Hunter Cheat Sheet

Asset Skills

Pick a profession for your character. Each Profession has two Asset Skills listed. You get a free Skill Specialty in one of those skills. So you get four starting specialties instead of three.

Professions and their Asset Skills

• Academic: Academics and Science
• Artist: Crafts and Expression
• Athlete: Athletics and Medicine
• Cop: Streetwise and Firearms
• Criminal: Larceny and Streetwise
• Detective: Empathy and Investigation
• Doctor: Empathy and Medicine
• Engineer: Crafts and Science
• Hacker: Computer and Science
• Hit Man: Firearms and Stealth
• Journalist: Expression and Investigation
• Laborer: Athletics and Crafts
• Occultist: Investigation and Occult
• Professional: Academics and Persuasion
• Religious Leader: Academics and Occult
• Scientist: Investigation and Science
• Socialite: Politics and Socialize
• Soldier: Firearms and Survival
• Technician: Crafts and Investigation
• Vagrant: Streetwise and Survival

Hunter Organizations

Compact

Cells occasionally discover one another and band together for strength and mutual support. When multiple cells get together in a region, the organization often acquires an independent identity, a group structure known as a compact.

• Ahl al-Jabal, Hunt Club

Conspiracy

Sometimes, a Compact becomes something else: a truly global organization. A Conspiracy, also called the third-tier, is a type of organization found in Hunter: The Vigil. Conspiracies are vast organizations of great power and influence, be it through government support, religious decree, or simply surviving for thousands of years. Many conspiracies work in secret, away from the public eye, and quite a few are dedicated to keeping the supernatural forces hidden from average people. Conspiracies tend to have more far-reaching networks, reliable resources and superior knowledge than the smaller, less organized Compacts.

Practical Experience

Practical Experience^[1] is not doled out exclusively at the end of a chapter or a story, the way normal experience points are. Instead, in any scene in which hunters face a supernatural creature, they have a chance to receive Practical Experience.

The scene does have to be a confrontation, or at least contain the very real possibility of one. It’s possible, if unlikely, that a cell of hunters develops a rapport with, for example, a vampire looking to cure his condition, or a werewolf who has taken a vow never to harm a human. In such an instance, scenes with these characters — scenes with no risk — do not give the cell a chance for Practical Experience.

Spending Practical Experience

Practical Experience can be spent in one of three ways. • A player can spend a point to regain Willpower.^[2] • A player can spend Practical Experience to increase Skills and Merits (including Endowments), but not Attributes. • A troupe can spend Practical Experience to purchase Tactics for a cell, or to train a new member to use existing Tactics.

Professional Training

Networking (•)

You get 1 dot in contacts for free per level you have in Professional Training

Continuing Education (••)

You get a third Asset Skill. If you buy this at character creation, she can take her free Specialty in any of her three Asset Skills.

Breadth of Knowledge (•••)

Upon purchase of this dot of Professional Training, the cost for Specialties in Asset Skills drops to 2 experience points per Specialty.

On-the-Job Training (••••)

In game terms,characters at this level of Professional Training pay only (new dots x 2) for Asset Skills, rather than (new dots x 3).

• Drawback: Buying the first dot of a new non-Asset Skill costs one extra point of experience (four points, rather than three).

A Day on the Job (•••••)

When the player spends a Willpower point on a roll involving an Asset Skill, and that use of the Skill is something that would fall into the daily purview of the character, the roll can instead become a rote action (rather than the usual +3 dice for spending a Willpower point).

• Daily purview means that the action is something the character would encounter on a regular basis in the course of his job.

• Drawback While a character can use this Merit to make a combat roll into a rote action^[3], doing so forces the character to concentrate on following through the attack above all else. The character receives no Defense during that turn. Also, the character cannot specify a target^[4]. In addition, the Storyteller may determine that the scene of combat is simply too out of the ordinary to fall under the “daily purview” rule. See the sidebar entitled “Combat by ‘Rote’” for more information on rote actions in combat.

Risking Willpower

The life of a hunter is risk

A player can risk a point of Willpower on a roll once per scene. Risks don’t stack; that is, if a player didn’t risk Willpower last scene, he can’t do it twice during the current scene. Only certain types of rolls can benefit from a risk:

1. The roll must directly relate to the Vigil. A roll to uncover information about a known monster, to break into a monster’s home (or into the library to gain information on the monster, for that matter), to interrogate the monster’s minion, to sneak up on a sleeping creature, rolls to resist a monster’s powers and, of course, combat rolls against monsters, can all benefit.
2. Perception rolls ^[5], rolls to resist toxins, fatigue or deprivation, rolls to avoid surprise and any other rolls that don’t draw on the character’s commitment to the hunt more than his own body are not eligible for a risk.

Possible Benefits

1. The roll gains three dice, as usual. The benefit is best used if the hunter is rolling a small dice pool and is low on Willpower.
2. The roll gains the 9-again benefit^[6] on the roll. This is a good benefit if the dice pool is large enough to count on a success, but the roll is one in which multiple successes matter.
3. The roll is counted as an exceptional success on three successes, rather than five. This benefit cannot be used on any roll in which successes are counted as damage, or inflict any other kind of loss to a target. It can, however, be used on a contested action. For instance, if the hunter is shadowing a monster back to its lair^[7], an exceptional success would allow the hunter to tail the monster with no further rolls necessary. Normally, this requires that the player rolls more successes than the Storyteller (or whoever is controlling the monster) and rolls at least five successes. By using this benefit, the number of successes required for an exceptional success drops to three (the requirement for rolling more successes than the monster still stands, obviously).

Failure

If the roll fails, however, the world comes crashing down around the hunter. The roll is considered a dramatic failure, no matter how many dice were rolled.

Tactics

Tactics are concerted strategies enacted by hunter cells against monsters.

• Tactics are purchased with Practical Experience.
• The cost for Tactics can be spread around a cell.
• A Tactic can be purchased for any number of hunters, regardless of how many hunters are required to actually perform the Tactic.
• That Tactic can then be taught to other cells.
• Tactics make use of the Teamwork rules^[8]
• A hunter cell can acquire a new Tactic in one of two ways:
  • by learning it from another hunter
  • or by creating it.
• Cells can also modify Tactics they already know, which is considerably easier than creating or learning new ones.

Enabling a Tactic

• One Character is the Primary Actor for the Tactic. They make the Last action in the Tactic and its up to there roll to decide if the Tactic is successful or if it Fails.
• All the other characters are Secondary Actors. They Roll before the Primary and there rolls either benefit or hinder the Primary.
• Any Successes from the Secondary add to the Primary's dice pool. Failures do not subtract but may have additional effects depending on the tactic. A Dramatic Failure gives a -4 to the Primary's dice pool.
• A player can choose to risk Willpower^[9] as either a secondary or primary actor, with all the benefit and risk that entails. A player can also spend Willpower normally.
• A player with Professional Training ••••• cannot turn a Tactics roll into a rote action, even if it uses one of the character’s Asset Skills.
• Hunters do not need to meet the prerequisites for a Tactic in order to learn it, but they do need to meet those prerequisites before they can use the Tactic.

Learning Tactics

References