Editing Vampire: The Masquerade (section)

==You're a vampire now, so what's next?==
First of all, being turned to a vampire don't change your personality. At all. You're still the same dude you were before you got embraced. Chances are you're not gonna remain COMPLETELY the same, as the kind of shit freshly turned vampires go through tend to leave emotional scarring, but still, you're not some fallen angel possessing a reanimated corpse.

Speaking of which, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way: your body is a corpse. A literal corpse, time of death being the moment your dying body was given vampiric vitae. Now to go down the list of what that entails, along with other shit what you should expect to deal with:

*Your body's cold, doesn't breathe and doesn't blink, which may raise suspicion from mortals you interact with. Best spend some blood to reanimate a few features once in a while.
*You cannot eat or drink anything but the blood. Again may be a problem if you're attending to a party or a dinner. If you are lucky, you can have traits that let you keep food and non-blood drinks, or force yourself to keep it until [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebwx4SXiiPQ you can puke outside].
*Your sense of smell and touch is numbed to anything that is not a prey, and your sense of taste is non-existent. Have fun having awkward moments amongst humans when that slob lets out a quiet fart.
*Your skin produces no  clear sweat or sebum, meaning no fingerprints and a grip as reliable as if you're using a talcum powder (terrible for swiping on modern touchscreens, though). You will sweat blood now, so, have fun dealing with that.
**No sweat and sebum also means no body odor. This also means you can get away with bathing or showering once a month or two, unless you wander through sewers, hang with hobos, fight in (or with) dumpsters, or cover yourself in the gore of your enemies (or pulverized parts of your own body). Which you probably would, as Elders often send you to do their dirty work. On the other hand, most animals instantly pick that you don't smell like a human despite looking like one - the normal reaction is either fear or aggression. On the plus side, dogs have a hard time tracking you by scent, because you literally don't have one. Learn some skills so as to not to agitate the local fauna. 
**While heat doesn't make you sweat, vapor from the hot, humid air would condense on your cold dead skin even more than it does on warm-blooded humans. A vampire on a hot humid night is pearly with condensation, like a cold can of beer, so that's THAT angle covered; perpetually dry skin would draw MORE suspicion... though this does mean you'd probably [[Twilight|sparkle in the daylight]] if you were capable of surviving it. Also, extreme stress CAN make you sweat, but you sweat blood; this is insanely creepy, a hunter magnet, and really hard to wash out of your clothes. (...and bed-sheets if you have <s>nightmares</s> <s>daymares</s> PTSD flashbacks while you sleep, but... see the entry below on Stasis for why this is extremely unlikely.) 
**Your tears are also made of blood, which is even more creepy - consider it before making that sensitive poetic Toreador... and then do it anyways.
*On the note of heat, anything short of the "glowing-red" category does not hurt you, nor does extreme cold. Your dead flesh ''can'' freeze at below zero, slowing down and constraining your movement a bit, so it's advised to actually wear some practical clothes in winter.
*Your body dehydrates and becomes more lean; so no edema, ever. This means you'd lose some weight and size, so fat vampires are quite rare. For [[Hot Chicks|some reason]] this never affects breast size. One of the side effects of this (and lack of lung tonus) is that vampires lose buoyancy and swim about as good as a bag of bricks - then again, not needing to breathe makes this a minor problem, and with proper athletic training and/or vampiric disciplines you can overcome this limitation and even outpace normal humans in the water.
*No blood pressure means no erection, so no sex for you if you're a dude unless you spend blood to re-animate some mortal functions. If you're a vampgal, you still have heavily-numbed sensitivity, and you're cold as the grave, so even if you find some sick enough necrophile there's not much kick in it for you.
*You're tough as nails. Blunt force trauma is a mild annoyance to you, since you have no blood and liquid pressure. Blades and bullets, while still dangerous, are considerably less lethal. If someone manages to actually break your body down you don't actually die, but merely enter a catatonic state until you heal yourself to a functional state. You can be paralyzed by a stake through the heart, and while a lone vamp is helpless if staked, they still fare considerably better than if a normal human had a stake driven through his heart. You're also just as vulnerable as anyone else to fire and to the claws and teeth of ''supernatural'' creatures like vampires, werewolves and demons (although flesh-crafted claws of Tzimisce or shape-shifted mages count as normal sharp weapons, just like the claws of normal animals). Regular weapons can still kill you for good, though, but it requires them to cut off (or explode) your head or completely destroy your heart, so it's heavily advised to ''not'' take shotgun blasts to the head, or catch RPG missiles to the chest.
*You've gained a few new weaknesses. You are now vulnerable to True Faith, an exceptionally blind and powerful belief in ''anything''. ([[What|There are reports a banker scared a vampire brandishing a credit card and focusing in the power of credit. Yes, this is canon]]) Looking directly into the sun will end poorly for you, though you can survive and move in a very sluggish state if you don't actually face the sun and stay in the shadows, and only if you still have your humanity as moral code, and a high value at that. Any edgy "enlightenment" vampire will not even be able to do that, and some bitches like the Setites are burned by a mere astronomical dawn (when night just starts to end).
