Blood sorcery isn't very usefull

[abbo1993]

As of title, I feel that blood sorcery could have received a bit more love especially considering that in the tabletop a good sorcerer could have forgone the use of most skills by using blood rituals alone. The courier isn't even an outright fledgelling so he should at least be able to use more offensive rituals (which he can kinda do when dealing with Caul but only there).

[Macro Tofu]

True, blood sorcery unlocks a few unique options, but I've seen no real change in game when those options were selected. And we can't use it in combat as well.

[Generalissimo]

Also finding it somewhat lacking.
Funny because most abilities have a few more applications.

[Marshall]

I recall it being useful in protecting those explorers in the biosphere level, but yeah, I sort of agree. Most of it's applications seemed to be info gathering, which generally involved skills that my Tremere characters already had plenty of points in to succeed without spending Vitae.

Like in the hospital mission, I can do the autopsy normally, or I can do it with the aid of blood magic to get... the exact same results! AFAIK, anyway. I certainly wished there were more combat options for it. While you can talk your way out of most confrontations, sometimes you may want to go into combat and it's odd to have to 'multiclass' a bloodmage into guns or melee combat to make sure you can fight competently as well.

Actually, other than the optional fights with Invidia and Giselle I don't remember any direct combat applications you can use it for. Maybe it's something they can revisit in a future update, but I'm still happy with my Tremere playthroughs if they can't.

[SteveTheTurret]

I'm totally satisfied with Blood Sorvery in Night Road. It is useful and intersting, how exectly your character may solve problems with it. Agreed, it is not very useful in fights, but game is simply not so much about fights. There is so much situations, when fighting skills and physical stats do not help you at all. Also closer to the end your character can learn to attack hunters with acid blood.

[Marshall]

I'm 99% certain they added more options for Blood Sorcery in the last big update. At least I don't remember having the option to mind-wipe the humans in the intro with it to preserve the Masquerade. There still might not be much direct combat use of it (though I did also see and appreciate that one blood acid trap Steve mentioned, not sure if that's new or not), but overall I think Blood Sorcery options are very well integrated throughout the game. Like enchanting the bad info to sell to that hunter in the club mission, good money to be had that way.

On a related note, while I can see a similar discussion perhaps to be had about Oblivion, (Not sure about Chimerstry, as I haven't played Ravnos yet), I think Oblivion's uses are pretty good too. In combat it often can be used as an optional bonus, described as your shadows slowing down or immobilizing your opponent, and then you choose what course of action to actually take. I did a Lasombra play-through and found Oblivion plenty powerful, and using it in combat that way lets us pair it with whatever other skill set we want to build towards.

Anyway, while no discipline or skill will be as potentially powerful as in the tabletop RPG, where we can come up with all kinds of creative-but-unintended uses or houserules for them, I think the Night Roads devs have done a great job of keeping every discipline useful.

[SteveTheTurret]

Originally posted by Marshall:

I don't remember having the option to mind-wipe the humans in the intro with it to preserve the Masquerade.

I played Day 1 and it was there. I had Thaumaturgy 2.

[ryttu3k]

There are a lot more Blood Sorcery options in the update, yeah. There's a fun one with Julian's initial test in the parking garage, a few in Scheffler (one that uses Koldunic sorcery), at least three opportunities to use Clinging of the Insect (hope you don't mind spiders!), one to help track Reremouse, all sorts.