casually compliments them for what he believes to be some awesome body modifications. Similarly, Venus Dare assumes they're looking for a mosh pit.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Your character will almost certainly have one towards LaCroix, as 4 of the 5 available endings will have you engage in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against him after working as his agent for the majority of the game. Considering how much he used you and tried to kill you, he absolutely deserves it.
• The Mole: You can be this for the Anarchs by acting as a Camarilla spy and periodically reporting all of LaCroix's dirty laundry to Jack and Damsel. You can also do the same against Strauss by ratting him out to Isaac about the Gargoyle, however it's more rewarding to be his Secret-Keeper and get twice the reward for dealing with it.
• Moment of Lucidity: The Malkavian PC has their moments of this, more of them by the end of the game. However there are moments where the PC gets so irritated and angry that they drop the madness, as seen with Gary Golden.
• Most Common Superpower: The female Brujah and Gangrel are styled to be the most combat-focused Action Girls of the game, and they also have the largest busts of any PCs, with the Gangrel also having some obvious Jiggle Physics.
• Mr. Fanservice: The male Malkavian is Walking Shirtless Scene and the male Toreador an outright Pretty Boy.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • The female Malkavian starts with a skirt with exposed underwear, and can upgrade her armor to a sexy cop outfit. Her last armor is a black leather bodysuit.
  • The female Tremere is there for those who believe Nerds Are Sexy, with her second outfit featuring some Painted-On Pants and her third being a rich red coat that on close inspection has nothing underneath.
  • Downplayed with the Female Toreador. Although her starting clothes are of the sexy type, the ones that are purchased in the following parts of the game cover much more.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: You can choose a specific clan and then have your PC act in a completely opposite way to how their clan usually does; for example, play as a Tremere and then be a Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire, join the Anarchs with a Ventrue or the Camarilla with a Brujah, and so on. It is, however, impossible to play a Malkavian as non-insane due to the changed dialogue options. At least not in the regular sense...
• Never Bareheaded: The female Brujah is guilty of this one.
• Nice Guy: A perfectly viable roleplaying choice for a high-humanity character. Forgetting for a moment you're a vampire, it's quite possible to be nicer than a lot of the humans you meet. In the tabletop game, the average human has a humanity stat of seven, whereas the player character is quite capable of having a humanity of ten. Your dialogue options become correspondingly more empathetic and understanding.
• The Nicknamer: The Malkavian PC, who only calls people by their real names when it would mess with them even more. They'll often give characters precise nicknames before learning their names. For example, they will call Alexander Knox "golden boy" before he reveals his identity, or Therese and Jeanette Voerman the Light and Dark Faces of Janus. The Anarchs are disconcerted by it the most; Skelter gets pretty freaked out that a Malk PC calls him "Helter Skelter" before he introduces himself, while Damsel demands to know who among the Camarilla was talking smack about her when called "the Damsel who breathes fire", likewise without her introducing herself beforehand.
• Nightmare Face: Nosferatu players are ugly enough to cause this reaction with some characters. Such as when Chunk nearly upchucks his lunch on first seeing them and Simon Milligan (who's already scared out of his mind) losing the ability to do anything more than scream. Most notably, a Nosferatu can literally cause the woman behind the counter at the diner to have a heart attack.
• Nightmare Fetishist: A low-humanity PC will be more drawn to the darker perversions. For instance, when speaking to the last surviving member of the Death Mask Productions film crew, they'll refer to their movies as "pretty cool stuff".
• Ninja: One of the Malkavian background options. The only drawback is that it prevents you from using firearms. And ducks. Fortunately, the game hasn't got any ducks.
• Noble Demon: A roleplaying choice, particularly if the player does anything to uphold the Masquerade. The Hunter of Monsters Yukie might even acknowledge that you're a good "Demon" and encourage you to stay on the moral high ground.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: At the status level at least. As a vampire, the protagonist is considered a rookie by clan standards, but is still a clan vampire, so most non-clan vampires and Ghouls will treat the protagonist as superior.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: The male Malkavian PC wears his pimp coat without a shirt.
• Odd Friendship: You are able to cultivate quite a few of these, gaining the confidence of several high-ranking vampires and Hunter of Monsters Yukie.
