In Vampire: The Requiem there are a number of interesting bloodlines that can help differentiate a character of any clan or covenant from his peers.
A number of books have already been published in this regard include Bloodlines: The Hidden, Bloodlines: The Legendary; Bloodlines: The Chosen as well as the various covenant and clan sourcebooks.
But how do you choose a bloodline for your specific Kindred character? The first thing most players complain about when they look through the various bloodlines is the arbitrary nature of many of the bloodlines.
They complain that the bloodline feel stupid and doesn't really offer anything of value while adding an additional weakness that will only serve to make the character weaker.
At first glance this is very true.
The bloodlines in Vampire: The Requiem are far from being powerhouses that offer amazing new powers to the Kindred that join them.
Some of the bloodline disciplines do offer interesting new tricks, but only at the high levels of the discipline and at the cost of the additional bloodline weakness.
If these are the only real advantages of a bloodline then what, my players often ask, is the point of even considering them? The answer lies not in what powers the bloodline offers versus the weakness of the same bloodline.
Bloodlines in The Requiem are meant, first and foremost, to be character development tools.
They are there to add to your character as a character - not as a set of numbers and statistics.
Take the Bron from Bloodlines: The Legendary, for example.
Their bloodline weakness ensures that wherever they take domain, that domain will rise up to oust them the longer they stay around (almost like the Prometheans but more proactive).
Their bloodline discipline, Crochan, offers some useful abilities including healing the wounds of other Kindred to stealing the Vitae of other Kindred.
Useful but not terribly 'exciting'.
If you pit the bonus against the weakness the question immediately arises: why on earth would I want to play one? People who ask this question obviously missed the 13 odd pages of back story, history and musings on their goals between the bloodline weakness and the bloodline discipline.
The 'point of the bloodline' if I may use so vulgar a term lies in those pages.
They speak of a character that is willing to defend their domain despite the domain rising up against them and who continuously seeks something that the character knows is probably unattainable but who will still - despite all this - keep going.
The Bron is just one example of a bloodline that many players may find unappealing from a statistical point of view but that, when examined a little more closely, become a bloodline that offers the right sort of character immense possibilities.
That being said, bloodlines are not always applicable to the chronicle your character may be part of.
Some bloodlines are terribly specific to certain settings or chronicles that explore certain themes while others are more easily inserted into any setting.
This leads to another mistake many players make.
They try and find ways to make a bloodline they want fit into the setting just for the sake of having a bloodline (more often than not they are after the bloodline discipline and couldn't really care less about what the bloodline is actually about).
These 'tacked on' bloodlines may just as well not exist the way these types of players portray them.
Once they have the discipline, they pay lip service to the bloodline's ideals and tend to forget about the bloodline's weakness when it suits them.
These cases need to be carefully monitored to prevent a Vampire game from becoming an arms race rather than a story.
At the end of the day bloodlines in Vampire: The Requiem need to be approached with a story in mind.
The bloodlines are special.
That is why there aren't many of a particular bloodline hanging around in most cities and why some of them are rare to the point of being myth.
Don't look at bloodlines as a way of making your character more powerful.
Use them as a tool to make your character memorable.