Haven Advantages and Flaws
Merits
Haven •-••• (Core p.188)
Base ratings in Haven abstract the haven’s size, security, and privacy. All of those factors affect the chance of spotting, penetrating, and surveilling the vampire’s actual resting place. Add +1 to the Difficulty of, or one die to dice pools resisting, such efforts for each dot of base Haven rating. Kindred know their havens intimately. For each dot of base Haven rating, add one per dot to dice pools to notice danger (including awakening rolls, p. 219) while in your haven.
Business Establishment ••-••• (Players Guide p.112)
You rent out your haven to a separate business: a 9–5 call center, coffee shop, laundromat, or salon. You might even operate the business yourselves (or with Retainers) as a Corporate coterie (p. 160) although the Storyteller should avoid turning this game of personal horror into a game of business management horror.
The kine mill around living their daily lives while you sleep in the repurposed storage basement, or one of the server rooms where all of the out of service equipment is stored. The business pays a monthly rent (or profit, if you own it), providing you with a steady stream of funding.
The downside: A lot of strangers walking around, and exposure to local officials, and business taxes that potentially put you very much on the grid. Renting to criminals takes the taxes and paperwork out of the picture, but adds even more exposure to cops and other less pliable criminals. Reduce your base Haven dots by one for pools involving your Haven’s privacy and for security against either financial or criminal intrusion (pick when you choose this Merit).
Dots in this Merit roughly equate to their Resources equivalent, and the Storyteller may let you use its dots instead of Resources if the substitution makes sense. It also adds two dice to pools to do things related to your business’ activities or core competency, to interact with other local businesses, and to tests of preparedness to already have something you need in the moment (Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 410). Businesses have inventory and supply closets, after all.
However, if something happens to your Haven, you don’t have those Resource-like dots any more: no money comes into your pool hall if it burns down or if the FBI closes it off as a crime scene. You may want to take “regular” Resources dots as a backup. They don’t stack: a two-dot Business Establishment plus two dots in Resources means you have two Middle Class income streams; you’re not four-dot Wealthy.
•• Your haven’s business is a thriving local concern or national chain outlet.
••• Your haven’s business is a dominant local concern or an office of an international company. Perhaps you have a few floors of a skyscraper, or an office building near the airport, or even a pier and warehouses on the docks where you collect fees from ships and shippers alike.
Furcus •-••• (Players Guide p.112)
Your haven lies over a knot or fork in the veins of the Earth, or a frayed spot in the Veil. While invisible to normal sight (though not perhaps to Auspex or various Rituals), it underlies a prominent area: the top of a staircase, a fountain in the garden, the center of a room. (Intelligence + Occult might allow someone to deduce its location, if they know what they’re looking for.) Kindred feel the pull of magical energies at the site, and kine often feel nervous or nauseated. Blood Sorcery Rituals, Oblivion Ceremonies, or Thin-Blood Alchemy (pick when you take this Advantage) tap into the furcus’ power.
Each dot in this Merit adds one die to Ritual (or Ceremonial) dice pools used at the furcus. (At the Storyteller’s discretion it may also subtract one die from Social pools used to calm or seduce mortals – or add a die when interacting with mortal hedge magicians or other occult groupies.) Bestial failures on such tests may also lead to especially horrific or eldritch results: energy from the furcus that harms or curses the sorcerer, accidental summoning of an entity, or a clear magical pulse from the haven’s location. Depending on the Ceremony, a total or bestial failure might automatically impose the Haunted Flaw on the haven.
Machine Shop •+ (Players Guide p.113)
Your haven has state of the art tools, equipment, and machinery in a dedicated work space, plus supplies of oil, industrial chemicals, gasoline, and other household necessities. Each dot of this Merit adds one to the dice pool for Craft rolls, or to other tests related to building, repairing, or disassembling a piece of machinery or equipment: Intelligence + Firearms (Gunsmithing) to build a Sten submachine gun, Intelligence + Technology to fab a compound crossbow with a 3-D printer, Intelligence + Craft (Engineering) to soup up a car, etc. For particularly recondite machinery, you may have to explain how you sourced it if you don’t have Resources ••• or better.
