Traits and Abilities

Traits

Bonus Traits gained from powers such as Shape of the Beast, Black Met, Horrid Form, and Feral claws may not be bid and lost as normal. From this point forward these traits may only be used when resolving ties and overbidding.

Traits spent to initiate a test (i.e. Telepathy) may be included in comparing ties for that test and will only be considered spent after the challenge concludes.

When bidding negative traits, if a negative trait is successfully called against you, you must bid an extra trait for every negative trait you possess that matches. (i.e. If Jack is has the negative social traits Callous x3, and Bob states, “You are too callous to entrance me!” Jack must bid three extra traits.)

Trait Stacking – On any one challenge you may not stack trait bonuses of the same category. The categories are as follows: Disciplines, Merits, Items, Rituals, and Abilities.

Trait limits – Mortals have a maximum trait limit of 8. Ghouls have a maximum trait limit of 9. Vampire trait maximums are determined by generation. No character may bid more traits than double their generational maximum even if bonus traits allotted to them would exceed that number.

Abilities

Alertness – Expending a level of Alertness to “negate the effects of surprise” will allow you to take a defensive action, rather than no action at all during a surprise round.

Awareness – When using the awareness ability, the appropriate retest is Awareness rather than Occult as stated in the book. Awareness may also be used as a retest during a challenge to determine if a power has been used on you (Mental Challenge versus the Mental traits of the individual who used the power on you).

Demolitions – Improper handling of explosives is dangerous. Without the ability of Demolitions, any attempts to do so result in it exploding prematurely in a bad way. This is for OOC reasons because explosives are not useful to games and actual kindred would never want to draw the attention explosives draw.

Specializations – You must have three levels of the ability before taking a specialization. You may only take one specialization per ability. This is per the books, but commonly mistaken.

Explosives/Demolitions

Explosives are seldom an effective means of proactive gaming. The generally result in lots of chaos and character death with little role-playing opportunity. They are heavily discouraged.
Explosives cannot be acquired without spending influence, regardless of how easy it is to track plans down on the internet. Underworld 6 is the only listed method. Creative use of other influences may be sanctioned.
Handling explosives without the Demolitions ability fails spectacularly. See above.
Explosives can never do more than 3 agg to an individual PC in one turn. NPCs may suffer more gruesome fates as befitting a story.