Making Background More Concrete, except for Influence

I mentioned this at the end of the Feeding rules post, but I'd like to ensure that backgrounds are concrete entities in general. You don't pay XP for them, so there's an expectation that they'll be able to grow or be destroyed. Also they could use some clarity on how they augment things and what they can do when they're not augmenting.

With that in mind, I think backgrounds can have a generic augment difficulty of 7. Between disciplines and abilities. This makes backgrounds useful. Unlike abilities, however, it is somewhat dangerous to be relying on your backgrounds all the time. Retainers are loyal, but if discovered by a rival they can be harassed, incapacitated, imprisoned, or worse. Allies might help you achieve a goal, but they will necessarily know of your actions and may request favors in return. When Resources are thrown around, it is hard to conceal what you are doing. Mentors may not always grant favors, and may also request favors or loyalty in return. Many thanks to J. for arguing with me about some of these a month or two ago. I think it'll make the game better.

Blood and Feeding Rules

I sat down to crunch a few numbers one day about feeding. According to the books, a vampire uses one blood point each day to wake. You can take 3 blood points from a mortal without endangering their lives. This seems like a fact that vampires would have quickly figured out and passed down from sire to childer over the ages. So we arrive at least 10 feedings a month. More if the vampire is using blood to power disciplines, heal injuries, impersonate mortals, etc. Less if you murder, obviously.

Apply the same philosophy to the Herd rules, and you see each dot of Herd can be added to each feeding. This means that if you have a herd of 5, you can get away with feeding only 4 times a month instead of 10. This assumes each feeding attempt is successful. Domain reduces the difficulty of the feeding check, meaning you actually successfully get those 10 feedings per month more easily: you're not making 12-20 tries. The idea here, is that feeding bonuses ultimately free up a vampire's time for more important things. With that in mind, here's what I'm thinking of for feeding rules.