<strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Dice Pool</span></strong><br/><br/>Vampire is a dice pool game. This means for most actions, you’ll roll a pool of 10-sided (d10) dice that represent some combination of traits on your character sheet. The most common dice pool is Attribute + Skill.<br/><br/><strong>Example:</strong><br/><em>Helen and Timothy are vampires who are sneaking<br/>around in a police department headquarters. They are<br/>looking for some information about a recent crime that<br/>may compromise Helen’s childe, Lucas. While Timothy<br/>keeps an eye on the lone police detective working the night<br/>shift at the front desk, Helen attempts to access the department<br/>computer files from a laptop in an adjoining room.<br/>The Storyteller sets the Difficulty at 2. Helen’s Intelligence<br/>Attribute is 3 and her Computer Skill is 2, so she has a dice<br/>pool of 5 (3 + 2 =5) to accomplish this task<br/></em><br/><br/><strong>How to Succeed</strong><br/>When you roll a dice pool, every die result that is 6 or higher is a success. This includes 10 (represented as “0” on most d10s).  The Storyteller determines how many successes you need for each role, depending on the difficulty of what you’re trying to accomplish. Example<br/>difficulties:<br/>Easy = 1 success<br/>Standard = 2 successes<br/>Moderate = 3-4 successes<br/>Challenging = 5 successes<br/>Hard = 6 successes<br/>Very Hard = 7-8 successes<br/>Nearly Impossible = 9-10 successes<br/><br/>IMPORTANT: In V5, Difficulty means the number of successful dice required to succeed at a task, not the target number for the individual dice (which is always 6+)!<br/><br/>Some rolls are opposed. Instead of comparing successes to a static difficulty number, you and the Storyteller (or another player) will both roll dice pools, and compare the total number of your successes. The acting character needs an equal or higher number of successful dice than the opposer for the action to succeed.Note that the individual pools need not include all the same traits.<br/><br/><br/><strong>The Price of Failure</strong><br/><br/>If your roll includes no successes, your character failed. Failure sometimes means only that your character didn’t achieve the desired result; sometimes it means dire consequences occur.  The Storyteller defines what failure means according to situation and circumstances, and decides whether or not you can try again after a failure.<br/>You may spend a point of Willpower to re-roll any or all dice (ANY roll, including Hunger and Frenzy), see Willpower, below.  VAMPIRE 5 ALPHA BASIC ACTION RESOLUTION 6<br/><br/><strong>Example:</strong><br/><em>Timothy distracts the mortal detective at the front desk<br/>while Helen searches the files. He decides to pretend to be<br/>an ordinary citizen who wants to file a missing person’s<br/>report. The Storyteller decides that the officer is suspicious<br/>and that this will be an opposed roll. Timothy’s dice pool<br/>is Manipulation 3 + Persuasion 3 = 6. The detective’s pool<br/>is Wits 2 + Subterfuge 2 = 4. Timothy rolls six dice and gets<br/>2,3,5,5,5,9, that’s only one success. The detective rolls 1,4,8,8,<br/>that’s two successes. He’s not buying what Timothy is selling,<br/>and reacts with very open disbelief.<br/>Timothy could opt to spend Willpower and reroll<br/>any or all of the dice in his pool.</em><br/><br/><strong>Succeed at a Cost</strong><br/>If your roll includes any successes, but fails by<br/>one success, you may opt to “succeed at a cost.”<br/>You succeeded in your attempt, but something<br/>happened to make things worse for you anyway:<br/>you take damage, attract unfriendly (and<br/>powerful) notice, lose something you value, etc.<br/>Any player (including you) or the Storyteller can<br/>suggest the cost; if it’s too high, you can always<br/>opt to fail instead.<br/><br/><strong>Example:</strong><br/><em>Timothy failed by one success; he suggests that he successfully<br/>pretended to file the report but left a fingerprint<br/>behind. The Storyteller thinks that’s not immediately costly<br/>enough, and counters by suggesting Timothy accidentally<br/>used Lucas’ name in the report, linking the two of them in<br/>police records. Timothy decides to take the failure rather<br/>than piss off Helen by getting her childe more heat.