Merits

Apocryphal Texts

You possess the writings of one of your church’s founders or prominent figures. While they’re not official canon, the revelations within make you a sought-after expert. Gain two dice on related Intelligence rolls.
Taken as a Flaw, the texts aren’t merely apocryphal, they’re considered dangerous by your cult’s leaders. On social combat rolls involving the writings, increase the Willpower damage modifier by 1.

Archaic

Only ancillae or older vampires may take either of these Flaws.

Ashfinders

• •	Influencer	You’re a social media sensation, with a follower count in the hundreds of thousands — minimum — hanging on your every post. They take your advice, purchase the products you hawk, and rally to any cause you point them towards. Once per story, you can call on them to perform a simple nonviolent action for you. It may be something like donating money to a crowdfunding campaign, flooding an elected official’s phone lines, or lighting a candle in their window on a certain night. Note that this only acts as a Merit for as long as your influencer status and actions are those of a mortal. If you start communicating Kindred secrets via the internet, you will earn a two dot Adversary Background (representing the vampire sent to silence you) and a two dot Enemy Background (representing mortal scrutiny, probably in the form of an Inquisitor).
• •	Memories of the Fallen (Thin-Bloods)	Partaking of Ashe grants the user memories of the Kindred who died to make the drug. You’re extremely receptive to the visions you have under its influence, keenly feeling the echoes of their power and experiences. On Blood Alchemy rolls relating to Ashe, 9s count as 10s

Bahari

	Gardener	As a faithful Ba’ham, you lead a Garden of your own. You guide new initiates, lead rituals, and direct those who walk in your Garden to carry out the Dark Mother’s will. This Merit acts as a selective form of the Herd and Influence Backgrounds, where the adherents (mortal and Kindred) feed you willingly, providing they receive the religious teachings and guidance of the Bahari, and you gain the region specified as territory. If ever you fall out of favor with the cult, this Merit goes with your reputation.
•	Gardener	Small Garden — 1-5 mortal adherents, located in a small, private space. The garden is no bigger than a few potted plants or containers.
• •	Gardener	Growing Garden — 5-10 mortal adherents, 1-2 other Kindred, located in a slightly bigger private space. This may be a rooftop garden in the city or a backyard greenhouse in a rural area.
• • •	Gardener	Community Garden — 10-30 mortal adherents, 3-5 other Kindred. The garden is a larger plot of land, about an acre. This may be part of a city park or a town green.
• • • •	Gardener	Sprawling Garden — 30-50 mortal adherents, up to a dozen Kindred. The garden covers a large swath of land: an entire city park, an orchard in the country.
• • • • •	Gardener	Major Garden — over 50 mortal adherents, more than a dozen Kindred, several of whom may branch out into Gardens of their own and oversee Rituals. The garden’s territory covers an entire city, or several towns in rural areas.
• •	Dark Mother’s Song	Your words make the listener’s pain and grief resonate like a struck harp. You drive them to deeper and deeper insights and plant the seeds of justice and vengeance in their hearts. Add three dice to Manipulation rolls when you’re convincing others to take up the worship of Lilith.

Bonding

Not all vampires respond to the Blood Bond equally. Some fall under the sway of a regnant with rapturous ease; others resist with every fiber of their being. You can combine these Merits and Flaws; a character might be a two-dot Bond Junkie with Short Bond, for example. For more on Blood Bonds, see p. 233.

•	Bond Resistance	Your Blood rebels against control. Add one die to your dice pools to resist a Blood Bond per level you take of this Merit (maximum three).
• •	Short Bond	Blood Bonds on you lose their Bond strength more rapidly than normal, decreasing at both the full moon and new moon (i.e., by two each month) if not reinforced.
• • • • •	Unbondable	You cannot be Blood Bound. If you’re ever short of cash, you can probably sell your vitae to alchemists, too.

Church of Caine

•	Fire Resistant	You’ve participated in the Sacrament of Firewalking (Cults of the Blood Gods, p. 64) several times. As a result, your body is able to withstand exposure to flames outside of the ritual setting. You may take convert Aggravated Health damage to Superficial Health damage, up to your Blood Potency in Health boxes.

