Powers (cont0
Telekinesis
* Basic Telekinesis
Roll: Intelligence + Telekinesis
This power allows a character to lift and move objects with their mind. Each success rolled grants them an equivalent strength score for the purposes of what they can and can't lift or move with their mind.
At Telekinesis 3, a character can now apply their successes to either strength or dexterity, or a combination of each, to allow more delicate manipulation of objects.
** Kinetic Blow
Roll: Int + Strength + Telekinesis
The character focuses the force of a physical attack, such as a punch or kick, down to a pinpoint, inflicting damage as though the person on the other end is stabbed with a knife.
Bashing damage is converted to lethal. Attacks that already inflict lethal are unaffected. This power affects one future attack roll per success. The player can choose which of his attack rolls are affected, but they must choose before they roll the dice for each attack. The effect lasts for one scene, after which time any unused Kinetic Blows are lost.
At Telekinesis 3, the character can apply this power with ranged-weapon attacks, so as thrown rocks.
*** Telekinetic Strike
Roll: Presence + Athletics + Telekinesis
The character creates a ball of telekinetic force that they hurl at their intended target. Each success inflicts a point of bashing damage.
At Telekinesis 4, this damage can be lethal. At telekinesis 5, the character can spend a point of willpower to make the damage aggravated, by tearing apart the target;s cellular structure. This version of Telekinetic Strike actually causes the air to ripple in an unnatural fashion, warning a target about the threat. The target it allowed their defence against the character's aiming roll.
**** Control Velocity
Roll: Intelligence + Science + Forces
The character can increase or decrease the velocity of an object (but not a living creature). He could, for example, make a hurtling truck slow down, or speed up (or slow down) a bullet.
To be able to affect things that aren't already moving at the start of a round, such as bullets, the character must have a higher initiative and interrupt them. In the example of a fired bullet, the character would need to have a better initiative in order to interrupt and use this power to affect the bullet while it's in the air.
Each success doubles or halves the target;s speed. For example, a truck going at 80mph is reduced to 40mph with one success, 20mph with two successes, 10mph with three successes and so on. Note that the character must affect the entire target and its size. He can't single out portions of it, such as slowing the velocity of a single tire and so slow the whole truck (while causing the passengers and objects inside to be thrown forwards). Especially large targets impose a penalty to the roll. A target of size 21-30 takes a -2 penalty, 31-40 takes a -4, and so on.
High speed projectiles such as arrows and bullets cannot be halted at this level. Instead, add (for increased velocity) or subtract (for decreased velocity) one point of damage per every two successes. For affecting auto-fire from the same gun, use the follow table for appropriate penalties:
Short burst -2 dice penalty.
Medium burst -4 dice penalty.
Long burst -6 dice penalty.
***** Velocity Mastery
Roll: Resolve + Athletics + Telekinesis (contested by Composure of target if living)
Cost: 1 Willpower
This power acts like Control Velocity, except you can now affect living creatures, or portions of objects (such as affecting a truck's tire, but not the rest of the truck, which will surely cause the rig to jack-knife unless the driver is very, very good.)
When this power is used on a living creature, its Speed trait is doubled or halved, but it is not in full control and must make a Dexterity + Athletics roll each turn it moves or it suffers a knock-down effect. The creature's speed is for the power's duration, which by default is one turn. Additional successes after the first can be spent either to continue to double or halve the creature's speed, or to extend the duration by one turn.
In the case of projectiles, one success is enough to completely halt the projectile halfway in its path (or as close between there and its target as the user desires). Additional successes can halt it closer and closer to its origin point, with an exceptional success halting it within the barrel of the gun. For instance, two successes halt a bullet after it travels only one quarter the way from the barrel to its intended target.
As with Control Velocity, there are penalties for affecting auto-fire as listed in the table above.
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Space Powers
* Spatial Map
Roll: Intelligence + Science + Space
Duration: Concentration + 1 turn
Statistics show that each individual involved in the average gunfight stands only a relatively small chance of being fatally wounded. Fear distorts spatial perception, just as it distorts the perception of time, influencing shooters' aim. A character that has this power is not guaranteed to be any less afraid during a gunfight, but they do have a much more accurate sense of where everyone and everything is.
The power creates a mental spatial map that constantly updates the character on the changing topography of their surroundings, from the guy sneaking up among the parked cars, the the stray leaf blowing by the that sudden breeze.
