Good Malkavian Build?

[Chax]

Anyone have tips for building a formidable Malkavian character? For example, the auto-spend puts one social point into Haggling (which somebody here mentioned wasn't worth it) - would I be better off sticking with persuasion, or does dementation cover those bases just as well? Generally, if you have a good idea about spread of points on skills, feats and disciplines, I'd really like to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

[Lestat]

spoilers

The following is valid for all clans:
When you start:
- do not put any points in firearms, sneaking or computers.
- get your scholarship to two points with your first XP
A book on sneaking can be found in the appartment opposite your first haven. When you have scholarship 2 & intelligence 1 (and thus research 3), go to Trip. Sell the sneaking tome to Trip, buy it back, use it, buy it again use it (but don't leave the store between purchases or between selling & purchasing, the tome won't be available anymore)
Trip also has a tome on firearms and one on computers. For each, buy-use-buy again-use.
So with an investment of two points in scholarship you'll have 2 on firearms, 2 on sneaking and 2 on computers.
Moreover the two points in scholarship added to your basic charisma of 1 will get you persuasion of 3, enough to swindle one of the thin bloods on the beach out of up to 460 USD and thus finance the purchases of your tomes.

Do not raise your brawl over 1 while in Santa Monica. Have Nines teach you the second point when you meet him in the last round, but don't raise it further.
Do not raise your melee over 2 before the end of the museum quest, but raise your intelligence to two.
Do not raise your scholarship over 2 before the end of the museum quest.
At the end of the museum quest, ask Beckett about all topics (but do not ask twice about thin bloods). You'll get a free point in scholarship.
You now should have 5 in research (Intelligence 2 + scholarship 3), 2 in brawl and 2 in melee which is enough to use the brawl manual (found in the first room of Boris's quarters) and the melee manual (found in skyline appartment 2). Sell and buy back twice both tomes to up your brawl & melee to 4 and thus the relevant feats unarmed and melee at least at 5 when you enter hollywood. You can further raise the feats by putting a point in strength and at a low cost in XP you'll have unarmed and melee at 6, which is sufficient to see you through the whole game, especially if combined with a higher ranged feat.
Scholarship 3 will also give you at least 4 in persuasion, the minimum required for both the restaurant critic quest & the pimpin' for romero quest (both in hollywood).
I also usually wait with further raising firearms until I get to Hollywood where Romero will teach you the third point of firearms.
Oh and in Grout's mansion there's a tome that can raise your dodge to two, so you might want to keep your dodge below that until you reach his mansion.

This might seem very limiting, but none of the fights in Santa Monica or Downtown LA are so tough that you need very high firearms, brawl or melee skills.
Moreover, if you're playing Malk, you have obfuscate & dementation to save your arse in the more difficult quests. And you have ranged 4 from almost the start (perception 2 + firearms 2).

Specific for Malk: Put points in the disciplines! They are the strongest points of this clan. Vision of death (dementation level 3) was very useful in Grout's mansion to compensate for lower combat skills. At three points in the mansion you have several loonies in the corners and one roaming around a large hall; with VoD you kill the roaming loonie, so you can easily stealth kill the corner loonies. But use the last one to fill up on blood.
Social skills: concentrate on persuasion (charisma & scholarship), since you're already investing in scholarship.
Put extra points in perception & firearms later in the game, so you have in the later stages ranged 7-8, to be raised to 9-10 (with Auspex 4) when needed (Jaime Sue can be extremely useful this way, especially against bat boy but even against Ming and Bach). With 9 in ranged you have a fairly stable crosshair when zooming (even 8 is OK).

Put at least one point in security since at some important moments you'll need a lockpicking feat of 6 (1 security + 5 dexterity through blood buff). A second point is even better, certainly before you going of to kill Ming since a lockpicking feat of 7 will allow you to take the somewhat easier routes in the temple and give you access to the room where you can disable a nasty set of traps.
Invest further in strength if you want to go for a more combat oriented character (this can be done from early on in the game).
Dexterity is not worth putting much points in. When high lockpicking is needed, you can use blood buff and who needs sneaking when you have obfuscate? But get obfuscate up to 5 before you get to the last level of Ming's temple (it is extremely useful to get the jade statues).
I usually neglect stamina, but it could be usuful if you're more combat oriented.
And if you play by the rules (and don't go looking for passwords on this site), you might want to up your wits (also useful for defense feat) for your hacking feat (though Auspex gives you also a bonus on this).