Church of Set

• •	Fixer	With little more than a brief conversation, you know what people want. Even when — especially when — it’s something they ought not have. You procure questionable goods for your clients. If word of such acquisitions got out, they’d be ruined. You keep their secrets because it’s good business, but sometimes that leverage comes in handy. Once per story, call in a favor from or threaten to expose a former client who has something you need. This may be using their political pull, granting access to restricted files, or even require the client to perform a criminal act. Once you’ve called in a favor from this client, they can’t be leveraged in this way again.
•	Go to Ground	The Church of Set teaches its members to be mobile, ready to slip away into the shadows if persecutors come calling. You’re prepared to disappear with a moment’s notice: exit routes mapped out, go bag prepared. Add two dice to rolls to evade pursuit.
• •	Vigilant	The Church of Set has an unfair reputation for paranoia, when in fact they instill in every initiate the need to keep eyes in the back of one’s head, having been subject to persecution for centuries. Staying alert keeps the cult safe. Once per chapter, if the Storyteller is having an SPC surveil you or about to ambush you, they will ask you to make a Wits + Awareness roll (Difficulty variable, dependent on whether the person or device monitoring you is hidden, and if a person, how many successes they roll on Dexterity or Wits + Stealth). Success allows you to detect the person or thing keeping you under watch. Failure means you don’t spot the spy, but you do still possess the feeling of being watched.

Clan Coterie

Every Kindred is an individual, but clans represent both prevailing archetypes as well as social functions by which vampires seek progeny of like mind. The following sections describe a generalized outlook for how members of each clan might interact with coteries they join.
Merits of Membership
To this end, each also includes a specific Coterie Merit that a Kindred of that clan can purchase at character creation. The benefits of these Merits can be generally activated or enjoyed by anyone in the coterie, a sort of group resource that can either be called upon collectively or that benefits the entire coterie. After all, coteries exist to offer safety in numbers, despite what insular elders or suspicious ancillae may think — and that safety in numbers sometimes comes in the form of advantage that can put those vampires a step ahead of a rival. Note that in some cases, only one member of the coterie can use a given Merit in a session, on a who-needs-itmost basis.

