Character Creation
Kindred
Our sheets are similar to the one in the book, but not exact
Name and Clan Choosing a Clan will affect things like the Disciplines you’d excel in and your clans bane. It may also inform you of what you background is or how you were embraced
Brujah - Punks, Rebels, Anti Establishment
Gangrel - Animalistic traits
Malkavian - Madmen, Lunatics, Jesters
Nosferatu - Creepy, Scary, Sewer Rats, Lepers
Toreador - Hedonists, Artists, Divas
Tremere - Warlocks, Blood Witches, Thaumaturges
Ventrue - Warlords, Tyrants, Clan of Kings
Caitiff - Unwanted, Clanless, Loners, Trash
Thin-Blood - Mistakes, Run-Off, Weaklings, Chameleons. Thin Blood is VTM on hard mode.
Concept: A basic description of your job/talent/current position in life, “What are you at night?”
Chronicle: The name of the game your in, often referred to as “Blank” by Night
Predator:** How you feed, affects your Specialties, and additional dots in places like stats, merits/advantages and flaws.
Alleycat - Under force or threat
Bagger - Preserved or dead blood
Blood Leech - Other vampires
Cleaver - Covertly from mortal friends or family
Consensualist - Blood with consent
Farmer - Animals
Osiris - From your cult, church or fans
Sandman - Sleeping victims
Scene Queen - Feed within a specific subculture
Siren - By seduction and sex
Ambition and Desire
Ambition - Long term goal
Desire - Short term goal
Generation: Ranges from 4th to 16th. The lower the number, the more powerful and old of a vampire you are (the closer to Caine) from when you were embraced. This affects your Blood Potency. Also gives you some bonus XP if Neonate or Ancillae to spend after character creation.
Childer - Fairly new vampires, embraced within the last 15 years
Neonates - Between 1940 and a decade ago
Ancillae - Between 1780 and 1940
Sire: Who embraced you
Public Description: Simply describe who you are. You can make this public knowledge or keep it to yourself.
Equipment: Add items and equipment as you'd like.
Attributes and Skills
Attributes
One Attribute at 4; three Attributes at 3; four Attributes at 2; one Attribute at 1
| •••• | ••• | •• | • | Total |
Attributes | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 22 dots |
Skill Point Distribution
Jack of All Trades: One Skill at 3; eight Skills at 2; ten Skills at 1
Balanced: Three Skills at 3; five Skills at 2; seven Skills at 1
Specialist: One Skill at 4; three Skills at 3; three Skills at 2; three Skills at 1
| •••• | ••• | •• | • | Total |
Jack of All Trades | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 22 dots |
Balanced | 0 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 26 dots |
Specialist | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 22 dots |
Specialties
If the Skills Academics, Craft, Performance, or Social Skills were taken, add specialty in those areas. (1 extra die if in a situation where your specialty helps)
Everyone takes 1 free Specialty in any Skill they have at least 1 dot in.
Don’t forget that your Predator style will give you a Specialty as well.
Disciplines
Disciplines give you Powers. Think of it like Spells or getting to use your Vampiric given abilities. Many of which cause you to roll a Rouse check and possibly get hungrier. Power Rouse checks can be re-rolled depending on your Blood Potency level.
Choose two of your clan Disciplines (2 dots in one and 1 in the other)
Caitiffs can choose any two Disciplines
Thin-Bloods have no automatic Disciplines
Background
Chronicle Tenets
A way to add some rules for the clan to follow (mostly led by the ST) Many of these rules ending with, if broken, the character loses Humanity points, almost like Moral commandments.
Examples would be: No witnesses; Clean up after yourself; Don’t let the beast win; Accept your condition and that you are no longer human; Cultivate your wisdom, your power and understand your condition; Do not kill the innocent; Act like a person, not a Beast; Do not cause unnecessary suffering.
Touchstones: Select 1 to 3. A touchstone is a living mortal that is, in a way, close/important to your vampire and represents a value or moral that your vampire looks to achieve.
Convictions: Those values that a touchstone represents. A Conviction is always tied to a Touchstone and vice versa.
Clan Bane: Directly is given by which Clan you’ve chosen (thin-bloods excluded)
Advantages/Merits and Flaws: Each dot gives or removes an extra die when the test pertains to one of these Merits or Flaws. If you start off as Ancillae, add two points in Advantages and 2 points in Flaws.
