Rules and Mechanics
- Blood Resonance
- Hunger
- Regular Dice Rolls
- Simple Tests
- Traits and Dice Pools
- Difficulties
- Contested Roll's
- Re-Rolling with willpower
- Working Together
- Rouse Check
- Conflicts (Combat) WIP
- Spending xp
Blood Resonance
Certain diciplines can be enhanced by a kindred should they choose feed themselves with the appropriate type of blood of a sufficient quality. Note that quality is subjective based on the type of blood resonance you are trying to acheive, for example spending a large amount of time seducing and then having sex with prey and feeding on them at the same time has a good chance activating sanguine blood resonance and therefore providing you benefits for the disciplines associated with sanguine blood resonance.
The various intesities of resonance come in temperaments, which can be well-balanced, fleeting, intense, or acute. An acute resonance is self-sustaining, an effect called "Dyscrasia" adopted from Hippocrates:
- Well-balanced temperament brings no closer advantages.
- Fleeting temperament brings no direct advantages, but can be used for Thin-Blood Alchemy
- Intense temperament increases a Discipline corresponding to the resonance type.
- Acute temperament has the same effect as intense but gives the drinker additional bonuses.
| Resonance | Element | Jungian Function | Humor/Hormone | Emotions | Affects |
| No Resonance | Oblivion | ||||
| Animal | Animalism, Protean | ||||
| Choleric | Fire | Feeling | Yellow bile, adrenaline | Angry, violent, bullying, passionate, envious | Celerity, Potence |
| Melancholic | Earth | Thinking | Black bile, thyroid | Sad, scared, intellectual, depressed, grounded | Fortitude, Obfuscate |
| Phlegmatic | Water | Intuition | Phlegm, pituitary | Lazy, apathetic, calm, controlling, sentimental | Auspex, Dominate |
| Sanguine | Air | Sensation | Blood, testosterone / estrogen | Horny, happy, addicted, active, flighty, enthusiastic | Blood sorcery, Presence |
All effects last until the vampire has their next drink, or reaches Hunger 5. The storyteller should decide circumstances where characters start with blood resonance however this can be used as an effective role playing tool and so a light hand may achive the best results
Hunger
Sating Hunger:
| Source | Hunger Sated | Time | Notes |
| Multiple small animals (three to four cats, a dozen or more rats) | 1 | One scene | Slakes no Hunger for vampires above Blood Potency 2 Animal Resonance; No Dyscrasia |
| Medium-sized animal (raccoon, dog, coyote) | 1 | One turn | |
| Large animal (horse) | 2 | One scene | |
| Blood bag | 1 | One turn | Slakes no Hunger for vampires above Blood Potency 2 No Resonance or Dyscrasia |
| Sip from human | 1 | Three turns | Includes licking wound closed |
| Maximum non-harmful drink from human | 2 | One scene | |
| Harmful drink from human that risks death unless treated | 1-4 | One turn per hunger sated | Aggravated damage equals Hunger slaked; Human rolls Strength + Stamina against a difficulty equal to Hunger slaked to survive blood loss |
| Human drained and killed | 5 | Five turns | The only way to reach Hunger 0 (zero) |
Regular Dice Rolls
Simple Tests
What are simple tests?
Usually day to day actions are free for player for example opening a door doesn't require any special checks as long as its unlocked. However for tasks or actions that are not part of regular life; if you want to do something harder than usual, like scaling a sheer cliff, reading Sumerian, or picking the lock on a door. You can make a simple test. Simple tests go like this:
- Describe what your character is trying to achieve and how.
- The Storyteller tells you which of your character’s Traits to use to assemble a dice pool.
- The Storyteller sets a Difficulty. This number may be kept secret, depending on circumstances and playstyle.
- Unless the test is an automatic win (see p. 120), you roll the dice pool and count your successes. Every die that shows 6 or higher is a success. A 0 on the die means a result of 10: a success.
- If the number of successes you get equals or exceeds the Difficulty, you win the test and accomplish that action.