  • Some friendships are only odd depending on your choice of clan; befriending Toreador-hating Gary as one, befriending beauty-loving VV as a Nosferatu, befriending any Anarch as a Ventrue, etc.
• One-Man Army: Any clan can become this as the game goes on with the right upgrades, and it's almost required to progress through the final levels.
• Only Sane Man: Amusingly, even if you play a Malkavian, you can be this. A lot of your dialogue options highlight what a messed up place the Kindred world is, and the Malkavian's special awareness only makes it more obvious (to you, at least; nobody else has any idea what the hell you're babbling about).
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Their fight against Ming-Xiao is a satisfying case of this, since they're not just killing her. Background materials say that if a Kuei-jin dies without fulfilling their Dharma, they get sent back to Hell. The boss fight against her is essentially sticking "Return to Sender" on her.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The female Non-Action Guy clan PCs (Toreador, Ventrue, and Tremere) are noticeably shorter and slighter in build than most NPCs, even including other women. All wear some really serious heels to compensate. Regardless of her size, by the endgame she'll have become quite the fearsome Action Girl, having cut and/or shot her way through countless enemies of the live and undead variety alike. Also counts for the more action-oriented clans to a lesser degree, as they'll still be quite a bit shorter than most male NPCs, though on par with most female NPCs.
• Player Headquarters: Like most Kindred, your character is provided with a haven where to hang out between missions. The initial one is provided to you by LaCroix, and is a crappy bachelor apartment in Santa Monica with only the bare necessities, but being sufficiently polite to him will eventually result in the Prince getting you a much more comfortable one in Skyline. Two special ones can be acquired for a Tremere and Nosferatu Fledgling, respectively from Strauss and Gary Golden.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: You can make fun of other people based on their clans, looks, conditions, and more. For example, you can make a Hentai joke to the very animesque Yukie.
• Precision F-Strike: A couple of dialogue options for the final conversation with LaCroix in the Camarilla, Anarch, and No Allegiance endings.
• Primal Stance: The Gangrel PC, during their idle animation, and when using Protean.
• Promoted to Scapegoat: A fledgling as young as the PC being a solo agent for the Prince is pretty much unheard of; it usually takes fledglings a couple decades before they're allowed to operate without being under the watchful eye of their sire and/or an older vampire who can take that role. However, given that the Prince views you as a living affront to his authority, he's given you the position with the specific hope that you'll die on his missions—ridding him of the reminder that he doesn't control the city as much as he should without provoking Nines and the Anarchs.
• Punch-Clock Villain: You're forced under penalty of death (and Domination if you get too uppity) to serve LaCroix's whims, which puts you at odds with the humans you used to live among and leaves the Anarchs constantly suspicious of you.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Every clan's armor includes more practical outfits for combat, except the Malks. The male Malkavian's armor starts at shirtless, moves through hazmat suits, and ends in a white fur coat and a Cat in the Hat hat, which also has no shirt. The female Malkavian armor is straight-up fetish gear. All of the Nosferatu outfits are bondage gear; higher levels just add more straps and eventually a gimp mask.
• Rage Within the Machine: Regardless of if you decide to side with the Anarchs, you'll continue working full time for LaCroix and the Camarilla until the final two missions.
• Randomly Gifted: As far as we know, the protagonist is just a standard eighth-generation vampire, but in just a few nights they achieve a huge power boost to the point of being able to fight seventh-generation vampires with decades of experience.
• Really Gets Around: With a few points in Seduction, they can dole out the Kiss of the Vampire to any number of enthusiastic partners.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Happens in one of the endings. If you betray the Kindred and side with the Kuei-Jin, Ming Xiao will reward you by chaining you to the Ankaran Sarcophagus and throwing it into the ocean.
• Refuge in Audacity: Nosferatu and Malkavian take solace in this with the former's BDSM outfits and the latter's rather colorful cloth options.
• Rich Bitch: The female Ventrue, who will even be called this directly by the homeless man outside of the Santa Monica apartment if she refuses to give him money.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: As noted above, the Ventrue player can easily act like a stereotypical stuck-up snob. But this trope comes in rather hilariously at the end. After riding with the Cabbie for hours, listening to his cryptic comments about Kindred society and how disappointed he's been with them, it's fairly obvious the Cabbie is actually Caine, father of all Kindred. Then again, the Ventrue can completely miss the message on the way out right before the final level.
