By Brendan Dalton (beemanfunk@hotmail.com)
System: The player must make a Perception + Occult roll, (difficulty is the local Shroud rating, but Storytellers can make it default to 7) and spend a Willpower point. If successful, the character assumes the form of a Wraith. All Attributes and abilities remain the same. However, disciplines become dormant. The Character's Via scores and virtues do not apply and are replaced by a Shadow. Because vampires are (or once were?!?) usually creatures of negative emotion, their Shadows start out with the number of 10 their Via score +1 for permanent angst (So if you had a Via score of 7, your Shadow would have 3 permanent Angst + 1 making it 4. Think of it as saying all the circles on your Via score that aren't filled in, +1 of course). They receive twice as much angst as normal wraiths.
As far as passions and fetters are concerned, Vampire Wraiths get 5 points of passions to distribute and one 5 point fetter: their bodies. They may get 2 Arcanoi to start with (only their first time; they have to spend experience after). The number of successes determines how long the character can remain a Wraith (3 hours per success + Stamina (one dot for one hour) + Fortitude (1 dot for one hour)).
For example: Brother Belamonte has discovered that one of his fellow clergyman has been murdered and wants to find out who done it by speaking with his colleague personally. He spends a willpower point and makes a Perception + Occult roll with a difficulty of 6 (in his underground laboratory; experimentation of bodies thin out the shroud a little) 3,1,6,7,10; two successes. His Stamina + Fortitude is a total of 4, giving him 10 hours to find his slain monk. That should be enough time, however, finding a person who has crossed over into the Shroud can be like looking for a mortal madman in an asylum full of deranged Malkavians.
A botched roll will involve an instant Harrowing (or a nightmare realm). Failure to survive the Harrowing could result in instant Oblivion (and loss of character), simply because the Vampire Wraith's Shadow is far to close to Oblivion. (Hey, Vampires wreak havoc on mortals, or the Quick, almost every night to some degree, and the fact that they are technically dead, their Shadows are dormant, but build up for each frenzy they succumb to)
Becoming a Wraith can be dangerous as the Shadow can become active (can make a Catharsis roll) and try to make the psyche's "fetter" rot away, sending her into a Harrowing. Should the character survive the Harrowing, she will be instantly transported back to her body where she will become alive (as far as being able to deal with the lands of the living) and her body almost intact (Remove one dot from all physical attributes unless they are already at one). Should for any reason that the Vampire Wraith be unable to return to her body before the time is up, the body will decay a health level after every hour passes beyond the time limit.
The character must spend 2 blood points to return to his body.
Note: For those Storytellers who arenıt familiar with Wraith rules, simply allow the character to enter the lands of the dead and give them a +2 difficulty on all frenzy rolls. The character no longer fears fire or sunlight, but rather Oblivion in which the Beast will try to drag him into. Any time his body fetter is threatened (i.e., is about to be burned), he should make a Rötschreck check (difficulty 8). Should he succeed he will return to his body and be able to defend himself. If he fails, he goes into a nightmare realm. He must try to get out of the nightmare realm through clever thinking. The realm that the character is in should reflect a situation that the character was in that he might have done in the lands of the living. If the character fails the situation, make note that the character has 4 dots left in his body fetter. Once all the dots are removed from the body the characterıs difficulty for all frenzy rolls are increased to +5 (max. of 10) and loses two via points instead of one. Once the character has lost all of his Via points, the character gets pulled into Oblivion and is destroyed.