Example:
Juan's character is canvassing the neighbourhood for information on movement in the area. The Storyteller decides this is a simple Resolve + Investigation test with a Difficulty of 2: straightforward. Juan's character has 3 dots in Resolve and 3 dots in Investigation and so he rolls 6 dice, getting three successes – more than enough for a win. The Storyteller gives Juan the info he sought: a clue he might be able to use.
Traits and Dice Pools
The Storyteller tells you which combination of Traits creates your dice pool, the number of ten-sided dice you will roll, for any action. Although most actions use a Skill pool (Attribute + Skill or Attribute + Discipline), a few only use Attributes to build the pool.
Often an Attribute pool represents a straightforward test of the given Attribute:
- Strength + Strength to lift a heavy beam off a coffin lid, for example.
- Sometimes, two Attributes combine to make a pool, such as Resolve + Composure tests to resist many Disciplines (p. 243). A character who lacks a Skill rolls only the pool’s Attribute, with no additional penalties.
Specialties:
Characters may possess greater aptitude or expertise in one particular aspect of a Skill. If a character attempts an action that falls within one or more of their specialties for the skill used, they gain one extra die for their dice pool.
Difficulties
| Difficulty of the Action | Required Success |
| Routine (striking a stationary target, convincing a loyal friend to help you) | 1 |
| Straightforward (seducing someone who’s already in the mood, intimidating a weakling) | 2 |
| Moderate (replacing a car’s sound system, walking a tightrope) | 3 |
| Challenging (locating the source of a whisper, creating a memorable piece of art)c | 4 |
| Hard (convincing a cop that this isn’t your cocaine, rebuilding a wrecked engine block) | 5 |
| Very Hard (running across a tightrope while under fire, calming a hostile and violent mob) | 6 |
| Nearly Impossible (finding one specific homeless person in Los Angeles in one night, flawlessly reciting a long text in a language you don’t speak) | 7+ |
Automatic Wins:
If a character’s dice pool is twice the task’s Difficulty, the Storyteller may opt to rule that the character wins automatically without a dice roll. Automatic wins streamline play and reduce distracting rules interludes. Apply them vigorously, especially outside of combat or for tests where character failure is boring: information-gathering tests, conversation-openers, or gambits that open up the scene or let it move forward dramatically.
Automatic wins seldom apply in combat or other stressful situations. A Storyteller willing to speed up opening rounds or to blow through a location they didn’t intend to be challenging, might allow automatic wins against mooks and nameless obstacle humans: renta-cops in the office lobby, not real cops in the streets.
Contested Roll's
Storytellers use contests to model direct opposition: e.g., hacking a monitored system, sneaking past a guard searching for you, or seducing an undercover vice cop.
In a contest, the acting character and their opponent each build a dice pool. This process does not have to use the same pool; the Storyteller might tell the sneaking character to use Dexterity + Stealth, but roll Wits + Awareness for the searching guard.
Basic contests go like this:
- Describe what you want your character to do and how.
- The Storyteller decides someone opposes your effort and tells you which of your character’s Traits to use to assemble a dice pool.
- The Storyteller chooses which of the opponent’s Traits to use to assemble a dice pool.
- Each contestant rolls their dice pool and counts their successes.
- If the acting character rolled equal to or more than the number of successes rolled by the opposing character, the test is a win.
- Player characters can definitely engage in contests against each other! The Storyteller still determines which character assembles which dice pool.
Examples:
| Scenario | Aggressor | Defender |
| The aggressor would like to sneak up on the defender | Dexterity + Stealth | Wits + Awareness |
Re-Rolling with willpower
Characters may spend 1 point of Willpower to re-roll up to three regular dice on any one Skill or Attribute roll, including a roll involving vampiric Disciplines. Characters may not spend Willpower to re-roll Hunger dice or a tracker roll, such as Willpower or Humanity. A spent point of Willpower counts as having sustained a level of Superficial damage to Willpower (see p. 126) and is marked as such.