  Ventrue Fledgling: Here's ten bucks. Get yourself a new air freshener. Bye.
  • It's worth noting that this line could just as easily be from a Deadpan Snarker Ventrue, invokedbut it is left ambiguous either way.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Almost certainly what the final battle against LaCroix will be by the time you get to it.
  • Similarly, the latter half of the mission in the Hallowbrook Hotel, assuming you witnessed the Sabbat killing Heather.
• Sanity Slippage: A PC who gradually loses his humanity and doesn't get it back will get more and more aggressive and Axe-Crazy.
• Scary Black Man: The male Brujah PC.
• Self-Deprecation: If the player is a Nosferatu, they'll get a lot of opportunities to wisecrack at their hideous new form.
• Servile Snarker: Arguably, a majority of the dialogue options you have with LaCroix make you out to be this. Without fail, you'll always have the option to say something snarky to your employer during debriefings.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Most of the vampire NPCs in the game will quickly recognize the Malkavian player's clan by their apparent inability to speak in anything but convoluted, nigh-unintelligible prose.
• Skilled, but Naive: While incredibly competent, being so new to the world of vampire politics leads the PC to becoming the pawn in the hands of many of their elders.
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: LaCroix and Ming Xiao separately decide to do this to you. LaCroix does it after you confront him about his alliance with the Kuei-jin, and Ming Xiao does it if you side with her in the end, as she recognizes your potential threat as a powerful Kindred.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty:
  • Nosferatu are considered horrendous and constantly have to hide in the sewers.
  • A character with high levels of seduction is considered a "World Class Beauty", especially if they are female. If their seduction is at least 7, the vampire can hire prostitutes without having to pay them.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: As you lose Humanity, some of the dialogue options that would allow you to raise it again become unavailable.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: The female Tremere wears glasses, and belongs to the clan most characterized by their intelligence.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: You have the ability to do so with several characters, as most of them won't stand for being snarked at without sending it right back. Gary, Bertram, Beckett and Venus are the biggest stand-outs, but most central characters will have an exchange or two with the player that could qualify. Even LaCroix and the player can have some moments, provided the PC chooses to be a Servile Snarker.
• Sociopathic Hero: Most of the dialogues have this as an option, but playing it straight is up to the player. Unless you let your Humanity drop too much, in which case you'll have difficulties coming off as anything but this trope.
• Spanner in the Works: You choose which factions to back and/or destabilize... of course, to survive in the World of Darkness, it's in your best interests to make every faction think you are working for them, which makes you ideally placed to destroy other people's gambits.
• Stealth Expert: An option for several missions, especially for clans with Obfuscate.
• Stone Wall: The Ventrue possess Fortitude, which reduces the damage they take, and Presence, which reduces nearby enemies' offensive stats and attack rate.
• Sunglasses at Night: The male Malkavian and female Tremere each wear a pair of shades that they never take off.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: For LaCroix, as you continue to survive his Uriah Gambits against all odds while pulling off ever-more amazing feats.
• The Tease: You have ample opportunity to flirt with many NPCs, but usually it's in order to get what you want from them, or mutual flirting like with Velvet and Jeanette. This trope mostly only comes into play with Chunk (if you seduced him in your original encounter, then played along with his crush for every subsequent one) and Romero (if you lightly flirted with him but didn't ever actually end up sleeping with him). Romero will directly call you on it, referring to a female PC as "Miss Cold and Hot".
• Third-Person Seductress: Most of the (non-Nosferatu) female clans are this in some way. Most obviously is the female Malkavian, who starts the game in a Stripperiffic cheerleader outfit and upgrades it into fetish gear. Other notable examples are the female Ventrue's starting dress with a slit that goes all the way up, the Brujah's tank top and biker gear look, and the female Tremere for her glasses and her second outfit's Painted-On Pants.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: The Malkavian protagonist definitely doesn't live in quite the same reality as everyone else. They will get into a shouting match with roadsigns, give everyone they encounter weird-sounding nicknames and hear the news reports on TV use the phrase "You were like 'Pow! Pow' and they were like "Oh, you wascally wabbit!" when reporting on a shoot-out you were involved with. That said, the Malkavian also has strange insights, into people, places and events, past, present and future, but always wrap it in so much metaphor, analogy and outright rambling it's usually impossible to understand before what they are referring to until you see it happen.
