Humanity

Vampire - The Requiem

The change from life to undeath affects more than a person’s body. It changes the soul. A Kindred shares his human consciousness with a force completely opposite to humanity — a thing devoid of reason, conscience or any emotions except hunger and rage. Kindred call it the Beast.
The presence of the Beast changes the very nature of morality for vampires. The Kindred can pretend to be human, but they are not. Even the most evil and monstrous mortal does not have a Beast. A vampire’s existence is a constant struggle between the Man, the aspect of a Kindred that can make moral choices, and the Beast, which cannot.
The Beast follows a simple plan: Hunt. Kill. Feed. Sleep. Repeat. It feels no pity, only thirst for blood. It cannot even speak.
The Man consists of everything that resists the Beast: rational thought, a conscience, and most of all the ability to relate to other people. The Beast does not understand what other people think or feel, and it doesn’t care. They are just food.
When a Kindred treats other people as prey or tools or inconvenient obstacles, the Man weakens. When Kindred make an effort to interact with mortals as fellow people, to care about their lives and happiness, the Beast… waits. The slide toward the Beast is easy. It comes naturally for creatures that must take blood from the living to survive. Strengthening the Man is very difficult. Most vampires slowly degenerate. Mentally, they become less and less human, more callous and brutal.
Most Kindred stabilize as monsters with some degree of selfcontrol. They give the Beast some of what it wants and fight it just enough to preserve their existence. The Beast doesn’t know how to hide the bodies; the Man does. These vampires hunt and feed and sometimes kill, but they try not to get caught.
Some Kindred cannot strike that balance. Each crime makes the next one easier. They no longer care if they kill their vessels. They show less discretion in who they feed upon, where or how. They might start… playing with their food. When the Beast nears total ascendance, the Man becomes little more than a psychological appendage, adding human perversity and cruelty to the Beast’s predation. Even that remnant of mortality goes in time, and the vampire becomes a killing machine as mindless and ruthless as a shark that scents blood in the water. The vampire retains just enough self-preservation to hide from the sun, flee fire and fight back when attacked.
The Kindred call such creatures draugr, from an old Norse word for a reanimated corpse that viciously stalks and kills its living relations. A draugr leaves a trail of corpses and public attacks that attract mortal attention. Even bitter enemies put aside their struggles and cooperate to stop a draugr before it breaks the Masquerade beyond repair.

Humanity as Morality

In rules terms, a trait called Humanity represents the balance of power between the Man and the Beast. Humanity is the specific form that the general Morality trait takes for vampires. The trait measures the connection a Kindred feels to her leftover mortal feelings and to her capacity to empathize with other beings. The lower a character’s Humanity goes, the less she cares and the more brutally she tends to act.
Humanity uses the same order of sins presented in the World of Darkness Rulebook (which is reproduced here for your convenience). Just as with mortals, when an undead character performs an act that carries an equal or lower rating than his Humanity, the player rolls a certain number of dice to find out whether the character suffers moral degeneration. If the roll succeeds, the character manages to feel shame, regret or at least some human response. If the roll fails, the character feels nothing except satisfaction at getting what he wanted…and a little more of the Man slips away and the character has less with which to fight the Beast in the future. His Humanity drops by one. For what it’s worth, the threshold for further moral crises drops too, so the player might not need to roll for degeneration as often — assuming the character can resist committing more heinous acts in the future.
As a character’s Humanity degrades, he grows less concerned with the world, yielding ever more to the Beast. He becomes capable of virtually any depraved act against another person. When Humanity is lost because of a sin the character committed, roll the character’s new Humanity as a dice pool. If the roll succeeds, the Kindred finds some kind of bulwark of sanity at his new level of Humanity. If the roll fails, a derangement manifests in the character’s mind. Derangements are mental and emotional “scars,” in this case brought on by the character’s stress, grief or even remorselessness over acts performed. Derangements are detailed at length on p. 186.

