oWoD Vampire house rules

[Jeebers]

Anybody interested in sharing theirs, or taking a look at my own?

[Dryad]

Well, in our Vampire: The Masquerade game, we used to rule that the average human running speed is 30 km/hour, with a 5 km/hour walking speed, which helped lots for mapping combat. We basically took the DnD movement speed 30 (ft.) and put the combat part in square grids so that everyone knew where everyone was at.
I think that was about it for house rules.
But this was years and years ago. I think it's about 11 years ago, now. Gosh, has it been that long? I feel old. :smallfrown:

[Jeebers]

The D&D walk speed is surprisingly close to that of a young human doing 3.4 mph (I think) I read about on Wikipedia. Dunno if that source is totally reliable though, but there was one thing that concerned me.

If in 6 seconds you can walk 30ft, how the heck would you have time to do anything else, like perform D&D's standard action?

I ended up taking a look at the Dark Ages rules, and noting that there was a lot missing, like ranges on a few weapons, rules for overland travel, etc. I also altered the movement rules a little so that even walking was dependent on Dexterity scores.

What do you think about altering Caitiff a little? In the games I run, you have to have a vampire with clan access to a discipline to teach you, except for the 3 instinctives (fortitude, potence celerity). This means Brujah don't need a teacher for 2/rds of their powers, which seems appropriate considering their rebel status. But, if you do get a teacher, you only have to pay x6 instead of x7. The way I altered Caitiff is that they can teach ANY discipline they learn, unlike every other clan based vampire (and learn instinctives with a teacher at x5).

I'm a fan of using game mechanics to encourage the sort of gameplay the book seems to be recommending. Like using Wits instead of Dexterity for Celerity actions (increases initiative and weakens both dex and celerity somewhat). Or having body armor on literally slows your character down even when walking (movement dependent on dex for walking). How about using Expression for Presence 1? It makes sense, since people use it for making speeches.

[Dryad]

The way I altered Caitiff is that they can teach ANY discipline they learn, unlike every other clan based vampire
We simply ran this as: Those who can, can teach. No matter what clan or discipline, if you have the discipline, you can teach it.
Walking... We didn't do on dex. Rather, it was usually either strength or stamina. For vampires, more often Strength than not, since running actions that required stamina weren't necessary for vampires in our house-rulings. Vampires could run pretty much indefinitely. Strength checks were merely there to propel the character to extra speed.
Body armour did slow the vampires somewhat, if it was heavy stuff. But we didn't usually play with heavy stuff; we used kevlar and leather, mostly.

If in 6 seconds you can walk 30ft, how the heck would you have time to do anything else,
Or 15 ft. in three seconds. How? It's easy. ^^ Humans can accelerate at a pretty high pace, and considering 5 ft. is just about a single steps, it's pretty easy for a human to walk six steps in six seconds, and still have time left to hit something. If you've ever played LRP, you know what I'm talking about. The constant, high-speed dancing around one another, which is not a trot, not a jog, and not a run does allow for quite a lot of movement in a very short time.

I don't think Wits should be the ruling factor for Celerity, because it's not so much an intelligence or speed of thought process that makes the thing work. It's purely physical reaction to the thought process. And for physical reaction, the game usually uses Dexterity.
As for expression for Awe: I dunno... There's of course a reason why Presence uses an attribute rather than a skill; it's to do with point costs, of course, but also because Disciplines tap into one's attributes rather than ones skills. Couple that with Expression already using social dice, and I really don't think there's a need for this.
What you could do is make expression checks lower the difficulty of the Presence discipline given enough successes. Presence is just standing there in a very empowered way, but adding a good talk should certainly help.

[Set]

1) We had a Celerity house rule that each dot of Celerity gave you one automatic success whenever you split your dice pool for a multiple action (at a cost of 1 BP / turn, regardless of how many dots of Celerity you are using)

The normal split action rules allow you to take multiple attacks, by splitting your total dice pool up among them, so with Celerity 3, you'd be able to add three automatic successes, divided up among the number of actions you take, in addition to your normal Dex + Brawl, Melee or Firearms roll. (Or between your attack and defense, if you are combinging shooting your gun with attempting to Dodge attacks.)