Add 7 points on Advantages, and take 2 points of Flaws in addition to the ones gained by choosing your Predator type
Some Merits/Flaws have you specify further who or what the situation refers to
Thin-Bloods: Choose 1-3 Thin-Blood Merits and an equal amount of Thin-Blood Flaws
Lore Sheet
Choose a Lore Sheet
You can place points in these just like you would Advantages
Blood Potency: Directly relates to the Generation you’ve chosen to start at.
14th - 16th = 0 Blood Potency
13th - 12th = 1 Blood Potency
11th - 10th = 2 Blood Potency
Blood Surge: Give yourself free dice for any Skill test, but requires a Rouse check
Damage Mended: Every Rouse check rolled, you may heal 1 Superficial damage
Discipline Power Bonus: Add one die to the test when using Disciplines
Discipline Rouse Check Re-Roll: Re-Roll the Rouse check required for specified level or Power used.
Feeding Penalty The higher the Blood Potency, the harder it is to slake you Hunger
Bane Severity Directly relates to you Clan Bane.
Resonance: Refers to the type of blood you’ve recently fed on, imparting a bonus die to their specific Discipline until your next feeding.
Choleric - Celerity and Potence
Melancholy - Fortitude and Obfuscate
Phlegmatic - Auspex and Dominate
Sanguine - Blood Sorcery and Presence
Empty - Oblivion (Players Guide)
Animal Blood - Animalism and Protean
Background Features: Fill in as you see fit
Mechanics
Willpower = Composure + Resolve
Health = Stamina + 3
Hunger is normally always 1 unless you kill a human while feeding (then 0)
You gain hunger as you make Rouse checks
At 5 Hunger, if you fail another Rouse check you Frenzy and the Beast takes over until you’ve fed and killed.
Humanity is set to 7 and can be affected by your Predator type
You can gain and lose Humanity while playing.
Stains are gained during play and at the end of a session you roll a Remorse test to see if you lose 1 Humanity or remove all Stains. 1 Success removes Stains.
The number of dice rolled equals the blank spaces between Humanity and Stains.
Starting Experience starts at 0 for Childer; 15 for Neonates; and 35 for Ancillae
You can spend your XP in many ways
Impaired means you remove 2 dice from any test using that core Ability.
Additional Actions: Create your own actions here
Building a Coterie
Start with 1 coterie dot per player
Add any unspent Advantage dots not used during character creation
Set up Hunting Grounds: Domain in the city
Add dots and gain Coterie Traits
Can add Coterie Flaws for more Coterie dots to spend
Core Mechanics
Dice Rolling / Tests
Roll a number of d10s equal to the Ability and Skill your ST asks for
Check Hunger. Any number of Hunger dice will take the place of regular dice being rolled in that Pool
Success Anything that shows a 6 or higher
Equal or over the Difficulty is an overall successful test
Win at a cost: At least one success die and then choosing a bad outcome for you but a successful test overall.
Critical Rolls
Criticals: Result of 10 on two regular dice. A Crit adds two additional successes over a normal roll. Each pair of 10’s equals 4 successes.
Messy Criticals: When 1 or more of the d10s required for a Crit are Hunger Dice. (Think of it like the beast inside of you making the critical and not the person)
Failures
Failure: At least 1 success but not enough to beat the Difficulty
Total Failure: 0 Successes at all
Beastial Failure: When the player rolls a 1 on one or more Hunger die in addition to failing a test.
Re-Rolling Using Willpower Use 1 Willpower point to re-roll up to 3 regular dice. Can’t re-roll Hunger dice or a tracker roll such as Willpower or Humanity or any Checks. Re-rolling counts as 1 superficial damage to Willpower.
Assisting rolls: Roll 1 die for each player assisting in the Test if they have at least 1 dot in the Skill being used.
Checks Any “Check” only uses a single d10 and garners success or failure from that single die.
Conflict/Combat
Order of resolution
Close combat between engaged people
Ranged combat
Newly initiated physical combat
Everything else
Ties are settled by either Dexterity + Wits or number of Dots of the skill used
Conflict is usually a contest between two people.
Three Turns and out
Attempt to end a conflict within 3 turns
Allow players or NPCs to roll one last time to determine course of the fight.
If NPCs have taken more loses overall, they my just break off the fight.
If the Players have won more contests or have taken less Aggravated damage, have them be victorious.
Change the situation.
Initiate 1 Roll Conflict: ST will set a difficulty and the Players will need to beat it to win the conflict.