<br/>The Storyteller may rule that you cannot succeed<br/>at a cost in circumstances in which nobody<br/>can think of an adequate cost.</em><br/><br/>Take Half<br/>We encourage the Storyteller to "Take Half"<br/>when making opposed rolls for Non-player<br/>characters (NPCs), to speed action resolution<br/>whenever the situation seems appropriate. To<br/>Take Half, count the number of dice in the opposed<br/>pool, divide in half, and that’s the number<br/>of successes. Round up any fractions.<br/><br/><strong>Basic Action Summary</strong><br/>1.    Storyteller identifies the task or situation (throw a punch, climb a wall, intimidate an enemy, etc.) and whether the test is Static or Opposed.<br/>2.    Storyteller determines a Difficulty: that is the number of successes required if Static, or what pool to compare if Opposed.<br/>3.    Player creates a Dice Pool of d10s using a number of dice equal to the total number of appropriate traits. For vampire characters, one or more of these dice may be Hunger dice.<br/>4.    Player rolls the dice pool. Every 6+ rolled equals one Success. If the roll is opposed, Storyteller rolls dice pool or Takes Half.<br/>5.    Player needs Successes equal to or more than Difficulty, or the number of opposed Successes.<br/>6.    Only one success short = Player can opt to Succeed at a Cost<br/>7.    No successes = Total Failure (very bad consequences, cannot retry)<br/><br/><br/><strong>example:</strong><br/><em>In the previous example, the Storyteller could have chosen<br/>to Take Half instead of rolling for the police detective. The<br/>detective’s pool is 4, and so if the ST decides to Take Half<br/>the detective gets 2 successes on his roll. </em><br/><br/><strong>Spendable traits and penalties</strong><br/>Some situations may impose penalties to a roll, and sometimes the penalties are so severe that the dice pool drops to 0 or less. Penalties can never cause a pool to drop below 1 die.  When a dice pool includes a trait that has its own pool, such as Willpower, always use the current value of the trait. A pool of zero still gets to roll a single dice, as dice pools can never fall below 1.<br/><br/><strong><strong><strong>Teamwork</strong></strong></strong><br/>If two or more PCs can effectively work together on a task (lifting a car, or tag-teaming a mark in a confidence game) they can make rolls separately<br/>and add their successes together. They do not combine all their dice into one pool: each character rolls her own appropriate dice pool.<br/><br/><strong><strong><strong>Criticals</strong></strong></strong><br/>When you roll the dice, look for the tens (“0”) that come up, if any. A result of 0 on two normal dice (00) is a critical success: You succeed at your task much faster, more stylishly, or more completely than a normal success. For example, in a combat against a nameless mortal, you easily dispatch your foe<br/>without needing to add up damage; against a vampire, you do damage based only on your number of successes (see ‘Criticals in Combat’).<br/><br/>Any result of 0 on a Hunger die (see Hunger, below) is a “messy critical.” Your Hunger has driven you to greater than normal performance – at the cost of control. You killed the bouncer, but you clearly snapped his spine or tore out his throat. You found the right book, and tore the rest of the bookcase down in your exultation. You eluded the guards by biting out the throat of the one who saw you before he could cry out, leaving a very informative corpse in your path. The Storyteller and the player work together to decide on the level of success and the level of mess: by and large, they scale upward together. If you can’t come up with a good “messy” result for your roll, lose 1 Composure and move forward.<br/><br/>A regular critical (00) on a Composure roll allows you to regain a point of Composure. As you do not roll Hunger dice on non-skill checks you cannot get a messy critical on this roll.<br/><br/>A result of one normal 0 and one Hunger die 0 is a messy critical.<br/><br/>A result of two normal 0s and one Hunger die 0 is a regular critical success: you control your power and your Hunger in the moment.