Red Court Infected, revisited

[Cadd]

Yeah, I've still not worked out how I want to handle the issue with hunger/powers/etc for a Red Court Infected, but now it's actually going to happen in my game, so I guess it's time to sort it out.

Not being able to pin down what mechanic to use to handle it between Feeding Dependency (either book or wiki version), Limitation or some use of Sponsor Debt, I decided to first back up and look at what I want to be able to do with it narratively and ask you peoples advice on how to get that through mechanically. The Catch for Thougness and Recovery got mixed into these thoughts as well, so here goes:

Hunger and Power use for a Red Court Infected:

• Using Vampiric powers makes the RCI hungry for blood. This hunger can cause distractions and at the extreme end a loss of control bad enough to kill and thus turn completely.
  
  • While the hunger can be quenched with blood without killing (like Susan in Changes) this is both incredibly risky (the RCI him/herself will not be in control) and will make it easier to fall to the hunger again. The hunger does however diminish with time of not using Powers, meditating etc, but most effectively by spending time in sunlight.
  • Tattoos given by the Fellowship of St Giles can help here, both raising the bar for when the hunger is problematic and giving clearer signals to the RCI of how close they are to loosing it.
• Direct sunlight completely prevents use of vampiric powers.*
• Holy items (and weapons empowered by Faith) burns them and ignore the vampiric resilience and healing

_{*Not clear in the novels, but seems appropriate that the reason the hunger can be controlled by spending time in sunlight would also block any power use. This is probably not terribly important, so ignore if you think it unnecessary.}

Also - I'm leaning towards not requiring the player to take either Addictive Saliva or Blood Drinker. In my mind, the narcotic venom of an RCI is so weak that it'll only come into play during mucous-membrane contact (essentially, kissing) and in those cases only be a hindrance or complication - thus a compel. Blood Drinker is so incredibly fringe as to be practically useless - drinking any blood at all is going to be very, very rare and a strong downward slope to killing; killing means NPC-dom; and hunger-related compels can be made anyway.

So, how would you go about doing this mechanically?
Option 1: Sponsor Debt has been discussed - exactly how would it be used? Invoking relevant rolls for debt instead of actually having Inhuman St/Sp/To/Re? Paying debt for Temporary Powers? How to handle the hunger being reduced without actually feeding - Spending X time in the sun can reduce debt by 1?

Option 2: Rebate powers - How would this be valued as a Limitation? I like the "losing access to powers" part of Feeding Dependency, but how do I handle the not-usable-in-sunlight part? Just a compel on sunlit scenes? What is a Catch of "just" Holy/Faith-empowered Items worth (it's fairly uncommon after all) - 1 or 0?

Thankful for input on merits and drawbacks of either options, and opinions on what will be simple yet still cover the various limits on power use.

[Sanctaphrax]

Option 1: Sponsor Debt has been discussed - exactly how would it be used?

You can take a point of debt to boost a roll whenever drawing upon your vampiric powers would be helpful. Then you get Compelled to feed or something.

How to handle the hunger being reduced without actually feeding - Spending X time in the sun can reduce debt by 1?

The only way to reduce debt, normally, is to accept a Compel. But spending time in the sun could be a Compel.

Might also be fair to let people reduce debt by spending FP under some circumstances.

Option 2: Rebate powers - How would this be valued as a Limitation? I like the "losing access to powers" part of Feeding Dependency, but how do I handle the not-usable-in-sunlight part? Just a compel on sunlit scenes?

"Not usable in sunlight" is a textbook Limitation. Wouldn't work well as part of Feeding Dependency, so you might need to use both Powers.

As for the Limitation value, that depends on implementation.

What is a Catch of "just" Holy/Faith-empowered Items worth (it's fairly uncommon after all) - 1 or 0?

As a Catch, 2 or 3. They're uncommon, so that's 1 for availability. And it's common knowledge that vampires are vulnerable to holy stuff, so that's arguably 2 for knowledge.

As a Limitation, mild or moderate (that's a 1/6 or 1/4 rebate) depending on the game.

[Cadd]

You can take a point of debt to boost a roll whenever drawing upon your vampiric powers would be helpful. Then you get Compelled to feed or something.

It does undeniably have the merit of both flexibility and simplicity during play. There's two things I'm struggling with though:
1) The resilience and healing - how do you handle that with invokes? For the resilience I guess you can flavor a debt-increased defense roll as the hit connecting but not doing anything instead of a miss, but for the healing I'm stumped...
2) The Tattoos. They aren't going to come into play immediately, but both I and the player want a noticeable effect when the character gets them. Something that makes the debt invokes give more bang for the buck? Some kind of "reservoir" of free invokes?

I'm also a little worried that the debt might cascade a bit during fights. A single fight scene might very well see 5 or 6 rolls that are justifiably increased just on the speed (defense, movement) and strength (hitting harder, improvised weaponry) and that feels like a lot of compels to take for just one fight.

Big thanks for the input! I want to work out the kinks of each option to present them clearly to the player, so we can decide together on which will work best.

[Sanctaphrax]

1. There's no perfect solution, but you can use an invoke-for-effect to do anything. Starting healing without medical care or healing a consequence faster might be fair invoke effects.

