Humanity, Paths, and ways to affect em!

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

I have the following questions:

1) I was told that when I interact with mortals, my dice were limited by my humanity. I know that's a thing in Requiem and V20, but I can't find it in any source material for Masquerade. Help?

2) How does Masquerade, the secondary, affect humanity and potentially the above issue?

3) How are Path-Walkers affected?

4) In the book, under Conviction, it states that you can never appear as anything other then a monster to anyone that can sense the beast (specifically names Vampires and Werewolves), is that something staff is running with?

5) Under Jennifer back in the day, she created a system where certain Merits would affect your apparent humanity (namely Blush of Health and Baby Face and Eat Food), is this still in effect, and if so would it affect your caps?

Thanks staff!

-Rob.

[Skir]

1) This was a mistake that I made that we figured out at the last meeting when entering the feeding data for everyone. Probably some sort of crossed wire with my Requiem experience, I was under the mistaken impression that this was the rule in Vampire: Revised and spread that through my staff, but we figured out that I'm crazy, so that isn't a rule. We found some flavor in Revised saying that low humanity makes you appear physically inhuman, Buffy style, but that was it.

So, this isn't a real rule. Your social dice pools with mortals are not capped by your Humanity score mechanically, even though it is suggested in flavor text and it is that way in Requiem and V20. Unless you guys really like that rule, in which case we can talk about adding it. Do you guys like it? (Discuss!)

2, 3 and 4) So Masquerade, the secondary skill, has a special mechanic in ECC, and that is to add effective levels of Humanity for the purpose of appearing human, 1 for 1.

In the book, in order to appear human, you can spend 8 minus your Humanity in blood to "Masquerade," causing your heart to beat, your skin to flush, your eyes to blink reflexively, and overall not look like Loius in that last scene in Interview with the Vampire when he threatens the reporter. It also says that Kindred on Humanity cannot attempt this at all, however, all sorts of later source material counters this ruling, saying that being on a Path treats your effective Humanity as zero, thus costing 8 blood to appear human, so that's what I run with.

There's actually a convention at ECC of misunderstanding this rule, and I haven't gone through an effort to change it yet, but this might be the right moment to if I am, considering the new focus on blood.

People at ECC tend to say things like "I appear to be Humanity 5" or "I appear to be on a path." These statements are not actually correct, by the book. In Vampire, there are two settings - I look like a vampire, I look like a human. Humanity 7 looks identical to Path of the Power the Inner Voice 7. Both of them look like a vampire. The difference is how much blood they have to spend to appear human. The Humanity 7 guy spends 1, the Path 7 guy spends 8. Technically, unless you spend the blood to Masquerade, everyone who is not Humanity 8 or higher should be doing the creepy pale guy makeup, maybe drawing on some prominent veins showing through your dead skin, maybe wearing contact lenses, etc.

Needless to say, this is not how people play this at ECC. Whether it's due to a misunderstanding of the rule, or simply came out of a practical need for LARP setting, I don't know. Honestly, I would like to have it be that the majority of people costumed for "I look like a vampire," and those rare souls who have Humanity high enough, or their Masquerade skill high enough to compensate, looked "human" the way basically the whole game costumes now. Over time, a lot more people would buy the Masquerade skill or spend the blood to Masquerade so they aren't the only guy at the Camarilla salon looking like a pale psycho.

It might make sense now why the Sabbat make such an issue out of the Camarilla's obsession with blending in with human society. If we played by the book in this issue, doing this would be a significant concern about blood expenditures that could be spent to things like throwing trucks at people or whatever it is vampires do with their blood that isn't making their skin pink.

As an aside, there is a lot of flavor text but no mechanic saying what the difference is between "I look like a vampire" and "I look like a human" when dealing with humans. That's why I mistakenly thought the mechanic was in place that dice pool was limited by humanity.

5) In my view, Blush of Health means you bypass all that business and your effective Humanity for the purpose of spending blood is always 8, even on a Path.

