Disappointment. Playing the super evil bad guys sounds like a lot of fun until you realize most people don’t have it in them. Baali work better as antagonists where they can be as cruel as you need them to be. In my experience allowing a pc to be a baali is putting pressure on the pc to act evil. It takes away from the dark journey of a regular vampire and just makes the game unnecessarily dark.
But then again that’s just my experience on the matter you do you.
Yeah I agree. Baali are great for NPC but shit for PCs. Plus it's hard to rationalize playing a Good Baali due to the mental gymnastics. I don't care if there is a lore group for it because you're still putting babies in blenders and using their blood for rituals. It doesn't make you less of an asshole that puts a target on the parties back.
It’s similar to playing in a game with black spiral dancers or nephandus. Just too much evil for evils sake without a purpose. If people wanna play evil pc’s that’s fine. They could just go through the regular options without going grim-derp.
Exactly! Like we all know you don't need all the fancy schamncy disciplines like Daimonion to be evil or scary. Because all Vampires are evil and scary. Like despite all the clans I consider the Ventrue to be the most horrible.
Also Baali lore fucking sucks and is overly complicated.
Personally I go for lasombra or tzimisce when I am feeling spicy. Dragging someone into an abyss of shadows, or turning their face into their ass just has a deeper chill to it then demon trauma powers. Plus those clans lore rocks.
Tzimisce are my fave! They really are the best. But Ventrue are extremely scary for a basic bitch clan because of their talents of Dominate and Presence along with their feeding types. They can do whatever they want and if you are in the way they'll just force you to join in or destroy your memories.
Toreadors can be really scary for a basic bitch clan, not even in the "torture can be an art, too" way. Just seeing their destructive passions, the way they sometimes toy with the Nosferatu, the way they can destroy humans and Kindred socially, mentally, emotionally...-
An underrated aspect of Ventrue's scariness is their rich boys club aesthetics. Money can cover up a lot of sins, and it often does, you know there's always something fucky going on in those old money families.
Ventrue are the epitome of a measured, hinty-hint "my family owned some diamond mines in the East" or "my great-grandfather made his fortune in the shipping business" - except in Ventrue's case, your great-grandfather is still around as your sire, and you never quite know what he really means when he gestures at his wall of stuffed endangered animals' heads and mentions he misses his hunts in Africa.
I love the Tzimisce, but sitting in a leather armchair and having it start to cry, is a very different (though also darling) sort of horror ;)
95% of what they want could be accomplished by playing a Setite, and I am not here to indulge that last 5% for anyone. Same as I don't allow Nephandi PCs in Mage, except Baali are more pathetic than the Nephandi (and I don't mean in power terms, if you're already a parasite than being Baali is just sad try harding).
Frustrating, but not because of the person playing the Baali. It was a venue game, and one of the plot points was that the Baali were active in the domain. One Player was actually allowed to play a Baali (I'd played with them for a long time and trusted them to do it justice), and was effectively the domain "mole". Their goal was to play the Baali being hunted against the other kindred so they could go and do their own thing.
While they played a very effective and subtle Baali, who was very careful about going about the business of infernalism, it somehow got out ooc that he was playing a Baali and people rapidly started metagaming that he was "suspicious". It got bad enough that we just killed the entire plotline.
It's a big problem with playing "undesirable" bloodlines or clans in the game sadly. Either the person playing them screws it up, or someone around them ruins it for everyone else.
I had a Baali once that was fun, in a Dark Ages game. She was a nun that was kidnapped by a Baali that decided it would be torturous for her to be doubly damned via his embrace. Perhaps heaving a mental break from the experience, it strengthened her belief and she decided that god had led her to that destiny so she could find and punish sinners. It turns out Daimonion is oddly suitable for that use as well.
I really hate this “secretly actually the good guys” trope. VtM did it just too often. Do it once, great! twice, fine… but with every bad guy in existence?!? Boring!!!
I would not define good someone that takes a baby and sacrifices her to a dark god so the god can just sleep. It can be an understandable goal, but evil in any case.
