Hello
Looks like stuff like Stains and Degeneration in the 5th is resultant of PC agency (Actions) and Narrator interpretation. In other words, no Humanity rolls for inhumane acts, right?
TY
Certain actions, like embracing a childe, result in stains automatically. The use of some Oblivion powers also have increased risk of gaining stains, with 
failures and messy criticals.
Mainly the chronicle tenets act as the storyteller’s guidepost, to determine if an action should result in stains.
That being said, in my games, anything a character does that would be considered monstrous/barbaric/unacceptable to society can result in stains.
That’s what humanity is. The connection that a vampire feels with the human world. Which is why there are penalities to human interaction as your humanity goes down, and why humanity is so much harder to regain once it gets low.
The act of feeding does not grant stains, as you can feed without killing or harming a living vessel. Actually removing that last point of hunger, on the other hand, should result in a stain. As it is the direct result of killing your prey.
Inhumane acts should definitely receive stains! It’s just up to you, the storyteller, to determine how many stains an action should receive.
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There’s a hard and fast list of sins that revolve around doing ‘monstrous’ vampiric actions like Embracing, ghouling, etc. and there’s a heavy emphasis on powers that are clearly doing monstrous and inhuman things, such as Brutal Feed or Cauldron of Blood, giving Stains. But there is no old style flat list of ‘arson, murder and jaywalking’ always gives stains. But the book clearly suggests ‘act like a monster and get Stains’.
This is purposeful with V5’s design, as Chronicle Tenets cover the majority of that, and they’re meant ot be narratively malleable to run things from humanist games where killing should warrant a stain, to deep political intrigue games where assassination and murder are watchwords.
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Where would one find that HnF list, pray tell?
TY
V5 core, pg. 240 has the single hard and fast list. It’s not all encompassing, but it covers a bit, mainly involving making vampires, ghouls, and your touchstones being harmed.
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Not exactly, when you read the Core Book p236 (Humanity), it tells you what it means to have a Humanity 10 down to 0 and gives you a good grasp of which action would incur a Stain at every single level of Humanity.
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There are certain actions that give you stains automatically, like embracing someone.
After that, there are chronicle tenets that also can add stains. The ‘default’ one is Humanist which basically says don’t kill innocents, don’t torture, don’t otherwise do something despicably evil. So yes, if players are doing any of them, they will incur stains. But you can have a chronicle that has different tenets, in which case characters gets stains if they violate those instead.
As a GM, if there’s any grey area, I would warn the player before their action that it may incur a stain.
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You don’t need to treat it like a hierarchy of sins. The system already makes a low-Humanity vampire less likely to lose Humanity from the same number of Stains, so there’s no need to vary the Stains according to a character’s Humanity.
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