Necromancy

Necromancy is divided into three paths — Sepulchre, Bone and Ash. A Giovanni character learns the Sepulchre Path first (and this costs new dots x 7), and her rating in the other Paths cannot exceed her rating in the Sepulchre Path (other Paths cost new dots x 6). Necromancy rituals are discussed at the end of this section.
*Sepulchre Path: The Sepulchre Path can be found on pp. 161-163 of Vampire: The Masquerade.
**• Insight: Roll Wits + Composure + Sepulchre Path. This power requires eye contact, which isn’t normally a problem when used on corpses. It can be used on vampires in order to witness their last moments of life (that is, the Embrace), and in this case, subtract the vampire’s Wits from the necromancer’s pool. If the vampire is willing to submit to this power, do not apply this penalty. The necromancer’s player suffers a penalty based on how thorough the information he is trying to uncover. Use the chart on p. 161 of Vampire: The Masquerade, but replace the number of successes with a dice penalty. For example, if a necromancer wants a clear image, with sound, of the minutes preceding death, the player incurs a –3 penalty.
**•• Summon Soul: The necromancer can call up a ghost from the Underworld or from Twilight. The vam pire acts as a temporary anchor, allowing the ghost to manifest and answer questions. Vampires that have been diablerized and souls that have been destroyed or passed on cannot be summoned with this power. The vampire must know the ghost’s name in order to summon it.
***Cost: 1 Willpower
***Dice Pool: Presence + Occult + Sepulchre Path
***Action: Extended (target number equal to the ghost’s Willpower, or 5 if the Storyteller does not have traits for the ghost)
***Roll Results: 
****Dramatic Failure: The ghost that the vampire summons is malevolent, powerful and completely out of control. Use the statistics for any of the ghosts on pp. 215-216 of the World of Darkness Rulebook that you wish. The ghost can remain in the area and bedevil the Kindred until the necromancer’s player succeeds on a Manipulation + Occult roll to cancel the summoning.
****Failure: No successes are added to the total.
****Success: Successes are added to the total. If the player reaches the target number, the ghost appears. The player can ask a number of questions equal to the vampire’s Necromancy rating, which the ghost answers to the best of its ability. Any questions beyond this number require a Manipulation + Occult roll to keep the summoning steady. If this roll fails, the ghost vanishes.
****Exceptional Success: As Success. In addition, if the player achieves the target number with an exceptional success, the vampire can ask as many questions as he wishes of the ghost.
**Many of the Necromancy powers involve dealing with ghosts. If the vampire has an object of great importance from the ghost’s life, the player receives a +1 modifier to any appropriate rolls.
****Suggested Modifiers:
*****Modifier Situation
******Vampire is holding one of the ghost’s anchors (doesn’t apply to locations) +3
******Ghost has been dead less than a day +3
******Ghost has been dead less than a week +2
******Ghost died violently +2
******Vampire personally killed the person whose ghost she now summons +1
******Ghost is within 1 mile of the vampire +1
******Ghost is within 10 miles of the vampire —
******Ghost with within 100 miles of the vampire -1
******Ghost is more than 100 miles away from the vampire -2
******Ghost is in the Underworld -3
******Ghost died more than 50 years ago -5
**••• Compel Soul: The vampire can use this power to command ghosts, whether he first uses Summon Soul to call the or simply finds them in the course of an investigation. In the latter case, the vampire must know the ghost’s name.
***Cost: —
***Dice Pool: Manipulation + Occult + Necromancy
***Action: Contested (Storyteller rolls the ghost’s Power + Resistance)
***Roll Results:
****Dramatic Failure: The vampire loses the contest, and the ghost is able to anchor itself to the vampire for the remainder of the night. The ghost might decide simply to follow the vampire around, or might actively and maliciously haunt him. In any case, the vampire cannot use Necromancy (any path) on this particular ghost for the rest of the night.
****Failure: The player achieves fewer successes than the Storyteller. The ghost resists the attempt to compel it. If the ghost remains in the scene, the character can try to compel it again, but incurs a –1 penalty for each failed attempt.