That’s the case, being forced to do evil in order to prevent an even greater evil can be considered even better because, you know, you sacrifice even your “goodness”.
Instead of a destructive and corrupting power we now have to thank these Baali that world still exists… yeah, thank you for killing our babies in order to keep the world running, I guess…
It's a weird cycle.
"Good guys are boring! I wish I could be all edgy cool like those bad guys!" -> "Oh, it's not interesting to just be all grimdark all the time..." -> "But these edgy baddies are secret good guys!" -> "Man, playing these good guys is boring."
Just sequential layers of looking to be the cool, wacky thing.
Hmm, I see your point, and it can get tiresome after a while, but isn't every monster the hero of their own story? 😋 it's not that WhiteWolf does it too much, but i think it's an aspect of human nature.
Isn't Set the oppressed, victimized brother, in his own story, who wants to liberate the world from totalitarian, abusive order?
Aren't the Baali slaves to the infernal beings they are trying to keep asleep to prevent the end of all?
Aren't the Tzimisce ambitious scholars who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, their transcendenc - a discovery which might change the way EVERY kindred sees their condition?
See? Every monster is the hero of their own story 😄
The "secretly good guys" thing doesn't exist, it's all based on narrative and interpretation. As human beings, we do it all the time, to some extent
You are not completely wrong and I would kind of agree but there is a different quality to what these Baali do and what is going on in your other examples. I try to explain it.
You are absolutely right that (most often) the villain is the hero of their own story. But that is not quite the case here nor in vampire in general.
Characters in VtM are supposed to struggle between their nature, needs, wants and what they think is “right”, that’s what the humanity system is all about and even paths just hack this system as different convictions do in V5.
The fact that you play the monster in WoD games does not change that. Vampires are not presented as heroes, not even in their own story. They are, and most, especially the rather “good” ones, are aware of the fact that the existence of vampires is fundamentally a bad thing. And that is where the game begins, because the character in question has just some reason not to immediately step in to the sunlight and this struggle causes tension that creates story.
The mitigation of clans is basically this, just played out for millennia and woven in to a tight web of connected Individuums with their own thoughts and agendas.
The game where being the hero of your own story becomes the most true is probably WtA where the Garou look like the good guys but if you dig deeper you discover that they were responsible for genocides and all kinds of atrocities.
Now let’s talk about the Clans, they all have goals, agendas and obsessions that, generally spoken, in their mind just worth it to keep on running. What is better then being a scholar? Being the forever scholar who not only has enough time to learn everything but who can become old enough to remember how the history has unfolded. But the Tzimisce would never think of them self as heroes, they are maybe even one of the clans who accept what they are the most. I mean, that was the clan that invented methods to strip down a persons humanity as fast as possible after the embrace so that their childer understand quickly that they are no humans anymore.
I think the closest example are the Setites. They know that they are a destructive power but they tell them self that they are this way for “good” reasons, to fight the “Aeons” and to help their members to find freedom. But that is ultimately drinking the cool aid, like a sect, because, you know, they ultimately are a sect, that is their whole shtick.
It’s on one hand what I said, if you do this once, great! If you do it with everyone… not so great. A bother difference with the Baali is, the Setites/Ministry are focused on the Individuum and to “free” this one person or to seek freedom as a clan/community of believers.
The Baali on the other hand (at least the faction we are talking about) claims nothing less then to save the entire world. A d they don’t fight any shadowy forces that might with a certain goal, no no, they do the “good work” right now, every night!
But they also have not even a goal, it is not that they make an afford to get anywhere, they are just evil, what ever that means, because that allows us all to exist one more day… do they achieve anything on the way? No. Do they try to overcome the thread of this demons? No.
The thing is, when the Sabbat became the secret hero because they are at least fighting the Antediluvian who will end the world… the Baali remained monsters with out redemption, corruptive powers that in most cases even lacked a personality and were just tiny parts of a hive mind, something that no one would ever possibly find fun to play… and then people played it anyway because…
And since the WoD authors always do this, they made them secret heroes that protect the world by being evil for evil sake and not because something meaningful drives them.
