E M E R A L D C I T Y C H R O N I C L E S
GAMEPLAY: PERMUTATIONS: HOUSE RULES: FEEDING
The whole of a vampire’s existence is dictated by blood. They crave it. They need it. It’s often times all they can think about. Unfortunately for us, this translates somewhat poorly to a clean system for any game exceeding three or four players. Feeding as defined on this page covers two primary things: how much blood your character begins game with, and how you can increase that total during game. Here is how we will be handling feeding within the Camarilla Vampire sphere.
BEGINNING THE GAME
All vampires have a feeding score which determines, essentially, how good at being a vampire they are. By the book, feeding scenes are a series of checks that are made in sequence to determine if your character was successful in cornering her prey. Naturally, doing this for a game of this size individually wouldn’t be very time-effective. Instead, we will be using your character's feeding score to determine how much blood your character, and everyone else's characters begin with en-masse.
Staff will note this feeding score number on your sheet somewhere so that you can also see how your character does at feeding. (See bottom R for online tracking)
Disciplines and esoteric Merits & Flaws add no additional effects to this matrix. Certain Clans/Bloodlines have feeding complications as part of their Curse. These Clans/Bloodlines will receive a -4 feeding to their pools.
At the start of the month, staff will roll randomly to determine how much of your feeding score is available to your character's blood pool. This is generally a percentage of this score, and that’s your starting blood. Blood will remain at this level all month, minus your game expenses and plus your game additions.
FEEDING SCORE
To calculate your character's monthy starting blood pool Add:
+ Your character's Perception Attribute rating (from 1-5)
+ A single relevant Ability rating (from 1-5)
Whichever is highest of the following: Animal Ken, Medicine, Streetwise, Subterfuge, or Survival
+ Relevant backgrounds that effect feeding per the V20 core book (from 1-5 or with Pooled Backgrounds, up to 10): Herd, Fame, Domain-Feeding
+ or - Merits & Flaws (Same as cost): Merits that positively affect feeding add its value to your score. Flaws that affect feeding reduces it by its value. Efficient Digestion will give +3, Grip of the Damned will give -4, etc.
BILLIOUS BRUJAH
Billy's Example Feeding score:
+ Perception 2
+ Subterfuge 3
- Prey Exclusion 3 point Flaw (children)
= 4 starting blood per month
Example above: Billy Brujah has a Perception of 2, a Subterfuge of 3, a Herd of 1, a Fame of 1, a Domain of 1 along with Prey Exclusion (Children). We calculate his feeding score as 7. This means that without spending Downtimes to feed fully or engaging in mid-game feeding scenes, the character will start with a base 7 blood each week. Staff determines at the start of the month that everyone has 50% of their score in their starting pool due to a particularly harsh feeding environment in Seattle that month. Billy begins play that month with 4 blood in his pool, and has some very serious hunger issues during thet month of feeding.
GAINING BLOOD DURING THE MONTH
Blood can be gained a number of ways during the course of the month if your feeding results are bad, or you burn through a bunch of blood due to a combat or the like. Below are listed a few:
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You may expend a downtime action to begin the following game at full blood. This will reset your counter for the remainder of the month to this number, but your character will not begin EVERY game full.
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You may request a feeding scene during game. Feeding scenes will require you to sit out of game (or be involved in an ST narrated story) for one hour per scene, minus 10 minutes per dot of Herd your character has. Each feeding scene will earn your character 3 blood points.
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Your character may buy blood from those characters who have the Blood perk on their businesses. This is like feeding, except it’s an out of game mechanic to determine an in game action. Example: Billy goes to a Night Club owned by Vincent Ventrue and purchases two blood. Effectively, Billy gives him money or boons and Vincent allows him to feed on his patrons. There is no in game time for this mechanic.
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Your character may assault someone. There isn’t really a mechanic for this: if your response to a feeding scene is ‘I kill that guy’ or ‘I murder a hobo for all his blood’, your character is now involved in a much larger scene that will have ramifications to your character's Humanity as well as in game legal consequences. Unlike a feeding scene, your character is *not* presumed to just ‘get away’ with these sorts of actions.
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Your character may utilize Influence to gain blood. While this takes a downtime action and a check as per Influence, the benefit is that you don’t need to necessarily drink this blood right away (or even yourself).
Feeding represents the life blood of the city in a very real way. There will be times where IC actions make the above harder or nearly impossible for a period of time. The city only has so much blood to go around before mortals start to notice; if everyone spends downtime actions to begin play full every month, you can expect the mortal populace to begin showing the wear of these actions in-game, and other actions may effect feeding as well.
HUNGER GAME
Feel free to check your character's feeding score each week using this handy spreadsheet. Sheets are tracked by player number (an arbitrary number assigned after bead draws, shown at the top-left of your online character sheet) so they'll keep your character's specific blood pool a secret.
A hungry vampire is more inclined to hunt, even if they have more than one blood point remaining — a Kindred can generally be considered hungry when they have fewer blood points than (7 minus Self-Control or Instincts). pg. pg. 366 - V20 Core Book
Check out our Permutations Podcast about feeding at our game below:
