System Stuff

However, you can't just spend experience higglety piggelty. There needs to be some reason why you get better at something. As a way of reflecting this, we use the tick system. The core idea is: When you make a successful roll, you can place a single tick against one of the things you roll. You can tick a thing once per session. You need as many ticks in something as you need experience to put it up.

An example, for sanity's sake:

Janet rolls Dexterity + Athletics to leap an obstruction and is successful. She can now place a tick next to either Dexterity or Athletics. She chooses Dexterity and places a tick next to it. Some time passes, and she needs to make another Dex + Aths roll - this time is also successful, but she cannot tick Dex, because it has already been ticked this session, she ticks Athletics instead.

At the end of the session, Janet adds her ticks for this session to the accumulated total for each thing. Her Athletics already had three ticks against it, so this makes for a total of four now. Coincidentally, she has 2 dots in Athletics, and now has four experience spare. Athletics, being a skill (see below) requires 2*Current Level (CL) to put up. Janet spends the four experience, and rubs off the four ticks, and now has an Athletics of 3.

Special Circumstances

• Disciplines
  When rolling or spending a bloodpoint to activate a discipline power, you can also choose to tick that discipline instead of the things you roll.
  Eg1: Janet uses Auspex 2 to get a glance at someone's aura. The roll is Perception + Empathy. She rolls and suceeds. Janet can now tick either Perception, Empathy or Auspex.
  Eg2: Tom uses Protean 2, wolf claws. He doesn't need to roll, but he does need to spend a blood point; therefore he can tick Protean.
  However, if the roll requires you to roll a knowledge to activate a discipline, you do not have the option of ticking that knowledge.
  Bill wants to use Auspex 5 to step outside his body. This requires a Perception + Occult rolls. Bill succeeds, but because Occult is a knowledge he cannot put a tick next to it and is forced to choose between ticking Perception and ticking Auspex.
  
  In fact, getting the first point in a Discipline is problematic. There are four ways to get the first point. The first is by learning from another Kindred who possesses the discipline. You can get two ticks for every week you spend doing this. The second is by drinking the blood of a Kindred who already posesses the discipline. Each time you drink, you can have another tick.

  The third way applies only to the physical disciplines, Potence, Celerity and Fortitude. If you make a successful roll on a Strength, Dexterity or Stamina roll, and don't yet have a point in the appropriate discipline, you can choose to tick the discipline.

  The forth way applies only to Clan disciplines and relies on GM fiat. If you make a particularily good roll which might be related to your clan disciplines, but don't yet have a point in it, the GM may award an extra tick in said discipline.

• Humanity
  It is rare that you will tick humanity, and therefore hard to say how it should go up. However, you can tick virtues when you try and resist frenzies of various sorts. As humanity is drawn from Conscience and Self-Control, if the addition of these two becomes higher than your humanity, then you gain a point of humanity as well. if they

The costs are as follows:

Thing:	Cost (ticks and experience)
Attribute (Strength, Manipulation, etc)	CL * 4
Abilities (Athletics, Drive, Science, etc)	3 for first dot CL * 2 after that
Willpower	CR * 1
Virtues	CR*4
Disciplines	10 for a new discipline CL * 5 for clan discipline CL * 7 for other clans
Thaumaturgical paths	7 for first dot CL * 4 thereafter