Additionally, you can spend 1 BP to activate Celerity for purely movement-related purposes, multiplying your running speed by 1+Celerity rating for an entire scene, allowing an Assamite with Celerity 3 to spend a blood point to run across a desert at four times his normal running speed for a couple of hours.

Whether you spend blood points or not, a Celerity-user is always a bit faster, and adds his dots in Celerity to his Dexterity when calculating both his movement speed and initiative.

With the exception of using the multiple actions / split dice pool rules, Celerity does not otherwise 'add extra actions.'

By making it add auto-successes to split dice pool / multiple actions, Celerity works more like Potence or Fortitude, although, unlike Potence and Fortitude, it does require a blood expenditure for the 'good stuff.'

2) Ghouls and Childer and Blood Bonds are harder to make. You can't just drip a few drops of blood into the 'mystery punch' on Hell Week and get an entire fraternity blood bonded to you and ghouled. Similarly, if the Kuei-jin are invading, you can't grab forty strangers on a bus and embrace them all in a single evening.

Any such special use of blood requires the expenditure of Willpower, as it's not just your blood that you must transfer to the other, but part of your Beast as well, to create the link / empower them, etc. This also means that you generally can't leave blood around in a jar, and the next person that drinks it becomes blood bound or ghouled (and you can no longer diablerie mill by taking a blood point of elder blood and making a child with it, to devour). To Blood Bond or Ghoul someone, you simply spend a temporary willpower point, but to make a Childe, you must transfer a greater amount of your Beast, and the willpower expenditure is permanent (although you can spend XP to recover the loss), making Siring childer a big deal, and not something one does to create expendable flunkies to sacrifice. (Sabbat, who *do* sire people to make expendable flunkies, tend to have lower permanant Willpower scores, which makes sense from their nature, and also makes it cheaper for them to buy back with experience their already-low Willpower dots.)

Tremere and Assamites and Tzimisce (and perhaps others) blood mages *do* know special techniques that allow them to store 'charged' or 'vitalized' blood that can be used for blood bonding, ghouling and siring others. Once the special magically sealed containers are opened, the willpower expended to charge them begins to leak away within minutes, requiring it to be used immediately. But, barring such special blood magics, anyone who wants to blood bond, ghoul or sire another individual must be physically present and expend the willpower as they do so, making it no longer a trivial thing, and one that is generally done in secure locations or in secret, as all vampires know that someone who is ghouling people willy-nilly has 'his Beast close to the surface' and may be less able to resist dominate, presence, Frenzy, Rotschroek, etc.

3) For approximately 30 days after the embrace, the blood is 'in flux,' and a childer may uncontrollably display clan disciplines at higher ratings than normal, or be unable to access their discipline powers at all. During this time, the childe cannot blood bond, ghoul or sire another, and an attempt to diablerize them during these first weeks will kill them normally, but provide no benefit to their devourer.

This rule was put in place to provide two seperate additional stop-gaps against 'diablerie mills,' in that it would never be safe to just create a child to devour (as their power may be unpredictable during that time, and they might be, temporarily, able to exhibit unusual levels of power, allowing them to escape or even endanger their creator). Similarly, even if devoured immediately, they wouldn't provide any benefit (other than degeneration and increasing levels of madness). The old 'go to the coma ward, give dude 1 the 5th gen blood, then give a pint of his blood to dude 2, and a pint of dude 2's blood to dude 3, and then eat them all in reverse order to diablerize your way up the chain' stunt becomes that much harder, as there is risk, a 30 day waiting period before a new childe can sire a 'grand-childe,' and then another 30 day waiting period before the grand-childe is 'ripe.' Add in the 'must spend willpower' requirement, and the 'can't use blood of an elder I found somewhere,' and it pretty much nukes that concept.