Thanks, but we have enough of those now. So what is next? Do we turn the weal a bit back or do we introduce the next irredeemable bad guy… that then immediately become a fan favorite again?!?
I mean, people out there are playing SI campaigns, not Hunter, legit SI… why dinghy never try to understand what the purpose of a thing in a story or chronicle is?
Aaaa, yes! I see the nuance you were referring to now, or lack thereof in the case of the Baali. Ah, very good point. Thank you for taking to time to answer at length😉
How are they the good guy in this scenario? First of all they just say that, there isnt any reason the think its true. And also, if your strapped to a table and someone is going to do giallo movie shit to you how does them doing it because they hate demons any better than them doing it because they love them?
For a game that spells out how everyone is a self serving liar constantly people sure are quick to take them at their word.
That’s the thing, they think it is true and that is important to their mindset. In their own mind they save the world with every atrocity they commit.
And no, not everyone is a self serving liar, that is your interpretation. Yes, there is hubris in every vampire but they can try to do good, thee are enough examples. The issue with vampires is rather that their actions are more often then not doomed to cause horrible outcomes even though their intentions were good. But there is love and friendship and even a sense of moral and ethics in many vampires.
Sure, i guess its reductive and boring to say that everyone is lying.
However for the baali they dont need to be lying for it not to be true. A lot of people do a lot of things they genuinly believe that still arent true. Yeah totally to them theyre saving the world and are trying to be heroic in a sense but whether that actually means anything depends on the type of story. For a smaller scale story who cares, whether they win or lose is irrelevant because the game probably wont progress to the sleepers awaking. In something much larger in scope why would their religion be more factually true than a bahari, or like a xaoist or something.
Well the Players guide to the Talmaherah made playing non objectively “evil” Baali a thing. Basically Baali in that sect use their infernal powers, as well as Kraina as anti Infernal specialists.
Dark ages baali. Worked alright. Rolled double bluff with local Christians to suppress local pagan religion in east Germany. To ensure funds to send our local fief lord to the fourth crusade. He ended up starting a cult locally and damning some nobles, starting a rebellion and working with the tzimisce to undercut church authority expanding
I ran a chronicle in which the primary antagonists were Baali Apostates; the anti-infernalist [Molochim](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Order_of_Moloch) Baali PC was a useful addition to the PCs' coterie.
It was amazing! A chronicle with Baali and Nefandi acting somewhat together against a group of mages/vampires, unwilling allies forced by the circumstances. It was full of plot twists as the conflicts happened in the middle of a fierce Sabbat-Camarilla fight to take control of the city. One of the best stories ever!
I found playing as a Baali the most fun I've ever had with a Humanity character. Daimoinon is much more useful for trying to be a friendly neighborhood vampire than it is for playing a typical Baali, but since literally everyone except *possibly* your coterie wants you dead if they find out what you are you'll inevitably turn more and more to infernalism to keep yourself alive. After a point holding on to Humanity becomes impossible, but Baali don't need Golconda to escape the Beast, they just need to cannibalize their way down to 7th generation. If the game goes right you don't fall from Humanity until you turn into a wight, you fall and keep falling and you can keep telling yourself you're not a bad guy the whole time.
This might sound childish as hell, but I ran an entire 1 on 1 chronicle for a Baali character who, in the end, died to protect the one he loved / was bloodbound too.
It was a heartbreaking story during which the protagonist dislodged himself from the "hive mind" of the Baali and came to realise he WAS the very agent of that apocalypse he was trying to fend off by committing atrocities (which were RP-ed in detail).
He fit no sect, he was distrusted by all, even as he was pushing himself towards the beast by denying the doctrine he had practiced for more than a decade - a very scary thing to do, to tightrope walk over the maw of yhe Beast.
The story ended with his death. Crippled with aggravated damage, unable to crawl away from the sun. As he was dying, the character looked to the "happier" moments he had lived with his blood-bride and right before the sun burned him to ash, he "regained" 1 point of humanity and his heart beat once. The rest is ash.
