Humanity Path (and Others).

Humanity is a Path that the majority of Camarilla members (Vampires) and Anarchs will be on. There are some exceptions with the Sabbat and possibly some other areas but for the most part it is safe to assume the majority of characters that are Vampires are going to be on the Path of Humanity.

Most characters will never learn that there are other Paths and those that do have to work -really hard- to maintain them or they could fall to corruption, because to be on another Path is to surrender your Humanity and admit you are in fact Inhuman. This Path basically shows your rating of how connected to life among humans you are and how much of ‘the monster’ you are. The more you feel you are better and the humans are just rabble around you, the lower your Humanity is likely to be. The more you take life cruelly, with rotten rationality or without a real reason, the less humane you will be. Falling to a 3 Humanity basically makes you along the lines of a serial killer, psychopath and also makes a person dangerously easier to corrupt.

It is also necessary for a character to be Humanity 3 or less to learn a new Path, which if that fails, the character is lost to madness. If the character on another Path falls again to a 3, because they fail that Path, their ending will likely not be pleasant.

You lose or gain points on the Path you are on based off of how you face certain circumstances and what your character attempts to do, particularly when the heat is on them. Your character is measured by the ‘sins’ he does or doesn’t commit that the Path defines (Hierarchy of Sins). This is why the Virtues can be quite important, since most often, if your character does an act that is challenging one of them, the repercussions are what comes next. No one else who can hold you accountable to human law may know your character just massacred 10 people in an elevator, but your character will, and worse yet, sometimes other things you don’t see will too…

Mages and Sorcerers – use Humanity Path as well. Mages do have Arete, which functions similar to a Mummy’s Balance, but isn’t quite the same in terms of meaning. Gaining levels in Arete happens when there is an epiphany of sorts and a Mage has newly awakened herself to it in order to gain some greater knowledge of the universe. It’s not really a rating on how humane they still are, so Mages still use Humanity effectively. Sorcerers are humans that are not fully Awakened.

Ghouls/Kinfolk, etc – These all will use Humanity as well as they are all Human characters with special differences.

Shifters – All Fera including Garou… These will use Virtues and Humanity as well, since they have no real way of measuring it, though their Renown touches upon it, depending.

Orpheus – The people in Orpheus are gifted humans and they too are bound by Humanity Path and Virtues.

Nephalim – These will be bound by Humanity Path and Virtues unless something changes… Pending…

On Others with Equivalents

Mummies/Amenti and Wraiths/Risen have their own versions of Paths, with Mummies using ‘Balance’ as a way of monitoring themselves and Wraiths utilize ‘Angst’, which the higher that is, the more in trouble the Wraith is. Angst works in reverse of Humanity, so if a Wraith has a 6 Angst, the equivalent would be a 4 Humanity. The Mummy’s fall from Ma’at and their duties would make them into Banes. Wraiths that become too full of Angst (level 7) become Spectres. Those who continue to listen to their Shadows and fall further inevitably end up in ‘The Oblivion’. It’s not a very happy place.

Hopefully, this explains why these stats are not just used with the VtM characters, let alone why some other games have relative terms to it, but other venues seemed to avoid it, despite their own ways of dealing with corruption. The ambiance we have here is one where mysterious forces are at play and your character is part of that world. They will experience things that call these Virtues up. Welcome!

The character sheets in here are a bit different than usual for cross-over simplification and because of the way the story lines go here. All characters have some form of Path though most will be on Humanity. This includes characters that regularly wouldn’t have these virtues or Paths, based on what they are, to include Mages, Shifters, etc.

So why do we have the 3 virtues and Humanity for other characters that traditionally would not have them? If the above explanation wasn’t enough, hopefully it all becomes more clear below.

The Virtues

Consider Conscience, Self-Control and Courage things that detail your character’s will and reveal some general stances in life that they will exhibit when they are cornered to make fast decisions. Usually, these work in tandem to your Nature/Demeanor in some way.

You are assigning points based on how you feel the character would cope with something serious, where they have to rely nearly on instinct, rather than having much time to sit around and think about it.

Conscience – Do you walk on by when someone is in trouble or do you look and feel guilty or do you go help or take out your phone to record for evidence to help them later… or do you not really care so you take out your phone to record so you can get famous on Youtube? What do you do with a pet that you have to give up because you have to move to an apartment that doesn’t allow pets? Do you take it somewhere to have it put to sleep so it’s not a burden anymore or do you try to find a friend or anyone to take the pet, or do you put it in a box and sit it outside a pet shelter, or do you drive it out of town and dump it out of the car onto some country highway? The lower your character’s Conscience is in the game, the more easy it may be to corrupt them and get them to do foul deeds, and -every- faction/venue has a corrupted side that wants to take the character and change them irretrievably. Breaking a being’s Conscience is one of those easy ways of doing so.

Self-Control – Do you get easily convinced to do things by peers that can be foolish? Some examples: Spending your paycheck at the bar, going gambling with your rent money, heading out of town without telling anyone in case something happens. Do you have an impulsive issue where you just have to do something because it’s right there and you just want to do it? The opposite of these inquiries would be that you are in control of your nature and who you really are. You won’t just be convinced to do something so foolish unless you actually really want to and you will plan out for such inevitability, when it comes to doing things like assisting friends. Self-Control also relies on how well you can control things like the darker sides in people. For vampires, it is ‘the Beast’. For Shifters, it is ‘the Beast’ as well, just with some twists and it can too be tainted by the Wyrm. For Mages, it is that pull of the Nephandi.

Courage – How brave really are you ? When you see something going on that you don’t like, will you stand up against it? Will you just watch it happen and witness? Will you turn and flee so you don’t have to be involved and try to make like you were never there? Are you afraid of your own shadow, or will you go stand against whatever… ? It doesn’t even mean necessarily you are ‘not afraid’ if you have a high score. It means you will fight to drive back that fear so you can still try to act reasonably in the face of great peril.

As you can see, these Virtues can be useful for Role-playing in an environment where there are really dark and awful things out there that characters may just confront. The Virtues assist with Storytelling and tell the STs about what your characters are like and also what they would potentially be most likely to do in certain scenarios. Occasionally, we also need to use the Virtues or Paths for rolling and obtaining target difficulty numbers for certain types of beings who attack against these or induce some kind of trauma potentially with their strikes or abilities.