I have no idea about Vampire the Masquerade but I'm kind of curious to know about the humanity system and whether this is special or not. And like how does the humanity system work?
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3 Answers
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A Humanity rating of 7 is standard for a starting character, so it's not special in any particular way. As a 150-year-old vampire, it means you've passed a century and a half and either maintained or regained the morality of a regular person. You're still in touch with what it means to be human, and can effectively pass for one if need be by spending blood.
The Humanity system "works" as a means of tracking the downward spiral that vampires are subject to. As you play the game, you're likely to undertake actions that go against your moral code — whether that's personal or based on the campaign (or chronicle) you're playing in. Doing such things tests your Humanity, which is likely to decline over the course of the story. As you become less Humane, you lose touch with the person you once were and give yourself over to the Beast, your darker impulses. If your Humanity falls to 0, you are entirely gone and are no longer a player character.
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Age is irrelevant to what your humanity score means.
The definition of your humanity score does not change as a result of your age, but rather as a result of your actions. Whether you are a mortal, a freshly turned vampire, or a 1000 year old methuselah, 7 Humanity is 7 Humanity.
It is certainly more impressive to see a 1000 year old methuselah with a 7 in humanity, b/c that means they've lived for 10 centuries without compromising the human morals they started with, but those morals haven't changed - surprisingly.
7 Humanity is your 'average' human. For a cross-system comparison, you could think of the true neutral commoner who isn't going out trying to save random stranger at the risk of their own skin, but would still probably take a bullet to save their own child. Anything above this score starts to get into "virtuous" territory.
As a vampire, anything below this begins your descent into the beast, and signals your separation from the morals you valued as a human, giving way for your survival and instincts as a creature of the night.
This doesn't change based on clan, age, or any other outside factors other than your ability to adhere to your own humanity throughout the ages.
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Of course also you feel your... urges. But you have a stable system to resist them. What you... need, you can take without a... problem.
You are always generous to compensate those, from whom you needed to... take. You know: had they known what happened, they had happily allowed it. Knowing this means nearly so much for you, like a... fresh meal. And you never take too... much.
You know that you lived two human lives until now, you also know that it is still young for many of your... kind. You don't feel yourself old even as a human, you feel only wisdom, but not age.
Of course, the decades pass each after another, but wasn't it the same as you were a human?
With your age and with your stable position in their ecosystem, you have no intent to change anything in it. Exactly that is what the older guys like the most in you. Clearly you are a low-risk, a nearly trustable point of their paranoid world. And you would not split a hair to change that.