Roll Results

When making a degeneration roll use only the dice pool associated with the sin committed. Likewise, when rolling Humanity to check for a derangement, do not add other Attributes or traits. You may not spend Willpower to gain a +3 modifier on either kind of roll, though other situational bonuses or penalties may apply (see below).
Dramatic Failure: Not possible on either kind of roll. At no point is a chance roll made.
Failure: On a degeneration roll, your character loses the struggle to maintain his standards of morality when faced with the reality of his sin. He loses one dot of Humanity. On a Humanity roll, he gains a derangement.
Success: Your character emerges from his crisis of conscience with his sense of right and wrong intact. His Humanity is unchanged, and he remains as sane as before.
Exceptional Success: Your character re-dedicates himself to his convictions in the wake of his sin, driven by remorse and horror at the deeds he has committed. Not only does his Humanity remain unchanged on a degeneration roll, he gains a point of Willpower (which cannot exceed his Willpower dots). No special bonuses are gained for an exceptional Humanity roll when testing for derangement.

Resisting Degeneration

Storytellers do not have to leave resisting degeneration as nothing but a straight dice roll. Ask the player to describe how the character feels about her sin, and what she intends to do about of it.
Short answers that don’t suggest much thought, like, “My character feels real bad about doing that,” receive an unmodified dice roll. So do defensive answers, such as, “Well, he was asking for me to beat him up, mouthing off like that.” At least the character tries to rationalize her actions. It isn’t a great example of humanity at its best, but it’s still very human.
Answers that show the character engages in extravagant but cost-free contrition, such as, “I return to my haven and scourge myself until dawn,” don’t quite pass muster. If you want to encourage that sort of melodrama, give the player a +1 bonus on the degeneration roll (but not the Humanity roll). If you think the character is lying to herself, don’t give the bonus at all.
Serious answers that show the character engages in some soul-searching or an attempt to do better in the future could receive a +1 die bonus to the degeneration roll. For instance, one character might go to her sire and ask how she can better resist the Beast when she’s angry, because she hates the results when she loses control. Another might pray for forgiveness. (Don’t reward that, though, unless the player has established the character’s religious feeling, or she does a good job of roleplaying the crisis that leads the character to a faith previously neglected or scorned.)
Attempts to find some good or at least necessity in the character’s actions might be worth a +1 bonus to the degeneration roll. “Sure, killing that guy was wrong… but the way he beat his girlfriend? Eventually, he probably would have killed her, and she didn’t deserve that. Better that he died than she did.” Or: “I tried every other way to stop that journalist from running the story, but the bribes, threats, Dominate attempts and schemes to discredit him all failed. He had to die to protect the Masquerade. I feel horrible about it, but how many people would die if mortals found out about the Kindred? He would have started a war.”
At most, a player should receive a +2 dice bonus to a degeneration roll, when his character shows deep regret and acts on it. Does the character try to make up for his sin? The character could apologize to someone he injured or secretly try to help the family of someone he killed in a Beast-driven rage. Anyone can “feel sorry,” but acting on regret is something special. Of course, the very acts that bring him into contact with people he tries to help may endanger the Masquerade… or enemies might threaten those people to extort concessions from your character… or he might unintentionally hurt them himself. The Damned seldom find it easy to atone for what they’ve done.
At the other extreme, a player might say his character feels no remorse at all. She intended to commit the sin, enjoyed it and would do it again. In that case, you might assess a -1 penalty to the degeneration roll. Such a Kindred doesn’t even try to resist the selfishness that’s so characteristic of the Beast. Don’t assess this penalty to a player rolling only one die for a degeneration check — the fact that the character’s Humanity is so low that she has only one die available for the check already signifies that she’s beyond caring and remorse.
Note that modifiers here apply to degeneration rolls alone, not to Humanity rolls to determine if derangements are gained.

