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Is Protean claw damage based on Brawl or Melee?

Also, the claws deal aggravated damage - how useful is this? Enemy vampires do not seem to regenerate anyway (the bosses never do, and the lessers die too swiftly) so aggro isn't any better than lethal.

Well, the claws are listed as weapons in the console, but the manual does say that it turns the vampires hands into claws, so i figure they depend on unarmed not melee.

But I do know that enemy vamps do regenerate. Just much slower than you do... so that u can run away, hide, regenerate and then come back to finish the job.

Protean claws are definitely based on brawl (says so in the manual if you look close enough). Also, and I could be wrong on this, aggravated damage cannot be defended against (maybe for those with a Fortitude skill). I've noticed that vampires and other boss types go down real fast when using Protean claws at the higher levels.

A couple problems with Protean: framerates can make this style of combat seem slow if you don't have a fairly top end system; and damage does not get really impressive until Protean 4 or 5.

Aggravated damage is defended against in a different way... in the game, u have 3 defences -- blunt, lethal and aggravated. That's why fire usually hurts like hell, whereas a baseball to the skull can be glanced off. and I assume most enemies don't defend against aggravated damage too well. Hence the flamethrower's lack of ammo...

Protean is based on brawl. The claws deal aggravated damage. My major issue with protean was that I felt it was clumsy and awkward. While the damage was useful situationally, it always felt inferior to what I could do with a katana, as I was able to move the katana much faster. As such, I wasn't convinced that aggravated damage had the same type of "advantage" it does in PnP or VtM Redemption. In theory it can't be defended against (though, I would add, fortitude defends against it), however, in game play terms lethal damage isn't defended against particularly well by your foes either.

From my experience, I felt protean could have used some tweaking. Now, those with superior video cards than mine, a lot of visual adjustments, and a lot more passion for the Protean discipline will defend it. But this was my not so uncommon experience with its aggravated damage. Personally, I longed to see protean emulate its PnP counterpart a bit more. A variety of shape changing powers would make me want to play a Gangrel every time through....