Small havens with this Merit can only add to pools for one specialty of Craft: they don’t have enough room for a general machine shop or for automotive work.
A three-dot machine shop can include an incinerator; a three-dot machine shop in a large haven can include a car crusher or compactor.
Mobile •-•• (Live From the Succubus Club p.25)
Your haven is on wheels, wings, or the wide open sea. A one-dot mobile haven may be a car, van, or truck with a sunproof trunk or other compartment for daysleep, or pull a small trailer to carry gear. A two-dot mobile Haven could be an RV, motor coach, or bus. A massive, three-dot mobile haven could be an entire train, jet, or large ship. Coterie dots can be used for this Merit.
Armored • Requires Mobile (Live From the Succubus Club p.25)
You’re taking no chances with your haven, taking pains to reinforce panels, locks, and tires, and swapping out the glass for something more resistant to whatever gets thrown at it. The vehicle continues running perfectly until it sustains ten points of damage, while only Critical Hits penetrate sufficiently to affect passengers.
Smugglers Stash •-•• Requires Mobile (Live From the Succubus Club p.25)
You’ve dedicated a small section of your Haven to security, ensuring that even if accessed and subjected to a thorough search, your cargo — or you — remains safely stashed away. For one dot, this space is equivalent in size to one person, while two dots expands the space to cover your entire coterie. Searches for the compartment are made at +2 Difficulty.
Spare Plates •• Requires Mobile (Live From the Succubus Club pp.25-26)
Vehicles are easy to trace, and their size makes them harder to hide. To ensure your home’s reputation never trips you up, you keep a series of spare plates, stickers, and other identifiers that you can switch out with a turn’s worth of activity, giving you sufficient cover to avoid all but the most invasive searches.
Flaws
Shared •-•• (Players Guide p.113)
Your haven is not entirely your own. Other Kindred, besides you and your coterie, have access to it and can make decisions about it without consulting you. Decide the specific conditions and determine the severity of this Flaw based on those circumstances.
The one-dot version of this Flaw covers joint havens: e.g., you have one or more Storyteller character housemates, or you and a whole clutch of fledglings squat in an abandoned building. Any problems they bring back to the haven become your problems, too. A coterie that takes a haven together does not automatically invoke this Flaw; sharing with your coterie has only as much downside as you mutually create in play.
The one-dot Shared Flaw also covers short-term havens: you’re staying in an embassy or safe house or campground, with the expectation that you’ll be moving on and another Kindred may arrive to take your place at any time. Getting a new shared haven when that happens costs no more dots, but you may lose dots you put into improving the old one, in addition to moving all your belongings and re-training your Herd where to show up at night.
The two-dot version of this Flaw means you have a local landlord. Another Kindred has rights to the property (either an actual land title or a grant from the local Prince or Baron) and graciously (or not) allows you to roost there. After haven creation, you must discuss any changes you wish to make to your haven with your landlord. The landlord can enter your haven at will. Especially older Kindred landlords may also call on you for service or dirty jobs, treating you like a vassal or apparatchik.
Tremere chantries, Nosferatu warrens, and Ministry temples might be one or two-dot shared havens for characters of the appropriate clan, depending on the power balance between you and the other Kindred there.
On the Rails • Requires Mobile (Live From the Succubus Club p.26)
Your haven’s movement is not entirely under your control, such as on a ship or train. You might speed or delay a departure, or make an unscheduled stop, but the destinations are likely fixed. Work with the Storyteller to determine where your haven travels.
Temperamental • Requires Mobile (Live From the Succubus Club p.26)
Whether you love it despite its flaws, can’t afford the repairs, or are ignorant to your haven’s mechanical imperfections, your vehicle is unreliable and waiting for the worst moment to disappoint you. Any failed Drive test sees the vehicle grind to a halt, unable to be restarted without a successful repair test. Should you change your vehicle, this Flaw follows you unless bought off with Experience.
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