Degeneration and Vices

The transformation from mortal to undead does not excuse a character from suffering his Vice as his Humanity drops. Characters who want to retain their Humanity need to resist their Vices as well as the Beast. Giving in to Vices can speed degeneration by eroding the self-control that a Kindred needs to fight the Beast. The lower a character’s Humanity drops, the more often he feels tempted by his Vice.
At first glance, this would seem to put all Kindred on an accelerating death-spiral. Less Humanity means a more prominent Beast, which means more sins, which eventually means still less Humanity and an even more recalcitrant Beast.
That’s not actually true, because a character can sink below the level of his Vice. A Vice drives a character to do something bad, but not the worst thing possible. A lecher might feel driven by lust to seduce, but he doesn’t have to commit rape. An avaricious money-grubber might have trouble passing up a crooked business deal, but she doesn’t have to rob banks. At low Humanity, the Kindred can find many ways to indulge his Vice without committing the most heinous acts. For instance, a Kindred who feels his pride insulted doesn’t have to murder the offender. He might satisfy his pride by Dominating the offender into making a fool of himself, use Majesty to turn other people against him or simply spy on him under cover of Obfuscate to learn damaging secrets for blackmail or humiliation. These are all sleazy, selfish acts — but not as bad as murder (probably). Make no mistake, though: Kindred who stabilize at a low Humanity become deeply unpleasant characters.

Degeneration and Derangements

Derangements usually make it harder for characters to retain Humanity. Some derangements can cause characters to lash out in wild fury under certain circumstances, or make them believe they face deadly danger when they do not. Such outbursts can lead a Kindred to commit acts he later regrets — or not, resulting in Humanity loss.
On the other hand, some derangements can help preserve Humanity if a character genuinely cannot understand the significance of his acts. He might not realize what he actually did. For instance, the player of a paranoid vampire who believes that all banks are part of a Ventrue conspiracy might receive a bonus to any degeneration rolls that happen because of assaults on banks or bankers. The vampire thinks a greater good justifies his acts.
Players and Storytellers should remember, however, that derangements are expressly disadvantages that always cause more harm than good. Storytellers should allow a derangement- based bonus to Humanity checks only if a player has steadfastly roleplayed the disadvantages of madness — and then only in very specific cases where the character’s delusions apply. At best, madness helps a character stabilize at a low Humanity, as a last-ditch attempt by the Man to protect itself from the Beast. Indeed, a character doesn’t get “better,” he simply mires himself ever deeper in insanity.

Regaining Humanity

Kindred who make a deep and prolonged effort can regain lost Humanity or even become more ethical creatures than they were in life. It isn’t easy, though.
In rules terms, a player can spend experience points to buy dots of Humanity for her character. In story terms, the character must do something to show that he really tries to become a better person and more able to resist the Beast (see p. 92 of the World of Darkness Rulebook). If the player announces her intent to buy Humanity for her character, the Storyteller can examine the character’s recent actions. Has he tried to atone for past crimes? Has he tried to avoid committing more sins? Has he resisted his Vice and upheld his Virtue, even when he cannot harvest Willpower? Has the character associated with mortals and cultivated relationships with them? If the character genuinely tries to act more human, the Storyteller should certainly permit the purchase.
Why demand an experience-point cost for an increased Humanity when characters lose the trait so easily? Shouldn’t highly moral acts receive an immediate reward of restored Humanity?
Sorry, no. One moment of grace does not reverse the habits built through years, perhaps centuries, of abuse. Enduring gains against the Beast require a heroic struggle that never fully ends. Note that this contradicts statements made about regaining lost Morality for free in the World of Darkness Rulebook. This contradiction is intentional. Humanity is so central to the themes of Vampire: The Requiem that we want to reinforce characters’ dangerous footing on the path of Humanity by being that much more stringent with the rules.
Example: Persephone feeds from a vessel and is unable to stop herself, accidentally taking too much Vitae and killing her victim. Her Humanity is 7, so this bloody transgression causes her to test for degeneration. This amounts to “manslaughter,” so Persephone’s player rolls three dice, achieving no successes. Her Humanity drops to 6.
Persephone’s player then rolls six dice (because her new Humanity is 6) for her Humanity roll, to see if she gains a derangement. Again, the player rolls no successes. The player and the Storyteller confer for a bit, deciding that the mild derangement narcissism (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 97) is appropriate here. They come up with the rationale that Persephone just didn’t care about the vessel and, indeed, that he did the world a good thing by dying so that Persephone might see her own desires through. Remember, this is what Persephone thinks, not the objective truth. That’s why it’s a derangement!
The player writes “narcissism” on the character sheet next to Persephone’s Humanity of 6. When and if the player buys Humanity back up to 7 with experience points, Persephone overcomes her narcissism derangement. Yet if her Humanity continues to drop, she might develop a more severe ailment, or even manifest some other type of derangement.

