Some minor things that we will do differently when it comes to disciplines.

Rules for Disciplines higher than 5

1) For all disciplines over 5+ you do not have to pick which discipline power you want to have – you can have all of them so long as you have someone to teach you.

For example: If you learn Auspex 6, you will automatically learn Clairvoyance since it is the main Auspex power.  You can however, also learn The Dreaming, Eagle’s Sight, Prediction, Sense Emotion, etc – without spending any extra experience points – so long as you can find someone to teach it to you.

2) It is extremely difficult to learn out-of-clan disciplines higher than 5 – as most people from other clans are not willing to share the knowledge.  Chances are if you find someone who is willing to teach it to you – they will ask for something fairly large in return.

Rules for learning new Disciplines and improving existing disciplines:

1) Learning new disciplines – if you are learning a clan discipline you can almost always find someone to teach it to you.  The higher the disciplines the longer it may take and the further from your home city you have to travel, but you can learn it.  Just don’t expect to go to bed with a Dominate of 4 and wake up with a Dominate of 5.  It takes time and effort to learn a new discipline – you need to RP our that effort – not just spend the points.

2) With the exception of Celerity, Potence and Fortitude, you will need someone to teach you the higher level of a discipline.  So if you have Auspex 3 and want to go to Auspex 4 you need to find someone with Auspex 4 to teach it to you.  Please keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be someone in your clan – just someone with the discipline at the level you wish to learn.

3) For Physical disciplines like Celerity, Potence and Fortitude, you can train those up on your own.  However, this assumes that you actually train.  If these are a clan discipline for you – you can keep advancing them without a problem.  If they are an out of clan discipline for you, it means you don’t have a natural talent for them and for every level over 5, you will need to have someone who has that discipline at that level work with you to train it up.  You cannot level past 5 on your own on these disciplines if they are not clan disciplines for you.

House Rules for Mental Disciplines

1) What are mental disciplines? Any discipline that involves your mental attributes to work.  Ones that come to mind immediately are Dominate, Chimestry and Presence, but there are also some aspects of Obfuscate, Auspex and others that requires the power of your mind to make them work.

2) Mental disciplines are highly governed by the power of your blood – as a vampire your blood not only makes you tougher and faster physically but mentally as well.  Therefore, for every 2 generations above another kindred you get a -1 to your attack roll.

For example: Alden wants to use Dominate 2 (mesmerize) on a young Sabbat vampire.  Alden is 8th generation, the sabbat is 12th generation.  He will roll his normal Man+Leadership but the target number will be sabbat’s willpower-2 since Alden is 4 generations higher than the Sabbat he is trying to use it on.

Another Example: Mr. Badass 4th generation vampire gets pissed off at Alden because he mesmerized his lowbie Sabbat servant and uses Presence 8 to try to make him frenzy.  Mr. Badass rolls his normal Man+Empathy but the difficulty for him will be his willpower -2.  If Alden wants to resist, since he is 4 generations higher than Mr. Badass, he will roll his self-control but instead of a difficulty of 7, it will be a difficulty of 9 because of the difference in generation.

3) Several mental disciplines in the book (at least my book) don’t say if they are resistable or not and some say they are not resistable.  I think most mental disciplines should at least give PC’s a fighting chance if they are not that much lower generation than the person using it.  So if there is no resist listed or if it says its not resistable, I will allow players make a self-control roll, T8 with modifiers for generation assuming that there is no more than 4 generation levels between the two.  You must match the number of successes rolled +1 to break the effect in those cases.  For everything listed in the book that has a resist roll – we will follow the book rules plus the generation modifiers.