As there isn't really a cap, (again, Discuss!) it doesn't affect any cap, but I have a general rule for Feeding dice pool that feeding related flaws and merits that don't have an explicit mechanic listed (like, -2 to deception based rolls, etc) give a bonus or penalty equal to their cost to your pool, if it's the appropriate pool (Like baby face might affect your Cha+Empathy pool, but not your dex melee pool if that's how you feed)

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

You artfully avoided my question regarding Conviction. Here's the text from the core book, the Appendix section.


Conviction- Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Appendix

The Conviction Virtue quantifies a character's ability to maintain a sense of reason when faced with desire, suffering or need. Utterly inhuman, Conviction represents the reconciliation of the predatory urge with the character's capacity for atrocity.
As opposed to Conscience, which deals with remorse and atonement for Path transgressions, a character with Conviction recognizes his failure and plans to overcome it. Conviction is completely inhuman; the character who has this Trait can no longer pass for human under anything but the most cursory of scrutiny. Creatures who can sense the Beast (vampires, werewolves, etc.) immediately recognize someone with the Conviction Virtue for what he truly is: a monster. Like Conscience, Conviction comes into question when a character must check for degeneration.

How is this being accounted for currently, and does it affect feeding?

[Skir]

I apologize if I was unclear - I wasn't trying to avoid your question.

To rephrase, the core book says that only those on Humanity may attempt to pass as human. I considered the passage there about Conviction to be an extension of that idea. Since I am not adhering to that particular passage, as other materials both in Dark Ages and Revised suggest alternate mechanics, that passage you quoted is similarly moot.

To my knowledge there is no "Sense the Beast" mechanic for vampires in Vampire the Masquerade, and adding one would be similar to the Predator's Taint found in Requiem and all that entails - which I'd rather not do. As for Werewolves, you'd know better than I would about that, but my understanding is that vampires register is Wyrm tainted at a certain level of morality, probably 7 and under, and I don't know how that interacts with Paths. Maybe a very high level of a Path (8+) might show up as Weaver (Honorable Accord?) or Wild (Feral Heart?) aligned instead.

In any case, I figured that because Conviction characters are never on Humanity (Except when they are, see the confusing section near the back of the book) this was another reference to their inability to attempt the Masquerade function of blood expenditure, and thus, isn't a thing in ECC.

[Just Evan]

But does being on a Conviction Path effect feeding in any way?

[Emelian Fantana]

Sean Wrote: "So, this isn't a real rule. Your social dice pools with mortals are not capped by your Humanity score mechanically, even though it is suggested in flavor text and it is that way in Requiem and V20. Unless you guys really like that rule, in which case we can talk about adding it. Do you guys like it? (Discuss!)"

So I discuss. My first gut reaction is that Dracula (in Bram Stoker's tale) and Lestat were both incredibly seductive vampires while obviously not appearing to be human. And these are two stories to which we know are directly responsible for the setting in which we play. So if the social dice pools with humans are to be cut due to the current path rating, I feel it would go against this.

However since presence lowers the difficulty of all social rolls and there are other merits (enchanting voice) as well as the masquerade secondary potentially doubling your humanity rating it just means there is something to specialize in as far as your ability to handle humans go. This would give people a reason to spend xp in something other than combat or thaum and in my opinion that is something this games needs. Long and the short of it, I like it.

edit: apologies for the run on sentances.

[Skir]

Nov 20, 2012 12:46:47 GMT -8 Just Evan said:

But does being on a Conviction Path effect feeding in any way?

No.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Hm.

As a general rule, I would like to see Path Walkers have as hard a time as possible. My experience with them is they are generally seen as a way to avoid degeneration from murder and such. Contrary to popular opinion, playing a path walker is extremely difficult and the setting should punish them on as regular a basis as possible. In my humble opinion.

Removing any of the limitations, and effectively treating Paths as 'low humanity' in all regards invalidates the Camarilla's entire stance on them. While I understand that Dark Ages offers some cool stuff, I don't think they should be treated as cannon for EC. Path walkers, by definition, have given up their humanity. Giving up your humanity removes you from the Masquerade. Allowing them to purchase things and skirt the system to actually impersonate humans (or appear as vampires still on humanity) negates every logical argument that the Camarilla at large would have against Path walkers. Yet they hate em.