*Speaking of healing, your dead body no longer regenerates naturally, which is a minor concern since you can use blood to heal injuries in seconds and even grow back lost limbs. Also note that your supernatural regeneration does not push foreign objects out of your body, so if someone emptied an SMG into your chest, best avoid metal detectors in airports until you find a surgeon to remove bullets. If you're Tremere or Tzimisce, you may be lucky to learn some low-level rituals that help you push foreign objects out or dissolve them, but outside that blood magic, only Elder-level disciplines can get rid of anything you got inside, ranging from bullets to stakes. Generally speaking, if you do end up in firefights a lot it pays to ghoul a surgeon, know another vampire who ghouled one, or learn a bit of surgery yourself.
** If you wind up getting too badly hurt and can't regenerate in time, you end up in [[torpor]], a vulnerable state of deathlike sleep. Needless to say, this can be very dangerous for you if it happens in an inconvenient place and time. Fortunately, having someone pouring blood in your mouth will get you back in your feet, although you might end up indebted to someone you wouldn't want to, depending on who does it.
*Diseases no longer harm you, but neither can you harm them, as your body has no immune system. If you feed off sick people you will become a disease carrier infecting everyone you feed from, which is generally accompanied with significant social stigma if not outright ostracizing in vampire society; even a Sabbat knows not to shit where they eat. Even common cold lurks in your blood until you burn it and get some fresh ones. Kindred spreading something dangerous like AIDS or hepatitis (or the Black Plague in the nights of old) may even be banished from the domain, and there are examples of blood hunts being called on unrepentant disease carriers. Be careful with what you eat. 
*Your wounds don't bleed, no matter how wide or deep they are. All the blood you have is stored supernaturally in your heart.
*And speaking about the blood. You're a ''vampire''. You need to drink blood to survive. Ideally human blood, but animal blood may suffice, although it's far less potent and may cause anger issues, and that's assuming your sire taught you you can sustain from animals (most sires don't). Blood of other supernaturals (at least those who have it) may work too, but it may have some side effects, like mage blood giving you an acid trip, and werewolf blood, though far more potent, can make you [[RAGE]]. Basically, blood tastes like the mix of everything the victim ate and smoked (some discriminating Kindred maintain herds with special diets and temperament). To help you with bloodsucking business you can magically grow fangs to bite people; the bite itself is not painful, but in fact about halfway between good sex and a first heroin trip in terms of pleasure, so it renders the victim completely catatonic (and probably with ruined underwear). Oh, and licking a bite mark completely heals it. Most humans tend to forget their first bite and a few minutes of memory around it, but long term victims lose this effect and often develop strong psychological addiction to vampire bites, which some kindred use to build loyal herds of bite junkies(plus it helps to maintain health standards in a tight-knit community). It's even better for ''you'', and is basically the only real physical pleasure you're left with. Have fun with that.
*The blood you sucked from others is magically transformed into super-blood called Vitae you can use to instantly heal your wounds unless they're caused by things vampires are weak to, make yourself stronger, tougher or faster, restore your dead body to full human functionality (so you can temporarily scratch all the disadvantages of an undead body listed above) or just get up from your bed (or coffin if you're into it) every evening. Vitae is more "compact" than human blood and it stores better, so it's better suited for storing extra blood for combat situations (think mana potions), although drinking ''other'' vampire's vitae poses a considerable risk, as it's quite addictive and if you're Camarilla, the last thing you want is to Diablerize someone by accident and get yourself killed faster than you can say "Blood Hunt".
*Drinking Vitae creates a Blood Bond that ties the drinker to his victim for each night the drinker drunk the vitae. It starts with a mild sympathy with one bond and goes up to complete sycophantic enthrallment at three bonds. This works on both humans and other vampires, as well as some other supernaturals.
*Vitae is a powerful magical reagent coveted by occultists of all sorts, starting from vampire's own blood mages (Caine help you if a Tremere or Assamite got his hands on a droplet of your blood), to Hedge Wizards (un-awakened linear sorcerers) and awakened mages (who use it as an easy source of Tass), to demons and their cults, to rogue ghouls and certain kinds of vampire hunters, to random mortal mafia cartels who make super-addictive drugs out of it. This is a reason maintaining the Masquerade around other supernaturals is no less important than around normal humans: there is always a bigger fish.
*You're a nocturnal creature now, waking up after the dusk and going to sleep before the dawn. This means you have less time per day to work with that humans do. Despite spending all your waking time at night you don't have night vision any better than normal humans do unless you learn certain Disciplines. You can stay awake at daytime, but it takes quite a lot of concentration, and you're likely to be very sluggish, weak and lethargic when the sun is up even if you never face it directly. Not good for combat.
*You're also affected by the effect called "Stasis", that reverses a lot of changes to your body during your daysleep. Basically, your body reverts to the state it was in when you died (new tattoos disappear, your hair goes back to whatever cut and color it had). This partly spreads to your mental changes as well, so while all the horrible stuff you go through only scars your psyche a bit when it realistically should have made you flip your shit and go insane years ago, it also takes more time and effort to learn and improve skills than humans and other supernaturals take. Have fun getting used to the newfangled "Internets" and "Smartphones" if you are an Elder.