The Character System

Characters are the hub of the entire project. Every relationship, coterie, location, discipline, and piece of equipment ultimately connects back to a character file. The character schema is also the most complex type in the project — 95 editable fields plus 6 computed fields — so understanding its structure is essential before you add to it.

What a Character Is

A character file represents any person in the chronicle: a Kindred vampire (the default), a mortal, a ghoul, a thin-blood, a werewolf, a mage, a ghost, or even an organization. The type enum controls this. Most characters in a chronicle are Kindred, and the schema is built around that assumption — mortals and other types simply leave the vampiric fields at zero or empty.

The Anatomy of a Character

Identity Block

name, concept, type, clan, sire, sect, status, coterie, location, role, chronicleName. These tell the AI who this person is, what they are, and where they fit. The type field is the gate: a Kindred has clan, disciplines, hunger, and blood potency. A Mortal has none of those. The status enum (Active, Dead, Missing, In Torpor, Embraced, Destroyed, Unknown) lets you bench a character without deleting them.

Attributes (Physical / Social / Mental)

Nine attributes, each rated 1–5: strength, dexterity, stamina (Physical); charisma, manipulation, composure (Social); intelligence, wits, resolve (Mental). These feed into every dice pool the AI builds. The computed fields healthMax (Stamina + 3) and willpowerMax (Composure + Resolve) derive from these — change attributes to change trackers.

Skills

Twenty-seven skills, each rated 0–5, matching the V5 corebook list. The AI combines these with attributes to build dice pools: firearms + dexterity for a shootout, politics + manipulation for court intrigue, awareness + wits for noticing the SI tail.

Disciplines

Fourteen discipline fields — one per discipline in the game — each rated 0–5. The character's clan determines which three they have innate access to, but they can learn others through diablerie or tutelage. The disciplinePowers object maps discipline slugs to specific power names the character has selected at each dot level.

Advantages, Backgrounds, and Flaws

Three key-value objects: advantages (Merits like "Bonding ●●": "Short Bond"), backgrounds (rated 0–5: Herd, Haven, Resources, Status, etc.), and flaws (rated by dots: "Prey Exclusion ■": "Children"). Additionally, mythicAdvantages and mythicFlaws hold supernatural Merits and Flaws. The backgroundNarratives object pairs with backgrounds to provide prose descriptions of what those dots mean in the fiction.

Blood and the Beast

hunger (0–5), bloodPotency (0–10), generation (0–16), humanity (0–10), stains (0–10). These track the character's vampiric condition. Hunger rises with Rouse Checks and falls with feeding. Humanity drops when Stains accumulate. The computed field degenerationRisk is true when Stains exceed the remaining Humanity buffer — a warning flag during play.

Health and Willpower Trackers

Four damage fields: healthSuperficial, healthAggravated, willpowerSuperficial, willpowerAggravated. The computed fields healthImpaired and willpowerImpaired are true when the respective tracker is full. The AI checks these during conflicts. Reset them at the start of each session as appropriate.

Touchstones, Convictions, and Chronicle Tenets

touchstonesAndConvictions is a key-value map pairing a mortal's name (the Touchstone) with the Conviction they anchor: "Maria Reyes": "Never kill an innocent". chronicleTenets is an array of the table's agreed-upon moral boundaries. The AI uses both when evaluating whether an action warrants Stains.

Predator Type, Loresheets, and Inventory

predatorType references a Predator Type file. The AI uses this to determine feeding behavior, mechanical bonuses, and which Compulsion manifests during frenzy. loresheets is a key-value map of loresheet slug → dots purchased, driving the computed hasActiveLoresheets boolean. inventory is an array of objects, each referencing an equipment item with optional equipped, quantity, and notes fields.

Narrative Fields

description, appearance, personality, history, distinguishingFeatures, notes. These are the prose fields the AI draws on for scene narration, dialogue style, and character portrayal. The richer these are, the more distinctive the character feels in play.

Adding a New Character

Start with the essentials: name, type, concept. If Kindred, add clan, sire, sect, generation, bloodPotency. Distribute attributes (one at 4, three at 3, four at 2, one at 1). Choose a skill distribution. Set two clan disciplines with dots. Pick a predatorType. Spend 7 Advantage dots and take 2 Flaw dots. Add touchstonesAndConvictions. Set humanity to 7. Write the narrative fields. Then add at least two relationships — one to your sire and one to a coterie-mate. Link their location to a point of interest or district.

What Not to Do

• Don't write computed fields (healthMax, willpowerMax, healthImpaired, willpowerImpaired, degenerationRisk, hasActiveLoresheets). They derive automatically.
• Don't invent new disciplines that don't exist as discipline files. The discipline fields are numbers keyed to the same slugs used by the Discipline file type.
• Don't leave clan empty on a Kindred character. The AI uses clan to determine Bane, Compulsion, and innate disciplines.
• Don't set hunger above 5 or humanity above 10. The schema enforces these bounds.
• Don't write a coterie slug that doesn't match an existing coterie file. The reference will break.