• •	Banu Haqim: Call to purpose	Once per session, the Banu Haqim motivates a coterie-mate they can see with a rousing statement reminding her of her Convictions or even an intense stare that calls her to action. The coterie-mate gains the effects of a Willpower point that must be used immediately, such as to reroll three dice or to briefly master a frenzy. This “Willpower point” isn’t taken from the Banu Haqim, and must be given to a coterie-mate (the Banu Haqim cannot use it on themselves.) See Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 158, for more information on using Willpower.
•	Brujah: Boot and Rally	Sometimes the best way out of a bad situation is to try again, harder, and have a frenzy-prone coteriemate impress upon you the error of your ways. Once per session, the Brujah inspires a flagging coteriemate, who may then reroll all regular dice on a failed Physical Skill test.
• • •	Gangrel: Pack tactics	A lone wolf against an enemy risks much, but a pack of wolves working together can take down even the largest and most dangerous prey. When in combat, so long as you have another member of your coterie alongside you, you more effectively harry your common foe: Anyone attacking the same enemy as you adds a single die to their dice pools for Brawl or Melee attacks. This Merit is non-cumulative; no matter how many Gangrel with it gang up on some poor fool, it offers only a single additional die to each of them.
• •	Hecata: Ars Moriendi	Almost all members of the Hecata clan are at least cursorily familiar with death and the dead. Once per session, the Lazarene is able to mask the corpse of someone killed by a member of the coterie. They can disguise foul play in the case of a mortal corpse, or protect the Masquerade by making the remains of a destroyed vampire (usually a brittle skeleton unless the vampire was very young) draw less attention, usually by efficiently disposing of it. These are quick-and-dirty fixes, though, and will not divert someone already on their tail, but they can provide some proverbial breathing space to the coterie.
• •	Lasombra: At any Cost	The Magister sets a ruthlessly effective example for their coterie-mates. Once per session, a member of the Lasombra’s coterie can choose to add two successes to a test made. The test is then considered a messy critical, including appropriate negative consequences.
• • •	Malkavian: Everyting is connected	The Malkavian is able to extract secrets from the most unlikely sources, such as discerning the location of an elder’s vault from someone’s casual exchange about the weather or unearthing an adversary’s deepest fears from the way they take a right at an intersection. Once per session, the Malkavian has the ability to let another member of their coterie substitute one Skill pool for another of their choice (that they possess) in a test involving the gathering of information. The Oracle is then able to interpret the results, gaining the same information as the original pool would have yielded, depending on the margin of success as usual.
•	The Ministry: Discerning	Once per session, the Ministry Kindred may discover something superficial a Storyteller character wants, so long as any member of the coterie has spoken to that character during the session, even if the Setite wasn’t present. This may relate to the individual’s Desire or Ambition or it could relate to a specific course of action they were undertaking (but should not expose any deep schemes or mysteries, especially if the coterie is unaware of them). The character who interacted with the Storyteller character in question describes the encounter.
• •	Nosferatu: Contextual Contact	Nosferatu Kindred often know more about their contacts than the contacts themselves, being able to leverage niche skills and hidden talents of their associates and others’. Once per session, a member of a coterie that has a Nosferatu with this Merit can add the highest single Contact rating of another member of the coterie to any one test to recover information (such as recovering deleted data, using social engineering to acquire a login password, or rifling a physical file cabinet). The contact needs to be involved in some way, but the test is allowed to fall outside their usual area of expertise for this test only. A Contact can only be used once per story for this purpose.
• • •	Ravnos: Cryptolect	Being forever on the move means having to find new ways to communicate with allies. Using coded language, onomatopoeia, and gestures, this Merit provides the Ravnos and their coterie with their own pidgin for the express purposes of communicating with each other — practically no one outside the coterie understands it, short of expert surveillance. The coterie’s cryptolect is not eloquent or robust, but can be used to convey high-level concepts quickly and securely, and isn’t identifiable as any other language. It also requires face-to-face presence to function, as its gestures and signs diminish when observed over phone or video calls. Leaving the coterie or losing its Ravnos member means the Kindred are no longer up-to-date on the cryptolect and can’t use it to communicate subsequently.
•	Toreador: All Access	Whether it’s the premiere of a film by a budding auteur, a fundraising gala for an aspiring politico, or the dive bar that suddenly has a dress code because it doesn’t like the looks of you, you know how to get yourself in — even without an actual invitation. Once per game session, when a coterie is faced with a barrier to enter a mortal event or facility, they can get past the bouncers or security guards by being on the guest list or having a connection to whatever passes for owner or patron. This applies only to situations with some kind of door staff or guest list; it doesn’t circumvent security systems, mystical wards, or the like, and the Storyteller is of course free to block entry if this would somehow short-circuit a story (but should then provide the players with a juicy clue instead).
• •	Tremere: Multi-level Lorekeeping	Despite the Tremere reputation for jealously hoarding occult knowledge, many vestiges of the notorious Pyramid actually facilitate the sharing of such among scholars of the forbidden. Once per game session, a single Kindred in a coterie with a Tremere who has this Merit can use a Loresheet Advantage that someone else in the coterie possess, including clan-specific Loresheets, at the Storyteller’s discretion. This additional Loresheet Advantage is usable only for the game session, and any knowledge supposed by the Loresheet Advantage is not retained thereafter by the borrower.
• •	Tzimisce: Old-world Hospitality	Enter freely and of your own will. At the beginning of a session, any members of the coterie who stayed at the Tzimisce’s haven when the previous session concluded restore an additional Superficial Willpower damage.
• •	Ventrue: Kindred legacies	The Ventrue understand that a vampire’s legacy carries with it an accounting of the deeds of their progenitors. For some Blue Bloods, this emerges via written histories while others may have certain sires or scholars among their acquaintances. However it manifests, once per session, a member of the coterie with a Ventrue who has this Merit may ask the Storyteller to reveal a piece of relevant information about the history of a single vampire with whom they’ve come in contact. This could be something specific, such as “the Ministry club owner smuggled fugitive Anarchs out of town after an uprising in LA,” or more mysterious such as “the allegations levied against that Kindred’s greatgrandsire having committed diablerie were untrue, but his childe still carries the shame to this night.”

