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I've been experimenting with the Voerman sisters situation, and I must say I've found some interesting things I never noticed before. Therese in particular, but both of them to an extent, can react in extremely different ways depending on what kind of character you have. I don't know whether it's all to do with clan or not.
The final encounter with the sisters is not dependent on clan, it requires a small amount of persuasion and a good disposition with both sisters. The way they react depends on their disposition which is negatively or positively affected by your dialog choices.
Not sure that it counts, given that 'vampires hurt by sunlight' isn't a thing in that book. Instead, they make it that Dracula is far stronger at night-time, and nigh-unkillable because he can just transform into mist or a plague of rats at will. If you compare the scale of the sun effect, it's the same just in a different direction. Instead of 'sun kills, nighttime is normal', it's 'normal power level during the day, insanely overpowered + invulnerable at night'.
It's also presented as deliberately vague, because (as Van Helsing points out) Dracula himself doesn't know squat about the extent and limitations of his powers due to this being the first time he's seriously emerged. He's a meticulous planner who has spent at least a half century or so planning his emergence - he's been buying up land and building cult followers for decades, studying English (almost scraps the whole plan when he discovers that he can't simply eliminate his foreign accent without further decades of practice), but it's all advance planning, this is the first time he's actually gone out and tested any of it.
When they're chasing him down in the climax (where it has a few pages from each of the character's perspectives before the final chase), most of the characters are doing so to cure Mina
and at the end of John's bit he reveals that he's already decided that if they fail, then instead of killing Mina he's going to let her turn him, and presumably they'd then do the groundwork for Dracula's next attempt
, but van Helsing notes that there's a lot more at stake. Despite his meticulous planning, Dracula made several errors out of ignorance - from not realising how long it takes to lose a foreign accent, differences in English vs Slavic culture, and his own powers, including that he didn't realise until halfway through that he could walk around fine in sunlight, merely with reduced powers (the bit where he's standing in the mist-covered sunlight is where he's testing that out). Van Helsing's fear is that they allow Dracula to disappear, then the next time his next attempt (in 50-100 years time) will be flawless - he'll just appear as a long-standing English aristocrat, slowing gaining in power and influence, with no way for anyone to find out who/what he is.
I've been experimenting with the Voerman sisters situation, and I must say I've found some interesting things I never noticed before. Therese in particular, but both of them to an extent, can react in extremely different ways depending on what kind of character you have. I don't know whether it's all to do with clan or not.
For example, I created two saves just before the final showdown. One is a Brujah female, and one is a Malkavian female. They did everything the same as far as quests and general behavior before getting to this point, and they have the same stats because I maxed them all out after the tutorial and gave them a big pool so they could buy Humanity if I wanted. Both are currently at 2 Humanity, because they've been murdering people by the dozen (but with no Masquerade Violations).
Therese reacts with overwhelming anger toward the Brujah gal. In fact, the whole episode consists of dialogue I'd never heard before, and it appears to be impossible to save both sisters. I ran through it three times using different responses, and couldn't save them both. Even with 10 Persuasion, there's no chance.
The Malkavian gal on the other hand, can easily save both sisters by picking the blue Persuasion lines in dialogue.
The most interesting thing is this: I reloaded the Brujah game, brought her up to max Humanity, tried again, and there was no change. Either it's entirely dependent on clan, or it depends on some other factor I don't understand.
FYI, both characters slashed up the paintings in Galelry Noir, but also gave the Ocean House amulet to Therese.
Neither one of these had any of the awkward camera pans I was talking about. When I get a chance I'm going to make a female Tremere save the same way, because that's where I saw it before. My male Ventrue also had one, but only one.
As Wesp5 said, your two characters must have picked different dialogue options in previous conversations. Jeanette is easy (just flirt), but Therese will require a bit more asskissing.
It doesn't need to be perfect. I once gave Jeanette the pendant and still managed to save both. Persuasion has to be 4 or higher during the final confrontation.
One thing I don't like about this outcome though is, when you revisit them later
they still stand there as Tourette as if that scene just happened a few minutes ago, even though several nights must have passed since then. That doesn't make any sense to me. I think Troika did this to avoid confusion and to reassure the player that, yes, both of them are still "alive".
Wesp5 , Thanks for all your hard work over the year. I need your advice regarding a annoyance.
Its virtually impossible to finish zombie mission without Celerity. Its there a way to reduce Zombie spawning or reduce time for that mission ?
Run like fuck out of the shack toward the mausoleum in the corner. Dont get in, but move to the farthest corner from the gates. The game only spawn zombies in your vision/location , so with that you can have very limited spawns and can kill them off with gun.
Finally done!
I know, I want to finish that quest using my own twitch skills as well but I am the suck in that matter~
A legitimate tactic is to jump on the pillar on the top of the height where you can snipe both gates without zombie eating your ass. But that require twitch skills to jump on that fast, and then shootan skillz. I probabbly can train that for two or three hours but since I can just deal with this in a lazy manner, I just do it~
I already made the gates stronger in the plus patch, but overall this quest is supposed to be a combat challenge so I won't make it any easier.
