Rousing the Blood
When you call on the supernatural powers of your blood to heal, activate Disciplines, or increase your strength, you are choosing to access the benefits of your vampire nature—and this choice always carries the serious risk that you will grow even hungrier (increase Hunger dice).
Below are the most common reasons to rouse the Blood. Not all of them will occur in this playtest. Kindred call these actions “Rousing the Blood.”
Every time you do one of these things in a scene, make a note of it: you’ll need this information at the end of the scene. For the purposes of this test, there is no limit to the number of Rouses you can make per dramatic turn (but remember to check for Hunger at five, see below).
• Rise every evening
• Temporarily increase an Attribute by one dot for the remainder of the scene (up to a maximum of 5)
• Use a Discipline
• Heal damage
• Heal impairments incurred from Aggravated damage
• To appear human for one scene (simulate breathing, skin warmth, eye blinking, etc.)
Note that Blood doesn’t have a separate score in Vampire: it’s represented abstractly by Hunger. Exactly how much blood you have in your undead body isn’t important: what’s important is how hungry you feel, and how long you can avoid dealing with your hunger before it forces you to do terrible things.
When you rouse the blood you may gain Hunger (add Hunger dice to your Hunger pool; see below), and when you feed you reduce Hunger (remove dice from your Hunger pool).
You made a note every time you did this in a scene. Now, when the scene ends, count up all the times you roused the blood. The same check is also made the instant you’ve roused the Blood five times in the same scene, or the instant you start feeding.
Roll 1d10 for each time you roused the blood. For every die that is not 6+, add a new Hunger die to your Hunger dice pool. If this takes your Hunger above 5 make an immediate Hunger Frenzy check with a -1 penalty for every step above 5.
Feeding
Feeding on blood reduces Hunger dice. When your character feeds on blood, remove Hunger dice as follows:
Source of Blood Hunger Dice removed
Several small animals – 1
Large animal – 2
Human (not killed) – 3
Human (killed) – 5
Unless you feast on a human until they are completely drained of blood (killing them) you can never reduce your Hunger below 1 dice.
Hunger
Being hungry is a constant problem for all vampires, and to deny yourself blood is to deny your very essence. Whenever you are hungry (whenever you have at least Hunger 1, or 1 Hunger die), you’re at risk of falling victim to your own undead nature.
To reflect this in the game, always use your all Hunger dice (if you have any—and remember that the only time you don’t have any Hunger dice is when you’ve just fed from and killed a human) as part of every dice pool. Form your dice pool normally, and then substitute your current Hunger dice for an equal number of normal dice from your pool, so that you have a dice pool that combines normal dice and Hunger dice.
If any of your Hunger dice result in a 1 on any roll, the gnawing hunger in your veins has inflicted you with a temporary but significant behavioural compulsion. Hunger dice otherwise function as regular dice, scoring Successes on a 6+.
Any time your Hunger dice reach a total of 5 (you have Hunger 5), check for a Hunger Frenzy (See below) immediately—even if this happens in the middle of a scene.
Source: Vampire 5th Ed. Pre-Alpha.