[yrthwyndandfyre]

[QUOTE=Lestat]The following is valid for all clans:
When you start:
- do not put any points in firearms, sneaking or computers.
- get your scholarship to two points with your first XP
[/QUOTE]
Now that is what I call a juicy bit of gossip. I'm going to try that right away.

[Anaximander]

Excellent pointers on efficient use of xp and books, there.
Ignoring firearms and computers at first in favor of scholarship is something I do with all my characters. I never knew that you could sell books and buy them back from merchents more than once, though. I always just picked them up and used them immediately. Now I want to start a new game just to milk that extra point out of all those tomes.

I've always found Obfuscate to be the most useful discipline for Malkavians and Nosferatu. With Obfuscate 5 you can stand up, run full speed, manipulate objects, and perform stealth kills while remaining completely invisible. The only place I've found that this doesn't work is in the Hollowbrook Hotel at the end. The Sabbat vampires in there can see you, Obfuscate 5 and all.

Consider keeping Dementation at 3 or 4. Vision of Death and Berzerk are nice, but you never know what you'll get with Bedlam.

For all clans, I find defensive abilities helpful. Stamina increases your resistance to damage taken from bullets and blunt melee weapons, and both dodge and wits increase your defense stat, which helps you avoid damage alltogehter. If you're going to focus mostly on ranged combat rather than unarmed or melee, defense becomes less important as you'll spend less time toe to toe with the enemy.

[Chax]

Whoa! Awesome loopholes, Lestat!
This should make my playthrough significantly more fun.
Also thanks, Anaximander.

[yrthwyndandfyre]

Whoa! That makes it almost too easy. I try to get my Tremere character's Suicide ability together before I get to Grout's mansion. Following those tips and mashalling my points, I had it together before I got to the beach house! Wow.

[Jack Daxtor]

I'm about to start a game with the Malks as well. Is the higher my dementation discipline, the more places I get to to use it for the dialogue options? Or do I automically get them without having to level it up at all? My first time through I was very persuasive but Im not gonna put any points into that this time and just use dementation and/or seduction to get what I need.

I probably will up it to level 5 though not only for the conversations but also for groups of enemies.

[Lunaida]

WoW !!!
Malkavians are soooooooooooo cool !!!
They are the wittiest of all the clans ! Of course you must have played the game with at least another clan before trying the Malkavians or their conversation will not make any sense. But if you have played the game before, then you'll know how great the Malkavians are ! It seems that they know everything from the beginning

Spoiler:
Try talking to Rosa the fortune-teller woman in the beach of Santa Monica if you have a Malkavian, and give her the 100$ she wants (you can save the game before so that you can just here what she says and then reload) and listen to what she has to say and what your character has to reply ! Its great

[Anaximander]

WoW !!!
Malkavians are soooooooooooo cool !!!

Yes. Yes they are. Here's a link to a thread discussing just how much fun they are:

[url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53211&highlight=play+malkavian"]http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53211&highlight=play+malkavian[/url]

[MalaksBane]

For any character, put as much points in the stat(s) you want high during character creation, when the third dot is just as expensive as the the first. When buying them with XP, the third dot is a lot more expensive then the first and second.

Don't put points into stats you can get training and manuals for, like brawl, melee (can put one in those two), computers, firearms (useless early on anyway) etc... But those have been mentioned and listed.

When you have scholarship 2 & intelligence 1 (and thus research 3), go to Trip. Sell the sneaking tome to Trip, buy it back, use it, buy it again use it (but don't leave the store between purchases or between selling & purchasing, the tome won't be available anymore)

I found they remain for sale, but, well save before you you experiment. The sell-buy thing might be considered cheating, but I just imagine Trip has a copier. And you can't duplicate (occult) items in this way, this might mean the manual duplication is by design.

Moreover the two points in scholarship added to your basic charisma of 1 will get you persuasion of 3, enough to swindle one of the thin bloods on the beach out of up to 460 USD and thus finance the purchases of your tomes.

I can not get myself to do that and you don't need the money anyway, my Malk had something like $6000 unused by the end of the game.