More importantly, it adds storytelling potential. A fledgeling vampire who wasn't properly trained, for whatever backstory reason, might remember from the 30 days 'in flux' beiing able to access levels of perception, or discipline abilities, that they can't deliberately control until they spend the proper XP to learn those advanced disciplines, opening up the potential for a 'lost boy' brujah or malkavian to know that he has the potential for presence or obfuscate, despite not having been properly trained. Once he spends the necessary XP, he can master those difficult skills, again, without necessarily hanging out with a bunch of other brujah or malkavians and being 'taught.'

[comicshorse]

Are current G.M. LOVES altering the rules and background. So...

All Clans have 4 Clan Disciplines. One is their speciality Discipline.

Assamites: Celerity, Obfuscate, Auspex, QUIETUS
Brujah: Celerity, Potence, Presence, TEMPORISIS
Setites:0bfuscate,Presence,Serpentis,SETITE SORCERY
Gangrel: Animalism, Fortitude,Protean,OGHAM
Giovanni: Potence, Dominate, Mortis,NECROMANCY
Lasombra: Dominate, Potence, Auspex,OBTENEBRATION
Malkavian: Auspex, Dominate,Obfuscate,DEMENTATION
Nosferatu: Animalism, Obfuscate,Potence,THANATOSIS
Ravnos: Animalism, Chimestry, Fortitude, ??????
Toreador: Auspex, Celerity, Presence, MELPOMINEE
Tremere: Auspex, Dominate, Thaumaturgy, NONE
Tszimisce: Animalism, Auspex, Viscissitude,KOLDUNIC SORCERY
Ventrue: Fortitude,Potence, Presence, Dominate

The Tremere Clan Flaw is that as 'artificial' Vampires they only have three Disciplines.
Legend has it the reason the Ventrue have no Speciality Discipline is because the Ravnos Antedeluvian stole it for his clan. But would you believe any story told you by a Ravnos ?

We also suspect that there are secondary Clan Flaw's that develop the older the kindred get. Nosferaut seem to get uglier, Tszimisce get more reluctant to leave their homes, Ventrue find it harder to absorb new ideas and concepts, Lasombra need attention and admiration or they start to 'go grey' as we call it, become more apathetic and tired and will gradually slip into torpor.

Disciplines can only be taught to a level beneath the teacher's highest level. ( So someone with Protean 5 can only teach it to to Level 4). To learn a Clan's Speciality Discipline not only requires soemone of that Clan to teach it to you over an extended period of time (and so owe them a big favour) it also involves taking on that Clan's Clan Flaw (not suprisingly very few outside the Nosferatu Clan has ever learned Thanatosis).
A Kindred can only teach Disciplines that are of his Clan. A Nosfearatu can learn Celerity but he can't pass it on to anyone else.

Presence is restricted by generation, as with Dominate.

You can only Diablerize a member of your own Clan.

Embracing is mysterious. A Kindred will know when he can Embrace but cannot do it at will. The older and higher generation the Kindred the longer the gap between being able to Embrace. A young ninth generation kindred will probably be able to embrace every 25 years or so. But as he gets older the time between each Embrace will lengthen.
( This was to stop the mass embracing of the Sabbat, though it is rumoured Sabbat Tremere have created rituals that enable Sabbat to embrace slightly more often)

I won't even get into how we've changed the background :smallsmile:

[Jeebers]

I don't agree about the Strength for walking. Be honest with you, only having 3 categories for physicals is a little crude, as there are some things like raw speed that are different (fast or slow twitch muscle fiber). But as things are, Dexterity seems more appropriate for raw speed, with Stamina for long distance.

As for armor, since the game I am in is DA, armor is a lot heavier back then. So it's necessary to have some concrete rules about it. You guys interested in some excerpts from my house rules doc?

As for speed, yes, the way I broke it down is that someone with a Dex of 2 moves at 3 boxes and can still do other things without penalty (walk speed) during the 3 second long rounds. Jogging requires a multiple action. Running takes up your whole turn. Each box equals 1 yard in size, so this makes it easier to determine ranges with projectile weapons (I wrote mine up with miniatures in mind).