This power allows a made to perceive their surroundings with an acuteness transcending mundane sight; ignoring any visual penalties they might be taking. It also allows them to eliminate one penalty die to their ranged attack pool in the following turn, helping them offset (or eliminate) penalties for opponents' concealment or other spatially based conditions such as hitting a prone target. They cannot gain bonus dice by virtue of this power, it simply eliminates penalties.
** Scrying
Roll: Intelligence + Investigation + Space
Duration: Concentration + 1 turn
The character can view a location remotely. They can employ all of their senses through these "perceptual windows", allowing them to see, hear, smell and even tough things on the far side.
The roll is modified by the character's sympathetic connection to the location, using the following table:
Sympathetic Connection/Dice Penalty
Sensory: You can see, hear or otherwise sense your target directly. No penalty.
Intimate: You have a piece of the target's physical substance, such as hair, nail clippings or blood from a creature, a leaf or flower from a plant, or a sliver of material from an object. Or you know the target very well, such as a long-time friend of close family member, a beloved pet or prized possession. -2 penalty.
Known: You know the target, which might be a friend, co-worker or personal possession. You have a photo or other accurate representation of the target, or you can see the target on live video or hear them over live audio. -4 penalty.
Acquainted: You're acquainted with the target. It might be a casual acquaintance, a co-worker you hardly know, or an item you held or used once. -6 penalty.
Encountered: Have have encountered the target briefly, such as a person you passed on the street or an item you touched once. -8 penalty.
Described: You have never encountered the target, but can describe it. You might know a person's name or physical description, or what an object or place looks like. -10 penalty.
The character cannot actually affect anything with their touch through the window, only feel their touch. The scrying window is not visible to the receiving end, although someone touched by the character may make a Wits+Composure roll to notice. If they succeed, they know something just touched them, but cannot see what it is.
At space 3, the character can use the power with a prolonged duration.
*** Portal
Cost: 1 Willpower
Roll: Manipulation + Investigation + Space
Duration: Concentration + 1 turn.
This power creates a spatial warp through which the caster (and anyone else who uses it) can move from one point to another without traversing the intervening space. The character steps forwards and "vanishes" from one place to arrive at another, "appearing" instantaneously.
The target number, as well as the duration, for successfully creating a portal is determined by the caster's sympathetic connection to the destination, as per the following table:
Intimate: 1 success
Known: 2 successes
Acquainted: 3 successes
Encountered: 4 successes
Described: 5 successes.
One person of size 5 or less can pass through the portal each turn (larger people can spend two turns squeezing through). Each success added to thr target number allows the character to widen the portal so that one additional person can pass through per turn.
A portal's entrance and exit can be placed anywhere that allows a person of size 5 of less enough freedom of movement to enter or exit it in a single turn Most portals are used like doors, with the entrance and exit perpendicular to the found, but the caster can be creative. The entrance and exit, however,r must mirror each other on the same plane. For example, the entrance could be placed below a falling person, but the exit cannot be set to eject the falling person sideways. It must face down (as its opposite faces up).
Note that the creator cannot limit who can and can't use the portal within using the power. Nearby enemies can attempt to step through an open portal. A person can be thrown through a portal forcibly, but a hold must first be achieved in a grapple action, after which the grappler can shove the person through the portal.
With space 4, this can be used with a prolonged duration. With space 5, it can always be cast in one turn regardless of difficulty.
**** Transportation
Cost: 1 Willpower
Roll: Intelligence + Science + Space
The character can traverse space without moving, all without the need to open a portal. The character must have a sympathetic connection to their destination. The weaker the connection, the more penalties their activation roll suffers (See the table listed under Scrying). A location that they are currently scrying is a known sympathetic connection (-4).
They can teleport themselves and anything they're wearing or carrying (provided it's not too large; needs one extra success per size rating above 3).
***** Worlds Collide
Cost: 1 Willpower
Roll: Resolve + Investigation + Space vs Stamina
The character can co-locate people or objects with one another and cause them to physically interact. When two or more objects (including people) are superimposed upon one another and allowed to interact, they are usually destroyed in a very messy fashion, as molecular lattices collide and drive each other apart. For living creatures, the result is usually crippling at the very least.
One subject per target factor (see below) can be affected. If even a single target succeeds in the contested resistance roll, none of the targets are co-located. The power inflicts one point of aggravated damage per success. Once the targets contact one another, they are immediately repulsed and suffer knockdown; they do not remain fused.
Number of targets/dice penalty:
Two: -2 penalty
Four: -4 penalty
Eight: -6 penalty
16: -8 penalty*
*and so on and so forth.