Personally, I think they shouldn't benefit from simpler Dark Ages views on Paths. They are contrary to Cam view. They should have a much much MUCH harder time fitting in to compensate for a usually more lax moral compass.

My .02.

-Rob.

[Capt. Calisto Santiago]

So given all we've said so far, is Masquerade the secondary skill still useful to path followers?

It used to be the one thing they could do to not register as a monster to mortals, even mask of a thousand faces wouldn't work, because it was considered by the staff at the time a spiritual vibe that surpasses obfuscate,and can only be countered with Masquerade or spending blood to appear human. This is where the perception of a difference between one's humanity and appearance of humanity came from. Because it's been houseruled that way for the last 4 years or so.

The perception of levels of inhuman appearance comes from the Downward Spiral section of the often overlooked humanity rules on pages 135-6 of Vampire Revised, where it notes how a vampire at that level would appear to a human, or how Buffied out they are when not masquerading in some way. It's in the last paragraph or line of each section, it's easy to miss. Humanity 5-6 essentially says you're not automatically horrid, but are somewhat unpleasant to be around, there may be some minor physical eerieness or malformation (I would think wicked fingernails, bags under eyes, think Steve Buschemi). Humanity 4 says physical changes become evident at that level, making the individual pallid, corpselike, and noticeably unwholesome. Level 3-2 says you may be mistaken for human, but don't bet on it. Humanity 1 can barely talk.

Now, this has always given me the impression that the intent was for a gradient of monstrosity of appearance in vampires. I believe this is where the idea that vampires have trouble socializing at low humanity came from, since it's hard to gain trust when you are at "may be mistaken for human". That tends to be a turn off, and I think that has been handled dynamically by different staffs over the years, by applying appropriate dice pool penalties or difficulty increases.

As for path followers and humanity appearance, on page 286, under So You Want to Follow a Path, subsection 'Paths are utterly inhuman', the second paragraph specifies that a path follower is treated as humanity three for the purposes of the rules for interacting with mortals. If they have less than three dots of path, use their path score instead. This suggests to me two things. Path followers may be mistaken for a human, likely taking great pains to do so, but shouldn't bet on it, and that there are rules for interacting with mortals at low humanity somewhere.

Page 134, under Effects of Humanity, it does mention that humanity determines how easily a vampire may pass among the populace, but it doesn't give a system so much as state that low humanity gives sunken eyes, etc. I think they intend for STs to just choose how a particular vampire's appearance effects the individual in question by adjusting the diff of the roll, but that's just my thoughts on it.

I haven't taken a look in Dark Ages on the "Path followers are treated like humanity 0" thing, I'm not as familiar with the book, but as a player of a path follower, I'd like to see that "worst of path rating or three" rule have an effect if we're letting path followers use blood for humanity. At least then we principled monsters get a little bit of a break, and 5 blood is still a huge hurdle to jump just to look human for a single scene. With a cost of 8 to appear human for all path followers, any PC could get no more than one scene of looking human before needing to feed before doing it again. At 5, a more principled monster might be able to pull off two whole scenes in a row, but it would drain most of anyone's blood pool to do so. This means that the monsters that have their beast more under control wouldn't be automatically screwed by, say, someone who was in their last scene catching up with them.

But maybe they should be? I don't know. Depends on how hard you want it to be for us monsters to get by among the mortals. I'm not that invested, since my dude's reflection keeps him out of the public eye anyway.

[Skir]

I would personally prefer my original misinterpretation - that your social dice pool is limited to your Humanity, or, if on a path, a maximum of 3. That would be a rules change though, and a not insignificant one as it would affect almost all characters in the game. That's why I'm asking for a discussion here to take your temperature.


I would love to have answered "yes" to the above question about feeding and conviction, but that just isn't the rule of the game right now.