Cult of Shalim

•	Gematria	The Cult of Shalim uses a coded cipher called the gematria in their missives. You understand the system and can encrypt or decrypt messages using it.
• •	Insidious Whispers	The Embrace cracks a person’s very core, throwing into question everything she believed before her death. Many Kindred shore up their senses of self with ambitions, dreams, and ideals to see them through the long nights. As a Shalimite, you flow like water into those cracks, widening them until they split. When you make a Social roll to undermine a character’s Conviction (based on you guessing or interpreting it or something close to it), 10s count as immediate critical successes without needing to roll two.

Domain

•	Built-in Flock (Chasse)	The cult maintains a front that attracts mortals such as a Shalimite self-help center or Cinder Institute-sponsored retreats. Once per week, coterie members may visit this establishment to feed.
• •	Mithraeum (Chasse)	Your coterie’s domain overlaps with the local Mithraeum. Your coterie acts as enforcers for the cult’s protection racket, and in exchange gains access to its resources. Reduce the Difficulty on hunting rolls in your domain by 1.
•	Community Outreach (Lien)	The cult performs acts of community service and has earned the residents’ goodwill. It makes frequent donations to food banks or turns abandoned lots into community gardens, though it might hide these activities under a different name. Locals recognize your character or coterie as part of that group. Add one bonus die to rolls when working with mortals in your domain.
•	Networked (Portillon)	You share access to the cult’s security precautions. If they have security cameras around their temple, you can log in to the live feed. If a security team patrols the block, the guards recognize you as a member. Once per story, the coterie can use this asset in defense of its domain. For example, it may pull footage of an intruder, or ask the patrol to expand their beat for a few nights.

Feeding

Several different Merits and Flaws fall under the general remit of Feeding. A character with one does not necessarily have any of the others.

•	Bloodhound	You can smell the Resonance of a human’s blood without tasting it. You still need to be within olfactory range of the person. Make a Resolve + Awareness test at Difficulty 3. Increase Difficulty for perfume or distance; lower it for more intimate contact.
•	Vessel Recognition	One easy way to piss off a Kindred is to feed off their kine. Kindred guard their herds jealously, and you’ve learned how to avoid them, being able to smell out which mortal belongs to a herd or is a particular Blood Doll. A win on a Resolve + Awareness test at Difficulty 2 lets you smell whether a mortal has been fed on recently. A critical win lets you sense if the feeding is recurring, likely making them part of someone’s herd.
• • •	Iron Gullet	You can feed from cold blood, rancid blood, and fractionated plasma. None of these provide Resonances. Ventrue may not take this Merit.

Inspired Artist

You channel your divine fervor into art. You’re a painter, a singer, a poet, a sculptor, and your creations inspire all who experience it.
Any artwork you craft consisting of your cult’s symbology or channeling its message has an entrancing effect similar to the Presence power of Awe (see Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 267), with onlookers being able to resist with a Composure + Intelligence roll (Difficulty 3).

Linguistics

Every player character has perfect fluency in their birth language and (except perhaps for a charming Hungarian accent) in the dominant language of the chronicle setting. For example, a Lebanese vampire in a Mexico City-set chronicle can speak and read Arabic (or Aramaic, if they are a very old Lebanese vampire) and Spanish. Kindly Storytellers might allow vampires whose birth tongue matches that of the setting to tak e a second language anyway. Each dot in Linguistics allows the char acter to fluently speak, write, and read one additional language besides those two default languag es. Don’t get hung up on the chang es in language over the centuries; assume that English remains English from Anglo-Saxon times to now, for instance, for the purposes of this rule, although r eading centuries-old documents or chanting in a str ange dialect may impose additional Difficulty to Ac ademics or Occult tests.

