Melee build advice

[Frank Horrigan]

So I just installed the unofficial patch and decided to restart my first playthrough. I plan on going melee with persuasion and seduction (playing as a female obv) with a bit of security. Im just stuck between clans atm. I was playing Brujah but now I'm considering Ventrue. Brujah was nice for the potence and celerity but Ventrue has fortitude as well as extra dialogue. Would I be gimping myself for going Ventrue? Which should I pick?

[Vepar]

If you wanna go melee, Brujah has Potence, which is kind of the master of melee. Ventrue will have Fortitue and Presence, so you can't go wrong there either, Presence will make everyone around you have a huge debuff. Though, i'm not sure how well that works on bosses. Still, if you have enough melee skill and a good weapon, it'll be fine.

And don't just have a bit of security, have just enough that you can pick the "current" locks with bloodbuff, and have some XP floating around to then raise either security or dexterity, whichever is cheaper at the time.

Same with hacking, have just enough, so you can raise it later.

You have plenty of XP to get that you can max out all the disciplines, have one combat skill and several utility skills at various levels so no need to force gimp yourself.

[ciberido]

In my experience Celerity is way more powerful in combat that Fortitude or Potence, so if you really want the clan with the most powerful melee ability, As Vepar mentioned, Presence is pretty damn useful in combat, especially if you get up close and personal, and it does help with bosses.

With celerity, potence, and presence, Brujah are absolute monsters at short-range combat (melee or unarmed).

Ventrue is certainly doable but won't be quite as much of a combat monster.

But if you really would prefer one clan for role-play reasons but another clan's disciplines look good, just use the console to swap out disciplines. You don't have to give yourself MORE ranks, just shift ranks from whatever clan discipline you like least to Celerity.

[dwarfpcfan]

The best melee is brujah in this game potence+celerity= dead enemies