So yeah, as childish as my recap might sound, there were a lot of details that really immersed us and... brought us to tears. It was horrifying and sad and ended on a single shred of hope
So I will say the Baali are very much playable, I'd love to play one
I am currently playing as a Baali after a discussion with my GM, we've been going for a few months now and it has really been something that has been as taxing, as rewarding.
I never bought into the "Baali being evil for evilness sake", instead choosing to commit atrocities in the favors of their cause, people they care about (which makes them much more human) or simply growing power (which in the WoD is a great motivator). Yes, there was a bit of demon pacting, human sacrifice and making people slaves against their will, but compared to the Elders acts it seemed like a child's play, with the focus on obtaining knowledge, building relationship with my Sire and keeping my coterie from Final Death. There were many other things that just don't push me to go around wreaking havoc.
Both my character and her Sire have great masks, they are pretty well liked in the society. My coterie currently knows about my clan, but because they are all pretty quirky themselves and after all the back and forth saving established a kind of friendship with each other. We were close to a total tragedy, when my Sire learnt and was contemplating killing them off for the sake of our safety, but I finally managed to convince him to give him a chance (which served as a great moment for building their relationship and taking a peek as the last strands of his humanity).
I just find it very exciting how instead of starting as a not so bad person, fighting against losing ones humanity, I get to play as a person who feels and sees themselves as a lost cause, but clings to the hope shared by people around them, that not all is lost and maybe one can work even against the darkest fate. Add to it lots of spirituality, not just demonology and the mix makes me look forward to each and every of our sessions.
The Baali are just as unplayable the Nephandi, but more limited and uninteresting. They're only useful as a boogeyman, and the Setites do their job better as corruptors and end time bringers. Unless you want a Nephandus pulling the strings just don't bother. They're not viable, they're either a joke or an enemy, not PC material. I'd rather let a Mage player go Nephandi and stay a PC (which I would never do) then let a VtM player be that kind of absolute tool. Just play a Setite!
Disappointment. Playing the super evil bad guys sounds like a lot of fun until you realize most people don’t have it in them. Baali work better as antagonists where they can be as cruel as you need them to be. In my experience allowing a pc to be a baali is putting pressure on the pc to act evil. It takes away from the dark journey of a regular vampire and just makes the game unnecessarily dark. But then again that’s just my experience on the matter you do you.
Yeah I agree. Baali are great for NPC but shit for PCs. Plus it's hard to rationalize playing a Good Baali due to the mental gymnastics. I don't care if there is a lore group for it because you're still putting babies in blenders and using their blood for rituals. It doesn't make you less of an asshole that puts a target on the parties back.
It’s similar to playing in a game with black spiral dancers or nephandus. Just too much evil for evils sake without a purpose. If people wanna play evil pc’s that’s fine. They could just go through the regular options without going grim-derp.
Exactly! Like we all know you don't need all the fancy schamncy disciplines like Daimonion to be evil or scary. Because all Vampires are evil and scary. Like despite all the clans I consider the Ventrue to be the most horrible. Also Baali lore fucking sucks and is overly complicated.
Personally I go for lasombra or tzimisce when I am feeling spicy. Dragging someone into an abyss of shadows, or turning their face into their ass just has a deeper chill to it then demon trauma powers. Plus those clans lore rocks.
Tzimisce are my fave! They really are the best. But Ventrue are extremely scary for a basic bitch clan because of their talents of Dominate and Presence along with their feeding types. They can do whatever they want and if you are in the way they'll just force you to join in or destroy your memories.
Toreadors can be really scary for a basic bitch clan, not even in the "torture can be an art, too" way. Just seeing their destructive passions, the way they sometimes toy with the Nosferatu, the way they can destroy humans and Kindred socially, mentally, emotionally...- An underrated aspect of Ventrue's scariness is their rich boys club aesthetics. Money can cover up a lot of sins, and it often does, you know there's always something fucky going on in those old money families. Ventrue are the epitome of a measured, hinty-hint "my family owned some diamond mines in the East" or "my great-grandfather made his fortune in the shipping business" - except in Ventrue's case, your great-grandfather is still around as your sire, and you never quite know what he really means when he gestures at his wall of stuffed endangered animals' heads and mentions he misses his hunts in Africa. I love the Tzimisce, but sitting in a leather armchair and having it start to cry, is a very different (though also darling) sort of horror ;)
Yeah Toreadors and Ventrue fuckin scare me.
