Step One: Character Concept

• Refresh your memory of the “elevator pitch” for this character, and think about their name and who they are as both a vampire and a person
• Note their Clan or Bloodline, including their in-Clan Disciplines
• Note their Road or Path
• Choose the Archetype that best fits your concept
• Note their Affinity
  • If your character doesn’t enter play as a member of an Affinity, then their sire (see Step Eleven) is definitely alive and your character is Blood Bound to them
• Select the Domain where your character is primarily based between events, which we call their “home Domain” – this is often the same as other members of your Affinity

Step Two: Age and Experience

• Note their age category (neonate, ancilla, or elder)
• Note their starting number of experience points (XP):
  • Neonates start with 65XP as of event 2
  • Ancillae start with 160XP as of event 2
  • Elders start with 305XP as of event 2
• You may gain more initial XP by choosing flaws during Step Seven

Step Three: Assign Initial Attributes

• Rank the character’s attributes (Mental, Physical, and Social) in priority order
  • Assign 7 dots to the character’s primary attribute
  • Assign 5 dots to the character’s second attribute
  • Assign 3 dots to the character’s tertiary attribute
• Select one focus for each attribute type:
  • Mental foci: Intelligence, Perception, or Wits
  • Physical foci: Dexterity, Stamina, or Strength
  • Social foci: Appearance, Charisma, or Manipulation

Step Four: Assign Initial Skills

• Choose one skill and fill in the first 4 dots of that skill
• Choose two skills and fill in the first 3 dots of those skills
• Choose three skills and fill in the first 2 dots of those skills
• Choose four skills and fill in the first dot of those skills

Step Five: Assign Initial Backgrounds

• Assign 3 dots to a single background of your choice
  • If you are an elder, you must select Generation (and spend XP during Step Nine to raise it to 4 or 5)
  • If you are a neonate, you may not select Generation
• Assign 2 dots to a single background of your choice
  • If you are an ancilla, you must select Generation (unless you have already allocated 3 points to it)
  • If you are a neonate, you may not select Generation
• Assign 1 dot to a single background of your choice
  • If you are a neonate, you must select Generation

Step Six: Assign Initial Disciplines

• Assign 2 dots to a single in-Clan Discipline
• Assign 1 dot to your character’s two remaining in-Clan Disciplines
  • If your character has a Merit that gives them an extra in-Clan Discipline, they do not gain any extra points at this stage

Step Seven: Choose Merits and Flaws

• You may spend some of your initial XP to purchase up to 7 points of Merits
  • Your character may never have more than 7 points of Merits at any one time
  • Unless otherwise stated, you can only purchase a single Clan- or Bloodline-specific Merit at each price point. For example, if you were playing a House Goratrix Tremere, you could purchase either Spellslinger or Talisman, but not both, because both are 3 point Merits. Conversely, you could purchase both Thaumaturgic Expertise and Ritual Master despite them both being 1 point Merits, because the text of Ritual Master explicitly states that you may do so.
• You may choose up to 7 points of Flaws
  • Add the value of these Flaws to your starting XP
  • Your character can gain no more than 7XP from Flaws

Step Eight: Assign Starting Morality Score

• All characters start with a Morality score of 6, minus the number of dots they have in the Generation Background (after spending XP on it, in the case of elder characters)
  • Neonates start with a Morality score of 5
  • Ancillae start with a Morality score of 3 or 4
  • Elders start with a Morality score of 1 or 2
• Subtract 1 from this if you selected a Road or Path that is not on your Clan or Bloodline‘s list of Preferred Roads and Paths
  • If you choose a Path of a preferred Road, you do not take this penalty, whether the Path itself is explicitly mentioned or not
• Subtract 1 from this if you are on a Path
  • You do not have to do this if you choose a Path from the Road of Light, or if the Path is explicitly named in your Clan or Bloodline’s list of Preferred Roads and Paths
• If this reduces your starting Morality to less than 1, you must spend enough XP in Step Nine to raise it to at least 1
• Note your Aura’s effect and Modifier

Step Nine: Spend Initial XP

After purchasing Merits and adding XP from Flaws you may use your remaining initial XP to:

• Purchase more Attributes, Skills, or Backgrounds
  • Except in the case of elders (see Step Five) you may not spend XP to increase the Generation Background
• Purchase additional dots of your in-Clan Disciplines (including Techniques and elder powers as appropriate to your Generation)
• Purchase dots of common out-of-Clan Disciplines (Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Presence, or Potence), including Techniques and elder powers as appropriate to your Generation
  • Neonates may purchase up to three dots of common out-of-Clan Disciplines
  • Ancillae may purchase up to six dots of common out-of-Clan Disciplines
  • Elders may purchase up to nine dots of common out-of-Clan Disciplines
• Purchase additional dots of Morality (up to a maximum Morality score of 6)

The XP costs for various items can be found on the Character Progression page. If you do not spend all of your initial XP during character creation, you may bank up to 5 points. Banked experience becomes earned XP. You may not bank more than 5 of your initial XP. If you complete character creation with more than 5 unspent XP, the remainder is lost.

