… And Hunger Makes Them Weaker: Now, take all of the above, but remove the ability to do Willpower re-rolls, increase the chance of a bestial failure, and make any possible critical a messy one. If your Storyteller will let you get away with lousy social stats because you never have to roll, then I suppose this is where you take advantage of that. One part touches on blood sorcery and self-vivisection used in sorcery rites of many kinds. You’re probably going to need to be able to make hunting rolls. Wits – Wits is the passive perception stat in V5 – it’s used to notice things when you aren’t actively searching for them. Scorpion’s Touch requires Strength, but it usually additionally requires a successful melee attack, so Strength was probably going to be called for anyway. V5 requires a relative lot of successes. It’s also the stat that gets rolled anytime your character is actively looking for something. A third-dot in an in-clan Discipline is way more valuable (15xp). Because there is no option what values to have for attributes, and advantages don’t have escalating point costs, this arbitrage could only be applicable to Disciplines and Skills (although it turns out to only apply to Disciplines). The more your game involves you the player assessing credibility and motivations, rather than dice rolls, the less useful Insight gets – to the point that it is almost useless with some Storytellers. It is, however, used for Sandman Predator Pools. Domain is the province of the entire coterie, not one character, but there are still better and worse ways to use it. Blood Sorcery. A one-dot Contact will help out once per story. And the mechanical effect of Entrancement is to add Presence to Social dice pools against that subject – which Awe already does for most Charisma rolls (although not for manipulation rolls). Note that the method described in the text from pages 144-46 is the same dot spread as the balanced quick skill assignment. Dear Twitpic Community - thank you for all the wonderful photos you have taken over the years. Its alright, and is great situationally. That means that, when resistance is applicable, the target of the power will often get to roll 5 dice. And there are other skills that a character will never be called upon to roll, unless the character’s specific concept is doing that thing. In conceptual and experience point terms, a dot of Humanity is the most valuable thing on a vampire’s character sheet. Athletics – Athletics can be of surprisingly little use in a game of Vampire, which often doesn’t include a lot of physical activity outside of combat. Attributes increased by spending blood now only last for one roll, so you can’t build up to a higher Strength as the fight goes on (and the fights usually don’t last very long anyway). Which is a long way of saying that there are reasons for any of these options, so you can safely pick whatever suits your preference, from an xp efficiency perspective. Politics is also somewhat just knowing about the political situation – but I’m not sure how many Storytellers will make characters roll Politics to have a grasp of the local Kindred power structure. Note that “fast talk,” although listed as a speciality of Persuasion, belongs under Subterfuge. On the more practical side of things, Science is used to create explosives (with a Technology or Craft follow-up to actually build the bomb), so there is one practical application if you want to up the damage level in your game. Learn how your comment data is processed. Dodging just replaces your attack dice pool with a Dexterity + Athletics pool. Wits is used for half of Auspex rolls, for resisting some Dominate powers, protecting Obfuscate against supernatural detection (or your own clumsiness), resisting one Presence power. That’s an enormous boost (just think what the cost would be to increase Charisma and Manipulation and Composure by one would be). The 3-dot Dread Gaze can sometimes substitute for Daunt, but is much more of a blunt-force weapon (using Charisma as the roll). Take Status 1 unless your concept is to play a social pariah. Interestingly, V5's Blood Sorcery also has multiple branches unique to certain Clans, ... new players might find Blood Sorcery's Vitae control and Rituals a bit too specific and complex. It might also come into play in social rolls that require fast thinking (including the ever-popular rap battle). Even most tracking is Streetwise. In V5, Blood Sorcery has a lot of branches, each with their own set of spells and intricate Rituals. Herd – You know how I talked earlier about how you aren’t locked into one kind of feeding? It covers trickiness of a physical sort (e.g., sleight of hand, pretending to eat). By making a Dexterity + Blood Sorcery roll at a difficulty, the user may craft the blood into any shape or image they desire. I think that it’s relevant to be able to make sure that your character concept is embodied in the dots you actually put on the sheet. Fame – Fame has its ups and its downs, but there’s a lot of interesting roleplaying potential, in addition to the practical usefulness of people going out of their way to help you and some shielding for overt physical assault (because your enemies have more of a Masquerade issue if you disappear). Intimidation – Like Firearms and Larceny, Intimidation is narrow, but narrow in a space where Vampire often plays. A character can dodge without too much penalty against multiple opponents, but will never be able to hit back. When confronted with a rival or a Kraina they do not recognize, the magic inherent to this form compels them to attack the intruder. Dominate is most commonly resisted with an Intelligence + Resolve roll, and lower-generation vampires can shrug the power off by spending a Willpower (I think the only mechanical benefit of being lower generation). Note that Intelligence might be called upon for the design aspects of Craft, in addition to the attribute appropriate for actual construction. 2 Dot Mawla – Equivalent to Blood Sorcery 4 . It’s usually either you know it as general background information, or it’s the sort of thing you have to find out personally. It’s used for some Auspex powers, for resisting many Dominate powers, resisting Awe (when you know it’s being used), and every single Blood Sorcery ritual.