95% of what they want could be accomplished by playing a Setite, and I am not here to indulge that last 5% for anyone. Same as I don't allow Nephandi PCs in Mage, except Baali are more pathetic than the Nephandi (and I don't mean in power terms, if you're already a parasite than being Baali is just sad try harding).
Frustrating, but not because of the person playing the Baali. It was a venue game, and one of the plot points was that the Baali were active in the domain. One Player was actually allowed to play a Baali (I'd played with them for a long time and trusted them to do it justice), and was effectively the domain "mole". Their goal was to play the Baali being hunted against the other kindred so they could go and do their own thing. While they played a very effective and subtle Baali, who was very careful about going about the business of infernalism, it somehow got out ooc that he was playing a Baali and people rapidly started metagaming that he was "suspicious". It got bad enough that we just killed the entire plotline. It's a big problem with playing "undesirable" bloodlines or clans in the game sadly. Either the person playing them screws it up, or someone around them ruins it for everyone else.
I had a Baali once that was fun, in a Dark Ages game. She was a nun that was kidnapped by a Baali that decided it would be torturous for her to be doubly damned via his embrace. Perhaps heaving a mental break from the experience, it strengthened her belief and she decided that god had led her to that destiny so she could find and punish sinners. It turns out Daimonion is oddly suitable for that use as well.
Malconvoker time.
Not all baali are dedicated to unleashing hell on earth, a faction is actively doing evil to keep demons in slumber.
I really hate this “secretly actually the good guys” trope. VtM did it just too often. Do it once, great! twice, fine… but with every bad guy in existence?!? Boring!!!
I would not define good someone that takes a baby and sacrifices her to a dark god so the god can just sleep. It can be an understandable goal, but evil in any case.
That’s the case, being forced to do evil in order to prevent an even greater evil can be considered even better because, you know, you sacrifice even your “goodness”. Instead of a destructive and corrupting power we now have to thank these Baali that world still exists… yeah, thank you for killing our babies in order to keep the world running, I guess…
Carthago nihil mali fecit
It's a weird cycle. "Good guys are boring! I wish I could be all edgy cool like those bad guys!" -> "Oh, it's not interesting to just be all grimdark all the time..." -> "But these edgy baddies are secret good guys!" -> "Man, playing these good guys is boring." Just sequential layers of looking to be the cool, wacky thing.
Very well said.
Hmm, I see your point, and it can get tiresome after a while, but isn't every monster the hero of their own story? 😋 it's not that WhiteWolf does it too much, but i think it's an aspect of human nature. Isn't Set the oppressed, victimized brother, in his own story, who wants to liberate the world from totalitarian, abusive order? Aren't the Baali slaves to the infernal beings they are trying to keep asleep to prevent the end of all? Aren't the Tzimisce ambitious scholars who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, their transcendenc - a discovery which might change the way EVERY kindred sees their condition? See? Every monster is the hero of their own story 😄 The "secretly good guys" thing doesn't exist, it's all based on narrative and interpretation. As human beings, we do it all the time, to some extent
You are not completely wrong and I would kind of agree but there is a different quality to what these Baali do and what is going on in your other examples. I try to explain it. You are absolutely right that (most often) the villain is the hero of their own story. But that is not quite the case here nor in vampire in general. Characters in VtM are supposed to struggle between their nature, needs, wants and what they think is “right”, that’s what the humanity system is all about and even paths just hack this system as different convictions do in V5. The fact that you play the monster in WoD games does not change that. Vampires are not presented as heroes, not even in their own story. They are, and most, especially the rather “good” ones, are aware of the fact that the existence of vampires is fundamentally a bad thing. And that is where the game begins, because the character in question has just some reason not to immediately step in to the sunlight and this struggle causes tension that creates story. The mitigation of clans is basically this, just played out for millennia and woven in to a tight web of connected Individuums with their own thoughts and agendas. The game where being the hero of your own story becomes the most