Character Creation

At the start of the campaign, Bavaria - and vampire society as a whole - is a series of fiefs held together by a mixture of personal power and connections between individual rulers rather than an overarching authority such as the Camarilla. Much like the feudalism of mortal Bavaria, powerful elders either have massive influence over, or outright control of, most of Bavaria. They then delegate it to subordinates to administer on their behalf, who in turn delegate some of it to their subordinates.

As the game will take place over a sweeping expanse of time and one of the themes of the game will be the toll that immortality can take on a character, Torpor will feature as both an obstacle and a benefit. It is worth noting that Torpor is an issue for characters rather than players; see the Torpor rules for what to do if your character is in Torpor when a session is taking place. 

The anticipated game experience for the four character “levels” is set out below. We are not forbidding characters from deviating from their expected place in the hierarchy; however characters who wish to make their own place - be it an elder who wants to live in another’s fief without offering assurances of support or a neonate who wants to be Prince of a town - will need to seize and hold that place themselves.

Below are the steps that a player should take in order to create a character using the Tenebrae system. Expand each section to find out more.

There are a few differences for ghoul characters which you can read about here, however broadly the system is the same.

1 - Core Concept and Personality

2 - Mechanical Crunch

Each character has a pool of build points which can be used to generate their character. These points can be spent as the player wishes, as long as the ST team approves the final character build. The number of build points characters have is based on whether they are a Ghoul/Neonate (60), Ancilla (75) or Elder (100).

Other than Attributes, which are based on a combination of age and generation, this pool of points is used to buy all of the component parts of the character’s sheet, including Skills, Disciplines, Merits and Flaws, and Backgrounds. It is not divided in any pre-determined way, so for example a character could be skill-heavy but Discipline-light, or fairly even across the board.