Throughout the Santa Monica a persusion of 4 is enough (required to reconcile the daughters of Janus), raise to 5 (charisma) when reaching downtown, and 6 seems to be enough for most remaining quests. You could delay the persuasion 5 tasks until after the museum.

Do Venus' quest early though, it nets you $250 after every main quest. For a Malkavian Boris is insanely easy. You can walk through the penthouse unnoticed - even without stealth/obfuscate - and either dement Boris or 'stealth' kill him and the guard. Getting the No-means-no manual is the hardest part of this quest.

... Sell and buy back twice both tomes to up your brawl & melee to 4 and thus the relevant feats unarmed and melee at least at 5 when you enter hollywood. You can further raise the feats by putting a point in strength and at a low cost in XP you'll have unarmed and melee at 6, which is sufficient to see you through the whole game, especially if combined with a higher ranged feat.

Unless you don't care for firearms, like me, ignoring ranged weapons (keep them available in the Fu lab though) yields a lot of XP you can spend in other stats. Untill you use the 3/4 manual you can raise strength to 3 to increase unarmed and melee. With strength on 3 and both brawl and melee on 4, melee and unarmed are at 7 and you're set for most of the midgame. Raise strength and melee to 5 in the late midgame and get the melee +1 item in chinatown for 9 unarmed and 11 melee. Not too bad.

Scholarship 3 will also give you at least 4 in persuasion, the minimum required for both the restaurant critic quest & the pimpin' for romero quest (both in hollywood).

6 is not enough to complete the pimpin quest, I think, but I'd have to experiment, and you might want 5 in the downtown area and later. If you don't use firearms, Romero's training is not important.

Oh and in Grout's mansion there's a tome that can raise your dodge to two, so you might want to keep your dodge below that until you reach his mansion.

And you could use the tome twice, put three in wits during creation and you defense would be good enough until after grouts mansion. You might want to wait with completing the plaguebearer quests until after you get the dodge boost. The 3 (5 in the endgame) in Wits plus the two from the computer manual plus Auspex will enable you to hack most computers.

Moreover, if you're playing Malk, you have obfuscate & dementation to save your arse in the more difficult quests. And you have ranged 4 from almost the start (perception 2 + firearms 2).

Specific for Malk: Put points in the disciplines! They are the strongest points of this clan. Vision of death (dementation level 3) was very useful in Grout's mansion to compensate for lower combat skills. At three points in the mansion you have several loonies in the corners and one roaming around a large hall; with VoD you kill the roaming loonie, so you can easily stealth kill the corner loonies. But use the last one to fill up on blood.
Social skills: concentrate on persuasion (charisma & scholarship), since you're already investing in scholarship.

The Malkavian's lack of usefull combat boosting disciplines had me worried for the Boss fights, and indeed, some were a lot harder then for my celerity boosted Toreador. But using Berserk is just plain fun, and obfuscate can help you choose a better approach to stealth killing, and even stealth feeding.

The fight with Ming was difficult (as was the second Andrei) but the Sheriff never saw my character untill he took the bat-form. That was fun, between the lobby of the Venture Tower and the floor with the vampires, the only one to fire any shots was LaCroix. The rest never knew what bit them.

Put at least one point in security since at some important moments you'll need a lockpicking feat of 6 (1 security + 5 dexterity through blood buff). A second point is even better, certainly before you going of to kill Ming since a lockpicking feat of 7 will allow you to take the somewhat easier routes in the temple and give you access to the room where you can disable a nasty set of traps.

There is a 3/4 manual, so upping security to 2 is worthwhile. Bloodbuff eats blood and a lockpick of 6~7 (4 security and 2~3 dexterity without bloodbuff) will allow you to open most locks casually.

Invest further in strength if you want to go for a more combat oriented character (this can be done from early on in the game).
Dexterity is not worth putting much points in. When high lockpicking is needed, you can use blood buff and who needs sneaking when you have obfuscate? But get obfuscate up to 5 before you get to the last level of Ming's temple (it is extremely useful to get the jade statues).
I usually neglect stamina, but it could be usuful if you're more combat oriented.

Stamina is usefull as it reduces damage from bullets, bats and batons. Put some points in it early/midgame, then whenever you've got some, up to 5. Casually walking towards a guard who's emptying his machinegun on you without doing noticable damage and then draining him is .... fun. You're a vampire afterall, and weapons make such a mess.

