Skip to main content

Science (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Skills

Definition

Science covers the hard disciplines and, more importantly, the method behind them: forming a hypothesis, testing it, and not believing a result that cannot be repeated. Chemistry, biology, physics, genetics, and forensics all live here, and so does the ability to read a technical paper and know whether it says what someone claims it says. In a World of Darkness chronicle its best use is often on the supernatural itself. A vampire with Science can study Kindred blood as a substance rather than a mystery: what happens to it in a centrifuge, why bagged blood fails to nourish, what a resonance is. That approach annoys elders and occasionally produces answers occultists have missed for centuries.

How it works

**Common Rolls**: - Intelligence + Science: Scientific analysis, understanding - Wits + Science: Quick scientific assessments - Resolve + Science: Extended research projects **Equipment**: Serious work needs a lab, and the Storyteller may rule that without one you can form a theory but not test it. **Specialties**: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Forensics, Genetics, Specific Fields

Tips

**Character Concepts**: Chemist, forensic technician, biologist, physics postgraduate, a thin-blood applying laboratory method to their own alchemy. **Synergies**: Medicine covers bodies where Science covers substances, Technology handles the instruments, Craft builds what your experiment needs, and Occult supplies the questions worth asking. **Worth Knowing**: Science is the least common knowledge skill at most tables, which makes a character who has it the only one who can answer certain questions.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the line between Science and Medicine?

Medicine treats a patient. Science studies the mechanism. Analyzing a blood sample is Science, deciding what to do about the person it came from is Medicine.

Can Science explain vampires?

Partially, and that is the fun of it. Measurements work, results replicate, and then something in the data refuses to behave, which is where Occult takes over.

Is Science useful for thin-blood alchemy?

Very. Alchemy is laboratory work with vitae, so a duskborn with Science, Craft, and a safe room has an enormous advantage over one working from instinct.