Basic Concept
Jon Hunter was a character I created for my Blood Will Follow Blood Vampire: the Masquerade one shot I once ran at a local convention. The entire scenario revolved around the concept of confronting the characters with their true vampiric nature, which, of course, was as opposed as (un)humanly possible to their mortal nature.
Jon was a brilliant computer programmer who got shot during a mugging and was Embraced by his Sire to save his life. He is still quite young as a vampire, but as time goes by, he feels increasingly suffocated by the city, due to his Gangrel blood. Slowly, he looses his patience and his tolerance towards people and urban living, which makes it increasing harder for him to continue with his former upper-class life.
Jon, like lots of real programmers I know, is a creator in heart. He wishes to create something both beautiful and useful – the computer is only his medium. The Nature that comes to mind is the Architect archetype. Jon takes pride in his work, sometimes too much pride. To his co-workers it often seems as though he insists on issues that no one would really care about, except him. He simply will not accept anything that is less than perfect. The Demeanor that represents this is the Director archetype. I’ll fill in all the details I have about Jon so far in his character sheet.
Attributes
I’ll start off with determining Jon’s Attributes. Jon is, as noted, a brilliant programmer, so I’ll take Mental to be his primary attribute. As noted, he doesn’t handle his fellow man too well, so I’ll make Social is tertiary attribute, which leaves Physical to be his secondary. This actually suits me quite fine – it’s hardly plausible for a Gangrel to Embrace a pathetic weakling, is it?
I want Jon to be absolutely brilliant, so I’ll give him an intelligence of 5, which would leave me with three points that I decide to use to get perception of 3 (a good debugger) and a wits value of 2.
Jon spends some time at the gym, but he still spends most of his day sitting in front of a computer screen. I’ll give him strength and dexterity of 3 each and stamina of 2 to represent that.
He’s fairly attractive, and able to handle an argument, but he just doesn’t seem to be a likeable person. I’ll give him charisma 1, manipulation 2 and appearance 3 to represent that.
Abilities
It’s now time to choose Jon’s Abilities. As a brilliant computer programmer, Jon probably knows a lot of things, so I’ll make Knowledge his primary ability. Looking at the list of abilities, Jon will probably have more Talents than Skills, so I’ll make Talents his secondary ability and Skills his tertiary.
Starting with Knowledge, I’ll take all the abilities that Jon would need to be a successful founder of a hit start-up company – Bureaucracy 2, Computer 3, Finance 2, Law 2, Politics 2 and Science 2. I would like Jon to have a higher Computer rating, but this will have to wait for the freebie points, since I can only select up to three points for each ability during this stage.
For Talents, I’ll take some abilities to represent Jon’s strong personality, and also some abilities he picked up at the gym noted earlier – Athletics 1, Dodge 1, Empathy 1, Intimidation 2, Leadership 2 and Subterfuge 2.
For Skills I’ll round out his character a bit with a few abilities every modern person should have, and some other skills he might have come across during his work – Drive 2, Etiquette 1 and Repair 2.
Advantages
It is now time to select Advantages for Jon. First, I need to choose how to spend the three points he gets in Clan Disciplines. I’d like Jon to have very acute senses, to the point that the everyday living in the city disturbs him, and to slowly become increasingly animalistic. The acute senses sound like Auspex 1, which will have to wait for the freebie points (since it isn’t a Clan Discipline). The animalistic features sound like Protean 2, and I’ll also take Fortitude 1 so he can walk in the sun a bit.
For Backgrounds, I’ll give Jon Resources 3 and Fame 1 (which describe his position as successful programmer), and Status 1 to indicate that he is known to the prince of the city.
Jon is still a young vampire, very close to his human self. However, he is losing his control over The Beast and tends to have deadly outbursts. I’ll represent that by giving him Conscience and Courage of 4 each, but only 2 for Self Control.
Finishing Touches
Jon’s Willpower is equal to his Courage, so we fill out 4 points there. His Humanity is equal to his Conscience plus his Self-Control, which means 6. I roll a ten sided die for his Blood Pool and get the result of 7.
Now it’s time to distribute his freebie points. First, I’ll buy the traits I wanted earlier on – Auspex 1 and two additional points in Computer, which leaves me with 4 points to spend. I’ll use them to buy Jon an additional dot of Willpower and two additional dots of Humanity, to better represent how human he still is.
We’ll just finish Jon up with some specialties – Brilliant (for Intelligence) and Computer Security (for Computer), write up his history and personality neatly, and we’re done. Check out the final result here.