Simple tests:
To begin, tell the Storyteller what your character wants to do. The Storyteller may just tell you that you succeed automatically: it’s something trivial like parking a car. Sometimes skipping a roll just speeds up play, especially for an easy or average feat, or something your character really excels at (see Automatic Wins on p. 120).
For other simple tests:
■ Describe what your character is trying to achieve and how.
■ The Storyteller tells you which of your character’s Traits to us to assemble a dice pool.
■ The Storyteller sets a Difficulty. This number may be kept secret, depending on circumstances and playstyle.
■ Unless the test is an automatic win (see p. 120), you roll the dice pool and count your successes. Every die that shows 6 or higher is a success. A 0 on the die means a result of 10: a success.
■ If the number of successes you get equals or exceeds the Difficulty, you win the test and accomplish that action.
Traits:
We call the Traits that define a character’s innate and potential abilities Attributes, while Skills define the ways characters most reliably or successfully apply that potential. Both Attributes and Skills fall into Mental, Physical, and Social categories. All of these, including other Traits, such as Backgrounds, appear in the Character chapter (pp. 133-199).
Pools:
The Storyteller tells you which combination of Traits creates your dice pool, the number of ten-sided dice you will roll, for any action.
Although most actions use a Skill pool (Attribute + Skill or Attribute + Discipline), a few only use Attributes to build the pool. Often an Attribute pool represents a straightforward test of the given Attribute:
Strength + Strength to lift a heavy beam off a coffin lid, for example.
Sometimes, two Attributes combine to make a pool, such as Resolve + Composure tests to resist many Disciplines (p. 243). A character who lacks a Skill rolls only the pool’s Attribute, with no additional penalties.
Take a number of ten-sided dice (d10s) equal to the number of dots in those Traits and roll them. Traits usually have ratings between 0 and 5, so pools generally range from one die (the minimum pool size, if you can roll at all) to ten dice or more.
Vampires always replace normal dice with their current Hunger dice in every pool. See p. 205 for more details.
Specialties:If a character attempts an action that falls within one or more of their specialties for the skill used, they gain one extra die for their dice pool. For more on Specialties, see p. 159.
Trackers and Pools:
Tracker pools go up and down as characters spend from them or take damage to them. Tracker pools cannot exceed their starting value, noted above.
If the Storyteller calls for a roll using a tracker, the dice pool equals the current undamaged pool of that Trait, not the tracker’s full rating. No dice pool can fall below 1, so a roll for an empty pool still yields one die.
Difficulties:
The Storyteller determines the Difficulty of the action you’re attempting, expressed in terms of how many successes you need to win, i.e. to accomplish that action.
Equipment:
Some tasks use specialized equipment, such as picking a lock, performing surgery, or engaging in gunplay. If the Storyteller considers equipment a core component of an activity, they may apply a +1 Difficulty modifier for improvised, unreliable, or poor- quality equipment. Without any equipment, the task is impossible.
Opposition:
Characters sometimes attempt actions that a Storyteller-played character (SPC) opposes, e.g., hacking a bank’s monitored computer system, sneaking past a guard, or seducing a victim.
The Storyteller can choose to define those actions as contests (p. 123), but for speed of play, they might prefer to represent the opposition with a static Difficulty number. They can determine that Difficulty several ways, using whichever one is fastest:
■ Decide on a Difficulty according to the table below.
■ Divide the SPC’s corresponding dice pool in half, rounding down (see Taking Half, p. 123).
■ Decide the target SPC’s Skill and use that as the opposing Difficulty. Even if the foe’s nominal Skill is zero, the Difficulty is 1. Skill (and Attribute) ratings of 2 or 3 are the most common; most mortals pose little challenge to vampires, or even to very capable fellow mortals.
Modifiers:
The Storyteller might decide to add or subtract a modifier to any dice pool. Vampire has two basic types of modifiers:
■ Change the size of the dice pool. This modifier reflects a change or circumstance for the character: they are drugged, they use a specialty, they appear terrifying, etc.
■ Alter the Difficulty. This modifier reflects a change or circumstance for the action: rainy weather, badly maintained equipment, performed under gunfire, on unfriendly turf, etc.
Automatic wins:
If a character’s dice pool is twice the task’s Difficulty, the Storyteller may opt to rule that the character wins automatically without a dice roll.
