I will be adding more House Rules as I come up with them.

Expendables
Blood/Vitae
1. Base Vitae = The Character's Humanity score
2. Add 1 Vitae per dot of Herd the character has access to
3. Add 1 Vitae per dot of Haven Location the character has access to
4. Subtract 1 Vitae per Ghoul in your vampire's service
5. Feeding rolls -- see below for how this works.

Willpower
Per WoD core, Willpower refreshes once a Story ends; otherwise, it's through four means:

1. Fulfilling your Virtue
2. Fulfilling your Vice
3. Small 'triumphs'
4. A night of rest

To make things easier in scenes, you will always start a scene with full Willpower. The only ways to regain it on a scene are with numbers 1 through 3 above, and each method can only be "claimed" once per scene.

Covenant, Clan & Domain Status
Every character will begin play with 1 free dot of the Status merit in their respective Clan and Covenant. Every character will also begin play with 1 free dot of Status in the Domain.

Further increases in Clan and/or Covenant Status may be purchased with XP up to 2 dots at creation, with proper IC justification in your background. Increases beyond 2 dots will require IC actions/justification once the game starts. A character may only start with dots of Status in a single Covenant. Once game starts, if there is proper IC justification, a character may earn the right to purchase dots in Status for a second Covenant. Their first Covenant will still be considered their "primary" Covenant, and a character may never posses more dots in Status in their "secondary" Covenant than their "primary." What's more, a character may not posses more than 5 dots of Covenant Status, regardless of how they are split up (e.g. a character may have Status 3 Invictus--their primary, and no more than 2 in Lancea Sanctum, their secondary Covenant).

As far as some of the Covenant-specific mechanics and benefits go, we will also use the following rules when a character has dual Covenant Status:

-Characters with Status in the Circle of the Crone as their Secondary Covenant may not purchase more dots of Cruac than their dots of Status in the Covenant.
-Characters with Status in the Lancea Sanctum as their Secondary Covenant may not purchase more dots of Theban Sorcery than their dots of Status in the Covenant.
-Characters with Status in the Ordo Dracul as their Secondary Covenant may not purchase more dots of Coils than their dots of Status in the Covenant.
-Characters with Status in the Carthian Movement as their Secondary Covenant will benefit from the XP discounts for relevant Merits and can purchase Carthian-only Merits as long as they meet other prerequisites. However, they are not allowed to learn Carthian Devotions.
-Characters with Status in the Invictus as their Secondary Covenant will benefit from the XP discounts for relevant Merits and can purchase Invictus-only Merits as long as they meet other prerequisites. However, they are not allowed to learn Invictus Blood Oaths.

Further increases in Domain Status do not require additional XP expenditures, but can only be attained through IC methods (e.g. being granted status by the Prince or Harpy).

Feeding Rolls
In addition to merits like Herd and Haven Location, characters can supplement their starting Vitae pool by making a feeding roll upon entering a new scene. This is meant to represent your character's efforts of feeding that evening. Successes rolled on a feeding roll will add to your starting Vitae pool for that scene on a 1:1 basis. When a character makes such a roll, they have two options/styles of feeding to pick from:

"Social" Feeding -- make a Presence + Blood Potency roll, which is capped by your character's Humanity (e.g. Presence 4 + Blood Potency 2 would give me 6 dice, but if my Humanity is only a 5, I cannot roll more than 5 dice on this roll). Other social dice bonuses such as those granted by the Striking Looks merit or similar mechanics may also apply to this roll, but keep in mind the Humanity limitation.

"Brute" Feeding -- make a Strength + Blood Potency roll, which is not capped by your character's Humanity, but other bonuses and/or penalties may apply.

When in doubt about whether there might be a bonus or penalty applied to a feeding roll, just ask! Send me a PM and I will respond to you as promptly as I can!

OOC Text in IC threads
Make sure any OOC text included in an IC post you make to a thread is done in the color Orange and listed as OOC.

Keeping track of Health, Willpower, Vitae and active effects in a thread
Sometimes your character will use a Discipline that lasts for the duration of a scene--it could be a buff of some sort. In order to keep track of those, please make sure that you list those in every post you make to the scene in which those effects are active, as well as including your current Health, Willpower and Vitae for the scene like this:

OOC: Health: 8/8, WP: 7/7, Vitae: 8/11. Active Effects - Vigor, Resilience.

Dice rolls and possible situational/environmental penalties
When making any sort of dice roll, please check the box that reads Record Each Die on the dice roller. The reason for this is that at times the players may be unaware of a situational and/or environmental dice penalty that will be applied to their roll, which I will need to do by subtracting dice after the roll is made. I will be subtracting dice from right to left, and will need to be able to see each die rolled in order to do this.

Example: Player A makes a Dexterity + Athletics roll to throw a ball and scores 3 successes. However, at the time of their roll they did not take into account that strong winds will levy a -2 dice penalty on their roll.

Player A's dice roll results are as follow -- 8,2,4,7,8,9.

If we are to subtract the -2 penalty counting from right to left, Player A's actual result is 1 success instead of 3 based on the example above since the numbers highlighted in red would be the ones subtracted due to the environmental penalty.

This rule will also be important when it comes to combat and subtracting things like Defense and Armor from a player's attack roll, since the players are generally unaware of what an NPC's armor or defense values might be.

Havens
Each characteristic of the Haven Merit (Library, Location, Security, Size) is purchased as a separate Merit. For example, having a Haven with Location 2, Security 3 and Size 1 would cost a total of 20 XP (6xp for location, 12xp for securiy, 2 xp for size).

Retainers
Rather than having to create a full sheet for NPCs represented by the Retainer Merit, we will use the following system:

When making a dice roll, a Retainer will roll an amount of dice equal to their rating (1-5). If making a dice roll related to something that is their specialty, they roll an amount of dice equal to 2 times their rating (e.g. 10 dice for a 5-dot Retainer). You can designate one specialty per dot in the Merit. For example, a 3-dot Retainer that serves as a bodyguard could have specialties in Brawl, Firearms and Intimidation. Retainers will have their own Merit dots equal 2 times their rating. In the case that a Retainer becomes involved in combat, their Defense is equal to their rating, their Initiative is equal to 2 times their rating. They have an amount of Health and Willpower equal to 2 times their rating. Retainers that are Ghouls will also receive dots of Disciplines equal to their rating. Do keep in mind that Ghouls require vampiric Vitae, so there's an upkeep costs for having them (noted above under rules for Blood/Vitae).

Owning a business IC
In order to represent the fact that a character owns a specific business in the game, they will need to purchase the Staff Merit found in p. 74 of the Ghouls book. The number of dots required will depend on the size, complexity and other factors relating to the PC-owned business. Unlike the Merit published in the book, I'll allow for this Merit to be shared if 2 or more PCs are "partners" and own the business together. However, every PC contributing dots towards the Staff merit still needs to meet the Resources prerequisite (e.g. Johnny and Laura want to own a large sports stadium/arena, which will require them to have 5 dots in the Staff Merit. Johnny has Resources 5 and is able to spend XP to contribute dots towards sharing Staff with Laura. However, Laura only has Resources 3, and thus unable to spend XP to contribute dots towards sharing Staff with John until she has enough Resources to meet the prerequisites).
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:14, Mon 16 May 2022.