As for Wits and Celerity, you should check out DA's Player's Guide to the High Clans, p 152, "Disorientation". That should grant my reasoning on the subject. Celerity is a time hiccup, not actual increased speed.

No no, I meant using Expression instead of Performance for Awe, not abandoning the attribute Charisma altogether!

[Jeebers]

I dunno, that Celerity ruling you have is more than a little expensive! Remember, the DA version requires 1 bp per extra action taken, and it's the most advanced version of the game ever made (moreso than VTM).

More than that, that auto successes idea is already in print, and its an upper level Celerity power. And, the overland travel idea is already in print, as well. Both powers must be bought with xp.

As for the increased initiative, take a look at what I did with Celerity and movement as is, in my last post. I think it already does what you mention without increasing the raw power of Celerity, which I think the normal version is a little overpowered compared to Fortitude and Potence already.

As for blood bonds, the way I worked it out is that you could only bond someone one level per evening. And you don't have to use a full blood point. Finally, you don't start out with one level blood bond to your sire automatically (this bit was unclear in the game rules as some of them implied it in the older supplements while other newer ones didn't mention it)

Moreover, that whole diablerie mill idea is a moot point. If you drained a single person dry, then gave them a drop of elder blood, it would result in a wildly frenzying vampire who is likely permanently wounded. The way I have it, when you are Embraced you will frenzy until your health levels and blood pool are full, no matter how long that takes. If you don't manage to get enough blood to even repair your health levels back up, you end up with that flaw Permanent Wound or some other defect. This is because the blood first cleanses the subject of minor imperfections like wounds, eyesight damage etc.

Moreover you can't just have some drop hanging around, it has to be given directly from sire to prospective childe. That last bit is official from the Vampire staff themselves. This would disable your whole diablerie mill idea immediately and without fuss.

Personally, I don't penalize Sabbat at all for being Sabbat, at least through game mechanics. You all get an alloted 7 dots of virtues, but you have to subtract one for every alternate virtue your inhuman Road has. Thus Sabbat will tend to have a lower Road rating. Both Cam and Sab get 4 dots of disciplines and 5 of backgrounds.

That anti-mass ghouling idea is interesting. Thing is, doesn't it require at least 1 point of blood to ghoul somebody in the first place? Bonding only requires a drop, but to totally ghoul would need at least 1 full blood point. That's expensive enough for my taste.

[Jeebers]

"Disciplines can only be taught to a level beneath the teacher's highest level. ( So someone with Protean 5 can only teach it to to Level 4). To learn a Clan's Speciality Discipline not only requires soemone of that Clan to teach it to you over an extended period of time (and so owe them a big favour) it also involves taking on that Clan's Clan Flaw (not suprisingly very few outside the Nosferatu Clan has ever learned Thanatosis).
A Kindred can only teach Disciplines that are of his Clan. A Nosfearatu can learn Celerity but he can't pass it on to anyone else.

You can only Diablerize a member of your own Clan.

Embracing is mysterious. A Kindred will know when he can Embrace but cannot do it at will. The older and higher generation the Kindred the longer the gap between being able to Embrace. A young ninth generation kindred will probably be able to embrace every 25 years or so. But as he gets older the time between each Embrace will lengthen."

I don't like that teaching limitation, since it means elder vampires of 8th get or worse wouldn't be able to teach a power that ALL vampires should be able to get to. Most players would riot once they found they couldn't ever have access to their full abilities. That's just being a pragmatic GM, there.

Diablerization of own clan only seems excessively limiting, and it directly contradicts a LOT of published setting and game material. I don't like it, imo.

That Embrace rule seems overly complicated, and poorly defined to boot. I can't say I like it. Me, I'd rather that mass Embraces just had other consequences like the recruits tweaking out immediately and uncontrollably, or having to feed them so they have enough strength to actually fight (which would be too costly).