Liber Vampyr

Chapter 2: Suppelemental Rules
The following section details a number of
miscellaneous rules that govern a variety of new concepts
introduced in this book, such as how to adjudicate the use of
cruomancy (the mysterious power accessed through vampire
feats and class features from classes like revenant bloodletter,
revenant infiltrator, and revenant occultist), new undeadcentered
uses for a number of existing skills, and information
on a new condition that only affects undead creatures:
necrosis.
Cruomancy
Cruomancy is the discipline of blood magic, which
allows a character to tap into a variety of different abilities
and powers, typically associated in some way with vampires,
by expending energy from their blood. The majority of
cruomancers are revenants or other forms of vampires, but in
some rare cases living creatures are able to master the art as
well.
Cruomancers gain access to their abilities from feats
and class features. They do not cast spells, like sorcerers or
wizards, but rather gain access to a number of passive or
active abilities, many of which require the expenditure of
blood points. There are two main aspects to cruomancy,
other than the individual class features and feats that grant a
cruomancer his abilities: a character’s cruomancer level, and
his blood point pool.
Cruomancer Level
All cruomancers have a cruomancer level, and
characters with a higher cruomancer level gain access to
feats that grant more powerful abilities. Additionally, many
of these feats have more powerful effects and/or give the
cruomancer more options the higher his cruomancer level
is. Finally, a character’s cruomancer level determines the
saving throw DCs of his cruomancy-related abilities, and,
in the cases of cruomancy effects that replicate spells, the
cruomancer’s effective caster level is equal to his cruomancer
level.
Most characters do not have a cruomancer level.
A character can gain a cruomancer level by gaining the
revenant template, taking the Novice Cruomancer feat, or
otherwise gaining a blood point pool in some way. Several
classes, such as the revenant bloodletter, revenant infiltrator,
and revenant occultist, increase a character’s cruomancer
level for each level taken in the class. Such classes are
referred to as cruomancer classes. Even cruomancers that
do not take levels in cruomancer classes are still capable of
advancing in the art of cruomancy, however. For every two
class levels that a cruomancer possesses of non-cruomancer
classes, his cruomancer level increases by 1 (for example, a
revenant with 5 levels in fighter and 3 levels in ranger would
have a cruomancer level of 5, while a revenant with 4 levels
of revenant bloodletter and 6 levels of fighter would have a
cruomancer level of 7).
cruomancer level from some source (such as the revenant
template or the Novice Cruomancer feat), no amount of
levels of non-cruomancer classes will grant him a cruomancer
level. Only characters with an existing cruomancer level can
increase it by gaining levels in non-cruomancer classes.
Blood Point Pool
All cruomancers have a blood point pool, which
represents the energy that they gain from draining, drinking,
or otherwise consuming blood, the source of cruomancy’s
power. Blood points in a character’s blood point pool do not
replenish naturally, and the only way for a character to gain
blood points is to consume blood in one of several ways,
depending on the source of his cruomancy abilities (typically,
with the Vampire’s Bite feat).
A cruomancer’s blood point pool has a maximum
number of blood points that the cruomancer can have at any
given time. Any blood points that the cruomancer would gain
in excess of this amount are wasted. This maximum number
of blood points is determined by the source that granted
the cruomancer his cruomancer level and blood point pool.
Additionally, most cruomancer classes increase this number
with each level taken in that class, and other things, such as
the Extra Blood feat, can increase this number, as well. In
general, increases to the maximum number of blood points
that a character can have in his or her blood point pool
stack. However, if a character has blood point pools from
two different sources somehow, those blood point pools
don’t stack. Instead, determine which blood point pool has
the higher maximum number of blood points, and apply all
increases to that amount to that blood point pool. In such
cases, the smaller blood point pool is ignored entirely.
Sources of Blood Points
A character gains blood points by draining blood
from other living creatures. In order to do so, the creature
must have blood to drink, and must have life essence for the
character to gain from the blood (old, stale dead blood does
not give a cruomancer what he needs to work his magic).
In general, creatures of the animal, dragon, fey, humanoid,
magical beast, monstrous humanoid, and vermin creature
types can almost always be counted on to be able to provide
blood points (although a few exceptions will exist, such as
fey that are particularly plant-like or magical beasts that are
specified to have acid instead of blood, etc.). On the other
hand, creatures of the construct, ooze, plant, and undead
types can generally be assumed to not be viable sources
of blood points (again, certain exceptions may exist at the
GM’s discretion, such as an ooze made entirely of blood, or
a blood-powered golem, etc. Revenants and other vampires
cannot typically be made into a source of blood points, even
if they have a blood point pool of their own or have recently
fed). Aberrations and outsiders are more difficult, and must
be examined on a case-by-case basis, with the GM having
final say one which creatures do and don’t have blood that is
consumable in this fashion.
Note that if a character does not already possess a
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