Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

[NiteFox]

If you respond, please do not spoil any plot stuff.  Feel free to discuss builds and tips though.  I'm currently playing as a Gangrel using Protean for combat.
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My first character. Let's discuss yours.

There are two real problems with Gangrel characters: The first is that, combat-wise, a Brujah with good celerity can dish out much more damage combined with potence than a Gangrel with protean. The second is that a Gangrel's playstyle will coherce a player to naturally forego any ranged combat skills - Of course, ranged combat in this game isn't good at all until you get to the highest levels; and even then you can still shred anything with melee and unarmed combat without so much as breaking a sweat, close-quarters is the way to go throughout the entire game with a few minor exceptions (Unless you're a wussy Tremere or Ventrue). A few bosses might be easier with ranged, and one of the final bosses almost requires ranged combat - unless you get lucky in ways that I couldn't.

Although this is a spoiler, it's vital to know: You get to choose which group you can affiliate with for the endgame, and which group you side with depends on what final stages you go through to end the game. Ironically for Gangrel, the one that avoids 'the' final boss that meleeists would have problems with is also against the bloodline profile - I didn't pick it because, well, I was a Gangrel. And Gangrels wouldn't pick that path. If you are willing to swallow your pride, then you can go that way and be rewarded with an easier path and a suckier ending :)

Animalism: Okay, Nightwisp Ravens is a very useful skill. In fact, it's more useful than the rest of the animalism tree put together. Oh, sure; you can summon pretty Spectral Wolves to tear apart an opponent, but by investing instead in stealth and keeping Animalism at level one you can almost certainly guarantee a stealth kill using stealth to sneak and Ravens to distract. By the end of the game, 90% of my kills were neckbreakers or katana stabs, the rest were protean/fortitude scraps.

In fact, stealth is the way to go. If enemies are positioned in a corridor, chances are you won't be able to sneak up on them, but if there's enough room to get around them then do so - Stealth kills act as advertised, and a room full of enemies won't even flinch at the fact that their friends are vanishing one by one unless they happen to be looking directly at a stealth kill in action.

Otherwise, boost your unarmed, boost protean to the max, boost fortitude to the max and then you'll be something no Brujah can match - An infernal tank. Brujah might be able to kill with obscenely quick hit-and-fade celerity/potence strikes, but a Gangrel can practically wade in and soak up a stack of damage before dishing it back out.

Also, don't waste anything on Inspection. Apparently, this helps finding hidden items but nothing is implemented in such a way that any points in this attribute is useless. If, after dealing with combat/attribute skills, then protean/fortitude, and sneaking, invest in the likes of hacking and lockpicking since both skills are useful almost trhoughout the game; lockpicking moreso. Of course, if you want to be cheap you can save the points in hacking and find a list of all the computer passwords online ;) Stuff in computers is almost never critical with a few special circumstances, while there will always be locked doors.