Logistics of Blood Potency 6+

[Charlaquin]

I am mostly curious as to how feeding would be handled without Unnatural Affinity. I'm asking from the perspective of populating a city with Kindred, rather than from the perspective of playing an elder. It seems a bit odd if every elder has unnatural affinity.

Most elders probably have more political power than the younger vampires and likely own large feeding territories, which, as elders, they don't really need. They could easily parcel out sections and grant feeding rights within them to younger vampires, in exchange for a tithe of Vitae. Getting vampire blood should actually be quite easy for most elders, it's just a matter of resisting the blood bond. As mentioned, the Invictus can do it through Oaths and the Ordo can do it through various Scales. The Carthians don't usually have many elders, and those they do have are often not well-trusted among the younger Firebrands, so the Covenant would probably approve of their elders being bound to neonates. That just leaves the Lancea et Sanctum and Circle of the Crone who really need to find a mundane way around it. That is, unless you just create a custom Rite or Miracle to do it. Plus, there's always Willpower expenditure, Unnatural Affinity, and Protean.

[Murder-of-Crows]

The Circle of the Crone has the level 3 ritual Blood Price (you gain Blood Potency amount of Vitae the victim drinks) and the level 4 ritual Willful Vitae (immunity vs. vinculum and vitae addiction). That should be enough for acolytes.

The way I look at it, only the Lancea et Sanctum and the Carthians seem to have an issue with getting enough vitae at Blood Potency 6+. On the other hand, the Carthians were founded in the late 18th century. The neonates from back then would only run into that issue in a couple of years.

Also, there is even one condition that allows you to drink human or animal blood, even if you normally wouldn't be able to do so: Ecstatic (gained on an exceptional sucess with a Cruac ritual).

[Resplendent Fire]

Thanks much for responses.

[Resplendent Fire]

Was just thinking of Lancea et Sanctum and considering the possibility of a Theban sorcery ritual that allows for a kind of reverse communion that protects from blood bonds.

Does this sound cool or thematic at all?

I am fine with Carthians having developed nothing to help, but it seems odd that Lancea et Sanctum lacks such a tool.

[Sethnacht]

There´s a theban sorcery ritual in the Blood Sorcery-sourcebook called "Lord´s Chalice", which provides protection from both vinculum and blood addiction. It basically turns a silver chalice into both a vinculum-neutralizer and stranger-blood-detector when a vampire uses it as an intermediary to drink.

[Resplendent Fire]

Guess I have to get the Blood Sorcery sourcebook, then. Thanks.

[VoidDrifter]

Personally, I always came away from the Requiem corebook, at least in 1e, with the impression that Elders (Blood Potency 6+) are incredibly rare precisely because of the problems they have with needing to feed exclusively on vampire vitae. Most vampires can't support themselves once their blood thickens to that extent, and so they go into Torpor and wait for it to thin out enough that they can go back to feeding on humans. It means a 50 year nap, at the least, but it's generally the safe option.

As others have said, though, those Elders who do stay active generally either broaden their appetites (take one or more dots in Unnatural Affinity and feed on other supernaturals) or find a way to leverage social power into tithes of vitae, so they can safely feed on a wide array of vampires without having to murder them or risk being Blood Bound to them, especially those with Covenant affinities that allow them to reduce the risk of a Viniculum.

[nofather]

I figure at some point there's bound to be a sort of 'mid unlife crisis.'

You've 'lived' hundreds of years, seen vampires come and go, the world changing around you, and it's always the same. Politics, Embraces, older vampires going into torpor, younger vampires making power plays. You can live forever, do you want to spend the rest of forever fencing over status with enemies who, after hundreds of years, have become your only friends?

So you have the more stable vampires who embrace that cycle because it's safe, too arrogant to believe some neonate will be there when they awaken, stake and hammer in hand. And other vampires who might seek out something else, in the meantime feeding on lesser vampires they have no connection to or other supernatural entities..