Automatic wins seldom apply in combat or other stressful situations. A Storyteller willing to speed up opening rounds or to blow through a location they didn’t intend to be challenging, might allow automatic wins against mooks and nameless obstacle humans: rent-a-cops in the office lobby, not real cops in the streets.
Dice Pool Results:
When you roll a dice pool, every individual die result of 6 or higher is a success, including a result of 10 (represented as 0 on most d10s). If you roll a number of successes equal to or exceeding the Difficulty number, the rules call that a win.
Criticals:
A result of 10 on two regular dice (00) is a critical success. A critical success counts as two additional successes above the two 10s (four total successes), as you perform your task much faster, more stylishly, or more thoroughly than normal.
Each pair of 10s count as their own critical success, so three 10s (000) would add up to five successes, whereas four 10s (0000) would count as eight.
In some tests, a critical win yields additional effects apart from the one stated above, and the Storyteller can even award complete wins regardless of Difficulty when a situation merits it. Vampires can also achieve messy criticals (see p. 207).
Margin:
The number of successes exceeding the Difficulty of the roll is called the margin. If the Difficulty was 4 and you rolled seven successes, your margin is three. Damage, many power effects, and some other rules use margin to calculate the degree of effect.
Even outside those circumstances, the Storyteller can narrate a degree of success depending on the size of the margin rolled: the larger the margin, the greater the success.
In an Automatic Win, the margin is always zero.
Win at a Cost:
If your roll includes any successes, but fails, the Storyteller may offer you to win at a cost. You achieve your goal, but something happens to make things worse for you anyway: you take damage, attract unfriendly (and powerful) notice, lose something you value, etc. Any player (including you) or the Storyteller can suggest the cost; generally it should scale with the number of missing successes. If it’s too high, you can always opt to fail instead.
Try, Try again:
If a character fails an action, they can sometimes try again. After all, failing to pick a lock does not mean the character can never insert a lockpick into that door again. To justify such an attempt, circumstances need to merit it – the character obtains a better set of lockpicks, for example, or their skill has improved since last time.
Total Failure:
If your roll includes no successes at all, your character has totally failed. Total failure sometimes means only that your character didn’t achieve the desired result; sometimes it means dire consequences occur. The storyteller defines what total failure means according to each situation and circumstances, and decides whether you can try again after a total failure.
Team Work:
PC's working together on an applicable task: roll the largest pool among the participants, adding 1 additional die for each character assisting that has at least one dot in the Skill involved. If no Skill is involved in the roll, anyone can assist.
Willpower:
Characters may spend 1 point of Willpower to re-roll up to three regular dice on any one Skill or Attribute roll, including a roll involving vampiric Disciplines.
Characters may not spend Willpower to re-roll Hunger dice or a tracker roll, such as Willpower or Humanity.
A spent point of Willpower counts as having sustained a level of Superficial damage to Willpower (see p. 126) and is marked as such. For more on Willpower, see pp. 157-158.
^ Above is an example of causing Superfifical damage using the '/' marking.
Checks:
Unlike rolls, checks normally use a single die. The player makes a check by rolling one die, attempting to achieve a target number of 6 or higher.
Vampire primarily uses checks to determine Hunger gain (see Hunger, feeding, and Rouse Checks, p. 211).
Characters may not use Will- power to re-roll checks. Automatic wins and taking half never apply to checks.
Contests:
Storytellers use contests to model direct opposition: e.g., hacking a monitored system, sneaking past a guard searching for you, or seducing an undercover vice cop.
In a contest, the acting character and their opponent each build a dice pool. This process does not have to use the same pool; the Storyteller might tell the sneaking character to use Dexterity + Stealth, but roll Wits + Awareness for the searching guard.
Basic contests go like this:
■ Describe what you want your character to do and how.
■ The Storyteller decides someone opposes your effort and tells you which of your character's Traits to assemble a dice pool.
■ The Storyteller chooses which of the opponent’s Traits to use to assemble a dice pool.
■ Each contestant rolls their dice pool and counts their successes.
■ If the acting character rolled equal to or more than the number of successes rolled by the opposing character, the test is a win.
Player characters can definitely engage in contests against each other! The Storyteller still determines which character assembles which dice pool.