How Much Blood and Vitae Does a Vampire Contain?

Question

For the purpose of this question, I'm going to strictly stick to using "vitae" to mean vampiric blood, like a vampire has in its blood pool, and "blood" to mean ordinary human blood.

If a Ghoul character manages to capture a vampire NPC and decides to drain him of vitae, how much do they get?

I think it would be the amount of vitae in the vampire's blood pool, but I'm wondering if a vampire has extra vitae in its veins that can be extracted.

The reasoning is as follows - Ghouls apparently contain 10 blood and 2 vitae (for a ghoul with a typical blood pool) because they need their human blood to be alive but can store vitae as well (somehow). So do vampires contain extra blood and/or vitae to allow them to function?

Phrased another way:
Is there a minimum amount of blood or vitae in a vampire's veins simply to allow them to function? Or are they 'dry' inside (unless they've spent vitae to 'appear human')?

Answer 1

The rules as written all suggest that a ghoul could extract no more than the vitae a vampire had. As mentioned by Sardathrion's answer, vitae measures potency, not volume. Even if there was still physical blood in the vampire, a ghoul extract no more potency from it after the vitae was all extracted. On the other side, a vampire of low generation may hold far more vitae than a mortal could hold the equivalent amount of blood.

As LegendaryDude points out in a comment below this answer:

Another way of saying it is that if you take the same vampire (physical size and stature) and lower his generation (however you might, e.g., diablerie), the volume of blood remains the same (because his size and stature haven't changed). However, his blood has become much more potent. Blood pool on the character sheet, then, is not a measurement of actual blood, but of remaining "blood power."

Incidentally, while this question is not directly answered in plain terms, the concept of ghouls capturing vampires and using them as sources of vitae is discussed in "Ghould and Revenants" for V20. One of the bigger complications with it is the blood bond, unless there is something in place that would handle preventing that.

Answer 2

A vampire contains only the vitae that's reflected in its Blood Pool. If a vampire has no vitae in its Blood Pool, then the next time that vampire must spend vitae (say, to wake up or heal wounds), it slips into torpor and spends an amount of time there that's dependent upon its Humanity when it goes Torpid.

Now, part of the confusion is that ghouls have both blood and vitae in their systems, as you observe. Vampires, despite the term "blood pool," have no blood in them. Blood becomes vitae once a vampire has consumed it. It suffuses the vampire's body and animates it magically. Unless the vampire has spent blood to appear human (or does it subconsciously, as with Blush of Health), vitae doesn't run in blood vessels. It doesn't flow unless the vampire wants it to.

Answer 3

I thought vitae was a unit of potency, not volume - although I cannot remember if this is anywhere in RAW. It certainly implies it.

Vitae seems to be a measure of potency which, in an ordinary human, corresponds to one unit per pint(ish) of blood -- or ten per human. Some older vampires can store more vitae in their blood (as determined by their generation), but that does not seem to affect the quantity of blood present in the vampire. So, a 7th generation does not contain twice the amount of blood of a 13th. Instead, a pint of their 7th gen blood is worth two vitae.

As for how much blood there is in a vampire, the question is never really answered by RAW as far as I can tell. Vampires are described as paler if hungry. Vampire hit by bullets or slashing damage are shown to splatter blood but never bleed. Neither do they lose "blood points" by blood loss.

I always ruled that when a blood point (aka vitae) is lost, a proportionally equivalent amount of blood was lost -- so half a pint in the case of the 7th gen. This meant that the lower the vitae, the more the vampire looks like a corpse. At 0, they are a shrivelled husk. Thus, the more hungry the vampire, the less human they appeared. This is a house rule born of not finding anything in RAW.