Midgame Character Developement Question - *no spoilers please*

[Blog Wraith]

So, I'm wondering how to spend my XP these nights to maximize fun level. My situation is as follows:

I'm at the Society of Leopold in the main quest, with most of the side quests I've seen completed (though not all, wanting to wait until character developement decisions are made before doing some, such as the VV quests).

My guy is a female Malcavian, with relevant stats-

- high persuasion (9)
- low seduction (3)
- medium dementation (3)
- high research (9), which has been used to boost various skills
- high lockpicking (10 w/ blood buff)
- high hacking (9 w/ auspex, natural wits of 3)
- intimidate (6)
- decent combat stats, through tomes and training during conversation and only 12 XP (brawl 4, melee 5, firearms 3, dodge 1)

I'm happy with what I've done so far, with the exception of upping my obfuscate skill to level 3, but at the time I thought I'd want to take it all the way to 5. I have just under 30 XP to spend, and I'm wondering which direction would be best at this point in the game. Of course the options are numerous, but here are some of the ones that I've been looking at.

- maxing dementation for the fun and funny dialog options (will need more XP, obviously).
- building up seduction, which will go fast at first since it's so low. I know this will make interacting with VV more fun and get me more (unneeded) feedstations, but I don't think I'd want it unless it got me more.
- spending 18 XP (because of tome) to up defence to 8 by maxing dodge.
- adding the 10th point of persuasion for 16 XP.

So, what do peolpe think I should do? Or do first, anyway. I've noticed that Malkavians don't have persuasion options that other clans do, such as not being able to convince the cop on the Dane that I was a reporter. I don't know if the also get other persuasion options that other clans don't, or if the 10th point in the feat adds any extra options, so I'm hesitant to pump persuasion. I had a little bit of trouble taking the 3 bodied guys in the Warrens head on (almost had to use a blood pack for the first time), but other than that it's been smooth sailing, so I'm hesitant to "waste" XP on combat skills just yet. My concerns with seduction are stated above, and with demented dialoge options aparently few and far between, I'm hesitant to spend the 35 XP needed to get demented^5. Of course, the paucity of red options could just be because I don't have a high enough level. Thanks for your thoughts in advance.

[gurgeh]

I just have a small question for the topic poster. How did you manage to get your melee skill to level 5 and only spending 12 XP in the process? AFAIK the melee manual you can find will at most take you from level 3 to level 4, it will NOT take you from level 4 to level 5, furthermore the cost of increasing the skill from 4 to 5 "the normal way" is 15 XP if I remember correctly, so how did you manage?

[Blog Wraith]

It's 12 XP to raise a skill from level 4 to 5 (so reads the manual, so says the game), but that's not where I spent it. The 12 XP spent was on the first 2 levels of both brawl and melee (3 XP each). Nines trained me to level 3 in both brawl and melee. I found a brawl tome to get level 4 in it, and I found 2 melee tomes, one in the Skyline apartments on kendo or something that took me from 3 to 4, and another in the Fu building that got me to level 5 (needed 10 lockpicking to get in the room and 9 research to use). My point of dodge is from a tome, as are the first 2 firearms levels, with the 3rd gained through training with the graveyard goul guy. Now, I did spend plenty of XP on getting research that high, but those points had extra benifits as well. I put my 3 starting points into scholarship and used another 21 XP to max it, but that also gave me high persuasion, and the 24 XP spent to raise my intellegence also gave me decent intimidation. The use of tomes has saved me a total of 6 + 6 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 3 + 12 + 12 = 63 XP, with 24 of that requiring me to go to level 9. I'm holding a dodge tome that will take me from level 4 to 5, which is why it would only take me 18 XP to go from 1 to 5 (3 for level 2, 6 for level 3, 9 for level 4). I highly recomend the research route, as the bonus stat points really beef up your guy, and the dialog options opened up by intimidation and especially persuasion are a big part of what make the game fun for me.

[Alaphic]

personally, i think i'd go the route of upping the seduction and dementation. from what i can tell you have everything covered pretty well. if you did alright against the things in the warrens, you should be able to do pretty well against everything else in the game. just make sure to pick up the heavy duty armors to make sure you have a good blunt (physical, shooting, whatever it's called) soak. my tremere has a melee of 5 or so and does decent damage with the kitana, so your char should be fine.

[gurgeh]

Ah yeah, my bad, melee from level 4 to level 5 is only 12 XP. When/where will Nines up your melee skill? And how high can he take it (from 4 to 5?) or less? I know he increased my brawling skill when I talked to him the first time at the Last Round, but I'm currently only at the Society of Leopold, so I haven't seen him since...