****Success: The vampire’s player achieves more successes than the Storyteller. The ghost is bound in service to the vampire for the remainder of the scene. It must answer any questions truthfully and perform any service the vampire requires of it (within its ability), but it is bound only by the letter of the law, not the spirit. If the vampire isn’t careful in how he words his commands, he runs the risk of the ghost turning the tables on him.
****Exceptional Success: The vampire’s player wins the contest and rolls an exceptional success. The ghost is bound in service for the remainder of the scene, and must serve the vampire to the best of its knowledge and ability, following the vampire’s intent as well as his literal commands.
**If the vampire succeeds in compelling the ghost, the player can spend a point of Willpower to bind the ghost for the remainder of the night. He can spend a Willpower dot to bind the ghost for a year and a day.
**•••• Haunting: The vampire can bind a ghost to a place. The roll is Presence + Occult + Sepulchre Path contested by the ghost’s Power + Resistance. If the vampire wins, the ghost is trapped in the given locale for the remainder of the night (the player can extend this to a week by spending a point of Willpower, and a year with a dot of Willpower). This removes the ghost’s ability to jump automatically to any other anchors it might possess, but the ghost can attempt to escape once per night. This requires a Power + Resistance roll with a penalty equal to the vampire’s Necromancy rating. If the ghost attempts to leave the area and fails this roll, it suffers one point of aggravated damage per turn until it returns. If it loses all of its Corpus to this damage, it is destroyed.
**••••• Torment: This is a simple attack against a ghost or spirit in Twilight. The vampire must touch the ghost (see Touching an Opponent, p. 157 of the World of Darkness Rulebook). If this action succeeds, the player rolls Strength + Occult + Sepulchre Path – the ghost’s Resistance. Every success inflicts a point of lethal damage to the ghost.
*'B'one Path: The Bone Path can be found on p. 163 of Vampire: The Masquerade. This path involves raising the dead as zombies. The current World of Darkness uses the following rules for zombies: Each zombie has the following base traits: Attributes: Power 1, Finesse 1, Resistance 2 Size: 5 (or less if the corpse is small) Speed: 1* Initiative: 1* Defense: 1* These traits begin at 1, regardless of Attribute scores.
**Zombies do not suffer wound penalties and cannot heal damage naturally. Bashing, lethal and aggravated wounds are marked normally, but zombies never suffer incapacitation — they just keep going until their last Health point is lost to aggravated damage. When a zombie’s final (rightmost) Health box is marked with bashing damage, no roll is required to remain conscious. When its final Health box is marked with lethal damage, it does not collapse and begin bleeding to death — it keeps going. Any damage suffered after that is upgraded to aggravated. Once this happens, the corpse loses body parts with each new upgraded wound until it is completely pulverized or disintegrated (the Storyteller decides which parts fall off with each wound).
**A zombie continues to rot. It suffers one lethal point of damage with each passage of a number of days equal to its Resistance. A zombie with a Resistance of 3 therefore suffers one lethal point of rotting damage every three days.
**In addition, zombies created by a given vampire have a vulnerability to one specific type of attack, such as fire, damage to the brain or carving a mystic sigil on one’s body. If a zombie suffers at least one lethal or aggravated point of damage from an attack to which it is vulnerable, it is destroyed instantly. The player chooses the zombie’s vulnerability when the vampire first learns the Bone Path.
*• Tremens: The player rolls Dexterity + Occult + Bone Path and spends a Vitae point. The corpse must be within line of sight of the vampire. The roll is modified based on how elaborate the vampire wishes to make the corpse’s movement.
