Hunting as an Action

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It is the nature of the vampire to hunt. For each hour the vampire spends searching for human prey, allow the player to make a roll against a difficulty based on the area in which the vampire hunts. The Attribute and Ability combination used should correspond to the method by which the player describes the character’s hunting technique. For example, Appearance + Subterfuge might represent a lusty tryst at a nightclub that ends in one of the lovers slaking her thirst, Stamina + Athletics would suggest a harrowing chase across a swath of city parkland, and Wits + Streetwise might be interpreted as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

Area				Difficulty
Slum neighborhood / The Rack				4
Lower-income/bohemian				5
Downtown business district				6
Warehouse district				6
Suburb				7
Heavily patrolled area				8

Success on this roll indicates that the vampire has found and subdued prey, in a manner appropriate to her methods and the area. She may now ingest as many blood points as she wishes to take from the victim (or, if the Storyteller prefers, a single die’s worth of blood points). Failure indicates that the hour is spent looking fruitlessly, while a botch indicates a complication (perhaps the character accidentally kills a vessel, picks up a disease, enters the domain of a rival vampire, or suffers assault from a street gang). If a botch does occur, the Storyteller should quickly set up the scene and let the character try to work her way out of trouble. Storytellers and players should both be creative in proposing and describing the hunt to make it dramatic and exciting. After all, finding prey isn’t necessarily the hard part — it’s holding on to one’s Humanity or preserving the Masquerade when the Beast hungers.

If the character catches prey, but currently has fewer blood points in her body than [7 minus Self-Control or Instincts], the character is considered to be hungry and a frenzy check (p. 298) is necessary — Self-Control to see if the character frenzies, or Instincts to see if the character can control her frenzy while feeding. If the player fails this roll, the character continues to gorge on the vessel until she is completely sated (at full blood pool), the victim dies from blood loss, or she somehow manages to regain control of herself.

The Fame and Domain Backgrounds reduce difficulties of hunting rolls by one per dot (to a minimum of 3), while the Herd Background adds one die per dot in the Background (so long as one’s herd could conceivably be in the area). However, Storytellers may increase hunting difficulties for particularly inhuman vampires (Nosferatu, some Gangrel, vampires with Humanity ratings of 4 or below, or who are on Paths of Enlightenment), as such monsters find it difficult to blend in with a crowd.

For more information on hunting scenes, see p. 365 -- VTM 20th Edition.

Its important not to confuse hunting the action with hunting the skill. An vampire can hunt without the skill, but having it make the action of hunting much easier. -- "The Magister 19:52, 6 July 2015 (MDT)"

• -- Hunting -- {The Skill}