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Weather Control
* Call the Breeze
Roll: None or Manipulation + Occult
The character may summon a brisk wind (approx 25 mph) and direct it as they will. This wind is useful both for dispersing or redirection a fire or flying insects, or as a distraction.
Though it requires no roll to actually summon the wind, a successful manipulation + occult roll is necessary to direction it to any specific task, such as to disperse tear gas. Because of the distraction of the sudden breeze, perception task rolls made in the area suffer a -1 penalty.
This power lasts for one turn per dot in Weather Control that the user has, can be be summoned both indoors and out.
** Silent Fog
Cost: 1 Willpower
Roll: Manipulation + Survival + Weather Control
With this power, the character may summon a thick blanket of fog to obscure an area, allowing a group to move unseen. Unlike regular fog, the user, and anyone with them that they allow to at the time of using this power, can see through the fog unobscured. This fog bank moves as the one who summoned it wills it to, and makes an excellent vehicle for ambush or a way of avoiding combat entirely.
Over the course of a turn, the air congeals and a dense fog covers an area equal to the user's Weather Control x 20 yards. It may thereafter be directed to move in any direction at a rate of (Weather Control x 10) yards per turn. While within the fog, a perception check at -2 is required for observers to spot someone more than one yard distant. Even if spotted, ranged attacks are treated as if those within the bank and substantially concealed. Silent Fog lasts for an entire scene or until dismissed.
On a dramatic failure, the fog appears but obscures the vision of the summoner and his allies as much as anyone else.
On an exceptional success, the fog is particularly thick, the penalty is -3 to perception checks instead of -2.
*** Deluge
Cost: 1 willpower
Roll: Manipulation + Survival + Weather Control
Action: Extended (20 successes, one turn passes per roll)
With this power, the character summons forth a torrential downpour to the area. No gentle shower, this torrent has myriad uses, from ruining crops to starting flash floods to erasing tracks and evidence of the group's passage. It can, however, only be used outdoors.
The area affected is equal to one square mile per success achieved. Common sense must be applied to applications of this power; it can flood low-lying areas or cause a river to swell in its banks, but no one stand on even reasonably high ground is going to drown. This power is not designed to cause damage directly, but it can sure as hell do so indirectly, causing thousands of dollars in property damage alone. The downpour lasts for a scene.
Those caught in heavy rain suffer a -2 penalty to perception rolls and ranged combat.
On a dramatic fail, the weather alter in a manner other than the character's choosing. It may shift from rain to snow to hail to high wind, usually in some way horribly inconvenient for the character.
On an exceptional success, the character can select an area that receives less or no rain, effectively creating an eye of the storm.
Modifiers:
The weather is already raining or drizzling: +2 bonus
A heavily clouded day: +1 bonus
Cloudless day: -3 penalty
Desert or similarly arid area: -5 penalty
**** Killing Frost
Cost: 1 willpower
Roll: Manipulation + Survival + Weather Control
This power summons forth the chill of a hundred winters in the space of a few heartbeats. The temperature suddenly drops below freezing within 10 yards per dot in weather control of the user. Frost forms on surfaces, and water freezes. If the power is used within a rainstorm, the sudden freezing rain might down power lines and break tree branches. Living creatures (except the power's user) take two points of bashing damage from the sudden chill. In addition, anyone in the area (again, excluding the character using this, but not his allies) suffer a -2 penalty to strength and dexterity rolls for as long as the cold lasts. The reduced temperature lasts for one turn per success.
At GM discretion, any creatures who are appropriately protected from the cold may take less damage or be immune to the imposed penalties. The user of this power is protected from the direct effects of the cold, but may be subject to secondary effects. The cold don't injure or debilitate them, but they may still slip when trying to move across ice or be injured by a falling power line.
This power can only be used once per scene.
On a dramatic fail, the power turns against the user; they immediately take two point of lethal damage from the cold as the power turns inward on the user.
On an exceptional success, the sudden shock of cold is particularly vicious, living creatures suffer three points of damage instead of two.
***** Thunderbolt
Cost: 1 willpower
Roll: Intelligence + Survival + Weather Control
At the character's command, lightning strikes their foes, its power capable of killing most humans.
The bolt deals a base of five pints of lethal damage, plus any extra successes from the activation roll after the first. The character can nominate any target within their line of sight, as long as the victim is outdoors or standing near a window.
On a dramatic failure, the bolt strikes a random target nearby, friend or foe.
On an exceptional success, the target is struck deaf for two turns (assuming they're not killed outright).