Game Effects of Humanity

Why struggle against the Beast? Why not compromise with the Beast and one’s own desires and stabilize as a callous but self-controlled monster?
Many Kindred accept that logic. They sacrifice more than abstract ethics when they compromise with the Beast, though. Preserving Humanity offers tangible benefits. The more a vampire cultivates mortal feelings and ethics, the less tightly the curse of undeath binds him, at least in some ways.

Daytime Activity

The Kindred have trouble staying awake during the day. The lower a character’s Humanity score, the harder it is to be active.
If a character wants to stay awake when the sun rises, the player rolls a dice pool of the character’s Humanity. The character resists sleep for one turn per success rolled. Exceptional success helps the character stay awake for the rest of the scene. If a character tries to remain active for an entire day, the Storyteller can make the effort an extended action and require the player to accumulate five successes, though a failure at any point means the character falls asleep despite his intentions. 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. 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 rolls Wits (+ Auspex, if the character has that Discipline) to determine if the sleeping vampire notices the disturbance. If the roll succeeds, the player makes the above Humanity roll to find 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 — dice pools for any task cannot exceed the character’s Humanity dots. For example, Solomon stays up well into the day to puzzle out a few clues to a threat against his Requiem. Normally, Solomon’s Intelligence + Investigation dice pool is seven, but since his Humanity is only 4, only four dice can be used in the Investigation roll.

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 flickers 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 flesh with Vitae to look more alive. Vampires with high Humanity do so almost reflexively 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, a player may use no more dice in Empathy, Persuasion or Socialize pools than his character has Humanity dots. For instance, if a character has a Humanity of 5, his player cannot roll more than five dice 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 dice pools, as these powers are supernatural in effect and thus outside the normal realm of experience governed by Humanity.
If a situation imposes penalties on a dice pool, assess the penalties after the Humanity limit is applied. Continuing the example from above, if the character suffers a -2 dice penalty on his Wits + Empathy pool, the player rolls three dice. Bonuses cannot raise a player’s dice pool over his character’s Humanity limit, so add them before comparing a pool to a character’s Humanity.
The subtle repulsion that mortals feel toward low-Humanity Kindred does not influence a character’s actual Presence score. Kindred look different than they did when their Humanity was higher, but that change can be subtle. Mortals may perceive a low-Presence Kindred as bestial, while a high- Presence Kindred could have a deadly, frightening taint. The warmth that once attracted the eye chills to a reptilian fascination. Mortals who try to recount the look of a low-Humanity Kindred might describe an image quite different from the vampire’s actual appearance, as unconscious fear shades their memory. Even someone captivated by a good-looking, low-Humanity Kindred might use phrases like “deadly beauty.”

Summary: The Descent

Humanity tends to drop. All Kindred must face this stark, unavoidable truth. Their existence as predators forces them to commit abhorrent acts, if not deliberately, then when the Beast overpowers them. A Kindred might begin his unlife vowing that he shall never succumb to the Beast. Well, he shall never succumb to the Beast and not feel bad about it afterward. As the years and decades pass, Kindred find it hard to muster the same revulsion to a crime they have committed many times before. Humanity wears away from sheer weariness. High moral codes bend, then break, and are forgotten in time.
Kindred tend to live down to their Humanity. As the trait drops, less and less seems objectionable. What once caused horrified repentance seems expedient — maybe even thrilling. That way, however, leads to destruction.
So how can a Kindred survive the Requiem? How can he preserve some shred of human conscience when the Beast never tires? What limit can he set to his own monstrosity?
The characters must answer that question for themselves. That’s what Vampire: The Requiem is all about.