Even with obfuscate, stealth is usefull as it will help you remain concealed when some action breaks obfuscate, and lockpicking around 6-7 will allow you to pick most locks casually without spending blood. Besides, getting dex on 3 only costs you 4 XP and the $$ for the Fae-charm.

Edit: About haggling, it may be less usefull, especially if you don't use firearms, but it will only cost 3 XP and few $$ to get Finance on 4, since Fat Larry can train the second point and there is a 3/4 manual in Jezebel's room.

[CaptRory]

Obfuscate 4 is a necessity. 5 is gravy but you definately want at least rank 4. I worked melee and firearms for my Malk and while some boss fights were difficult by the end of the game my stats were so high I didn't have much trouble, even without Combat Boosting Disciplines. It's just like "Fuzzy" always says "If brute force isn't working you're not using enough of it." And if you consider Malks to have a lack of brute force (No Celerity, Potence, etc.) then you need to employ more strategy. More stealth kills (easy with Obfuscate) more judicial use of the flamethrower, etc. I never got much use out of blocking the entire game, but when it came to a boss with a giant sword it made the fight a lot easier. With less combat oriented characters you need to make better use of the terrain as well. Example: Defeating the southland slasher is a lot less painful if you knock him into the ring of fire that surrounds the battlefield. He'll burn to death in short order.

Or when fighting the Chang brothers, making use of cover is essential and turns what would be a very difficult fight into a Turkey Shoot if you have firearms skills and a Jaegerspas XV.

If you're going for a gun heavy Malk, you should put some points into Finance but you only need 3xp to raise it up to 4. One free point for doing the quest from Fat Larry +3xp +Finance Manual +Finance Manual (sell and buy back trick)=4. Ammo is expensive and you'll go through a lot of it. For 3xp I think it's worth it.

[Lestat]

6 is not enough to complete the pimpin quest, I think, but I'd have to experiment, and you might want 5 in the downtown area and later.

I just went through Hollywood again, and Persuasion 4 is definitely enough to convince a prostitute to follow you to Romero's place and get 2 XP + a bonus in firearms or money.
You might want to raise Persuasion to 5, to have enough to convince Strauss to tell you he made the Gargoyle (which nets you the protective amulet and some monetary reward from him and/or extra XP from Isaac if you betray Strauss to him).
To convince the Gargoyle of working with Isaac, I think you need Persuasion 6.
You'll need also fairly high persuasion to convince Hatter and the guy at Sin Bin to give you what you want, but at Sin Bin you can always get the info from the comp and Hatter requires only a little intimidation (and with the Intelligence for research, you should have about 3 on intimidation).

[MalaksBane]

Dement also works with Hatter, I think. And I must have missed something with the prostitute then.

[QUOTE=CaptRory] ... And if you consider Malks to have a lack of brute force (No Celerity, Potence, etc.) then you need to employ more strategy. More stealth kills (easy with Obfuscate) more judicial use of the flamethrower, etc.
[/quote]

Stealth, obfusacte and other trickfull and fun skills are frequently useless in Boss fights and other fights are not difficult enough to warrant adjusting the build or equipment. The extra's are fun, and worth it for just that, but somewhere in the critical path there'll be a Boss that requires (a lot of) brute force.

In boss fights things are frequently either rigged in a way that prevents much different strategies (no stealth killing Ming, even if she doesn't see you) and/or require a specific way or trick in which the Boss can always be defeated.

Anyway, I feared the lack of boosting disciplines when starting with a Malkavian, turns out that it was quite doable and sometimes rediculously easy, the giant with the big sword, for instance, never even saw me. I suppose it might be a 'bug', or maybe not.

[Lestat]

[QUOTE=MalaksBane]Stealth, obfusacte and other trickfull and fun skills are frequently useless in Boss fights and other fights are not difficult enough to warrant adjusting the build or equipment. The extra's are fun, and worth it for just that, but somewhere in the critical path there'll be a Boss that requires (a lot of) brute force.

In boss fights things are frequently either rigged in a way that prevents much different strategies (no stealth killing Ming, even if she doesn't see you) and/or require a specific way or trick in which the Boss can always be defeated.