Step Ten: Character Questionnaire

We want everyone to answer the following questions about their character:

• Who was your character in their mortal life?
• Who was your character’s sire, and why and how did they Embrace your character?
• Why did your character choose their Road or Path (or, who chose it for them)? Who was their mentor?
• What does your character try to keep hidden about themselves from others?
  • You should name at least one, and no more than three, such secrets
  • They should be things that they keep hidden from everyone else, whether due to shame, fear, or the desire to protect a loved one or ally
  • These secrets must be important enough to your character to be worth keeping, but less serious than a Dark Secret
  • These secrets are likely to come under risk of exposure during the course of the game, putting characters in difficult situations where they must work hard to avoid revealing the truth and potentially making themselves vulnerable
• How and why did your character become an Anarch?
• How did your character meet the other members of their Affinity (if appropriate)? Why did they join or form this Affinity?
• How does your character feel about their sire now that the Blood Bond is broken (if appropriate)?
• How did your sire die (if appropriate)?
• What aspect of their Road or Path does your character find hardest to abide by or understand?
• Does your character have any particular moral and/or ethical lines that are not directly related to their Road or Path?
• How does your character feel about their Clan or Bloodline?
• Which other Road does your character least understand or respect?
• Is your character religious? If so, what do they believe? If they’re not on the Road of Light, how do they reconcile the two sets of beliefs?
• To whom do you owe a Trivial Boon? Does anyone owe you a Trivial Boon?
• What are your character’s pronouns?
• You may optionally submit an additional background document of no more than 500 words to supplement the character questionnaire. Please do not submit more than 2,000 words of character description between the Questionnaire and the optional background.

Step Eleven: Starting Equipment

• Your character may enter play with whatever Equipment seems appropriate to their Skills – e.g. someone with Melee could enter play with a sword, someone with Academics could enter play with pen and ink and paper, and so on.
  • However, none of this Equipment will have any Qualities and exists solely to let people use their skills.
    • Any melee weapons can only be used in one hand and deal only 1 point of damage – they cannot be thrown
    • Any ranged weapons can only be used with both hands and deal 2 points of damage
    • Any armour your character wears is purely for aesthetic purposes and offers no protection
  • You do not need item cards for this equipment, and you do not need to make a note of it
• Alongside this, you may enter play with as many item cards as you have dots of the Resources background (in your home Domain).
  • If you have Resources 1 or 2, these items may only have one quality each
  • If you have Resources 3 or 4, these items may have up to two qualities each
  • If you have Resources 5, these items may have up to two qualities each and the Artisan quality, if appropriate
• If you have the Crafts skill, you may also enter play with one item card per dot of Crafts, appropriate to your field(s) of study.
  • If you have 1 or 2 dots of the Crafts skill, these items may have only one quality each
  • If you have 3 or 4 dots of the Crafts skill, these items may have up to two qualities each, and you may give up one item to allow another item to have the Artisan quality
  • If you have 5 dots of the Crafts skill, these items may have up to two qualities each, and they all have the Artisan quality. You may give up one item to allow another item to have the Masterwork quality.
  • If you have multiple fields of study in the Crafts skill, you get appropriate equipment from each field of study according to your number of dots in that field.
• Please note that horses and other animals do not count as equipment and are instead managed by the Retainers rules.

Step Twelve: Finishing Touches and Approval

• If you want to discuss your character choices before submitting them for approval, please contact the Storytellers
• Note the character’s Blood Pool (the maximum number of Blood Points they can have at any one time) and how many Blood Points they can spend per turn
  • This is based on the number of dots they have in the Generation Background
    • Generation 1 (neonate, 11th-13th Generation): Blood Pool 10, can spend 1 Blood Point per turn
    • Generation 2 (younger ancilla, 9th or 10th Generation): Blood Pool 12, can spend 2 Blood Points per turn
    • Generation 3 (older ancilla, 8th Generation): Blood Pool 15, can spend 3 Blood Points per turn
    • Generation 4 (master elder, 7th Generation): Blood Pool 20, can spend 4 Blood Points per turn
    • Generation 5 (luminary elder, 6th Generation): Blood Pool 30, can spend 5 Blood Points per turn
  • A Blood Point is a unit measuring a small amount of Blood consumed during the activation of powers, or for other abilities
  • For more ways to spend Blood Points, see this page
• Note the character’s total dots of Willpower (normally 6)
• Note the character’s starting Vinculum ratings: this is normally either 3 or 4 with each other member of their Affinity, but Merits and Clan Weaknesses may affect this.
• Note your character’s starting health levels. This normally consists of nine health levels in three tracks:
  • Three Healthy
    • As long as you do not have any points marked off within your Injured or Incapacitated wound tracks (three wounds or less), you may operate normally.
  • Three Injured
    • If you have one or more points marked off in your Injured wound track, you are Injured. There is no immediate mechanical disadvantage to being Injured, but some attacks work more effectively on Injured characters.
  • Three Incapacitated
    • If you have one or more points marked off in your Incapacitated wound track, you are Incapacitated. Incapacitated characters lose their simple action every round until they heal all of their Incapacitated health levels, unless they have the Stamina focus.
• Once you are happy with your character sheet and your answers to the Character Questionnaire, you should send all of that information to the Storytellers