The clans of Vampire: The Masquerade.
A clan is not a class. It is a family of blood, inherited from the vampire who gave you the Embrace: three disciplines, a bane you will never be rid of, a compulsion that takes hold at the worst possible moment, and a reputation that walks into every city ahead of you.
Here are the thirteen clans of the fifth edition, the seven from the core book and the six that came with the supplements, what each one actually brings to the table, then the Caitiff and the thin-bloods, for characters who belong to no one.
What a clan actually decides.
A clan sets four things: the three disciplines your character learns without owing anyone a thing, the bane every member carries, the compulsion that surfaces when the Beast takes over, and lineage, meaning your sire, their line and the debts that come with it.
It sets neither your sect, nor your morals, nor your standing in the city. Two Ventrue can sit one on the prince's council and the other in an Anarch barony. A clan is an inheritance you suffer, not a side you pick, and the best scenes come out of that gap.
The seven clans of the core book.
Celerity and Potence make them immediate fighters, but their anger spills over. One failed check turns a conversation into a crime scene.
Protean gives them animal shape and the earth for shelter. Their Beast is so close that a frenzy leaves them with animal features.
Auspex and Obfuscate make them formidable observers. Their derangement triggers in tense moments and costs them dice.
Obfuscate and Animalism make them untraceable and perfectly informed. They can never pass for mortal, which closes a good many doors.
Presence and Celerity make them brilliant court figures. Ugly surroundings strip their poise, literally, in dice.
Blood Sorcery opens rituals nobody else has. Since the pyramid fell, their blood no longer forges the bonds they once imposed.
Dominate and Presence make them the natural masters of a court. They can only feed on one very specific kind of prey, which complicates every night.
The six other clans, from the supplements.
Judges and assassins, long outside the Camarilla and now admitted. Vampire blood draws them, which makes every gathering dangerous.
A family rather than a clan, gathered around necromancy and trade with the dead. Their bite is agony, which rules out any discreet feeding.
They command shadow and cast no reflection, not even on a screen. Having moved from the Sabbat to the Camarilla, they arrive with a reputation to rebuild.
Heirs to the cult of Set, they get through temptation what others take by force. Light hurts them more than any other clan.
Always moving, they burn if they sleep twice in the same haven. Their illusions only fool those willing to believe.
Vicissitude lets them reshape flesh, their own included. They must sleep close to something that matters to them, soil, object or place.
The disciplines, three per clan.
Each clan grants three disciplines out of Animalism, Auspex, Blood Sorcery, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Oblivion, Potence, Presence and Protean. They run from one to five dots, every dot opens several powers to choose from, and nothing activates without a Rouse check that pushes Hunger up.
Staying inside your clan costs less experience. Reaching outside it means drinking the blood of a vampire who already has the discipline you want, and that dependency is a story in itself. This is what makes the clan such a structural choice: it decides what your character can do without asking anyone for anything.
The bane and the compulsion.
Every clan carries a bane, identical for all its members, whose severity depends on your generation: bane severity, one or two for most characters. The Ventrue can only feed on one very specific kind of mortal, the Nosferatu will never pass for a living being, the Brujah resists fury poorly.
The compulsion only shows up when the Beast takes over, on a bestial failure or a messy critical. The Storyteller then imposes a behaviour for the length of a scene: arrogance for the Ventrue, obsession for the Toreador, a hunger for secrets for the Nosferatu. The two are often confused, wrongly: the bane is permanent, the compulsion is an accident.
The Caitiff and the thin-bloods.
A Caitiff is a vampire without a clan: their blood carries no legible inheritance, so no discipline comes ready-made and no bane either. They pick their disciplines freely but pay more for them, and above all nobody in the city knows whom they belong to, which earns them contempt almost everywhere.
The thin-bloods go further. Born of a fourteenth generation or beyond, they stand so far from Caine that the sun burns them without killing them, and some still eat, sleep or father a child. Instead of disciplines they practise blood alchemy, and they are built from a list of merits and flaws of their own. Their appearance is said to herald Gehenna, which explains the welcome they receive.
Picking your clan without regrets.
The bane plays out in every scene, the disciplines once a night. A picky Ventrue or a Nosferatu who cannot walk in, that is the real character.
A clan hated in the city promises trouble, which can be an excellent choice. Ask the Storyteller first, not after your first audience.
Five Brujah give you five ways to break the same door. A mixed coterie covers the court, the street and the information.
Your sire explains why you exist, who you owe and who is watching you. The single most useful NPC in the whole chronicle.
A clan built for combat is bored through three hours of reception. Check what you will be doing when nobody is fighting.
Clan stereotypes exist because they work at the table. Take yours, then pick one precise point where your character escapes it.
Playing your clan online.
Three disciplines and their powers, a bane, a compulsion, a Hunger track and a Humanity track: on a paper sheet, half of what your clan gives you ends up forgotten at the bottom of the page.
Tomeus gathers the sheets, the Hunger dice, the backdrop and the music in a single browser window. Every player keeps their powers in sight, the Storyteller sees the whole coterie, and nobody installs a thing.
Frequently asked questions.
How many clans are there in Vampire: The Masquerade?
Thirteen in the fifth edition. Seven appear in the core book, the Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavians, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere and Ventrue, and the six others arrived with the supplements: the Banu Haqim, Hecata, Lasombra, Ministry, Ravnos and Tzimisce. The Salubri, now vanishingly rare, sit alongside them, as do the Caitiff and the thin-bloods, who are not clans.
Which clan should you pick for a first session?
One whose bane is easy to play out in a scene. The Brujah and the Toreador mostly ask you to hold a temperament, the Ventrue offer contacts and a constraint that is simple to remember. The Nosferatu force you to play someone who can never be seen, the Malkavians to play a lucidity that unsettles the table: wonderful roles, but more demanding for a first night.
Can you change clan, or belong to two?
No. Your clan comes from your sire's blood and cannot be left behind, unlike your sect, which can change in a single night. A vampire can learn another clan's disciplines by drinking their blood, paying more experience for them and keeping their own bane. Only diablerie, drinking the soul of a vampire closer to Caine, transforms your blood, and even then it does not change your clan.