Welcome to the second guide, all about consumable resources! Again, I’ve just collected the pertinent points spread across the main book and collected them here for reference.


Blood


Of course a game about vampires would include blood as a consumable resource. Blood serves two primary functions – it keeps your character alive, and it also serves as fuel for most special abilities.

Regaining Blood: There are a myriad of ways to spend blood points, but only one way to obtain them. Your character will have to consume the essence of a human – this is generally done through hunting. Hunting is a physical feat, but is unique in that it’s dice pool will be determined based on the method that your character hunts. For example, my Ventrue would not be a very adept night stalker, with his low athletics and dexterity skill, so trying to run down prey would be a poor decision for him. Instead, he would opt to frequent a club or busy city area and try to attract prey, a charisma + appearance roll. The difficulty of hunting is based on the area which you are hunting in, and is determined from the chart on page 260. Alternatively, Will may decide to operate on a much more in depth hunting method, which involves several multistep rolls. I will describe this if the time comes that we adopt it.

Consuming Blood: Blood points mean everything to a vampire. Aside from aggravated damage, vampires do not naturally heal. Your character may choose to spend one blood point to heal one point of bashing or lethal damage from him/herself. This is a full turn action. If you do this in combat, it will require a Stamina + Survival reflexive roll at difficulty 8. Unfortunately, your character cannot always choose when to consume blood points…

Every night when your character rises you consume one blood point, to symbolize the curse sustaining your character.

Additionally, your character may elect to spend a blood point to increase a single physical attribute by one dot for the duration of the scene (i.e. battle, conversation, etc). You can do this as many times as you wish, but you can only raise a single stat to one dot above your generational maximum. Your character may also spend blood points to appear living for a scene, if you have humanity 7 or lower. The cost for this ability is (8 – humanity), so any vampires with humanity 8 or higher may do this as a free action.There are two relatively underused blood point expenditures which I will briefly mention; blood points may be used to create ghouls and may be gifted from one vampire to another. Both of these methods carry inherent risks, and are covered on page 269.


Willpower


Willpower is a bit unusual compared to other ratings. Willpower describes the drive that your character has to complete his / her tasks, and has two distinct traits; your permanent willpower, and your willpower pool. Your willpower pool is equal to your permanent trait at the start of the game. Over time, your pool will lower, and your trait will more than likely remain constant. Most actions that require your character to make a willpower roll, such as frenzy, will use dice equal to your willpower pool, not your trait.

Spending Willpower: Willpower will always be spent from your floating pool. You character may choose to spend one point of willpower to gain an automatic success on one action per turn. This success is not canceled by botches, but you must make this declaration before you roll. Additionally, you may spend a point of willpower to prevent your character from making a reflexive action, such as stepping back from a chasm. You may also spend a point of willpower to prevent a derangement from manifesting, or possibly eliminate it altogether… if you spend enough willpower, that is, and with the storyteller’s permission. You may also spend a point of willpower to ignore wound penalties for one turn if you are not incapacitated.

Reminder; if you want to roll to resist frenzy you must spend a point of willpower.

Regaining Willpower: Willpower, being a very valuable resource, is very scarce to come by. At the end of the story not the session your willpower pool is fully replenished. The remainder of the effects which restore willpower are entirely up to Will; he may choose to use them, he may not. Common restorations include restoring 1 point of willpower when you rise for the night, restoring one point whenever your character acts in their nature, and restoring points when you accomplish a major goal.


Humanity


For the sake of completeness and completing all the major rules, I’m going to briefly cover humanity.

Humanity is based on a scale of 1 to 10. If your humanity ever reaches 0, you have succumbed to the beast and will become an NPC under the control of Will. Humanity is an indication of how far you have fallen; 7 is an average human’s morality, below 7 is more monstrous, and 8+ is “more human than human”. You may never make any virtue rolls with dice pools greater than your total humanity. Additionally, your humanity affects social rolls for appearing normal and garnering sympathy. Humanity 7-4 has no modifier, 8-9 decreases DC by 1, 10 decreases DC by 2, 2-3 increases DC by 1, and 1 humanity increases the DC by 2.

Of course, your humanity can move in either direction of the scale. If your character does an act that the storyteller considers monstrous, you will have to make a conscience roll at DC 8. If you fail, you lost a point of humanity. If you botch, you lose a point of humanity and gain a derangement. You cannot spend willpower to take an automatic success on this roll.

The only way to increase your humanity is by spending experience points to boost it. The experience cost of humanity is your current rating X 2.

More details on humanity are available around page 312 of the V20 book.


This concludes the second guide. Between this guide and the combat guide, almost all of the core rules are represented for quick reference. I highly suggest being familiar with your own disciplines, weapons, armor, and common maneuvers. Good luck!