Auspex
"I touched the knife, and a wave of emotions and memories washed through me. I saw her, Donny. I saw her as theywere chopping her apart...¨" - Warren Yam, Toreador Primogen of Dallas
A predator's senses must be tremendously acute to track prey in the night. The five senses of smell, touch, taste, sight, and hearing can all be sharpened with the use of Auspex. This improved awareness can even go beyond the physical senses, expanding a vampire's powers of concentration, perception, and consciousness itself beyond the ability of mortals. Such heightened awareness can grasp subtle textures of movement as well as emotional states, transcending ordinary mental acuity. Auspex can also pierce mental distractions and illusions, such as those created by the disciplines of Obfuscate or Chimerstry.
Auspex and Obfuscate/Chimerstry: If you are attempting to use Heightened Senses to pierce supernatural concealment, your target may opt to use her Mental attribute + Stealth as a defensive test pool rather than her Mental attribute + Willpower. If you are attempting to pierce an illusion, your target may opt to use her Social attribute + Subterfuge instead of her Social attribute + Willpower.
If the Auspex user is successful, she pierces the powers of Obfuscate or Chimerstry.
Auspex Test Pool: The vampire wielding Auspex uses her Mental attribute + Investigation versus the target's Mental attribute + Willpower.
Contents
• Heightened Senses
You can extend your physical senses beyond human norms. Eyesight and hearing can sharpen to twice mortal limits, while touch, smell, and taste become acute enough to discern even the smallest details with ease. A character can sharpen any or all of her senses, as desired.
System: Heightened Senses is always active. A character's heightened vision allows her to see clearly, even in total darkness, and to understand sounds too quiet for normal people to hear. When a character with Heightened Senses comes within two steps of an individual hidden by supernatural concealment, such as Obfuscate, the character with Heightened Senses automatically realizes that someone is nearby, although she does not know who or precisely where to find that someone. Heightened Senses provides only a vague warning that something is out of place.
When something blinds you, your hearing can provide adequate compensation for the loss of vision. Normally, characters who cannot see while in combat must use the Fighting Blind combat maneuver. So long as your character's hearing is unimpaired, you may fight without needing the Fighting Blind combat maneuver.
If you spend 1 point of Blood and take a standard action, your character sharpens her senses even further. If you do so, you will automatically notice any mundanely hidden objects within line of sight, and you may make an opposed challenge using the Auspex test pool to discern the details of any person or object hidden with supernatural powers, as well as illusory objects, or objects or people disguised by supernatural powers. If you pierce a supernatural power in this way, you ignore uses of the same power generated by the same user for the next five minutes. If you possess more dots of Auspex than the target possesses of the power she's using to generate the concealment (or illusion), the effects of piercing a power persist for an hour instead of five minutes.
Exceptional Success: If you score an exceptional success when trying to see through supernatural concealment, you will automatically pierce any supernatural concealment (or illusion) created by the same individual for the next hour.
Focus [Perception]: A Perception-focused character sharpens her senses by spending a simple action, rather than a standard action.
•• Aura Perception
By carefully studying a subject, you can pick out the glowing aura that surrounds all living creatures. The interplay of colors in an aura provides insight into the subject's emotions, motives, and nature. With practice, you can learn to read these colors. On a normal evening, an individual aura might be comprised of many shifting hues; strong emotions predominate, while momentary impressions or hidden motivations flash past in streaks and swirls. The colors change in sympathy with the subject's emotional state, blending into new tones in a constantly changing pattern. The stronger the emotions involved, the more intense an aura's hues become.
System: Spend 1 point of Blood and expend a standard action to make an opposed challenge against your target. If you succeed, your character can read the details of a target's aura. Typically, this scrutiny is visual, but any appropriate physical sense may be used.
If you are successful, you can discern your target's creature type (vampire, ghoul, vampire possessing a mortal, and so forth; see errata below), general mood, any immediate violent tendencies, and whether or not the target has diablerized within the past year. This power does not allow the user to read minds or to discern the truth.
If you fail the opposed challenge, your target's aura is too murky to make out clearly. Details are vague, and no particular color or pattern seems dominant.