• Troll: Available as an occasional option, sometimes depending on clan. One notable example is said by the Toreador PC to former-model turned Nosferatu, Imalia.
  Toreador PC: Who's Tawni Sessions?
  Imalia: Tawni Sessions is a wannabe face-girl with no talent and scabby little knees. Did you know she got Model of the Year? Before I got here, she would have had a hard time making the catalogue for 'Jacque Penney'.
  Toreador PC: OH! That Tawni Sessions. She's so hot right now...
  • Another example comes when the player first meets Simon Milligan in the Abandoned Hospital. When he starts raving about something chasing him, a non-Nosferatu can reply:
  "Look out, it's right behind you!"
  • A Nosferatu also gets a few chances, especially when talking to Blood Dolls in nightclubs.
  Nosferatu PC: "But I have a heart! Wanna see it?"
• Underestimating Badassery: A very frequent mistake of the PC's human enemies, who more often than not mistake them as some idiot in need of a lesson only to find out far too late that they're dealing with a superhuman monster. Inevitable Curb-Stomp Battle ensues.
• Unwitting Pawn: Those creepy e-mails you keep getting who refer to a "pawn"? They're talking about you. The amount of people who manipulate or "move" you in this game is staggering. You can count on one hand the major characters who don't, though by the end you get the option to bite back at quite a few of those manipulators. It is also worth remembering what happens if a pawn reaches the end of the board...
• Vague Age: The Mandarin mentions that they appear to be somewhere in their 20s, but the game leaves it to the player to decide their exact age.
• Vapor Wear: Several of the female PCs are obviously not wearing bras, be it because of chest physics or because of how Stripperiffic their outfits are. In particular, the female Toreador and Malkavian's first outfits are all skimpy enough to make it obvious while the female Brujah's final outfit and all the Malkavian's other outfits both also show off more cleavage than would be possible otherwise.
  • Most surprisingly, the Tremere also gets in on the action with her third outfit; a deep red coat with a low neckline and nothing underneath, coupled with some subtle breast physics.
• Vegetarian Vampire: Every clan but the Ventrue can live off of rats alone if they prefer, with the Nosferatu getting as much nourishment from them as from lower-class humans. Even a Ventrue can restrict themselves to blood packs.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Lowering your humanity too much makes you more susceptible to frenzy, and if activated in the wrong place it can cause you to feed on someone in a public place and lose Masquerade points.
  • Killing humans on the Elizabeth Dane will cause you to gain less experience and not be able to get the second haven.
  • Being a jerk with a quest giver in many cases causes them to not give you the mission, and you lose the experience or money that you would have gotten with the quest.
• Villain Protagonist: As with most open-ended RPGs, this is definitely an option. As long as you make a reasonable effort to keep up The Masquerade you can be as depraved as you like. And let's face it, sometimes upholding the Masquerade involves having to Leave No Witnesses.
• Volatile Second Tier Position: LaCroix begins to treat you as his trusted emissary after you return with the Sarcophagus, promising grander things on the horizon; it's all an act, of course, and the majority of this supposedly more prestigious job is spent being stuck with duties that will probably get you killed.
• Walking the Earth: The Independent ending. The cabbie tells the Fledgling that choosing the "I Work Alone" path is the path of legends, and results in this trope.
• Willfully Weak: If you want to avoid losing humanity points or want to avoid breaking the masquerade, the playable character will be this in relation to the police. In most cases, the police are nothing more than simple Mooks, but killing them will lose you humanity points, so the playable character should simply hide and wait for them to leave.
• Yes-Man: If you choose to stick with LaCroix the entire way through. Getting the option to side with the prince during the ending requires you to have acted politely towards him in the past, followed his orders to a T, and either overlooked or rationalized how he's sent you to your death multiple times and set you up for a fall. Through dialogue, you can play it in a number of ways, such as professing genuine loyalty to the man, believing him to be an ultimately good leader whose rule the city will benefit from, or simply sticking with LaCroix because he begins the endgame in the strongest position.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: The PC gets to be Sheriff of the City in the Camarilla ending. If they side with the Anarchs, it's very likely they will be second in command to Nines Rodriguez in his new order.

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