Looks

Not all vampires look like actors on the CW network. Some of them look even better. And some, of course, look far worse. These modifiers only apply when you can be seen. The Storyteller rules whether these modifiers apply during Social combats on a conflict-by-conflict (or even pool-by-pool) basis.

•	Famous Face	You bear a passing or very close resemblance to someone very well known. Sometimes this works in your favor. Other times this results in “Charlize Theron bit that cop on the neck!” You gain two dice to social tests in circumstances where you can leverage your lookalike status, but suffer a two-dice penalty whenever you try to hide in a crowd or in other areas where you want to avoid recognition.
•	Ingénue	You look completely innocent and blameless, making others believe in your good intentions much easier. Add two dice to any rolls related to avoiding suspicion or deflect blame, at the Storyteller’s discretion.
•	Remarkable Feature	You possess a rare, memorable feature such as a striking eye color, atypical pupils, or an unusual complexion, providing a two-dice bonus to social interactions with strangers. (The novelty quickly wears off.) Take a one-die penalty to disguise yourself.
• •	Beautiful	You add one extra die to all appropriate Social dice pools.
• • • •	Stunning	You add two extra dice to all appropriate Social dice pools, as above.

Mithraic Mysteries

•	Bargainer	Mithras was a god of merchants and traders, and as his devotee you see both the value and drawbacks to any deals you broker. Reduce the Difficulty on rolls to assess a transaction by 1.
• • •	Bull-Slayer	Like Mithras, when you set your sights on a target, you pursue it until it falls. You may suffer setbacks, but you don’t give up — you adapt. During each component of an extended test, reroll up to two failures (providing your equivalent Attribute for the test — Stamina, Composure, or Resolve — isn’t rated at 1, where if it is, you can reroll one failure per component).

Mythic merits and flaws

Every Kindred bloodline carries peculiarities, curses, and soul scars. Fragments of ancestors long-since dust germinate within the seed of vitae that spreads the curse from sire to childe. Other vampires develop weaknesses in the moment: psychosomatic disorders intensified by the Embrace or invisible tides and eddies in the millennialong flow of the Blood.

• •	Eat food	You can consume food without effort and might even enjoy it, though it gives no nourishment and must be expelled before resting for the day.
• •	Nuit Mode	Your body doesn’t automatically revert to the death- state each night, enabling you to keep things like new haircuts, tattoos, and other body modifications at your option. You are still able to return to your original death-state, though, and can mend any later modifications as if they were Aggravated damage. This Merit is available only to Kindred of Blood Potency 1 or lower. (If your Blood becomes more potent at any point, the Merit no longer grants any benefit, but if you drop back down to Blood Potency 1 it returns.)
• • • •	Luck of the Devil	Someone else will always take the fall for your missteps as long as someone’s available to take the blame. Whether this is because of a face everyone loves, a guardian angel, or something far darker, you manage to slip, skate, and dodge out of trouble, though you’re in constant need of new friends as you burn through them like a wildfire. Once per session you can have a misfortune — an attack, an accusation, a blame, or anything in between — directed at you befall someone else close to you. This can be an ally, retainer, coterie mate, or even a Touchstone. The Storyteller is the final arbiter on what counts as a proper misfortune.

Nephilim

• •	Archangel’s Grace	You’ve invested considerable time in dance studios, gymnasiums, and dojos owned by fellow Nephilim. The training makes your movements lithe and assured, every gesture an art form in itself. You may use your Performance Skill in place of your Athletics Skill, or vice versa, when engaged in what for mortals would be a cardio-heavy physical exertion such as fighting, fleeing, or dancing.

Substance use

You have an addiction to a substance besides blood. Kindred with this Merit or Flaw seek blood containing that substance, drinking from users. Addiction to a specific sort of blood or refusing to drink blood containing a given substance both count as Prey Exclusion (p. 181). See p. 310 for effects of specific substances in consumed blood; these remain in effect regardless of the specific Merit or Flaw taken. Remember to specify the substance you use.

•	High-Functioning Addict	You add one die to any one category of pool (specify when you choose which substance you use) when the last person you fed from was on your drug.

