The Table Reference

Blood Pool by Generation House

Generation is fixed at the moment the character is made. The floor in this chronicle is the tenth, and no amount of experience moves it — there is no diablerie ladder out of the bottom of the table, and nobody is going to wake up closer to Caine because they spent points.

A vampire spends one blood point on waking, every night, whether she does anything with the night or not. It comes off the top before she has decided anything.

Spending Blood

• Heal a health level for a blood point. If she heals and acts in the same turn, the player makes a reflexive Stamina + Survival roll, difficulty 8.
• Raise a Physical Attribute by a dot per point spent, to a maximum of one dot above what her Generation ordinarily permits.
• Give it away — to a mortal or to another Kindred. Three drinks on three separate nights make a blood bond.
• Make a ghoul of a mortal or an animal. The ghouling has to be renewed monthly, and the renewal is a scene somebody has to turn up for.
• Blush of health — breath, warmth, colour, appetite — at a cost of (8 − Humanity) blood points. The further she has fallen, the more it costs to pass.
• Pay for a Discipline that asks.

A grown adult drained to death yields about ten blood points. The Storyteller sets the figure for any particular body, and bodies differ. Addicts run thin. The frightened run hot.

Blood and the Beast House

A vampire runs on blood, and so does everything she uses to keep the Beast where it belongs. Empty, she has nothing left to hold the door with.

Frenzy and the Red Fear

Both rolls are capped by the blood in the body. A vampire who has just been set on fire and is running on two points is rolling two dice against difficulty 7, and the table knows how that usually goes.

Humanity

Humanity is how much of the woman is left. It caps what she can roll if the day pulls her out of sleep, caps her Virtues, sets how long torpor keeps her, and decides whether the man behind the counter looks at her twice.

Read the ladder downward to see what a character no longer notices. A Kindred at four does not roll for killing in a frenzy. She rolls for planning one.

Hunting House

Half a million people live in the metro area. Most of them are alone at some point in the night, and most of them are never missed by anyone who would call it in. Penance has two thousand and is losing them: one bar, one diner, and a clinic with no doctor most days. Hunting is resolved in five steps, once a week unless the story says otherwise.

1  Choose a predator type

Done once, at creation. Every vampire settles into a way of taking blood, usually within a year of the Embrace, and it holds on the nights when it is inconvenient, which is most of them. The type sets the dice pool every hunt is rolled on. Hunting in the manner her type describes regains one Willpower point, once per night. Feeding any other way still fills the pool. It returns nothing else.

(S) hunts by charm, (P) by taking, (A) on four legs. The letters match the merit and flaw tables under step five — your type's letter tells you which of their entries apply to you.

Animal blood is thin, and bagged blood is thinner — the blood dies in the plastic. A Bagger also depends on a supply, and supplies are interrupted. An Osiris depends on somebody keeping the faith. A Siren wants a crowded room, and above the canyon mouth there are no crowded rooms.

2  Say where she hunts

A fief of Penance, picked from the list by district, or the wilderness: the ground nobody holds. Where she hunts sets the base difficulty, brings her own holdings on that ground to bear, and counts who else has hunted it this week.

3  Set the difficulty

Then apply what applies. The difficulty never drops below 3.

Disciplines on the hunt. A Discipline that costs no blood rides the roll on its own: Presence, Dominate or Auspex for charming prey; Obfuscate or Auspex for taking it; Animalism on four legs. The highest that fits the manner adds its rating in dice, and the sheet does it without being asked. The Disciplines that cost blood are different: Celerity, Potence, Fortitude, Protean and Quietus when she takes prey, and Thaumaturgy however she hunts, cost a blood point on the hunt, and the blood buys either the Discipline's rating in dice or −2 to the difficulty, her choice. Without the blood they do nothing for the hunt.

4  Roll

The predator type's pool, against the difficulty.

