Did you use a recent version of the patch? If not, check it out and look at whatever changes have been made since you last played.
Regarding mods, see
here.
I looked at some mods, but none of them seemed... that great. There's the Camarilla Edition, which has a lot of balance changes and weird shit I don't like (spend money on your computer to raise skills! wow!), the Clan Quest mod (questionable clan-specific quests along with questionable voice-acting), some basic gameplay change/balance mods that are interesting in their own right but probably aren't what you're looking for, and some other probably-unfinished mods that have their own weird and ill-considered design decisions. Oh, and some sort of companion mod... that lets you possess your companions and sire your own vampire children for some godawful reason.
In my last game, I installed Wesp's patch (the Plus installation), and made some changes similar to those of the P&P mod, nearly eliminating feed-healing, slowing down auto-healing, adding stamina/2 to lethal soak for vampires (although it rounds in a weird manner), and lowering blood cost for certain disciplines while greatly increasing the duration of most/all of the passive disciplines. Along with getting rid of the annoying sounds that certain disciplines make while active (stupid-ass Obfuscate whispers), and some of the visual effects (like the Potence electro-fists, Obfuscate blur effect, and so forth, partly because they are stupid and partly because the machine I'm playing it on doesn't handle the particle effects well).