Humanity 10-8

Kindred with Humanity scores this high can seem “more human than human.” Neonates might recoil from their own monstrosity and take up ethical codes stricter than any they followed in life. They usually try to feed only from animals or seek other alternatives to victimizing mortals, and feed as little as possible in any case. They don’t have to act preachy or passively accept everything that unlife and their fellow Kindred throw at them, but they must work hard to avoid harming anyone else and to atone for any sin they commit. Interaction with mortals often matters a great deal to such Kindred, as interacting with the living helps them remember what life was like. They can also pass for mortal almost without effort.
Few mortals can maintain such high ethical standards, and even fewer Kindred succeed for long. A vampire eventually loses control and kills someone, and then kills again. Kindred harden themselves to this awful truth or destroy themselves to prevent further harm to others. Few Kindred find reason to both continue their existence and remain this moral.
Older, more jaded (or realistic) Kindred often find highly humane vampires insufferably naïve. They take dour satisfaction in the thought that the whelps will learn better, just as they did. Some elders are not above foisting “lessons” in callousness, selfishness or deceit on a neonate who thinks he can be a “good vampire.”

Humanity 7-6

At this Humanity, Kindred have ethical standards like those of most mortals. They feel that killing, theft and cruelty are wrong, but they don’t go all weepy if they shade the truth a little, hit someone who tried to hit them first, or take opportunities for a little fun that don’t really hurt anyone else. Such a character has a Vice that she probably indulges in small ways with only minimal regrets. These Kindred can still easily pass for mortal, and they probably have mortal acquaintances.

Humanity 5

It’s a tough world, and Kindred with this Humanity score accept that they need some toughness as well. Such characters can recognize and reject deliberate atrocities… but shit happens. If some happens to them, they throw it right back. Why should they act better than anyone else?
At this Humanity, a Kindred starts to show the eerie unpleasantness that puts mortals on their guard. A skilled dissembler can still persuade mortals to ignore their instincts, though.

Humanity 4

Most Kindred eventually stabilize at or around this Humanity. Characters with Humanity 4 become genuinely callous and selfish. Murder no longer shocks them. Violence, theft, treachery, lies — these are all just tools to help a Kindred get what he wants, to gain power and to protect his all-important self. Expedience becomes sufficient justification for nearly anything. A character suffers from his Vice and indulges it with little restraint. He can still recognize the practical, legal consequences if the mortal world discovers his crimes, however, so he takes care to hide his offenses.
Such a low-Humanity Kindred has a distinctly corpselike appearance, though makeup can compensate. Beauty carries a predatory taint or shows the bland, sterile attractiveness of a manikin. Only the inability to conceive of such a thing keeps mortals from recognizing the character as a walking, talking cadaver.

Humanity 3-2

A vampire does whatever he can get away with. Only the most remarkable sadism or perversion can bother Kindred with such a low Humanity… or at least seem too dangerous to justify the pleasure they would bring. All other creatures are tools, toys or food. Anyone who says otherwise has proved he is too stupid to deserve consideration. A character this inhumane feels the pull of such a potent Vice, on top of the Beast and his own ruthlessness, that he barely qualifies as sane.
No amount of dissembling can help such a character pass for human for long. Mortals know within minutes that they are in the presence of a monster, even if they don’t realize what kind.

Humanity 1

Forget sanity — at this Humanity, a Kindred can barely function as a sentient being. Little except a deranged obsession or direct threat to existence can focus the vampire’s mind against the hungers of the Beast and the drive of an overwhelming Vice. The character even has trouble mustering the cunning needed to hide her crimes and debauches from mortal authorities or other Kindred. Rotting corpses strewn about a gore-spattered haven is a perfectly typical setting for such degenerate vampire. Mortals instantly recognize the Kindred as a monster whom they should flee, or at least a psychopath in the last stages of mental disintegration.

Humanity 0

Hunt. Kill. Feed. Sleep. Repeat. At Humanity 0, a character possesses no shred of free will and cannot be played any longer. From this final degeneration, there is no return.

Isolation and Humanity

The rules for degeneration checks take into account Kindred who actively encounter other individuals, and therefore have opportunities to transgress against them. Storytellers are certainly within their rights, however, to call for degeneration checks for Kindred who spend too much time in solitude, for their connection to humanity (and Humanity) can easily atrophy. No hard-and-fast system exists, but a good guideline can be obtained by subtracting the Kindred’s Humanity from 11. Every time the resulting number of years passes in a game without the character making any significant human or Kindred contact, the player must make a degeneration check.