While a ghoul might be centuries old and have a morality that makes monsters uncomfortable, they are still mortal. Ghouls do not need to make Hunger tests to appear human.

Certain factors such as low Road or any Vicissitude modifications might affect tests to appear as a particular type of human, but they automatically appear alive.

While Ghouls might damn their souls by willingly serving monsters, perhaps even choosing to commit acts their Domitor would shy from, they are not vampires and so do not bear the full weight of Caine’s cursing of his descendants. Therefore, ghouls do not have a mandatory Clan flaw in the same way that vampires do.

Some ghouls—especially those who have been ghouls for many years, have low-generation Domitors, or regularly consume larger quantities of vampire blood than needed to survive—can start to manifest aspects of a Clan flaw. Therefore, ghoul PCs who develop a new Toll may choose to have it based on their Domitor’s Clan flaw.

While Clan-based characteristics are never mandatory for ghoul PCs, they are equally not forbidden so players who wish to are free to flavour their character’s behaviours based on their Domitor’s Clan flaw or to explore the uncertainty over whether it is shaping their behaviour whether or not they have a Toll centred around it.

Ghouls gain a +3 to all tests to resist Frenzy, to represent the Beast only being an echo.

As they are not supernatural predators, Ghouls are not subject to hunger frenzy at the sight, smell, or taste of human or animal blood. However, their addiction does leave them open to frenzy due to vampire blood.

The Beast wishes to remain alive, so Ghouls are subject to Frenzy when faced with danger or direct threats.

Ghouls are not cursed with the same consuming desire for blood as a Vampire. However, Kindred blood is highly addictive and potentially the only thing keeping the ghoul healthy (or, in the case of those who have been ghouls for an extended period, alive).

The Ghoul’s Hunger rating therefore represents how well they are overcoming the desire to hoard their remaining scraps of blissful life. To represent this, if a Ghoul is at the ‘Starving’ level of hunger, they cannot power any Disciplines that require a Hunger test.

As one of the most trusted servants of a vampire, it is possible a player-character ghoul might earn the Embrace. So that we can create a Domitor who uses ghouldom as a way to select potential childer and can include suitable points in plotlines, players who wish to pursue a personal story of striving for the embrace should raise this during character creation. However, we equally support ghoul characters who are intended to explore the unique advantages and disadvantages of ghouls over centuries of play.

A ghoul cannot be Embraced if they are more than 250 years old. Given the first step of the Embrace is draining the potential childe of all blood including Vitae - and Vitae is all that is keeping the ghoul from immediately turning into dust at this point - by the time the potential sire gets to giving their candidate some of their own Vitae, the drained ghoul will have crumbled to nothing. For revenants, this age limit is 500 years due to their ability to live to 250 without additional Vitae.

If a ghoul is Embraced, it will happen in downtime.

Ghouls are much more easily able to maintain human relationships, so find it easier to maintain a stable outlook. However, they still suffer the death of those they care about and the growing sense that each day is the same as the last. As such, they have the same number of age-related Tolls as a Vampire of equivalent age.

As Ghouls cannot make use of the soothing effect of Torpor, instead they draw strength and stability from time spent with their Domitor.

Downtime actions spent with their Domitor, without doing other activities even if the Domitor is in Torpor, allow checks to be made for Toll severity decreasing; as with vampires, a ghoul with allies or servants may set them to tasks while focusing on reducing tolls.

Ghoulish Obssession

As they are sustained by their increased connection to the living, ghouls do not need the same overwhelming ambition goal to sustain their existence. However, they do both perceive their Domitor as the centre of their universe and intellectually know the only reason they are allowed to take part in vampire society (or even remain alive) is because they continue to be very useful to their Domitor.

To represent this, the first Toll any PC ghoul has is one that represents their obsession with their Domitor or the task they have been set to; in whole or part the reason why their Domitor has trusted them with such a rare degree of autonomy.