Modifiers:
Rain or windy weather: +2 bonus
Cloudy day: +1 bonus
Cloudless Sky: -3
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Auspex
Forenote about Auspex: Once in a while, this discipline provides extra-sensory and even precognitive visitations. Such premonitions might come as quick flashes of imagery, overwhelming feelings of empathy, or even as an ominous sense of foreboding. This aspect of the power is in no way controllable by the character, but they can learn to interpret the signs given time and experience. Additionally, as this mostly deals with heightening your senses to supernatural levels, it can have its drawbacks. When using any level of power save the fifth (Astral Projection), they run the risk of their senses being overwhelmed by excessive stimuli. Sudden or severe occurrences, such as a gun firing or a flash bulb in the eyes, can distract a character unless they succeed on a resolve roll. Failure disorients the character, making him effectively unaware of his surrounding until the end of the following turn.
* Heightened Senses
Roll: None
When this power is activated, all of the character's senses sharpen to a razor's edge, effectively doubling the range and clarity of all stimuli received. Heightened eyesight allows the character to perceive the most minute details of objects at great distances, while a heightened sense of smell might alert the character to the presence of trance amount sof alcohol on a person's breath. Character with this power also have the option of magnifying a single sense, rather than all five, in order to better block out unwanted stimuli from other sources. Note, however, that the risk of sudden distraction remains, regardless of how many or how few senses are currently heightened.
This power allows the user to see in pitch back darkness.
** Aura perception
Roll: Intelligence + Empathy + Auspex - target's composure.
With this power, the character can open their perceptions to the psychic aura that surround all sentient creatures. Numerous and often-shifting hues and patterns compose these auras, and it can take many years before someone becomes truly proficient at reading them correctly with any degree of regularity. Although the strongest emotions predominate, almost every individual has more than one colour to their aura at any given time, and an observer can see ay number of streaks or flashes of these other colours.
"Psychic colours" change with the subject's mental or emotional state, creating an ever-moving pattern that is as unique to each person as a fingerprint. As a rule, the more powerful the emotions, the more powerful the emotions, the more intense the colours, but even this guideline is betrayed by any number of mitigating factors, depending on circumstance. Attempting to discern specific information may warrant a more difficult roll.
See
this image for a guide to aura perception.
An auspex user who observes someone in the act of lying may recognise that the subject speaks falsely. Intelligence + Empathy + auspex is rolled versus the subject's Composure in a contested action. The Auspex user recognises the lie if the msot successes are rolled for him. Applied towards reading the mood of potential combatants, this power also grants its user a bonus to initiative in the first turn equal to the number of successes rolled in activating the effect. Doing so requires that the vampire speaks to or is in the proximity of intended combatants for at least one turn before a fight breaks out. That period of interaction allows the reading character to recognise that events are about to turn violent, so they can react with advanced knowledge.
*** The Spirit's Touch
Roll: Wits + Occult + Auspex
The character's powers of perception have progressed to the point that they can pick up psychic impressions from objects simply by handling them for a moment or two. Such impressions can tell the character who last help the object, when it was last held, and even what was done with it in the past.
These psychic impressions typically come in the form of quick and cryptic images, and as with other Auspex powers, learning how to decipher the information gleamed can be a task all its own. Most impressions pertain to the last person who handled the object in question, but two circumstances usually preclude such a reading. First, a long-time owner or handler of the object leaves stronger impressions than someone who handled it briefly, if more recently. Second, experiences associated with great emotion, be it hate, passion or fear, often linger in the form of intense psychic impressions on objects. It is these impressions that likely come to the fore over anything more recent or, in all likelihood, far less emotionally significant.
All that is required in order to glean information form an object by using this power is that the character turn the item over in their hands (or otherwise handle it) for a few moments, during which they enter a shallow trance. This trance is the gateway through which psychic snapshots arrive, and anything that prematurely disrupts the trance likely prevents any useful information from being received.
This power can also be used to glimpse the past of another. The subject must be touched, which could require a roll if the subject is resistant. In this case, the roll is contested by the subject's resolve. The subject does not know that past events in their existence are perceived. If the roll is successful, a vision is received of the subject's past, all from the subject's perspective. With no time-frame or criteria for the event witness, the last dramatic, tense of passionate act performed or experienced by the subject is glimpsed. If a specific time-frame of event is focused on, the Auspex user's roll suffers a -1 penalty for each day that has passed since the event.
*** Telepathy
(coming soon)
***** Astral Projection
(coming soon)
