I'm dissatisfied with the feeding rules for Vampire: The Requiem. They're not realistic in the slightest, and are, in fact, far too lenient -- by the book's rules, a mortal can lose six pints of blood and walk away with a -2 penalty, and then be completely recovered within twelve days.
So I came up with these house rules. I'd appreciate any comments:
A typical human being has seven pints of blood in his veins at any given time. For purposes of staying simple, this blood is composed of two substances -- blood plasma and blood cells.
The heart requires a certain level of blood pressure to continue beating. The threshold between "alive with distressingly low blood pressure" and "heart failure and death" exists at roughly half of the volume of blood in the human body. A human who loses half his blood goes into cardiac arrest and dies.
Blood plasma's fluid pressure replenishes quickly, as it's basically fluid and a few nutrients. Someone who loses blood can replenish all of his blood plasma over the course of a day of rest and a good night's sleep, provided he drinks lots of fluids.
In contrast, blood cells replenish slowly. It takes months to regenerate red and white blood cells, and people who lose a lot of blood over a short period of time suffer the affects of anemia. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the body, while white blood cells help fight off infection -- someone with anemia is pale, weak, sickly, and vulnerable to diseases.
Mortals have a number of blood points equal to half their health levels, rounded down. This doesn't represent the number of vitae points a vampire can take from a mortal (that's equal to the mortal's actual health levels) -- rather, it represents the number of vitae points a vampire can take from a mortal in one feeding without killing him. Most mortals have three blood points.
If a mortal loses all his blood points, but does not go into negative, he suffers a -2 penalty to all actions. If a mortal has one blood point left, he suffers a -1 penalty. Otherwise, he suffers no penalty. A mortal who loses all his blood points, and then loses one more, has his health chart filled with lethal wounds and begins dying, with the special note that resuscitation measures will fail unless the person attempting them has some means of replacing the blood lost.
Blood points don't normally replenish at a set rate per hour or day like health levels do. Instead, a single day and night of rest (and drinking a lot of fluids, which is assumed to happen off-screen if it isn't roleplayed) replenishes all of a mortal's blood points. In cases where excess fluids aren't available, such as, for instance, a vampire and a mortal stranded together in a desert (I hope the vampire has Protean ••), blood points don't replenish.
If a vampire takes more vitae points from a mortal in a single month than that mortal has blood points, the mortal suffers anemia. This manifests in two ways -- a single aggravated wound, and a -1 penalty to all actions (though the -1 penalty could actually turn into a +1 bonus in some circumstances, like when trying to appear weak and helpless to play to someone's sympathies). Every additional vitae point a vampire takes from a mortal in a month (counted from the last feeding) inflicts an additional aggravated wound, but the -1 penalty does not increase (though it will eventually stack with wound penalties). The anemia penalty goes away once the mortal has healed all aggravated wounds (including those inflicted by other sources). Intensive care can downgrade these aggravated wounds to lethal as usual -- blood transfusions make this sort of anemia go away.
These rules don't interact with the bleeding rules in any way. It can be assumed that a mortal who has less than his total number of blood points has low blood pressure and bleeds more slowly, or something, which balances with their blood points lost and keeps the rate at which they bleed to death the same. I don't feel like writing up a cross-reference chart for this. Too much bookkeeping = bad.
These rules created by Stephenls', and posted without permission.
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