Vampirism

Vampirism abilities cover the need to feed, affecting creatures that feed on blood or emotions to gain their power. Not every creature with these abilities could be called a “vampire,” but the mechanism is much the same.

You can (and, with Feeding Dependency on page 190, must) drink blood. Feeding on lifeblood sustains you more fully than any other food might, and you’re particularly good at it. Anything short of freshly-spilled blood is less vital and, thus, less fulfilling; a fresh kill is like a three-course meal, while a bag from the blood bank is like an hors d'oeuvre—small and tasty, but ultimately leaving you hungry for the main course. You have no need to eat regular food (though you might still enjoy it).

Drink Blood. Any time you draw blood in close personal combat—with your claws or your teeth—you can ingest some of it to gain sustenance. Roll Fists or another appropriate skill (Weapons, etc.) to make your victim bleed. Once you've done this successfully, gain a +1 to your attack on subsequent exchanges against the same target. In a grapple, you may inflict an extra point of stress on a target as a supplemental action.

The Taste of Death. Once per scene, if you inflict enough stress and consequences to kill a victim from feeding, you may take an immediate “free” recovery period equal to an extra scene. This will clear your stress track and mild physical consequences (page 220), and possibly larger consequences if you have an ability that lets you heal quickly (page 184).

Blood Frenzy. When in the presence of fresh blood, you feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to attack. The GM is within her rights to call for Discipline rolls to resist the urge. In some cases, the urge may take the form of a compel against your high concept.

You can (and, with Feeding Dependency on page 190, must) “eat” strong emotions—often lustful and passionate or otherwise dark ones. Purely positive emotions, such as love, are not an option. This very much follows the law of “you are what you eat”: those who feed on fear and despair tend to be fearsome creatures (or at least control freaks), while those who feed on lust tend to be consummate seducers and very sexually active.

As a baseline, whenever you’re near an “eligible” strong emotion, you may draw in mild sustenance from it. This just grazes the surface of the victim’s life force, maybe making them just a shade less vital in the long term, but it doesn't have much of an immediate effect. Being in the presence of many people experiencing strong emotions—a mob during a panicked riot or an orgy at a “swingers” convention, for example — has a multiplicative effect; as such, emotional vampires are nearly always drawn to such events.

Musts: You must choose the emotion associated with this power when you take it.

Feeding Touch. Physical contact is where it's at for a satisfying, long-term meal. When a victim is in the throes of an eligible emotion (usually easy for a White Court vampire using his Incite Emotion ability, page 172), you may draw some of his life force out of him to sustain you. This is done as a psychological attack with an appropriate skill (usually Deceive or Provoke). If you have the Incite Emotion ability, inciting the emotion and feeding on it may be done as a single action, based on a single roll. On subsequent exchanges, if the emotion is still in place you may continue to feed, gaining a +1 on the roll.

The Taste of Death. Once per scene, if you inflict enough stress and consequences to kill a victim from feeding, you may take an immediate “free” recovery period equal to an extra scene. This will clear your stress track and mild physical consequences (page 220), and possibly larger consequences if you have an ability that lets you heal quickly (page 184).

Feeding Frenzy. When in the presence of heightened emotions and willing victims, you feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to feed. The GM is within her rights to call for Discipline rolls to resist the urge. In some cases, the urge may take the form of a compel against your high concept.

You gain some of your supernatural abilities by feeding on blood (page 188), emotions (page 189), or something else (in the case of ghouls, massive quantities of meat). If you take this ability, it “attaches” to most if not all of your supernatural powers except for those from this category (at least 2 points’ worth).

Hunger Is Stressful. You have an additional stress track called hunger. The length of the track works like those of other stress tracks from Endurance, Conviction, etc., only using Discipline as the base skill. Unlike other stress tracks, you may not clear this out at the end of a scene (see below).

Limited Reserves. At the end of a scene whenever you have heavily exerted your affected powers, you must check to see if you experience feeding failure. This manifests as an attack with a strength equal to the total refresh cost of the abilities you used; you roll Discipline to defend. For example, if you used Inhuman Strength and Inhuman Toughness in the scene, that’s a total of 4 refresh, so you’d be rolling your Conviction to meet or beat a target of 4.

• If you succeed, you may clear out your hunger stress track.
• If you fail, you take hunger stress as though you’d suffered an attack. If you have physical or mental consequence slots open, you may use them to buy off the stress as per the normal rules (page 203). If you cannot or do not wish to spare consequences, then you must lose access to a number of your powers, up to a refresh cost equal to the amount of stress taken. These options can be combined however you choose.

If you have no powers left to lose and are taken out by a feeding failure, you are actually taken out (resulting in complete incapacitation, extreme emaciation, and other nasty fates).

Highly stressful or emotional situations can still trigger your need to feed, even if you’ve already lost some or all of your abilities. In such situations (often as the result of a compel), the strength of the attack is equal to half of the refresh value of your affected abilities, rounded up.

Failure Recovery. You can recover your lost abilities at the rate of up to one point per scene so long as you opt out of the scene, essentially because you are spending it feeding. You can regain all of your lost abilities in one scene if you feed so forcefully as to kill a victim outright. In either case, your hunger stress clears out completely, and any consequences that resulted from feeding failure vanish regardless of the usual recovery time.

You've enlisted or allied with the Fellowship of St. Giles (OW89) to keep your Red Court vampirism in check. They've covered you in normally invisible tattoos that carry a magic potency, enabling you to better fight off the dark urges rising within you—and letting others know when you’re in jeopardy of giving in to your hunger.

Musts: The tattoos are only available to someone infected, but not yet turned, by Red Court vampirism. You lose this ability immediately if you ever turn and become a full Red Court vampire.

A Warning to Others. Whenever you take hunger stress, your tattoos become visible, darkening into a black ink, then turning red when you’re at high risk of taking consequences; this gives others a bonus to any perception checks to realize your situation. The bonus is equal to the amount of hunger stress you take from the attack (see above).

Biofeedback. The tattoos give you a boost when exercising your self-control. Whenever your tattoos are visible, you gain +1 to your Discipline when using it defensively.

Deeper Reserves. You can run longer and harder before really losing it. Add two boxes to the length of your hunger stress track.

Supernatural Player. The tattoos mark you as a member of the Fellowship when those “in the know” see them on you. If your tattoos are showing, gain a +1 to your Provoke when dealing with such individuals.

Fellowship Training. The tattoos come with the Fellowship’s training program. Gain +1 to Lore when using it to identify supernatural threats. Increase this bonus to +2 when using Lore to identify signs of the Red Court at work.