Working Together
If two or more characters can effectively work together on a task, such as investigating a crime scene or tag-teaming a mark in a confidence game, roll the largest pool among the participants, adding one additional die for each character assisting that has at least one dot in the Skill involved. If no Skill is involved, anyone can assist.
Rouse Check
To make a Rouse Check, the player rolls a single die. As always, a result of 6 or higher succeeds. On a success, the vampire’s Hunger remains unchanged. On a failure, the vampire gains 1 more point of Hunger, and thus gains one more Hunger die. Any Hunger gained is added after the desired effect resolves, so it is perfectly fine to make the Rouse Check at the same time or even after any other dice test involved, as long as the Rouse die is clearly distinguishable and won’t be mistaken for part of the pool
Some conditions, such as increased Blood Potency, allow the player to roll two dice on some Rouse Checks and pick the highest. One success (6+) on either die prevents Hunger from increasing. (This is equivalent to re-rolling the Check.) At Hunger 5, the vampire’s body is too starved of blood to provide increased supernatural power. A vampire can never intentionally Rouse the Blood while at Hunger 5. If some outside factor forces a Rouse Check on the vampire, the player must make an immediate hunger frenzy test at Difficulty 4 (see p. 220). As always, failing a Rouse Check at Hunger 5 still activates the effect that caused the check, if any.
Conflicts (Combat) WIP
The Conflict Turn
What is a turn?
- Conflict happens in a flurry of blows, metaphorical or physical.
- One turn is defined as each participent within a given colfict having acted once.
- Turn order is arbitrary and so its up to the discression of the storyteller how loosely or rigidly they enforce a structure, the general approach is left to right around the table.
- Turns take as much time as the narrative indicates they should – two gunshots might happen in less than a second and end a fight, while a three-hour series of innuendos and courtesies might compose the first turn of an all-night seduction attempt. Thus, one roll does not necessarily represent one swing of a baseball bat, unless the Storyteller says it does.
- At the start of every turn of the conflict, each player declares their intent – what they are trying to achieve. This can be anything from trying to tackle the driver of an escaping motorcycle, to assisting in the seduction of a ghoul by distracting his domitor, to simply taking cover.
- After all players have made their intentions known the storyteller makes the same descision for all NPCs in the conflict
How do act in conflicts:
- Conflicts are still based on the idea of simple tests
- The storyteller tells the group which dice pools to build for the actions that they have chosen. The players then roll to attempt it.
- The dice pool used by each player to participate in conflict activities is known as their conflict pool.
- When characters act against each-other and their conflict pools are compatible enough in intent, their rolls will count as contested against eachother for example Leah engages in a Strength +Brawl vs Dexterity + Melee contest with the hook wielder.
- Some rolls may result in automatic success if they are not conflicted, for example taking cover when no one is attacking you.
- Some rolls may simply use difficulty values when they are not contested, for example Tracy rolls Composure + Firearms against Difficulty 2 (her target is in the open, coming right at her)
Consequences of conflicts:
- As with other basic contests, the side that scores the most successes wins their turn of that conflict.
- The winner subtracts the loser’s successes from their total conflict pool and applies the remainder as damage to one of the loser’s trackers; Willpower or Health (see Damage, p. 126).
- If the conflict is one-sided, such as when the defender is trying to avoid getting shot, only the attacker can inflict damage.
- If both participants are able to cause harm to their opponent, the conflict is two-sided, with both sides counting as attackers. In this case, the actions of both parties are merged into a single conflict roll.
Spending xp
| Trait | Trait | Notes |
| Increase an trait (stat) | The new level x 5 | |
| Increase Skill | The new level x 3 | |
| Clan Discipline | The new level x 5 | |
| Other Discipline | The new level x 7 | You must first gain the dicipline |
| Caitiff Discipline | The new level x 6 | |
| Oblivion Ritual | Ritual level x 3 | |
| Blood Sorcery Ritual | Ritual level x 3 | |
| Thin Blood Formula | Formula level x 3 |