Each character’s blood debt is tracked weekly. Each character’s blood debt starts at 7 and is increased for any regular uses of blood during the week such as feeding a ghoul (blood debt increased one week each month during the maintenance action for the background), using disciplines such as Earth Meld regularly, or any healing that may be needed. A character’s weekly blood debt directly subtracts from any blood left in the character’s system after game each week, potentially taking the character to negative numbers. The character must spend downtime actions feeding to overcome this blood debt and begins play each week with an amount of blood equal to the difference.

For example, Greg the Gangrel feeds roughly. He does not keep any ghouls but does haven by use of Earth Meld each day. This means his weekly blood debt is 14. The first week he spends some blood at game and ends the game session with 7 blood left in his system. Over the week, he loses his blood debt of 14 from his pool leaving him at -7 blood. Greg must spend a minimum of 2 downtime actions feeding to have any blood in his system at the next game. Now he wants to have more than 2 blood so he decides to take 4 downtime actions to feed this week. This gives him 20 blood which overcomes his total of -7 and leaves him with 13 blood to start the next game with.

Now let’s say the next week, Greg goes and fights some Anarchs. He spends 5 blood over the course of the fight and leaves the fight having taken 3 levels of Aggravated Damage. That means that this week, his blood debt greatly increases in order to heal that damage. Each level of Aggravated damage requires 5 blood to heal, adding 15 to his usual blood debt of 14 for a total of 29. He had 8 blood left in his system at the end of the night leaving him with a weekly total of -21. In order to start with a decent amount of blood at next game, this week Greg decides to spend 6 downtime actions feeding, gaining a total of 30 blood, leaving him with 9 blood to start the next game with.

The Herd background greatly increases one’s efficiency and ability to feed. Herd allows the vampire to feed a number of times per week equal to his Herd rating without taking a downtime action to do so. However, Herd can only be used so often before it is damaged. Herd may be safely tapped a number of times per month equal to the character’s Medicine Knowledge x their Herd rating. Each time it is tapped beyond that number requires that an additional action be spent and a successful Intelligence + Medicine roll at difficulty 8, requiring a number of successes equal to the times this Herd has been tapped in excess of the safe number to prevent some of your Herd from dying and reducing the Background a level.

The Fame background grants bonus blood for each feeding action as people flock around the character. For each feeding action taken by the vampire, he gains an additional amount of blood equal to his Fame background. So a vampire with Fame 3 feeding roughly would gain 8 blood for each feeding action. Fame does not benefit a vampire feeding Brutally, nor does it benefit feeding actions from the vampire’s Herd.