Anyway, I feared the lack of boosting disciplines when starting with a Malkavian, turns out that it was quite doable and sometimes rediculously easy, the giant with the big sword, for instance, never even saw me. I suppose it might be a 'bug', or maybe not.[/QUOTE]I found that if you used more or less the auto level scheme of raising your abilities, you ended up with a sniperlike character. You said you neglected firearms, so wouldn't have noticed.
For me the combination firearms/perception/auspex + obfuscate + vision of death, made for a formidable ranged character, especially at the later stages (it took me three or four shots to shoot the giant bat out of the air with Jaime Sue, no difficulty aiming: 7 ranged + 2 extra perception from Auspex 4, made for an effective ranged of 9).

[CaptRory]

Taking the giant with the big sword as an example, despite not being able to stealth kill him, I was able to get in boosted damage from being invisible a number of times that fight. Now, most of the time I agree with you, the battles to get to the boss don't require anything special. Sometimes though it is easy to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If you sneak the Fat Larry parking garage mission and don't have decent Obfuscate you will need to fight your way out. I just went through that mess with my new Brujah, I needed to be extra clever. I shot at a group then ducked up into a vent and fired down upon my attackers, I needed to thin out the top two levels in that manner in order to leave. The earlier levels were easy enough to hack my way through but the top tiers just had too many people with guns. In the Temple heading to Ming it is easy to get swamped by enemies. Especially in that one bunk room with all the footlockers. Having Obfuscate to stealth through simplifies things greatly. I got held up there and cycled through all my automatic weapons trying to break out.

All I'm saying is that if you lack the combat disciplines you need to make better use of what you do have.

There is room for more variety in boss fights then you might imagine. I fought the big giant differently with my Malkavian then I did with a Ventrue. The southland slasher can be eliminated in different ways. Granted I'm talking mostly about styles of fighting now but you always have the option of taking an Action Hero approach or a safer more methodical approach.

[Lestat]

[QUOTE=CaptRory]In the Temple heading to Ming it is easy to get swamped by enemies. Especially in that one bunk room with all the footlockers. Having Obfuscate to stealth through simplifies things greatly. I got held up there and cycled through all my automatic weapons trying to break out. [/QUOTE]
Normally, if you have obfuscate, you will encounter very little enemies, since you can sneak through. But if only one guy sees you, spawning hell starts. I have no problem with the occasional spawning and respawning to make things more difficult, but the Temple takes it to perverse heights.

[QUOTE=CaptRory]There is room for more variety in boss fights then you might imagine. I fought the big giant differently with my Malkavian then I did with a Ventrue. The southland slasher can be eliminated in different ways. Granted I'm talking mostly about styles of fighting now but you always have the option of taking an Action Hero approach or a safer more methodical approach.[/QUOTE]With a high enough persuasion, you can even convince the slasher of stopping his killing, so no fighting necessary (you do take a masquerade violation though, unless you install one of the later patches, but that violation can be easily compensated by a redemption for convincing Julius to leave town, which is at about the same moment in the game).

[CaptRory]

That is very true about the Temple. I tried persuading the slasher but never cared to take the Violation. But as you pointed out you can convince Julius to leave to balance that out; this game I think I'll do that. One thing that struck me as odd in this game was all the opportunities for Masquerade redemptions. If you took the time to count them all up you'd probably have enough to replace the entire bar 1 or 2 times.

[MalaksBane]

Those, yeah made me wonder too if certain playstyles require it. But perhaps it's just the nature of many quests.

[CaptRory]

The only character I can think of that would require so many would be a careless Nosferatu.

[MalaksBane]

[QUOTE=Lestat]I just went through Hollywood again, and Persuasion 4 is definitely enough to convince a prostitute to follow you to Romero's place and get 2 XP + a bonus in firearms or money.

[/quote]

Aye, you are correct, I might have just missed the proper line (and she doesn't visually follow you in the cemetery). The firearms bonus is for free then - any character would probably have persuasion > 4 by then.

Although, if you choose to convenience him yourself, the email you eventually get from him certainly adds to the desolate, abandonded atmosphere near the endgame.

On a side note, the sneak+obfuscate trick against boss with the big sword didn't work on a second and third attempt. Just for the fun of it, I did manage to go through the Venture Tower without anyone ever firing a single shot. Except for the commando's during the fight with that big bat.