Vampires and Hunger

[wolff96]

Just a quick question... 

Assume a powerful White Court Vampire.  He has Supernatural Speed and Toughness, with the usual catches.

Our resident vampire wants to impress some mortals in a meaningless contest -- showing off at basketball, or something equally low-end that doesn't require his full capability.

Would you allow the character to use the "Inhuman Speed" (and it's resulting Hunger Stress) instead of going all-out with his full Supernatural Speed (and the higher Hunger Stress)? 

The only relevant section in the rules (that I have found) is the side-bar on YS190:  "Some GM's might allow certain abilities to “downgrade” as they absorb hunger stress, so Supernatural Toughness might become Inhuman with a 2-stress hit." 

I could see allowing this for characters, since higher-level abilities automatically replace the lower-level powers.  It gives a player a bit more choice, in determining how 'all-out' his character feels the need to go in different situations.  A player asked me about at our last game and I didn't see any real problem with it... but I thought I'd come here and see if anyone else could find an issue or potential abuse I had overlooked. 

[Papa Gruff]

As always I'd say it depends on the scale the Whamp is trying to show of on. If he just wants to establish his superiority on the basketball court against a vanilla mortal I doubt that he would have to tab into his hunger at all.

As a GM I'd probably decide on letting the player describe this as part of the RP and treat it as flavor for as long as it is an out of conflict action. If the Whamp uses it to create a maneuver or something during an social exchange, then you can decide to use the "downgrade" if you and your group think that it's cool.

Little advice: take care to not grand to many "refunds" when it comes to hunger stress. This is an important mechanic of the template and will probably lead to many interesting situations, that you and your group will not be able to enjoy when the hunger stress gets to be a secondary concern...

[Becq]

I think the text about downgrading powers is talking about losing part of a power in lieu of the whole power when suffering from hunger.  That is, if you've already suffered a 2-stress hit to your hunger track, the GM can allow you to 'turn off' only half of your 4-point Supernatural Speed, rather than losing the whole power.  This is different than what I think you are getting at, which is allowing a vampire to voluntary use only a portion of their power for whatever reason, which I think is reasonable.  When dealing with the hunger stress at the end of the scene, just use the highest level of each power used during the scene.  While it doesn't strictly say you can do this in the rules, the fact that you can choose whether or not to use a power at all makes it seem reasonable.

[Lanir]

Since the target of the discipline roll to avoid hunger stress is equal to the point value of the abilities used this idea scales just fine. Makes sense storywise too. Just think of it like a normal human exercising by walking, jogging or running a mile. If you're in shape enough to do all three, each of them would tire you out to a different degree.

[fabulator]

Just a quick question... 

Assume a powerful White Court Vampire. 

Heh, I love that. Sounds like a physics problem. "Assume a spherical, frictionless vampire..."  But in answer to your question, there's no problem with letting the Whamp activate lesser forms of his powers with less hunger stress.  Its not spelled out in the system anywhere but it makes sense and as long as the group is ok with it, go for it. 

[HappyDaze]

Hopefully you meant Supernatural Recovery rather than Supernatural Toughness, since the lack of Inhuman(+) Toughness is one of the only weaknesses of a WCV.

Aside from that, I don't like linking Inhuman(+) Toughness powers to the hunger stress track since it's pretty much an entirely passive ability.  I don't think a vamp can elect to not be tough (armor and stress boxes), but Inhuman (+) Recovery powers being linked to the hunger stress track makes perfect sense to me.

[noclue]

Our resident vampire wants to impress some mortals in a meaningless contest -- showing off at basketball, or something equally low-end that doesn't require his full capability.

If it's a meaningless contest, I would just say "Yes, you impress them with your awesome basketball speed. Tell me how that looks." No hunger.

If they wanted to put an aspect on the scene or on one of the mortals, like "Impressed with my dude's skillz." I'd ask them to tag an aspect for effect and pay a Fate point. Still no hunger.

White Court Vampires shouldn't get hungry playing basketball.

[blackheart]

White Court Vampires shouldn't get hungry playing basketball.

Quoted for truth.
When role-playing, allways err on the side of fun.

Or, you know, the Story.

[Drashna]

Or just spend a fate point invoking his high concept (you know, WCV). Besides, who's there is going to care how far he hit it. Just think about how sexy he was when he was doing it!

[babel2uk]

What you do really depends on what the success is going to mean. If it really isn't important then just assume that the mortals are suitably impressed and move on - hell, unless they're really good at whatever the WCV is beating them at, or the WCV is embarrasingly bad at it then the result isn't likely to be that interesting (and as the rules say, if it isn't going to be interesting, don't roll for it).

If the player wants to put an Aspect of Impressed on the mortals that they can tag later in a social context that's a different matter. In that case play it out as a contest and allow them to Invoke aspects and use powers as they wish to supplement their roll.

Obviously, if the WCV in question has aspects that you could compel to make him spectacularly fail to impress then you should milk his embarrassing failure to perform for all it's worth...

[wolff96]

If it's a meaningless contest, I would just say "Yes, you impress them with your awesome basketball speed. Tell me how that looks." No hunger.

White Court Vampires shouldn't get hungry playing basketball.

..And this is how I handled it, for the record. 

In this situation, it was all that was needed.  But his specific question was, "I'd like to only speed myself up a little bit, like maybe Inhuman Speed, since I don't *really* need to go full out to look amazing against them.  Can I do that and have less Hunger stress?"

As noted, I handled it through role-playing in this case, but the question is still a valid one.  Which is why I came here and asked the question. 

Oh, and HappyDaze...  Yeah, that was my goof.  It's Recovery, not Toughness.  Just wrote down the wrong thing in this thread.   

[noclue]

Someone, actually the GM of our Dresden game pointed out a different way to look at this situation. If a white court vampire wants to tap into the hellish powers that fuel his inhuman depravity in order to play basketball, maybe snapping and killing some folks is a just consequence to have to deal with. Maybe the WCV should think a little bit before channeling their magical essence. After all, there is a reason Dresden doesn't tap his magic for every little task. Power has a cost. The cost for being a WCV is feeding dependency.

[toturi]

Someone, actually the GM of our Dresden game pointed out a different way to look at this situation. If a white court vampire wants to tap into the hellish powers that fuel his inhuman depravity in order to play basketball, maybe snapping and killing some folks is a just consequence to have to deal with. Maybe the WCV should think a little bit before channeling their magical essence. After all, there is a reason Dresden doesn't tap his magic for every little task. Power has a cost. The cost for being a WCV is feeding dependency.

If the white court vampire wants to tap only a little into his powers instead of the whole shebang, is he allowed to? Sure, at the end of the day, he needs to roll Discipline for it, but is it all or nothing or can he control how much he uses?

[Becq]

My vote would be to say that if a character of any sort has supernatural or higher levels of strength, speed, etc, then they can choose to use the lower levels instead if they wish to.  In the case of vampires, they would use the refresh value of the portion of the power used.

Note that this is not stated in the rules (there are rules that can be interpreted as implying either this or the opposite); I just feel it makes sense.