**Under no circumstances can the vampire use the corpse to attack a target.
**Suggested Modifiers:
***Modifier Movement
***— The corpse moves one limb, opens its eyes or mouth, or performs some other simple movement
***-1 As above, but with a trigger — the corpse opens its eyes if someone touches it within the next scene
***-2 The corpse makes a movement involving up to half of its body (kicks legs, sits up, covers its eyes)
***-3 As above, but with a trigger
***-4 The corpse makes an elaborate movement — the corpse sits up, opens its eyes, and points in particular direction
***-5 As above, with a trigger
*•• Apprentice’s Brooms: The player spends a Vitae point and rolls Wits + Occult + Bone Path, with a penalty equal to the number of corpses the character wishes to animate. The zombies created are the basic zombies described above, and perform their task until they rot away, the work is completed, or something destroys them.
**••• Shambling Hordes: The vampire can create zombies capable of attacking targets. The player spends one Willpower point, rolls Wits + Occult + Bone Path with a penalty equal to the number of corpses being raised, and spends a point of Vitae for each corpse. The corpses can be set to guard an area or an object, and will wait there until they rot or the necromancer releases them. If the necromancer’s player expends a dot of Willpower, the zombies do not rot, and can wait forever to fulfill their tasks (they can still be destroyed normally, however).
***The vampire can improve the zombies. Every success on the roll can be used to raise an Attribute by one point. This change applies to all zombies raised with a particular application of the zombie.
***For example, a Giovanni attempts to create zombie guards out of four corpses. The player spends one Willpower point and four Vitae, and rolls Wits + Occult + Bone Path – 4 (because the player is raising four zombies). The player rolls two successes, and chooses to raise the zombies’ Power by two points (the zombies hit a little harder than usual, but are still fairly fragile). If the character had a lot Willpower to spare, he could raise each zombie individually. It would cost more Willpower, but allow for a larger dice pool for each zombie (which could translate to more successes to improve the zombies).
**•••• Soul Stealing: The vampire can pull a living soul from its body. This requires a contested roll of the vampire’s Resolve + Occult + Bone Path vs. the victim’s Resolve + Composure. This power only functions on non-supernatural mortals, not on vampires, werewolves, mages and so forth. The number of successes that the vampire’s player rolls is the number of hours that the soul is ripped loose from its body. During this time, the soul wanders, probably very confused, in Twilight, and the vampire can use the body as a vessel for Daemonic Possession.
**••••• Daemonic Possession: The vampire inserts a ghost into a soulless or recently dead (no more than 30 minutes) body. The ghost must agree to this arrangement. The vampire’s player spends a Willpower point, but no dice roll is necessary. If the body is dead, this power does not prevent it from decaying, meaning that it will eventually lose the ability to pass as human. If the body’s soul was removed with the Soul Stealing power, the body’s original owner can attempt to repossess it once per night (contested Resolve + Composure roll with the ghost using the body).
*'A'sh Path: The Ash Path can be found on pp. 164-165 of Vampire: The Masquerade. Note, though, that ghosts and the plane of existence on which they dwell are very different in the original World of Darkness, and therefore the relative power levels of the Ash Path are inappropriate in a Vampire: The Requiem game. As such, the first two levels have been combined into the Lifeless Tongues Necromantic ritual (see below), one that most necromancers learn very early in their careers.
**• Death Calls to Death: The vampire can sense ghosts. Whenever the character enters a haunted area or comes within 20 feet of a ghost’s anchor, the Storyteller should roll the character’s Wits + Composure. If the roll succeeds, the character realizes that he is near a ghostly object or a haunt. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a ghost is presently nearby (since some ghosts have multiple anchors), but it lets the vampire know that he might wish to investigate further.
**•• Dead Hand: As the original Ash Path ••• power. The player spends a Vitae point and rolls Wits + Occult + Ash Path. Success means the character is able to interact with Twilight entities until the end of the scene, or until he cancels the power, which ever comes first.
**••• Shroud Mastery: The vampire can alter the ease with which ghosts can manifest. The player rolls Resolve + Occult + Ash Path and spends one point of Willpower. Every success allows the vampire to raise or lower the manifestation modifier of his immediate area by one (see p. 210 of the World of Darkness Rulebook). Any changes made last for one scene.