5  Count the take

What the sheet does to the hunt

Merits and flaws that change how she reads to prey change the difficulty, sorted by weight. The letters are the same ones on the predator types: (S) applies to charming prey, (P) to taking it, (A) on four legs, (G) to all of it. A Bagger declares theft or arrangement each hunt and takes the (P) or (S) entries to match.

One roll stands for a night's hunting, so the sheet is read whole: a flaw that would bite somewhere in a night's work bites, and a merit that would help, helps. Nothing waits on a situation. The one exception is the one the sheet can check for itself: an injury reads her health. Merits together buy at most −2 off the difficulty; flaws bite whole, however many she took.

The rest of the sheet

Traits that never show to prey still bend the hunt. These riders cover every one on the coterie's sheets; anything not named here truly does not touch feeding.

The Herd

A Herd is a set of people who come when called: a congregation, a shift, a bad crowd at a good bar. She does not hunt them. She keeps them.

Every vessel in Penance has a name, a shift, and somebody who notices when she comes home wrong. A Herd of two thousand is not a Herd. It is a town.

When she cannot feed

Ground and Terms House

Denver has been a Camarilla city since the railroads, and the register has a holder for nearly every block of it. The Second Tradition is the one the court enforces most often, and it enforces it against the young.

Rent is paid in boons. A trivial or a minor a month buys hunting rights on most granted ground. Some holders take information instead. Some name a chore.

Reading a Domain House

The Domain Background is the register's recognition of her ground. Each dot reduces her hunting difficulty by one on the ground it covers, and it is her standing when a dispute over that ground reaches the court. It does nothing anywhere else.

Acknowledgment governs most of it. Several holdings stand open to any Kindred the court has recognised and shut to everyone else. An unacknowledged vampire is not refused at these doors. She is not expected at them.

Holdings keep their own house rules. Learn the Rack's first: feed in the alcoves, nothing fatal, nothing remembered, and never take a vessel another Kindred is working. The Mistress of the Rack keeps a list of who has broken them, and reads the list aloud.

Below street level the register does not apply. The storm drains, the steam loop under the banking blocks, and the culverts are Henry's. The rail cuts, the viaduct footings, and the cemetery margins are Mordecai's. They settled the boundary between themselves and have never drawn it for anyone else. Passage is a favour. Both of them count favours.

Multiple Actions House

Only one attack per turn unless the character is spending blood on Celerity. No action may be attempted if its difficulty would reach 10. Dice pools are not divided; each action rolls its own full pool, less its own penalty.

There is no plan to commit to and nothing to abort. Act, and the count starts. A defence rolled after your own attack is already your second action, and the count does not clear at the top of the round — it clears when your turn comes back to you.

Gunfire. Bursts, full automatic fire, strafing, and multiple shots use the V20 autofire modifiers and resolve as one attack action, however many rounds leave the barrel.

Defending Yourself

Defensive successes subtract from the attacker's. Reduced to nothing, the attack misses. Otherwise the remainder comes off the damage pool.

Full defence. A committed stance. She gives up every other action until her next turn and does nothing but defend: full pool against the first attack, one die fewer against each attack after, and the ladder never touches her difficulty. When the dice run out she has no defence left. Gunfire is the exception the stance does not buy off — dodging it is still +2 difficulty unless her Celerity is active.

Being outnumbered. A character fighting more than one opponent suffers +1 difficulty on everything she attempts for each enemy past the first, to a maximum of +4.

Getting Hold of Someone

Most of what happens in a Kindred fight happens at arm's length or closer. A vampire who wants to feed, restrain, question, or carry somebody out of a room has to get a hand on them first, and the Beast prefers it that way.