Ranged Combat
Defender : Dexterity + Athletics; No cover = -2 die from defense pool, Superior cover = +1 or +2.
Shooter : Composure + Firearms.
Hand to Hand
Strength + Brawling.
Dodging = Dexterity + Athletics to defend (non damaging no matter the margin of success).
Multiple opponents
Defending - Lose one die in Pool for each time an opponent faces them that turn.
Attacking - Split your Pool total among the number of opponents being targeted with an attack.
Social Conflict
May call for things like Charisma + Persuasion or even Manipulation + Etiquette.
Damage
Either way conflict goes your character or the NPC will take damage with the total being the amount of successes over the Difficulty or over the number of Successes the opponent gets.
Additional Damage:
Add a weapons damage rating to the total Health damage.
Added Social/Willpower damage is based on the audience.
Two types of damage
Superficial
Physical - Non Lethal weapons to humans, and Standard Weapons to Vampires.
Social - Embarrassment or bruised ego that has no long lasting effect on target’s image.
Aggravated
Physical - Sharp and Piercing weapons to humans, and Fire, Sunlight, or creatures claws to Vampires.
Social - Revealing secrets about the target or attacks from close friends/trusted figures.
Torpor and Final Death
Torpor
Look shriveled in appearance, cannot use Disciplines or react to stimuli. Will wake from Torpor in a time dictated by Humanity Rating.
Test to awaken after Torpor period is up if a victim is nearby.
Hunger 4 in order to awaken fully from Torpor.
Can also be fed enough to stake 1 Hunger by Kindred who's Blood Potency is higher than your own.
Three ways to enter Torpor
Failing a Rouse Check at Hunger 5 when awakening.
Taking enough Aggravated Health damage to fill their entire tracker. They will unconsciously attempt to heal 1 point of Aggravated damage each night, if they heal all the damage they may wake.
Entering this state voluntarily. During this time their hunger will still increase each night.
Final Death
Truly dead.
Causes: Fire, Sunlight, Decapitation, Dismemberment, or total destruction of the body.
Final Death is generally only met once a vampire's Health tracker is filled completely and they've entered Torpor, any additional Aggravated damage from fire, sunlight, decapitation, or total destruction of the body will cause Final Death.
Staked
A wooden stake through the heart will immobilize a vampire, essentially paralyzing them.
Healing
**Superficial**
Health:
Mortals - Start of session, number of superficial damage equal to Stamina.
Vampires - Rousing the Blood each turn.
Willpower:
Mortals and Vampires heal Willpower at the start of each session equal to their Composure or Resolve (use higher).
Aggravated
Health:
Mortals - Intelligence + Medicine with Difficulty = Aggravated Damage, +1 to Difficulty if attempting to heal self, heals for half of users Medicine rating.
Vampires: 1 level of Aggravated Health damage per night with a Rouse Check.
Willpower: Start of next session, a character that acts towards their Ambition heals 1 level of Aggravated Willpower damage although the ST can determine whether or not this happens.
Experience Points
1 Point at the end of each session
1 Point for each story completed
For faster gameplay the ST can award 2 points per player at the end of each session
Trait | Experience Points |
Increase Attribute | New Level x 5 |
Increase Skill | New Level x 3 |
New Specialty | 3 |
Clan Discipline | New Level x 5 |
Other Discipline | New Level x 7 |
Caitiff Discipline | New Level x 6 |
Blood Sorcery Ritual | Ritual Level x 3 |
Thin-Blood Formula | Formula Level x 3 |
Advantage | 3 per dot |
Blood Potency | New Level x 10 |
ST Specific
Running NPCs
Four Types of NPCs - Mostly only their character sheet differs, but they are run just like a Player Character when if comes to building Dice Pools.
Mortals - Ghouls : Retainers/Servants of Kindred Addicted to Vitae and obedient, Some have Special descriptors. Read those before running the NPC
Animals - Simple
Vampires - Same as Players
Creatures of Horror: As they don't suffer from Hunger, If a Creature of Horror uses a Discipline, a failed Rouse Check causses 1 point of Superficial Health or Willpower.
Taking Half:
Adding up the number of Dice in a Pool for an NPC, halfing it, and using that number as the number of Successes achieved by the NPC automatically.
Setting a Difficulty:
Set a difficulty level: 1-7+ (+1 difficulty to impossible tasks if faulty equipment is being used) Try not to raise or lower difficulty by more than two as the ST.
The Golden Rule
THERE ARE NO RULES