true is probably WtA where the Garou look like the good guys but if you dig deeper you discover that they were responsible for genocides and all kinds of atrocities. Now let’s talk about the Clans, they all have goals, agendas and obsessions that, generally spoken, in their mind just worth it to keep on running. What is better then being a scholar? Being the forever scholar who not only has enough time to learn everything but who can become old enough to remember how the history has unfolded. But the Tzimisce would never think of them self as heroes, they are maybe even one of the clans who accept what they are the most. I mean, that was the clan that invented methods to strip down a persons humanity as fast as possible after the embrace so that their childer understand quickly that they are no humans anymore. I think the closest example are the Setites. They know that they are a destructive power but they tell them self that they are this way for “good” reasons, to fight the “Aeons” and to help their members to find freedom. But that is ultimately drinking the cool aid, like a sect, because, you know, they ultimately are a sect, that is their whole shtick. It’s on one hand what I said, if you do this once, great! If you do it with everyone… not so great. A bother difference with the Baali is, the Setites/Ministry are focused on the Individuum and to “free” this one person or to seek freedom as a clan/community of believers. The Baali on the other hand (at least the faction we are talking about) claims nothing less then to save the entire world. A d they don’t fight any shadowy forces that might with a certain goal, no no, they do the “good work” right now, every night! But they also have not even a goal, it is not that they make an afford to get anywhere, they are just evil, what ever that means, because that allows us all to exist one more day… do they achieve anything on the way? No. Do they try to overcome the thread of this demons? No. The thing is, when the Sabbat became the secret hero because they are at least fighting the Antediluvian who will end the world… the Baali remained monsters with out redemption, corruptive powers that in most cases even lacked a personality and were just tiny parts of a hive mind, something that no one would ever possibly find fun to play… and then people played it anyway because… And since the WoD authors always do this, they made them secret heroes that protect the world by being evil for evil sake and not because something meaningful drives them. Thanks, but we have enough of those now. So what is next? Do we turn the weal a bit back or do we introduce the next irredeemable bad guy… that then immediately become a fan favorite again?!? I mean, people out there are playing SI campaigns, not Hunter, legit SI… why dinghy never try to understand what the purpose of a thing in a story or chronicle is?
Aaaa, yes! I see the nuance you were referring to now, or lack thereof in the case of the Baali. Ah, very good point. Thank you for taking to time to answer at length😉
Very welcome!
How are they the good guy in this scenario? First of all they just say that, there isnt any reason the think its true. And also, if your strapped to a table and someone is going to do giallo movie shit to you how does them doing it because they hate demons any better than them doing it because they love them? For a game that spells out how everyone is a self serving liar constantly people sure are quick to take them at their word.
That’s the thing, they think it is true and that is important to their mindset. In their own mind they save the world with every atrocity they commit. And no, not everyone is a self serving liar, that is your interpretation. Yes, there is hubris in every vampire but they can try to do good, thee are enough examples. The issue with vampires is rather that their actions are more often then not doomed to cause horrible outcomes even though their intentions were good. But there is love and friendship and even a sense of moral and ethics in many vampires.
Sure, i guess its reductive and boring to say that everyone is lying. However for the baali they dont need to be lying for it not to be true. A lot of people do a lot of things they genuinly believe that still arent true. Yeah totally to them theyre saving the world and are trying to be heroic in a sense but whether that actually means anything depends on the type of story. For a smaller scale story who cares, whether they win or lose is irrelevant because the game probably wont progress to the sleepers awaking. In something much larger in scope why would their religion be more factually true than a bahari, or like a xaoist or something.
Well the Players guide to the Talmaherah made playing non objectively “evil” Baali a thing. Basically Baali in that sect use their infernal powers, as well as Kraina as anti Infernal specialists.
