The Rules of the Night
Vampire runs on the Storyteller System: roll a pool of ten-sided dice, count successes, and compare against a Difficulty. This chapter covers the core mechanics you will use every session. The rules are here to serve the story, not the other way around — when in doubt, the Storyteller's judgment moves things forward.
Building a Dice Pool
Most actions combine an Attribute and a Skill. The Storyteller tells you which combination fits what you are trying to do. Want to chase down a fleeing vessel? Dexterity + Athletics. Want to convince the Prince your coterie wasn't responsible for the Masquerade breach at an underground club? Manipulation + Subterfuge. Want to identify the faint scent of vitae on a mortal's breath? Wits + Awareness.
If you lack the Skill entirely, you still roll the Attribute — no penalty beyond the missing dice.
Rolling and Succeeding
Roll your pool. Every die showing 6 or higher is a success. A 10 (shown as 0 on most dice) is a success. Two 10s on regular dice is a critical success — four total successes, and you perform your task faster, more stylishly, or more thoroughly than normal.
The Difficulty is the number of successes you need to win.
| Difficulty | Example |
|---|---|
| 1 | Striking a stationary target, convincing a loyal friend |
| 2 | Seducing someone already interested, intimidating a weakling |
| 3 | Replacing a car stereo, walking a tightrope |
| 4 | Locating the source of a whisper, creating memorable art |
| 5 | Convincing a cop the cocaine isn't yours, rebuilding an engine |
| 6 | Running across a tightrope under fire, calming a violent mob |
| 7+ | Finding one specific homeless person in a city of millions in one night |
If your dice pool is double the Difficulty, the Storyteller may grant you an automatic win. No roll needed. This keeps the game moving through scenes where failure wouldn't be interesting.
Win at a Cost
If you roll some successes but not enough to beat the Difficulty, the Storyteller may offer you a win at a cost. You achieve your goal — the lock clicks open, the guard buys your story — but something makes things worse. You leave evidence behind. Someone sees you. You damage your tools. Any player can suggest the cost. If it's too steep, you can always choose to fail instead.
Contests
When someone opposes your action directly — sneaking past a guard who is actively searching, hacking a monitored system — you roll against each other. Your pool versus theirs. Whoever rolls more successes wins. If you tie, you still win as the acting character.
The Storyteller can "take half" for SPCs to speed things up: divide their pool in half (round down) and treat that as their successes.
Conflict and Damage
When contests result in harm — physical or mental — it's a conflict. Each participant declares their intent each turn. Roll your contest; the winner applies their margin of success to the loser's tracker as damage.
Physical conflicts damage Health. Social conflicts damage Willpower. Damage comes in two types:
- Superficial (marked "/"): Bruises, sprains, embarrassment. Fists and blunt weapons do Superficial damage to humans; most weapons do Superficial damage to vampires. Halve Superficial damage (round up) before applying it.
- Aggravated (marked "X"): Broken bones, deep wounds, devastating revelations. Fire, sunlight, and the claws and teeth of supernatural creatures do Aggravated damage to vampires. Close friends and trusted figures can deal Aggravated Willpower damage.
When your tracker is full, you are Impaired — lose two dice from relevant pools. Further damage converts Superficial to Aggravated. A tracker completely filled with Aggravated damage removes you from the conflict — comatose or dead for mortals, torpor for vampires.
The Storyteller is encouraged to end conflicts after roughly three turns. Change the situation, award victory to the side that won the most contests, or let the players break off and flee.
Willpower
You can spend a point of Willpower to re-roll up to three regular dice (never Hunger dice) on any roll. You can also spend Willpower to take control of your character for one turn during frenzy or supernatural coercion, or to ignore Health damage penalties for one turn.
Spending Willpower marks Superficial damage on your Willpower tracker. You recover Superficial Willpower at the start of each session (up to your Composure or Resolve, whichever is higher), by acting to further your Desire, or by dramatically playing out a messy critical or frenzy. Aggravated Willpower heals when you act to benefit a Touchstone or uphold a Conviction against your own best interest.
Hunger and the Red Dice
You are never full. You are never safe. Your Hunger rating (0 to 5) replaces that many regular dice in every pool you roll with Hunger dice — visually distinct red dice. Hunger dice function like regular dice for success and failure, but they carry additional consequences:
- A Messy Critical occurs when you roll a critical success that includes at least one 10 on a Hunger die. You succeed — but the Beast asserts itself. You go too far. You hurt someone you didn't mean to. You reveal your nature. Your success is stained with monstrosity.
- A Bestial Failure occurs when you fail a roll and a Hunger die shows a 1. Your failure is not just failure — it is the Beast's failure. You lose control in a way that makes everything worse.
Hunger rises when you Rouse the Blood to activate Disciplines, heal wounds, or rise each night. It falls only when you feed. A Hunger of 5 means you must test for frenzy; at Hunger 0, you are sated — a fleeting, precious state.
Rouse Checks
Every time you use vampiric powers, heal damage, or rise from daysleep, you make a Rouse Check: roll a single die. On a 6 or higher, you succeed without cost. On a 1-5, your Hunger increases by 1. You cannot use Willpower on Rouse Checks and you can never take half.
Experience and Improvement
At the end of each session, you earn 1 experience point (or 2 in faster-paced chronicles), plus 1 at the end of each story. Spend XP to improve Traits:
| Improvement | XP Cost |
|---|---|
| Increase Attribute | New level × 5 |
| Increase Skill | New level × 3 |
| New Specialty | 3 |
| Clan Discipline | New level × 5 |
| Other Discipline | New level × 7 |
| Caitiff Discipline | New level × 6 |
| Blood Sorcery Ritual | Ritual level × 3 |
| Thin-Blood Formula | Formula level × 3 |
| Advantage | 3 per dot |
| Blood Potency | New level × 10 |
The Storyteller may require you to have pursued an improvement in the fiction before you can spend XP on it — you don't suddenly develop Dominate 3 because you killed enough rats in the Undercity.