Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

egaining humanity • game effects of humanity • daytime chapter activity one: • society relating of the to mortals
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If a character tries to remain active for an entire scene , the Storyteller can make the effort an
extended action and require the player to accumulate fi ve successes, though a failure at any
point means the character immediately falls asleep despite his intentions. If the vampire is still
awake at the end of the fi rst hour of daytime, he can attempt another extended action to stay
awake for another scene, repeating that extended action again and again. Any failure results
in immediate sleep, however. A vampire might remain active during the day to undertake
extensive research, to perform a lengthy ritual or to keep a vigil or to stand guard. Attempts
to go out possessing an animal or mortal with Animalism or Dominate almost always fail as
the vampiric curse overwhelms a character’s mind. Remaining active for a whole day doesn’t
preclude the normal Vitae cost for “waking” that night. In this case, the Vitae is spent for
the vampire to continue functioning for the remainder of the night.
A Kindred can also try to wake up during the day if something disturbs her sleep. The
player draws Wits (+ Auspex, if the character has that Discipline) to determine if the sleeping
vampire notices the disturbance. If the draw succeeds, the player makes the above Humanity
draw to fi nd out if the character can force herself awake. Rousing from sleep during the day
also costs a Vitae, regardless of how long the character remains active thereafter. (Staying
active during the day without ever having slept costs no Vitae.) If a vampire is roused from
sleep during the day, a Vitae is spent for her to be active, and if she resumes sleep thereafter,
another Vitae is spent that evening for her to rise for the whole night.
A Kindred has trouble putting forth her full effort when the Beast’s instincts tell her to sleep.
While a Kindred acts during the day — whether having remained active since the night before
or having been awoken from slumber — test pools for any task cannot exceed the character’s
Humanity dots. For example, Thomas stays up well into the day to puzzle out a few clues to a
threat against his Requiem. Normally, Thomas’s Intelligence + Investigation test pool is seven,
but since his Humanity is only 4, only four of that 7 can be used in the Investigation draw.
RELATING TO MORTALS
The more human a vampire feels, the more human he can act. Every second, mortals
send and receive tiny cues that they pay attention to each other, that they care and respond
— that they’re alive. They look at each other’s faces, mimic each other’s fl ickers of expression,
shift their weight when another person does so, nod slightly as another person talks. The
Man does all that, the Beast doesn’t. A Kindred with low Humanity can put great effort
into acting like a living person. He can force himself to breathe and remind himself to blink
now and then… but he can’t fake that subtle, unconscious dance of nonverbal interaction.
Mortals soon pick up on this. They cannot consciously spot the problem, but their instincts
tell them that something is very wrong and they should get away. They sense the predator
behind the human mask.
Kindred can suffuse their fl esh with Vitae to look more alive. Vampires with high Humanity
do so almost refl exively to preserve the illusion for themselves that they are still people, not
monsters. Low-Humanity vampires do so less often and achieve less lifelike results. As the
Man weakens, the Kindred tend to look paler and more corpselike.
When a Kindred interacts with people other than vampires, that character’s test pool in
Empathy, Persuasion or Socialize can rise no higher than his Humanity dots. For instance,
if a character has a Humanity of 5, his player cannot have a test pool of more than fi ve when
attempting to use Wits + Empathy on a mortal, no matter how high the character’s Wits and
Empathy scores might be. This limitation does not apply to Discipline powers that call for
Empathy, Persuasion or Socialize in their test pools, as these powers are supernatural in effect
and therefore outside the normal realm of experience governed by Humanity.