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Let me just preface this right away with the fact that I do not intend to do any of this in an actual game; this is, I am well aware, a Stupid Cheesy Trick that I probably shouldn't attempt in an actual game unless I want to get beaten with a limited edition Vampire: The Requiem dice bag. This is entirely for hypothetical purposes, and if I happen to share some interesting tricks and flavorful game ideas that are actually usable in the process, well, so much the better.
So, first, here's the setup to why I need Willpower Farming as, like, a Thing.
There exists a Bloodline Discipline in the Vampire: The Requiem supplement Ancient Bloodlines called Sakti Pata. It is, on the face of things, cool and flavorful- blood magic that lets you make weapons and armor out of your own blood, and comes at the concept of a combat-focused Vampire from a fun and cool angle. But, at the fourth dot, we encounter something that's... a bit wild. Called Durga’s Kiss, Kindred with four dots in Sakti Pata can, under very special circumstances, expend a point of Willpower to completely refill their blood pool. What special circumstance, you ask?
When it's raining.
Now, ordinarily blood is... honestly not that hard to come by. You make a Feeding roll, and the Storyteller is advised to not drag it out too much- feeding really is just an everyday fact of life for Vampires, no need to make a production out of it every time. From a strictly game-mechanical perspective, it honestly doesn't matter that much that the Amara Havana elders have found ways to top up their Blood Pools without needing to drink from mortals. Now, from a lore perspective, "did you hear that these Indian Warrior-Vampires have found a way to survive off rainstorms, foggy mornings, and particularly stiff breezes instead of human blood?" is absolutely buck-fucking-wild and is something that should be revolutionary to Kindred society once it becomes at all widely known, but let's just sorta ignore that for a minute, and instead focus on something much smaller and dumber I thought about:
Ghouls, in this edition, do not have caps on how far they can advance a Discipline. A Ghoul can, by the rules as written, attain four dots in Sakti Pata, and thereafter keep themselves fully stocked in their own home-grown Vitae, beholden no longer to any Kindred, and free to be an immortal blood sorcerer on their own terms, as long as they live somewhere that rains more than, like, once a year, which coincidentally is most places that people live. The only real problem is that, well, Ghouls don't have much blood storage of their own. They get their Stamina Rating in stored Vitae, and that's it. And sure, they can survive off that just fine, they just have to go out in a storm like three or four times a year. No big deal. But what if they wanna do more than that? I mean, come on, they're an immortal blood sorcerer, why wouldn't they want to do more than that?
Well, now we come to two new problems that need to be solved for our Ghoulish friend. Storing additional Vitae, and keeping themselves in Willpower. Storing Vitae, thankfully, happens to have a solution- with a one-dot Theban Sorcery ritual(hey, if you managed to snag four dots in the obscure Sakti Pata, then one dot in the commonplace Theban Sorcery should be no problem) in the core book, Vitae Reliquary, you can do exactly that, storing Vitae long-term. This, of course, merely exacerbates the second problem: Willpower. It costs a point of Willpower to completely refill one's blood pool with Sakti Pata, and it also costs a point of Willpower to perform the Vitae Reliquary ritual. Even if you consistently perform the ritual well enough to store all of your harvest from Sakti Pata- and you very probably won't- that's still a lot of Willpower you're expending, and Willpower can be tricky to get back the conventional way.
So, that brings me to the central question of this thread, the reason I laid all of this out. Obviously, one can regain Willpower by fulfilling one's Virtue or Vice. But are there any other ways in which Willpower can be regained, or perhaps for the need for Willpower to be obviated in some way? I invite any and all hacky, stupid, half-legal tricks you can think of- pretend I'm a generous Storyteller who's willing to let you have it, but only if you successfully entertain me with a display of system mastery/rules lawyering.
So, first, here's the setup to why I need Willpower Farming as, like, a Thing.
There exists a Bloodline Discipline in the Vampire: The Requiem supplement Ancient Bloodlines called Sakti Pata. It is, on the face of things, cool and flavorful- blood magic that lets you make weapons and armor out of your own blood, and comes at the concept of a combat-focused Vampire from a fun and cool angle. But, at the fourth dot, we encounter something that's... a bit wild. Called Durga’s Kiss, Kindred with four dots in Sakti Pata can, under very special circumstances, expend a point of Willpower to completely refill their blood pool. What special circumstance, you ask?
When it's raining.
Now, ordinarily blood is... honestly not that hard to come by. You make a Feeding roll, and the Storyteller is advised to not drag it out too much- feeding really is just an everyday fact of life for Vampires, no need to make a production out of it every time. From a strictly game-mechanical perspective, it honestly doesn't matter that much that the Amara Havana elders have found ways to top up their Blood Pools without needing to drink from mortals. Now, from a lore perspective, "did you hear that these Indian Warrior-Vampires have found a way to survive off rainstorms, foggy mornings, and particularly stiff breezes instead of human blood?" is absolutely buck-fucking-wild and is something that should be revolutionary to Kindred society once it becomes at all widely known, but let's just sorta ignore that for a minute, and instead focus on something much smaller and dumber I thought about:
Ghouls, in this edition, do not have caps on how far they can advance a Discipline. A Ghoul can, by the rules as written, attain four dots in Sakti Pata, and thereafter keep themselves fully stocked in their own home-grown Vitae, beholden no longer to any Kindred, and free to be an immortal blood sorcerer on their own terms, as long as they live somewhere that rains more than, like, once a year, which coincidentally is most places that people live. The only real problem is that, well, Ghouls don't have much blood storage of their own. They get their Stamina Rating in stored Vitae, and that's it. And sure, they can survive off that just fine, they just have to go out in a storm like three or four times a year. No big deal. But what if they wanna do more than that? I mean, come on, they're an immortal blood sorcerer, why wouldn't they want to do more than that?
Well, now we come to two new problems that need to be solved for our Ghoulish friend. Storing additional Vitae, and keeping themselves in Willpower. Storing Vitae, thankfully, happens to have a solution- with a one-dot Theban Sorcery ritual(hey, if you managed to snag four dots in the obscure Sakti Pata, then one dot in the commonplace Theban Sorcery should be no problem) in the core book, Vitae Reliquary, you can do exactly that, storing Vitae long-term. This, of course, merely exacerbates the second problem: Willpower. It costs a point of Willpower to completely refill one's blood pool with Sakti Pata, and it also costs a point of Willpower to perform the Vitae Reliquary ritual. Even if you consistently perform the ritual well enough to store all of your harvest from Sakti Pata- and you very probably won't- that's still a lot of Willpower you're expending, and Willpower can be tricky to get back the conventional way.
So, that brings me to the central question of this thread, the reason I laid all of this out. Obviously, one can regain Willpower by fulfilling one's Virtue or Vice. But are there any other ways in which Willpower can be regained, or perhaps for the need for Willpower to be obviated in some way? I invite any and all hacky, stupid, half-legal tricks you can think of- pretend I'm a generous Storyteller who's willing to let you have it, but only if you successfully entertain me with a display of system mastery/rules lawyering.
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