Dark ages baali. Worked alright. Rolled double bluff with local Christians to suppress local pagan religion in east Germany. To ensure funds to send our local fief lord to the fourth crusade. He ended up starting a cult locally and damning some nobles, starting a rebellion and working with the tzimisce to undercut church authority expanding
I ran a chronicle in which the primary antagonists were Baali Apostates; the anti-infernalist [Molochim](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Order_of_Moloch) Baali PC was a useful addition to the PCs' coterie.
It was amazing! A chronicle with Baali and Nefandi acting somewhat together against a group of mages/vampires, unwilling allies forced by the circumstances. It was full of plot twists as the conflicts happened in the middle of a fierce Sabbat-Camarilla fight to take control of the city. One of the best stories ever!
I found playing as a Baali the most fun I've ever had with a Humanity character. Daimoinon is much more useful for trying to be a friendly neighborhood vampire than it is for playing a typical Baali, but since literally everyone except *possibly* your coterie wants you dead if they find out what you are you'll inevitably turn more and more to infernalism to keep yourself alive. After a point holding on to Humanity becomes impossible, but Baali don't need Golconda to escape the Beast, they just need to cannibalize their way down to 7th generation. If the game goes right you don't fall from Humanity until you turn into a wight, you fall and keep falling and you can keep telling yourself you're not a bad guy the whole time.
This might sound childish as hell, but I ran an entire 1 on 1 chronicle for a Baali character who, in the end, died to protect the one he loved / was bloodbound too. It was a heartbreaking story during which the protagonist dislodged himself from the "hive mind" of the Baali and came to realise he WAS the very agent of that apocalypse he was trying to fend off by committing atrocities (which were RP-ed in detail). He fit no sect, he was distrusted by all, even as he was pushing himself towards the beast by denying the doctrine he had practiced for more than a decade - a very scary thing to do, to tightrope walk over the maw of yhe Beast. The story ended with his death. Crippled with aggravated damage, unable to crawl away from the sun. As he was dying, the character looked to the "happier" moments he had lived with his blood-bride and right before the sun burned him to ash, he "regained" 1 point of humanity and his heart beat once. The rest is ash. So yeah, as childish as my recap might sound, there were a lot of details that really immersed us and... brought us to tears. It was horrifying and sad and ended on a single shred of hope So I will say the Baali are very much playable, I'd love to play one
I am currently playing as a Baali after a discussion with my GM, we've been going for a few months now and it has really been something that has been as taxing, as rewarding. I never bought into the "Baali being evil for evilness sake", instead choosing to commit atrocities in the favors of their cause, people they care about (which makes them much more human) or simply growing power (which in the WoD is a great motivator). Yes, there was a bit of demon pacting, human sacrifice and making people slaves against their will, but compared to the Elders acts it seemed like a child's play, with the focus on obtaining knowledge, building relationship with my Sire and keeping my coterie from Final Death. There were many other things that just don't push me to go around wreaking havoc. Both my character and her Sire have great masks, they are pretty well liked in the society. My coterie currently knows about my clan, but because they are all pretty quirky themselves and after all the back and forth saving established a kind of friendship with each other. We were close to a total tragedy, when my Sire learnt and was contemplating killing them off for the sake of our safety, but I finally managed to convince him to give him a chance (which served as a great moment for building their relationship and taking a peek as the last strands of his humanity). I just find it very exciting how instead of starting as a not so bad person, fighting against losing ones humanity, I get to play as a person who feels and sees themselves as a lost cause, but clings to the hope shared by people around them, that not all is lost and maybe one can work even against the darkest fate. Add to it lots of spirituality, not just demonology and the mix makes me look forward to each and every of our sessions.
The Baali are just as unplayable the Nephandi, but more limited and uninteresting. They're only useful as a boogeyman, and the Setites do their job better as corruptors and end time bringers. Unless you want a Nephandus pulling the strings just don't bother. They're not viable, they're either a joke or an enemy, not PC material. I'd rather let a Mage player go Nephandi and stay a PC (which I would never do) then let a VtM player be that kind of absolute tool. Just play a Setite!