I am all for making a Path as hard as possible, as Rob suggested. Especially because it's harder for staff to adjudicate what sorts of things violate what levels of everyone's path to make sure degeneration checks happen. If one guy is on Path of Harmony 7 and one guy on Humanity 7 and another guy on Humanity 3, and another guy on Typhon 4, all in an action scene, it might be really hard for every storyteller on staff to A) know all those values for each character by heart, and B) know what is and isn't a sin on each path and C) Know what is and isn't a sin on each person's level of each path.

That isn't to say I discourage, as a rule, people going on Paths, or have a vested interest in everyone being on Humanity, just an acknowledgement that Path guys get a pass probably more often than they should, and more ways to make it harder probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

It also has to do with the Feeding System. If social dice with humans were limited by Humanity, that would mean that all you seduction feeders would have to think about that when you put Charisma Subterfuge on your form. Your dice pool might be 8, but your 4 Humanity makes it 4. Presence lowers the difficulty of these rolls, and that helps. It's a question of theme - are vampires super seductive because they are really hot and honed from years of predatory experience, or are they really creepy and evil, yet irresistible because of their command over Presence and powers like it?

Incidentally, there's also a rule in the book that says that your first interaction with someone is limited in dice pool by your Appearance score, which would be the case in feeding. So there's that to think about too, as long as we're at it. That's another one that basically seems to not be run, but seemingly as a consequence to LARP play being mostly vampire on vampire with very rare interaction with mortals directly. Is this another rule that should go away, or should it be kept, should dice pools be limited by humanity?

[Thornstar]

Nov 21, 2012 9:33:31 GMT -8 Skir said:

I would personally prefer my original misinterpretation - that your social dice pool is limited to your Humanity, or, if on a path, a maximum of 3.

TLDR@BEGINNING:


No. Just... stop. This is dumb.
Leave the Successes Limited on First Impression rule alone like Brittney.

Don't make some stupid rule-to-replace-roleplay about limiting Social Dice based on humanity.

Someone sucks at manipulating mortals because they're more inhuman than they used to be? You buy skills with XP and you get better at things; Humanity limits what actions you can take without degenerating further. What you can say and do and all that without your beast seizing on the opportunity. Losing humanity is it's own penalty when you become a wight, or other kindred are afraid you will and kill you for it first.

Pathwalkers shouldn't get an auto-succeed bonus via "Masquerade" or "Carousing" or whatever. Rob and I both played characters with that combination previously (and simultaneously) and it worked out terribly for everyone else.

If you want to un-misinterpret the house ruling of "Masquerade can be used by vampires on paths" then I'm all for that. Like Rob said, those guys should have a hard time appearing human & such because walking a path is INHERENTLY ALIEN TO THE HUMAN PSYCHE. Low humanity? Still within humanity's expected range of behaviors, tics and such. Even if you're bad at it and your beast is closer to the surface, that's already handled elsewhere.

If you want less people on paths, approve less people on paths.

If you want less problems with people being on paths, choose wisely when approving people to play paths.

Doing makeup to approximate what someone's skin pallor should look like is bad. People want to see how inhuman you are? There's a roll for that. It's not based on our OOC appearance and OOC costuming skills.

Also, you're wrong about the looking similar deal based on Path 7 vs Humanity 7; all path people look like humanity 3.

Thankfully, mortals are idiots when it comes to supernatural creatures.

People on paths should have a harder time fitting in, yes, I totally agree. Paths are totally hard-mode. They should be roleplaying their characters as inhuman monsters. People will react as they do. This is RP. Learn it. Love it. Do it on Saturday nights, whether you're a staffer or a player.


I like that you're looking at all the rules that might be responsible for problems and talking about them. Sometimes, like with these two issues, it should be a short conversation and then business as usual.

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

Regarding Humanity Appearance, once as a side project, Cory and I were going to take 10 pictures of a person in their IC costume and photoshop them from Humanity 1-10, with 10 being Buddy Jesus and 1 being OMYGOD ITSEES ME I THINK IT SEES ME RUNRUNRUN!

But we never got around to it.

If anyone is interested I'd eventually like to ressurrect the project.

FROM THE GRAVE!