The Blood cost to activate Aura Perception is waived if the target relents to the challenge.
Exceptional Success: For the next hour, you continue to perceive the target's aura without further Blood expenditure or challenges. If her mood shifts or she becomes aggressive, you'll have advanced warning. Mechanically, if your target starts a combat, you may take your simple action before she can take any action. This forewarning does not give you an additional action, but allows you to take your simple action early.
Focus [Perception]: If your target is within three steps, your character spends no Blood to activate Aura Perception, whether the target is willing or not. If the target is unwilling, you must still make an opposed challenge to use this power.
••• Spirit's Touch
Living creatures leave behind traces of thoughts and emotions like a rippled wake of water. With this power, a character can read the psychic impressions on recently handled objects or locations that have strong emotional events tied to them. A touch and a moment of concentration can unlock a flood of images and sensations, possibly giving insight into the past.
Note that you can only use this power on objects or places, and not on people, vampires, animals, or other living creatures. The visions received by the use of this power are seldom clear or detailed, and register more like a "psychic snapshot." Still, a clever vampire can learn a great deal from a glimpse. Although most visions will reveal the last person to handle the item or be present in a location, a long-time owner may leave a stronger impression, and a long-ago trauma may overwhelm more recent events that transpire at a location.
To get a psychic impression, you must physically hold an item (or touch parts of a location) with your bare skin. As you do so, you enter a shallow trance and glean information from the spiritual residue on the object. You are only marginally aware of your surroundings while using Spirit's Touch, although a loud noise or jarring physical sensation will break the trance in an instant.
System: Spend 1 point of Blood and use your standard action to touch an object. You can then ask the Storyteller one of the following questions, plus an additional question for every five minutes your character concentrates on the object or location:
- Show me the last person who handled the object: Your character receives a vision of the last person to use the object. The vision generally shows the last significant individual, not simply the most recent person who touched the item.
- How did the individual die?: This question may only be asked when Spirit's Touch is used on a dead body (or part of a dead body). Your character receives a vision of the last few moments of the target's life.
- When (or how) was the object last used?: Your character gains an image of the item's most recent use and target (a knife stabbing, with the victim's appearance; binoculars looking down, seeing the Prince's car; etc.). If the object was recently involved in an emotional event, such as a murder or a robbery, your character gets a brief glimpse of the emotion, and how it relates to the item.
- Are there any strong emotions attached to this object?: If someone loves or hates the object, or if any deep emotions are relevant to the object's use, your character will receive such information. This information may be quite old, depending on the object's nature and associations.
Some objects or locations have particularly strong emotional connections. Your Storyteller may elect to provide one or more answers for free when a character uses Spirit's Touch on such an emotionally charged target. Characters using any level of Obfuscate who handle an object or visit a location do not leave psychic impressions.
For the purposes of this power, corpses (including the corpses of supernatural creatures and the ashes of vampires) count as objects and may be targeted by Spirit's Touch. Vampires who have not met Final Death do not count as corpses.
Focus [Perception]: When you activate Spirit’s Touch, you may ask three questions instead of one.
•••• Telepathy
Since the ancient days, mortal man has longed to hear the secrets sheltered in another person’s mind, to speak and receive communication from the soul as well as the lips. Telepathy is the pure communication of thoughts, feelings, and desires, and those who can perform such a feat are powerful, indeed. By projecting your senses outward, you can pierce the minds of others, drawing forth their very thoughts. You can link your consciousness to another mind, sending or receiving concepts in the flicker-flash of thought.
System: To activate Telepathy upon a willing target, simply spend 1 point of Blood. No challenge is required, and the target can be located anywhere within the same city (or 50-mile radius of your character’s location). This application of Telepathy specifically does not require line of sight. Telepathy allows the character and her target to send and receive mental messages and simple images.
If you attempt to use Telepathy on an unwilling target, spend 1 point of Blood and make an opposed challenge against the target, who must be in line of sight. If you succeed, your character can send one image or a brief message (something you could say in less than 10 seconds) to the target. Alternately, your character may pull one image or specific piece of information out of the mind of an unwilling target.