As for the original Dracula novel, I think I should finally read it! The description above makes Dracula much more a cold blooded planning bad ass than the romantic guy that some movies turned him into.
As for Tourette still standing, this brings up the question of in how many nights the whole game plays out. There is only one shown daylight-sleeping scene, when Jack returns you from Griffith Park. Maybe the game is taking place during only two nights?
The PC gaining such immense power in 2 nights is probably out of the question. It's already a stretch that s/he becomes more powerful than Ming, LaCroix and Andrei, that happening in 2 nights is even weirder. I don't think there's a way to know the exact time-span however. I also think there are too many events happening for it to be that short (only the movement of the sarcophagus would take longer, it goes from the boat to the museum, to LaCroix's tower, to the Giovanni mansion, then back to LaCroix etc.). It's also logical that it's summer time, everyone is walking around in T-shirts or half-naked, so the nights should be pretty short. About Jeannette and Therese - they probably just didn't return to that quest/location/event/character to change it, having such a tortured development will cause such things. You also don't really have a reason to return to her/them after those events, so they might have thought that there are more important things to take care of.
Wesp5 , Thanks for all your hard work over the year. I need your advice regarding a annoyance.
Its virtually impossible to finish zombie mission without Celerity. Its there a way to reduce Zombie spawning or reduce time for that mission ?
The PC gaining such immense power in 2 decades, let alone 2 nights, is completely out of the question. Getting one Discipline, nevermind multiple, to 5 dots takes several decades of active practice and that's if you have a teacher.
Wesp5's patches are considered a staple and a must-have. They fix bugs, improve a lot of things and add some new ones, while staying close to vanilla. As for visual mods and such, I have no idea, I don't use them.
Wesp5's patches are considered a staple and a must-have. They fix bugs, improve a lot of things and add some new ones, while staying close to vanilla. As for visual mods and such, I have no idea, I don't use them.
The PC gaining such immense power in 2 decades, let alone 2 nights, is completely out of the question. Getting one Discipline, nevermind multiple, to 5 dots takes several decades of active practice and that's if you have a teacher.
Exactly, and that's why we can't really estimate a time-frame just from the power progression, the PC is illegal in the PnP. I don't think there's any other example of such rapid power gain in the PnP at all.
Tremere's a good pick as its limitation isn't a pain in the ass - you can't get physical attributes higher than 4, but I don't think I ever raised any of those up to 5 in any of my playthroughs (not even with Brujah) as you miss out on a lot of stuff if you build a meat grinder. Thaumaturgy is a very nice and unique discipline, and it allows for a more efficient blood usage (you basically expend blod points to do damage and get some blood in return). You do get a little clan-specific bits in the game, too.
There's really nothing else you need for the first and second playthrough, other than maybe some cosmetic mods and such.
If you plan on playing more than twice, popular total overhaul mods include VtMB - Camarilla Edition, The Final Nights and VtM - Antitribu. They all drastically alter the way the game works, with the latter two completely replacing the original 7 Clans with a different set.
Tremere's a good pick as its limitation isn't a pain in the ass - you can't get physical attributes higher than 4, but I don't think I ever raised any of those up to 5 in any of my playthroughs (not even with Brujah) as you miss out on a lot of stuff if you build a meat grinder. Thaumaturgy is a very nice and unique discipline, and it allows for a more efficient blood usage (you basically expend blod points to do damage and get some blood in return). You do get a little clan-specific bits in the game, too.
The PC gaining such immense power in 2 decades, let alone 2 nights, is completely out of the question. Getting one Discipline, nevermind multiple, to 5 dots takes several decades of active practice and that's if you have a teacher.
Exactly, and that's why we can't really estimate a time-frame just from the power progression, the PC is illegal in the PnP. I don't think there's any other example of such rapid power gain in the PnP at all.
For your first playthrough you don't need anything, the GOG version comes with the basic Unofficial Patch included. Later on you should download the full patch to replay with the plus version which restores a lot of unused content!
Now that you reminded me of Dracula, I have an idea how the PC could become so powerful. Dracula had relatively fast power gain because he was living as an independent ghoul, feeding off of a vampire he had chained in his castle, but he was also immune to the Blood Bond (curiously enough), then forced a Tzimisce vampire to Embrace him. This leads me to this - what if the PC was a centuries/millennia old ghoul (like Prias), but had his/her memories periodically wiped, so s/he wasn't even aware s/he was a ghoul, but still received the benefits of being so. Then maybe his/her master died/got bored and just commanded him/her to live a normal life (and wiped his/her memories again), s/he would turn to dust very fast anyway, but a relatively new vampire (the PCs sire) Embraced him/her. That would explain the very rapid power gain, the sire being a weakling AND the PCs total ignorance of the creatures of the night. I think this is actually legal in the PnP and can be done.
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