[Resplendent Fire]

Personally, I always came away from the Requiem corebook, at least in 1e, with the impression that Elders (Blood Potency 6+) are incredibly rare precisely because of the problems they have with needing to feed exclusively on vampire vitae. Most vampires can't support themselves once their blood thickens to that extent, and so they go into Torpor and wait for it to thin out enough that they can go back to feeding on humans. It means a 50 year nap, at the least, but it's generally the safe option.

This is probably the least interesting answer, though. I don't care about elders who go into torpor to manage their diets, at least not in the context of this thread. Obviously they do exist, but so do those who find ways to endure with their greater dietary needs.

As others have said, though, those Elders who do stay active generally either broaden their appetites (take one or more dots in Unnatural Affinity and feed on other supernaturals) or find a way to leverage social power into tithes of vitae, so they can safely feed on a wide array of vampires without having to murder them or risk being Blood Bound to them, especially those with Covenant affinities that allow them to reduce the risk of a Viniculum.

Yeah, so far there's been several good answers as to how to get around the restrictions. Invictus have oaths, Lancea et Sanctum have the magic chalice, Circle of the Crone has Willful Vitae, and Ordo Dracul has Sanguinary Invigoration.

Unnatural affinity is not very interesting to me because I am not really thinking in terms of a game with a lot of crossover elements. Obv. it's there and it has some benefit, and some elders will go for it, but I find it difficult to conclude that they'd have an easy time feeding on other supernaturals on a reliable basis.

I figure at some point there's bound to be a sort of 'mid unlife crisis.'

You've 'lived' hundreds of years, seen vampires come and go, the world changing around you, and it's always the same. Politics, Embraces, older vampires going into torpor, younger vampires making power plays. You can live forever, do you want to spend the rest of forever fencing over status with enemies who, after hundreds of years, have become your only friends?

So you have the more stable vampires who embrace that cycle because it's safe, too arrogant to believe some neonate will be there when they awaken, stake and hammer in hand. And other vampires who might seek out something else, in the meantime feeding on lesser vampires they have no connection to or other supernatural entities..

I like to think there's a very small handful of Kindred elders who have never gone into torpor - and they're all evil bastards - but that most do it eventually for whatever reason.

[Kirby Jerusalem]

It's going to vary from domain to domain, covenant to covenant and vampire to vampire. One idea that I didn't see on a skim is that in particularly draconian domains, those outside of the established hierarchy don't count as Kindred and are free for feeding, or perhaps there are extremely harsh laws with penalty of execution designed to catch up dumb neonates as food for the court.

[StSword]

There's also breath and liver eating from Mythologies,and a covenant in Danse Macabre that can leech energy off of necromantically aligned supers for blood points, and the ghost eating merit in book of the dead.

As for unnatural affinity, it works with blue book supernaturals as well, heck you could even take it for some of the other forms of vampires from Wicked Dead or sons of phobos from blood sorcery. Unnatural affinity- zombies is a legit option, and there are bloodlines who can make zombies.

[Elfive]

Although the Breath eating discipline will need to be tweaked to account for how the feeding restrictions have shifted. And also that breath drinking is a Strix thing now.

[Resplendent Fire]

The setting (for me) loses something if you have significant numbers of elders feeding off zombies or ghosts or whatever. It's a thing some elders do, but I don't see it as something that very many elders do.

[nofather]

Vampires who need to feast on vampires just bite the bullet.

In the fiction for Danse Macabre, Prince Maxwell has finally reached that point. He tried stealing the secrets of the Ordo Dracul so he could lower his Blood Potency without going into torpor, but it failed. So he just finds a vampire who, I believe, he thinks won't try to take advantage, and keeps him as a sort of blood doll.

Even with the increase of maximum Vitae held, vampires don't need to be topped off constantly, you can go a long way with just a couple drinks a week. Some vampires will just take the Vinculum and drink from a favored Kindred, some will try to avoid it and spread their drinking around or use an ability or plan to help with that.

[Resplendent Fire]

Yeah, that was my starting point but I was looking for stuff beyond that - which the posters in this thread have quite kindly provided.