The information you gain in this way must answer one of the following questions (your choice):
- What are you currently thinking about?
- What does that person or thing you just described look like?
- Where is the person or object you were just talking about located?
- Do you like or dislike the person you’re currently talking to?
- What are you planning to do in the next few minutes?
If a willing character becomes unwilling during a telepathic session, the character using Telepathy must immediately spend 1 point of Blood and succeed in an opposed challenge or be ejected from the now-unwilling character’s mind.
When communicating with a willing target, a single use of Telepathy lasts for an hour, but you can only mentally communicate with one person at a time. If you activate Telepathy on a second target, the first contact immediately ends.
An individual cannot utilize other powers (such as the Dominate powers of Command, Mesmerism, or Forgetful Mind) in conjunction with Telepathy.
The telepath has the option to make herself known when communicating. Otherwise, the target can determine the identity of the telepath by succeeding in an opposed Awareness challenge.
Exceptional Success: You can ask two of the above questions (rather than one) with each successful challenge when pulling information out of a target’s mind.
Focus [Wits]: You can maintain Telepathy with up to three willing targets, allowing you to carry on a conversation with all participants at the same time. Participants may talk to you or to each other through this telepathic contact. You must spend 1 Blood per target. To bring new individuals into a link, spend the Blood required. You may eject someone from the link without breaking your communication with any others involved.
••••• Psychic Projection
(sometimes called Astral Projection) No longer confined to the physical plane, you can project your senses and awareness outside of your body. Thus untethered, your consciousness roams various planes of thought, allowing you to view the world as though you were an incorporeal spirit. Without the concerns of mass and matter, you easily pass through any physical barrier and move as easily as thought to any place under the gaze of the moon.
System: To activate Psychic Projection, you must spend 1 point of Blood and expend a standard action meditating. This expenditure allows the character to project her awareness outside of her physical form. While a character is in Psychic Projection, her body lies in a torpor-like state. If her body is damaged, the Psychic Projection automatically ends, and the individual’s consciousness returns instantly to her physical form.
A character’s Psychic Projection is an idealized version of her normal appearance. While this image may be clothed in golden robes, shine with a halo of silver light, or have shaggy fur, it’s always recognizable as your character. A psychic form travels at roughly 50 miles per hour and can pass through solid objects, but cannot interact with the physical world in any way. The only powers you can use while in Psychic Projection are the first 4 dots of Auspex; you cannot use other disciplines, elder powers of Auspex, or techniques (even those based on Auspex) while in this state.
A psychic form is invisible to those without Heightened Senses or similar supernatural abilities. You can spend 1 Blood to manifest (your torporous body expends this Blood), making your psychic form visible, as though materially present for one turn. While the character is still intangible and cannot physically interact, a manifested psychic form can be seen and heard normally and can be targeted by Mental and Social powers by those in the material world. Individuals with Heightened Senses or similar supernatural abilities can see the vague outline of an individual in Psychic Projection even when that individual has not manifested, but the observer cannot make out details, see gestures, or hear the projected character’s voice unless she manifests.
Two individuals who are both in Psychic Projection can interact with one another normally, and may even engage in combat through punching or other unarmed Physical attacks. A successful blow from another psychic individual doesn’t inflict damage; it instead costs the victim 1 Willpower. If the victim runs out of Willpower, her Psychic Projection immediately ends and cannot be reactivated for 10 minutes. Remember that only the first 4 dots of Auspex can be used in Psychic Projection; a character cannot use other powers (even against other projecting individuals) and possesses no equipment other than simple clothing while in this state.
Focus [Wits]: In addition to Auspex, you may utilize the first 2 dots of any Mental or Social in-clan discipline you possess. This is an exception to the rule against using other disciplines while in Psychic Projection. Your character uses these powers normally when targeting others in the psychic plane. If your character manifests, she can also use these disciplines on targets in the material world while she is manifested.
Potence, Celerity, and Fortitude cannot ever be used while in Psychic Projection, nor can powers that require touch, unless used against other Psychically Projected individuals.
