Vampire-Specific House Rules/General
Raising Humanity
in the sphere, humanity cannot be raised through practice or a pre-meditated act where one tries to do something that will ‘raise my humanity’.
Humanity can only be raised after significant events happen where the character makes decisions that align with the hierarchy of sins.
For example, a character cannot walk down the street and say “I won’t shoot that person in the head; I won’t shoot this person in the head”. However, if the person is fleeing the scene of conflict, and an ignorant, innocent person attempts to stop them strenuously, and the character does not kill that person, that could be considered progress to regaining humanity. If the character does not steal the only vehicle on the farm to get back to the city and safety before dawn, because that would strand those people in the farmhouse, that could be considered rising to higher levels of humanity. The character must still submit an XP request with examples of when they made decisions that exemplify humanity. Not killing innocents when you have Humanity 8 will not justify a humanity raise.
As with all things, the final decision is with staff.
House Rule: Learning Disciplines
Disciplines within your clan (or in the case of Caitiff, of the three you initially chose), are learned by practice and use, with no penalty. Certain disciplines can be learned easily by mere repetition; these are usually the physical ones, Celerity, Potence, and Fortitude. Most others are extrapolations of the lower levels and use and experimentation can be used to increase their level of mastery. The six exceptions are Dark Thaumaturgy, Dur-An-Ki, Koldunic Sorcery, Necromancy, Setite Sorcery and Thaumaturgy. The above practices and experimentation only apply to the Path originally learned. To learn new paths and rituals in these six disciplines require either being taught by a more experienced user or having access to a library that holds those secrets.
On Fulcrum, the general time between disciplines raises is three real time months; the Vampire Staff retains the right to shorten or lengthen this as they see fit. Maybe players do not like this restriction, but our time during many years running the Vampire sphere at Sheltering Sky made me realize that if we wanted to play a more politically based game and less a combat-oriented one, this limitation was necessary.
Out of clan disciplines must be taught by someone who knows the Discipline. Teaching of the first rank of the discipline must be accompanied by a sip of blood, indeed, one point towards a blood bond.
Once an out-of-clan discipline is learned, further increasing said discipline proceeds along the strictures of the first paragraph. Again, the six exceptions are going to be incredibly difficult without a long-term relationship.
Learning the first rank of an out of clan discipline can be done before the three months – it starts at the time of the first sip of blood. However, learning the discipline ‘starts the clock’ again. For example, Mary learns Fortitude 1, a clan discipline in May. In June, after discussions, Mary tries to get Victor to teach her Obtenebration – Victor obliges – and Mary would usually be approved right away as long as she takes the blood point. However, Mary most like would have to wait for three months to learn any new discipline from the day of the sip.
Using Vitae to heal in combat
A vampire may spend one blood point to heal one normal (basking or lethal) health level of damage. Characters must be resting and relatively inactive for the healing to take place without a roll.
Vampire characters in stressful situations may also spend blood to heal themselves. To do so, the character must concentrate and do nothing else for one full turn – the character may abort to a dodge, but if they do, the blood point(s) is/are wasted, and no healing takes place. A character may attempt to heal while performing other actions, but this requires success on a Stamina + Survival reflexive roll (difficulty 8). This dice pool is not split regardless of how many other actions are attempted in the round.
Failing this roll means the vampire loses all expended blood points with no effect, while a botch causes the vampire to lose both an additional blood point and an additional health level. Spending blood to raise Physical Attributes or power Disciplines may be done automatically, without the need for concentration, but both healing and raising attributes and disciplines are dependent on the blood spending per turn limitation.
A staffer may rule that a vampire may be doing too much - we aren’t playing undead superheroes. If a Kindred decides to fire a submachine gun while parkouring down the side of an alley while using Dread Gaze, staff is within their right to determine that a character may not also heal. If in doubt, ask before declaration.
Flaw: Cast No Reflection
The LaSombra have a clan weakness Cast no Reflection, and there is a Flaw Cast no Reflection. Under the description of the weakness, it specifically states they do not show up on any cameras, including digital ones. Although scientifically, digital media today do not use reflections, neither did security cameras at the time the books were written. Furthermore, this isn't a physical, scientific weakness or Flaw - it is a supernatural one, involved in the curse of LaSombra's blood and the poor unfortunate Kindred who have somehow inherited this Flaw without being LaSombra. This is fate, if you will, rather than an effect of the environment. So, those with LaSombra blood and the Flaw cannot be captured on film or by video feeds.
However, for your PC to know this, you would need to have LaSombra-lore 1, Sabbat-lore 2, or Kindred-Lore 4. If you do not have these lores, and you see a vampire with no reflection, it would play into the stereotype from Stoker, et al, and you cannot identify said vampire as LaSombra. However, for those who take the Flaw, the assumption that the Kindred is actually LaSombra would be a valid one.