Thin-Blood Merits and Flaws

These Merits and Flaws only apply to thin-blood characters. They have no dot value; each Flaw balances a Merit, and vice versa. They thus do not count against the maximum dots in Advantages and Flaws allowed to be selected during character creation or purchased through experience.

•	Anarch Comrades	You have befriended the members of an Anarch coterie who tolerate your presence or even affectionately treat you as their pet. They cumulatively act as a one-dot Anarch Mawla, as long as you don’t deviate from the party line. Write them on the Relationship Map.
•	Camarilla Contact	You have caught the eye of a Camarilla recruiter who has promised you admittance and a chance at becoming a real vampire. All you need to do is keep your eyes and ears open, report on your and your coterie’s activities, and be prepared to perform any task asked of you. You have the equivalent of a one-dot Camarilla Mawla who treats you badly. Write them on the Relationship Map.
•	Catenating Blood:	You can create Blood Bonds and perform the Embrace as a regular vampire. Any vampire you create this way will be a thin-blood.
•	Day Drinker	Sunlight halves your Health tracker (rounded up), but otherwise simply removes your vampiric abilities, including all Disciplines and Health benefits, and does no other damage. You still suffer from Hunger, however, and sooner or later you’ll need to sleep. If your health drops below your currently sustained damage levels as a result of this, you suffer the effects of Impairment or torpor (depending on type of damage) until you are clear of sunlight.
•	Discipline Affinity	You have an affinity for a certain Discipline, picked at character creation. You gain a dot in this Discipline and can learn and retain additional dots in it through experience expenditures, as if you were a normal vampire. (The experience point cost is the same as an out-of-clan Discipline.) Drinking blood with matching Resonance does not reward you with any extra dots in this Discipline, temporary or not.
•	Lifelike	You have a heartbeat, can eat food, and enjoy sexual activities like a mortal. All but the most advanced medical inspections reveal nothing out of the ordinary, assuming they happen at night.
•	Thin-blood Alchemist	The Duskborn change as they feed. Thin-Blood Alchemy is the mastery of this process. Whether it is spontaneous or a skill learned by comparing notes with other bloodcookers, you have gained one dot and one formula (p. 282) in Thin-blood Alchemy. You can purchase additional dots and formulae through experience as usual.
•	Vampiric Resilience	You suffer damage as a regular vampire, treating regular puncture and slashing wounds as Superficial damage.
•	Abhorrent Blood	Something in your Blood makes other vampires unable to stomach it. Whether it is the perverse mix of life and undeath or your history of questionable Thin-Blood Alchemy, other vampires gag and vomit when they try to drink from you. Other vampires abort any bite attempts after the initial damage and anyone who tries to keep drinking from you must spend two points of Willpower each turn that they do so. Mortals and Thin-Blood Alchemy are not affected by this anomaly.
•	Faith-Proof	Whether you consider yourself an atheist or devoutly religious, you remain too close to mortality for True Faith to affect you.
•	Low Appetite	When at Hunger 0 or 1, and when rising at sunset, roll two dice on your Rouse Check and take the highest of the two.
•	Lucid Dreamer	Most vampires don’t dream because they don’t sleep. You dream; you can recall and even sometimes control your dreams. Once per session, if you’re asleep by day you can ask the Storyteller to provide a clue from the previous night’s memories or a hint about the story suitable for dream revelation.
•	Mortality's Mien	Your mortal nature still outshines your Beast. Your aura does not appear vampiric or supernatural; instead it looks mortal to anyone able to detect supernatural creatures. You can also add two dice to any attempt to make yourself appear mortal in other regards, such as makeup.
•	Swift Feeder	Maybe you were a phlebotomist in life, or just didn’t like mess. You sip delicately and quickly, neatly slaking one Hunger in one turn, including licking the wound closed. This Merit can only be used once per scene.

Travelling Preacher

You spread your cult’s message wherever you go, despite the risks Kindred take when they travel.
You’ve mapped out safe routes, established good places to go to ground along the way, and learned where surveillance systems falter.
When traveling along established routes, reduce the Difficulty on rolls to avoid the Second Inquisition’s or Hunters’ notice by 1.