You can also describe their injuries as worse than they "really" are. Like, a broken arm wouldn't normally be a mild consequence. But if it is a mild consequence for this character, then they'll recover from a broken arm much quicker than most characters.

Or you could just buy Recovery and use normal Compels.

2. A stunt that boosts rolls for a certain skill when you take debt might be possible. Buying a debt reserve is tricky because a point of debt is almost equivalent to a Fate Point - but not quite. Maybe tack a debt reserve onto some other benefits as part of a multi-Refresh Power?

Again, no perfect solution.

3. You can take actual Powers and use them with the debt. Or you can just invoke an appropriate Aspect with normal FP. Or you can describe your skills as the result of vampire magic. Give a scrawny character Good Might or something.

[Cadd]

Hm.... Can you spot any immediate holes in this setup:

• Use Inhuman Toughness and Recovery to show resilience/fast healing (stuff that doesn't neatly fit invokes).
• Invoke for Sponsor Debt to represent strength, speed, reflexes, skulking, etc. Basically all of those stuff easily boosted with an invoke.
• Getting the tattoos and training with them is then the in-story effect of purchasing powers boosting the above stuff (example below). Boosting via debt is still an option for that extra push.
• The "losing access to powers" I wanted from Feeding Dependency is just debt-related compels. "Sorry, you've drawn too much on your vamp side - it's just not capable of knitting that wound together right now, you have to recuperate a bit".

Example of the tattoos - Vampiric strenght, because it's easy:
Prior to tattoos: Invoke for debt on Might, Fists, Weapons. This can rack up debt fast in a fight.
Getting the tattoos is mechanically purchasing Inhuman Strength (maybe attaching it and other powers to Human Guise as the "warning to others" part.)
IC she doesn't get as hungry when drawing on the vampiric strength anymore, because OOC she gets a bonus in strength-related situation without having to increase debt.

[Sanctaphrax]

I think that would work pretty well.

[vultur]

That looks perfect, yeah.

[killking72]

I think the way that the book has it written up under the feeding dependency power is a really good way to go about it. At the end of a scene you roll discipline to defend(control) yourself against a hunger attack equal to the refresh of the abilities used. If you use inhuman strength and toughness in a fight, you have to defend against an attack of 4. You roll discipline against that, and everything you don't defend hits you as hunger stress. The hunger stress doesn't go away at the end of a scene depending on what happens after. You must actually spend time to get rid of your stress. Like someone else said. Meditating, spending time in the sun, stuff like that.

[Cadd]

The RAW "Feeding Dependency" is pretty unclear though. The interaction between "lose powers" and "take stress" is not very clear, and with RCI there's the issue of how to handle regaining powers/reducing hunger without actually consuming blood. There really isn't any RAW way to do that, but it's definitely something in the novels, and mentioned in their blurb in OW.

[Sanctaphrax]

Yeah. Feeding Dependency really isn't a very well-written Power. I try to avoid using it and I wouldn't recommend that other people use it.

[Taran]

The RAW "Feeding Dependency" is pretty unclear though. The interaction between "lose powers" and "take stress" is not very clear, and with RCI there's the issue of how to handle regaining powers/reducing hunger without actually consuming blood. There really isn't any RAW way to do that, but it's definitely something in the novels, and mentioned in their blurb in OW.

You take stress.  You absorb the stress with any combination of stress boxes, consequences and powers.  If you suffer an attack and don't have any of the above(or don't wish to use any of the above) to absorb the damage, you are taken out.

I'm not sure how it would work with RCI.  They eat cute, tiny, puppies instead of people.

[killking72]

It isn't that complicated. You draw upon your powers in a fight and at the end of it you roll your discipline to defend against your darker nature trying to control you. Example in the book, you use inhuman strength+toughness. Those have a combined refresh of -4. You roll a 4 shift attack against your discipline. Now say you roll an effective 2 on your discipline. That means you have to take the 2 stress. Now you can take the stress hit, take a mild consequence, or you use your powers as if they were consequences. By losing inhuman toughness, which is -2. You effectively use that as a feeding consequence until the next logical time you could have cleared your hunger track.

[Cadd]

Now say you roll an effective 2 on your discipline. That means you have to take the 2 stress. Now you can take the stress hit, take a mild consequence, or you use your powers as if they were consequences. By losing inhuman toughness, which is -2. You effectively use that as a feeding consequence until the next logical time you could have cleared your hunger track.

That's one way of reading that text, yes. Another way of reading it is that you at that point check off your second stress box and lose 2 refresh worth of powers.
See what I mean with unclear?

I also find it a bit strange that you can actually clear out your hunger track by using a little of your powers rather than not using them at all since you clear out your stress track when you successfully defend against a hunger "attack". How this interacts with lost powers are also unclear, since the relationship between power loss and actually taken stress is unclear.

[Sanctaphrax]

Some people think that you take stress and lose powers, you don't get to choose one or the other.

As I understand it, the book can be read to support either interpretation. Which is a problem.

Other problems include the way that Feeding Dependency can either be free Refresh or a crippling weakness depending on what it's attached to and the perverse way that its recovery mechanisms encourage you to behave.

Argh, ninja'd.

[Taran]

I agree it's not clear.  Although, with soaking stress it does say that you can use "any combination from above."