• Clinch. On the turn it lands, the attacker rolls Strength damage. On every turn after, both combatants act on their own Initiative, and each may either inflict Strength damage automatically or try to break free. Neither can take any other physical action until the clinch ends. Breaking it is a resisted Strength + Brawl roll, and more successes wins.
• Hold. The attacker grabs and keeps hold until the victim's next action. When that action comes, both roll resisted Strength + Brawl. If the victim does not beat the attacker's successes, she stays immobilised and can take no physical action at all, and the same contest repeats on her next action.
• Tackle. The attacker rushes and drives the target down. Both combatants roll Dexterity + Athletics at difficulty 7 or suffer knockdown, and even on a success the attacker is off balance: +1 difficulty on everything she does next turn.
• Bite. Only available after a clinch, hold, or tackle has succeeded, and taken as the next action. A bite to harm deals aggravated damage and does not cause the Kiss. A bite to feed deals no damage, causes the Kiss, and draws three blood points a turn.

Potence adds its rating in dice to Strength pools, which means it adds to Hold and to breaking one. A vampire with Potence who gets both hands on someone has effectively ended the conversation.

Shooting

Range. Difficulty 6 within the weapon's listed range, 8 at twice that, 4 inside two yards. Reloading takes a full turn and the character's whole dice pool. A Willpower point changes the clips in two guns at once.

Armour

Armour is not indestructible. If the damage rolled in a single attack equals twice the armour's rating, the armour is destroyed. A Kevlar vest rated three is finished by six damage in one blow, and whatever it did not absorb went into the wearer.

Kindred who expect to be shot at buy Stamina and Fortitude. The ones who buy vests buy several.

Soaking and Healing House

The Stake

A stake through the heart paralyses a vampire where she stands. She stays that way until somebody draws the wood out, and she is awake the whole time, and she can hear everything said over her.

At range only the crossbow will do it, and reloading a crossbow takes the full turn. A shooter gets one attempt, and then whatever she shot at is closer.

Bullets do not stake — including wooden ones, which are made and sold in this city and do not work. The heart takes a driven point with a body's weight behind it. A bullet shatters.

The Physical Disciplines DA20

These three run constantly, at no cost, whether the character wants them to or not. The blood point buys the moment somebody notices.

Waking the Sleeping House

A vampire in torpor may be woken early on the blood of a vampire at least three generations lower than she is. An eleventh needs an eighth, or better.

Blood given is blood drunk. Whoever pours it puts one step of a bond on the sleeper, who was not consulted.

Two Small Mercies House

Making a Character House

Attributes 7/5/3. Abilities 13/9/5, none above 3 before freebies. Disciplines 3, Backgrounds 5, Virtues 7. Fifteen freebie points, plus one for each point of Flaws taken, to a maximum of seven. An Attribute may reach 5 at creation.

The generation floor is the tenth. The Generation Background stops at 3 when the character is built, and cannot be raised afterward by any means.

Experience House

Backgrounds: Earned, Then Paid House

Backgrounds are not purchased. They are acquired in play, and then finished with experience.

A Background can only be raised once the story has already handed it to your character. When the court acknowledges her, a higher Status becomes available to her — but she rolls no additional dice for it, and it carries no weight in a dispute, until the experience has been spent. Until then the world has made her a promise she has not yet collected on.

Generation is never purchased, at creation or afterward. Status is never purchased without an act of the court preceding it: a Kindred with standing grants it, cedes it, or loses it to her, and then she pays.

Backgrounds in Play House

Name them, at creation or as they turn up. Where she met them, what they get out of it, and what would make them stop answering the phone. The Storyteller will not invent one for you at two in the morning.

• Allies act, and may refuse.
• Contacts know things and trade them.
• Retainers are held by salary, vitae, or Discipline, and the hold has to be kept up.
• Herd is a feeding ground with faces, and it lives on a particular set of blocks.

Influence House

There is only so much of any sphere in a city, and the Kindred who hold the top of one have usually held it a long while. The Salon keeps the ledger, and everyone who matters reads it.

The spheres: Bureaucracy · Church · Finance · Health · High Society · Industry · Legal · Media · Occult · Police · Politics · Street · Transportation · Underworld · University.