**•••• Ex Nihilo: The character can enter Twilight directly. All of the character’s clothes and small objects that he carries (but not larger objects such as vehicles, and not other living or unliving beings) change with him. While in Twilight, the vampire can interact with Twilight entities and move as a ghost, but cannot feed on ghosts or spirits. The player spends a point of Vitae and a point of Willpower and rolls Stamina + Occult + Ash Path. The vampire can exit Twilight at any time.
**••••• The Black Key: The vampire can create a doorway to the Underworld. The Underworld is a dangerous and mysterious place, even for the Kindred. The ghosts that dwell there are well beyond their living days and have no anchors, and delving deep into the Underworld leads to strange domains with rulers and denizens over which even the Giovanni have no sway (see the sourcebook World of Darkness: Book of the Dead for an in-depth treatment of the Underworld and more information on how the Kindred interact with it). The character must draw a door in chalk or blood. The player spends one Vitae and two points of Willpower and rolls Manipulation + Occult + Ash Path. If the roll succeeds, the gateway opens and remains so for one minute per success. Once the gateway closes, the vampire must use this power again to exit the Underworld.
*Rituals: Rituals in Necromancy function much like the rites of Crúac and Theban Sorcery. The vampire must have the Necromancy Discipline (any Path) at a level equal to or higher than the ritual he is trying to perform. All rituals have the same roll and activation cost.
**Cost: 1 Vitae
**Dice Pool: Intelligence + Occult + Necromancy (primary Path)
**Action: Extended. The number of successes required to activate a ritual is equal to the level of the ritual (so a level-three ritual requires three successes to enact). Each roll represents one turn of ritual casting. Note also that each point of damage suffered in a turn is a penalty to the next casting roll made for the character.
**If a character fails to complete the ritual in time (such as by being sent into torpor before accumulating enough successes) or decides to cancel the ritual before garnering enough successes to activate, the effect simply fails.
**Roll Results: 
***Dramatic Failure: The ritual fails in some spectacular fashion. This usually involves the vampire becoming the target of a ghost’s wrath for a short period of time.
***Failure: No successes are added to the total.
***Success: The ritual takes place as described.
***Exceptional Success: The ritual takes place as described. In many cases, extra successes are their own reward, causing additional damage or conferring extra duration or capacity.
**Call the Hungry Dead (Level-One Necromancy Ritual): As described on p. 165 of Vampire: The Mas querade. Successfully casting this ritual on a target imposes a –4 penalty to any Wits-based roll involving hearing.
**Ashen Caul (Level-One Necromancy Ritual): This ritual comprises the first two levels of the Ash Path as written in Vampire: The Masquerade. The vampire burns a small piece of fabric to ash, and smears the ashes on his eyelids and tongue. For the remainder of the scene, the vampire can see, hear and speak with any ghosts in the area.
**Eyes of the Grave (Level-Two Necromancy Ritual): The visions that this ritual inflicts can strike at any time. When they do, the target’s player rolls Resolve + Composure. If the roll fails, the character suffers a –3 on all actions for the remainder of the scene as he is plagued with visions of his own death. These visions persist for a week.
**Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter (Level-Three Necromancy Ritual): This ritual can be used to locate a ghost’s anchor.
**Cadaver’s Touch (Level-Four Necromancy Ritual): Using this ritual on a target imposes a –3 modifier to all Social rolls, Perception rolls, and Initiative.
**Grasp the Ghostly (Level-Five Necromancy Ritual): This ritual allows the necromancer to conjure up anything he can think of from the Underworld. This ritual can’t be used to conjure up advanced technology (cars are acceptable, but not computers), but the technology it summons up only requires a point of Willpower every week to keep running. These objects fade after about a year of use, but during that time they function normally, and travel with the vampire if he enters Twilight or the Underworld. If the vampire doesn’t pay the weekly Willpower cost, the object fades away and returns to the Underworld. The vampire must trade an object of roughly equal mass for the object he is conjuring up, but the mate rial is unimportant — he can trade a small pile of trash for a functioning gun, for instance.
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