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Caitiff

No lineage. No legacy. No leash.

What Are You?

You're a vampire without a Clan, and there are a lot of ways that happens. Maybe you were Embraced by a Nosferatu but never grew hideous, or by a Ventrue but can feed from anyone without your tummy getting upset. Perhaps your sire was Caitiff themselves and chose you deliberately; someone tough, stubborn, and resourceful enough to survive at the bottom of a hierarchy that despises you. Either way, the blood of the ancients didn't mark you. No terribly specific curse shaped your transformation. You just woke up dead, hungry, and alone.

What you lack in pedigree, you make up for in flexibility. Your blood has no built-in loyalties nor limitations; you can learn any Discipline from any source, given enough time and exposure. Some Caitiff lean into their independence, building alliances with other clanless Kindred and carving out a niche on their own terms. Others hide what they are entirely, faking clan membership and performing traditions they have no real connection to, because the alternative is being treated as disposable. Increasingly, the clanless are organizing; not into a clan, exactly, but into an amalgamation that watches out for its own.

The cost is respect. You have no supernatural curse or Compulsion. Regardless, other vampires look down on you by default. Princes barely tolerate you. Elders consider you a mistake. You start almost every interaction at the bottom of the barrel, and earning trust means working twice as hard for half the credit. Caitiff survive anyway, because that's what they've always done. Nobody handed you a legacy, so you'll make your own.

Disciplines

Choose any 2 Disciplines to start with. These are unaffected by your Bane.

Bane: Lacking Lineage

You carry no supernatural curse, but Kindred society treats your existence as one. Any Kindred who knows you're Caitiff may impose social consequences at their discretion; the Storyteller can apply a penalty of -1 to -2 Forward on Demeanor rolls with Kindred who look down on the clanless (which is most of them).

Additionally, Disciplines take more effort to advance, as your Blood must learn what the Clans inherit. When you spend XP on unlocking access to Disciplines, add your Blood Potency to the cost (minimum 1). When you spend XP on Discipline Powers from Disciplines other than your two starters, add half your Blood Potency (rounded up) instead.

Compulsion: Nothing

You have no fixed Compulsion. You just get to help with everybody else's.

Clanless Perks

You get 2 unique abilities:

Scrappy: You cannot have a negative modifier to any roll for any reason other than Hunger — the worst you can do is add nothing. Nobody covered your weaknesses for you, so you learned to cover them yourself.

Playing Possum: When another Kindred dismisses you as beneath their notice, irrelevant, or harmless, you may immediately ask the Storyteller one question from the Discern Vibes or Catch the Scent lists about that character without rolling or spending Hold. Their contempt makes them careless around you.

Clanless Experience

Once each per session, gain +1 XP when you...

  • Prove yourself indispensable to your Coterie in a way that has nothing to do with Clan prestige
  • Turn your clanless status from a disadvantage into a tactical or social advantage
  • Forge a meaningful alliance or connection with someone who initially dismissed you

Archetypes

  • Freelancer: No Clan means no obligations. You work for whoever pays, and you always deliver.
    • Blood +1 | Shadow +1 | Resolve +0 | Demeanor +2 | Wits +0
  • Imposter: You wear the mask of a Clan well enough that most never think to check underneath.
    • Blood +0 | Shadow +2 | Resolve +0 | Demeanor +1 | Wits +1
  • Survivor: You're still here. That's more than most Caitiff can say.
    • Blood +1 | Shadow +0 | Resolve +2 | Demeanor +0 | Wits +1
  • Custom Archetype: Create your own by distributing these stats: +2 | +1 | +1 | +0 | +0