House Rules

[Rabbit]

Average Horse Speeds

Walk/Trot No roll required.
5 miles per hour
60 miles per day (12 hours)

Cantor/Gallop Roll required.
20 miles per hour
240 miles per day (12 hours)

Pushing a Horse*
Part One: Cantor/Gallop for Extended Periods (more than a few minutes)
Ride (difficulty 6) increases speed by 10 miles per hour.
Ride (difficulty 7) increases speed by 20 miles per hour.
Ride (difficulty 8) increases speed by 30 miles per hour.

Part Two: Risk of Wounding the Animal
Botch = the horse is hobbled
1 Success = 3 damage to horse, horse rolls Stamina 4 to attempt soak
2 Success = 2 damage to horse, horse rolls Stamina 4 to attempt soak
3 Success = 1 damage to horse, horse rolls Stamina 4 to attempt soak
4+ Success = no damage

* One series of Ride rolls will be made whether the horse is pushed for 1 hour or 12. It reflects the rider's ability to pace the animal safely.

[Rabbit]

Riding a (new) horse Manipulate + Animal Ken (difficulty 7)
Attempting to ride a horse or otherwise use a new animal (who is unfamiliar with the supernatural taint of vampires.)

Dodging and Ambush Wits + Dodge (difficulty 6)
To avoid being hit during a surprise attack (to be used instead of Dexterity + Dodge.)

[Rabbit]

Awakening from Torpor: 3 versions

1) Starvation: Torpor due to lack of blood (not drinking blood until there are no points in your Blood Pool and your Health Level goes below Incapacitated.) If you are given blood, you may awaken instantly but in a blood crazed fenzy.

2) Damage: Taking damage until your Health Level goes below Incapacitated. Must rest for a time depending on via/Road score, then spend a blood point (if any left in Blood Pool) and roll Awakening.*

3) Voluntary: Some vampires will themselves to fall into torpor. Must rest for at least half as long as if due to damage, then roll Awakening.*

*Attempting to Awaken is typically; Perception + Auspex (difficulty 8)

Other factors: Being fed blood from a vampire of low enough generation will add dice to the Awakening roll. The dice bonus is eleven minus the blood giving vampire’s generation (10th generation = +1 dice, 9th generation = +2 dice, 8th generation = +3 dice, etc.) The potent blood of an elder can even trigger an Awakening attempt sooner than usual if the slumbering vampire makes a Via/Road roll (difficulty 8.)

example: A vampire is attempting to awaken from Torpor. She has a Perception 4 and Auspex of 2. She has also been fed the blood of an 8th generation vampire. Her Dice Pool for Awakening is 9 (difficulty 8.)

[Rabbit]

Understanding these concepts of “time” in the game help when reading the below rules on multiple actions and the round-robin style of combat.

Scene = A compact period of action or roleplaying. Usually spanning at least several minutes.

Turn = A unit of time within a scene allowing every character to act and react to events and each other. This can be as short as three second or up to three minutes depending on the nature of the scene. There are typically multiple Turns in a Scene.

Rounds = Most Turns will only have one Round unless character(s) choose to take multiple actions. In these instances a Turn may be split into one, two, three, or more rounds.

Multiple Actions
A character can perform multiple actions in a turn, but they must divide their Dice Pool among these actions. To split a Dice Pool, the character determines which action has the lower Dice Pool and divides those dice among their multiple actions.

A character with multiple actions takes their first action during the normal order of initiative (unless they intentionally delay.) A character may take no more than one action in a round.* After all characters have completed their first action, characters with second actions may take them. This continues on to third actions. While a character may delay their action, he must perform it before the other characters move to their next action, or lose it.

*This applies even when using the Two Weapon Fighting, Double Strike, or any Multiple Actions.


Two Weapon Fighting
A character may use a weapon in each hand, attacking with both. There is a +1 difficulty for the dominate hand and +3 difficulty for the off hand. (The merit Ambidextrous allows characters to perform separate tasks with the each hand at no penalty.)


Double Strike (Melee Complications pg 191)**
Each attack Dice Pool receives one additional die. The character’s Dexterity +1 is the maximum number of dice that may be used for each attack.

The maximum number of additional attacks is determined by dividing the character’s skill by two. (A character with six points in Melee can attack three times in one turn.)

The Difficulty for all attacks increase by 1.

**In the book the developers suggest this Melee Complication is only meant for knife fighting, but the way it reads I am not sure if that was another typo. Regardless, I adjusted it to make it still work for all types of Melee (and some brawl.)

[Rabbit]

Obsfucate and Combat

Sneak Attacks
Attacking immediately drops the veil of Obsfucate. However, Obsfucate can still be used to gain an advantage in sneak attacks.

Typically dodging an Ambush is Wits + Dodge (difficulty 6)

When Obsfucate is in use the defender’s Dice Pool is penalized by the attacker’s obsfucate rating (minimum 1.)

Additionally, if the defender has Auspex they ignore that many points of the attacker’s Obsfucate.

EXAMPLE 1:

Vampire A with Obsfucate 3 is attacking Vampire B with Auspex 2.

Vampire A; attack Dex + Melee.

Vampire B; defends Wits + Dodge – 1 dice.

Note the first attack is considered an Ambush (Wit+Dodge.) Once a character is aware that someone is using Obsfucate to attack them they will roll normal defence (Dex+Dodge.)

[Rabbit]

Botches (house rule)
Typically every 1 rolled removes a success from the rolled Dice Pool. If there are any 1s left, and no successes, the attempt is considered a botch. Meaning something notably negative happens to the character. While I like the concept of potential botches I believe that the original version makes botches too common.

New Rule: Points in the Ability used to create a dice pool can remove 1s and prevent botches:
3 points in Ability prevents 1 Botch
4 points in Ability prevents 2 Botches
5 points in Ability prevents 3 Botches
Etc.

I think this will be more fair and it will also encourage characters to specialize in Abilities instead of simply stacking points in Attributes (not that there is anything wrong with that.)

EDIT: there are certain rolls that do not involve Abilities and Attributes. Willpower, Courage, Roads, etc. I am still considering ways to lessen botches with these types of rolls. I may simpley ignore the botch rule or leave it up to the story teller's discretion.