Today's answers:

There are 5 different armors each clan can get which will change their look, but no customization

Replayability - I believe this game will have a high rate of replayability, but it depends on what your criteria are for replayability. The main story arc is fairly the same in terms of things you need to do, but how you accomplish your goals and how you treat people (and therefore how they treat you)can give the game a totally different feel. For instance, a super beautiful/suave Toreador is going to have a totally different game play experience from a Nosferatu that is a stealthy assassin who has to be careful around NPCs to not violate the masquerade. And then there's the Malkavians who have completely different dialogs than all the other characters. Besides your choice of clan there's also the feats you choose to emphasize, whether you want to play as a high humanity character or kill everything that moves, etc.

There are no Lasombra in Bloodlines. We did have a quest involving one, but it was dropped.

You can buy or find research manuals, and you can 'use' them if your Research feat is high enough. When you 'use' a manual, it permanently ups a stat. There are varying degrees of how high you can raise certain stats, there's no across the board rule about how high you can raise a stat by using the manuals.

leon