Politics is held at five by the Prince. Finance by the Keeper of the Book of Lineage. Industry by the Mistress of the Freight. All three held that ground before anyone at this table was born.

Buying Things House

The chronicle's equipment list is house canon and overrules the books where the two disagree. Every entry carries a legality, and the difficult ones carry an Access rating.

Access House

An unregistered pistol at Access 3 is Streetwise 3 for a character who knows the corners. It is Allies 3 when one of the allies sells guns. It is Influence 3 in Underworld when she is part of why the shipment landed. Contacts, Fame, Resources, and Mentor all serve where the account holds up.

The exotica costs a scene. Incendiary rounds, silver worked to an edge, military ordnance, a suppressor made by somebody whose trade is that it still works on the twentieth shot. These come from a man in a room, and he remembers faces.

HEAVY items need Firearms 4 with a Heavy Weapons specialty to buy or to use.

Resources House

Backgrounds cap at 3 dots at creation. The last two rows are printed for reference, and for the elders sitting on them.

The Small Print

• Fire. A molotov, a flare pistol, a dragon's breath shell — every Kindred who sees it rolls Rötschreck, the one who threw it included.
• Blood carries what the vessel carried. Feed on someone high and the Kindred gets high. Feed on someone dying and she tastes it for a week.
• Tools. A good kit takes 1 off the difficulty of the work it was made for. A proper workspace takes 2, and does not travel.
• Living bodies. Strangling wants breath, and the dead have none to take. Pepper spray, tear gas, and electricity want a nervous system still in service. Against Kindred all of it is an insult and is received as one.
• Restraints. Police handcuffs: Strength, difficulty 8, five accumulated successes. Heavy chain: difficulty 9, ten successes. Potence and a moment alone shorten either.
• Disciplines run on the Dark Ages rules throughout. Those powers were written for a world of horses and plague. Where one reads strangely against 1994, bring it up and we will change how it looks.
• Clan weaknesses. Where the V20 version is unplayable or simply no fun, ask to use the V5 one instead. Between sessions.

None of this is final. Play it and say what is broken.

Holding Penance House

Penance is ten districts. Each district is two or three fiefs, and each fief is three to five sites: a diner, a church, a bridge, a hardware store. Every site has a note on the map, and the note carries its card: who keeps it, what it pays, what it does for the Kindred who hold it. The full cards live in the Holding Penance journal at the table; this page carries the rules.

The Rounds

The Downtime button opens the Rounds. Pick a site and roll its pool at difficulty 6 plus the site's Security. Successes bank on the site, and the whole coterie's successes bank together. More than one round a night is allowed, and each round after the first is at −1 die and +1 difficulty, stacking. A botch costs the bank a tier's worth and puts the keeper on notice.

What she brings to the round

The same room is easy for one Kindred and nearly closed to another. That is the point: the town is worked by a coterie, and each of them has doors the others do not.

The three tiers

When the bank reaches a threshold, anyone who worked the site may claim the tier. Each tier keeps everything below it. Regular and Fixture may be held by any number of Kindred; Uncontested is one name, and it costs experience: 3 for a Renown 1 or 2 site, 5 for Renown 3 or 4. Thresholds by Renown: 1 → 3 · 6 · 9 · 2 → 5 · 10 · 15 · 3 → 8 · 16 · 24 · 4 → 12 · 24 · 36 successes.

Fiefs and the night's take

Hold the majority of a fief's sites Uncontested and you may take the fief for 5 XP: hunt −1 everywhere in it, the fief's standing benefit, and its own money every night. Every holding pays money and nothing else, each night, when the night turns: an Uncontested site its whole figure, a Fixture a third of it. The sheet settles it with Resources and upkeep pro-rated to the night, and posts one card.

Theft

Breaking in and taking what you want works, and it is a sin at Humanity 7. At Humanity 7 or above, Conscience is rolled for it at Session's End; below 7 the ledger notes it and nothing is rolled.