House Rules
House Rules for Dark Ages: Vampire
System Stuff
- Prescience - Covers my rules for the seers of the Cappadocian and Malkavian clans.
- Maturation - Rules for downtime!
- Library - New Background for research and information.
- Diseases - Diseases with systems!
- Retainers - Notes on Retainers
- Lores - Do I know that?
Vampires Around The World
- Upyri - Rules for the European vampires of Clans Nosferatu, Gangrel and Tzimisce.
- Asuras - Indian undead possessed by demons, sometimes called Ravnos by uneducated Westerners.
- Followers of Apophis - Egyptian monsters, masters of darkness and corruption.
Clans
- Cappadocians
- Cappadocians exude a spiritual blight as a result of their innate closeness to death. Insects die if they come too close and plants wither at the touch of a Graverobber. Extended periods of time in physical contact with a Cappadocian cause inexplicable weakness and fatigue, inflicting one level of Bashing damage per hour. This unnatural Aura of Death unnerves mortals and even vampires, adding 1 to the difficulty of all Social rolls not based on Intimidation. Finally, Cappadocians may never spend blood to appear more human; they are far closer to a corpse than a living being and cannot pretend otherwise.
- Gangrel
- New Weakness: A Gangrel's Beast displays itself in times of stress. Whenever a Feral would make a Frenzy check, they must make an additional, separate Self-Control check at the same difficulty. If they fail this roll, their Appearance is reduced to 0 for the rest of the scene as the Beast twists them into an animalistic monster. Gangrel with Instinct assume the Bestial Visage whenever a Frenzy roll would be required, unless the difficulty of the roll is less than their Instinct score.
- Giovanni
- They don't exist. See Cappadocians.
- Nosferatu
- New Weakness: A Nosferatu's maximum Appearance is equal to 1/4th of their Morality rating, rounded down. Even those Nosferatu with an Appearance of 1 or 2 are disfigured and project an unsettling air. Their Appearance difficulties have a permanent +2 difficulty, unless related to Intimidation.
- Samedi
- New Weakness: A Stiff's body requires constant upkeep to prevent rot and putresence from setting in. If a Samedi's blood pool is ever less than half full their Appearance is reduced to 0 as their bodies start to decay, transforming them into zombie-like walking corpses. Even when fully sated, their skin is inhumanly pale, their eyes milky and sunken and they stink of decay. All non-Intimidation Social difficulties are increased by 2 and they can never spend blood to appear human.
- The Samedi have the Clan Disciplines of Fortitude, Necromancy? and Obfuscate
- Tremere
- New Weakness: The entire Clan suffers from Thaumaturgical Addiction. Every night, a Warlock must either cast a blood sorcery path or ritual or be the target of a similar power. Any night where the addiction is unsatisfied causes the Tremere to lose 1 die on all pools. This penalty is cumulative and can only be undone by casting or being the target of a blood sorcery ability. A single night's magic is enough to halt the accumulation of penalties, but each penalty must be undone individually, taking one night per lost die.
- Though they were originally Upyri, the Destruction of Saulot changed the Tremere forever. They are now Cainites, except that they are Repelled by Garlic as upyri are and they retain the ability to learn Animalism. Merits and Flaws that bestow benefits or curses like the ones Upyri bear are very common among the Tremere.
- Tzimisce
Combat
- All attacks are automatically resisted by a character's chosen Defense Value, which is equal to half their regular pool.
- Soak is no longer rolled, instead half of your total soak pool is automatically applied.
- Grapple - All attacks made against a grappled or grappling character are at +2 difficulty and botches will result in the attack hitting the other character.
- It is no longer possible to take more than two non-reflexive actions in a single turn, under any circumstances.
- Taking two actions applies a -4 dice penalty to both actions.
Roads
- Auras
- A low Road score does not apply a penalty to the rolls that a high score gives a bonus to. A negative Aura modifier instead affects rolls where the vampire is attempting to act against their Road. A negative Aura of Menace makes it difficult to interact peacefully with mortals and a negative Aura of Seduction makes it hard to be taken for anything but a self-indulgent glutton.
- An instructor must have a rating 1 higher than the level of any power he is attempting to teach.
- In-Clan Disciplines can be developed on one's own, given sufficient time and practice.
- Physical Disciplines do not require an instructor, even if they are out-of-Clan. A teacher only lowers the time requirements of learning these Disciplines. The exception to this is Elder-level powers, which do require an instructor if out-of-Clan.
- General and Physical Disciplines can be learned by any vampire: Auspex, Dominate, Obfuscate, Presence, Celerity, Fortitude and Potence.
- Asuras can also learn: Animalism and Chimeristry
- Apophans can also learn: Serpentis and Obtenebration
- Cainites can also learn: Daimoinon, Dementation, Obtenebration, Quietus, Valeren
- Upyri can also learn: Abombwe, Animalism, Protean, Spiritus, Visceratika
- I use Disciplines Curses. A rating of 4 or more in a Disciplines may impose some penalty on the vampire. This idea was introduced in the Player's Guides to High Clans under the section Perils of Power. Remember: vampirism is a curse.
- Any vampire who meets 3 or more of the criteria for Discipline Derangements gains a Temporary Derangement.
- Any vampire who meets 5 or more of the criteria for Discipline Derangements gains a Permanent Derangement.
- Criteria
- One Clan Discipline has more dots than the other two combined
- An out-of-Clan Discipline has more dots than any Clan Discipline
- Knowing multiple powers of the same level
- Reaching your maximum potential in a Discipline without at least 5 in another
- Reaching your maximum potential in a Discipline (yes, it counts twice)
- Multiple recent botches of a Discipline
- Multiple recent excessive success with a Discipline
- Using a Discipline frequently, even when not required
- Alternate Powers can be purchased for normal (1-5) powers as well as Elder (6+) powers. For example, there are two powers for Obtenebration 4 (Nightshades and Black Metamorphosis), a Lasombra can choose which to learn when he purchases the 4th dot of Obtenebration. A character who has already learned one power can choose to re-learn that level of a Disciplines to acquire an alternate power. An alternate level 1 power costs 5 XP.
- This rule applies only to In-Clan Disciplines. Someone learning an out of clan Disciplines is stuck with whatever powers their teacher shows them.
- If a Player Character (PC) or important NPC is resisting a Discipline effect that has its difficulty based on the target's traits, the difficulty is instead 6 and the PC engages the power's wielder in a contested roll using the traits that the difficulty would have been based on.
See Disciplines
Blood Magic Rules
- Rituals
- Characters who start play with a form of Blood Magic have as many levels of rituals as they have dots in the Discipline, to split up however they like. For example, a character with Thaumaturgy 3 could have a single level 3 ritual, three level 1 rituals or a level 2 and a level 1 ritual.
- Rituals can be purchased at creation for (level x 1) freebies.
- Rituals can be learned for (level x 1) XP in play.
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