LEVEL 1
LETHAL BODY
Potence •
Using this power, the user is capable of causing horrendous damage to mortals, tearing skin and breaking bones with bare fingers.
Cost: Free
System: The user’s unarmed attacks can now do Aggravated Health damage to mortals, if desired. They also ignore one level of armor per Potence level of the user.
Duration: Passive
SOARING LEAP
Potence •
Possessing unholy strength in more than arms and fists, the user can leap far higher and further than any mortal.
Cost: Free
System: The user can jump a number of meters equal to three times their Potence level vertically, and five times their Potence level horizontally. The user needs no run-up to make these leaps.
Duration: Passive
LEVEL 2
PROWESS
Potence ••
Vampires with Potence gain far greater strength from their Blood than those who lack it.
Cost: One Rouse Check
System: When activated, add the Potence rating of the user to their unarmed damage value as well as to feats of Strength, and add half their Potence rating (round up) to their Melee damage.
Duration: One scene
RELENTLESS GRASP
Potence ••
The vampire’s grip becomes impossibly strong and once they get a good hold of something they are almost impossible to dislodge, short of dismemberment.
Cost: One Rouse Check
System: The vampire adds their Potence rating as automatic successes to any attempt that involves holding on to something. This includes attempts to maintain a grapple, though the initial grapple test does not benefit from this bonus.
Duration: One scene
LEVEL 3
BRUTAL FEED
Potence •••
Known as the “Savage Kiss”, this power allows the user to employ an unholy inner strength when draining a victim. In mere seconds, the attacker swallows torrents of blood while mauling the victim. The result is an efficient, if messy, feeding often employed in the heat of battle where the mangled remains of the victim can be disguised.
Cost: Free
System: The vampire can drain a human completely in seconds, usually within a single turn. Every point of Hunger slaked causes one point of Aggravated Health damage to the victim, as their blood vessels burst and organs bruise and rupture internally. Using Brutal Feed on a vampire does only Superficial Health damage to their dead and inert organs.
In combat, Brutal Feed comes immediately after a successful Bite attack. The victim first takes bite damage, followed by a number of automatically successful feeding actions up to the user’s Potence rating. Against vampires, the number of feeding actions is halved (round down). Armor does not protect against Brutal Feed, as the wounds are, or at least begin as, mainly internal. Of course, Armor may protect from the bite itself, as normal. Storytellers may decide such mutilation-killing warrants Stains (p. 239).
Duration: One feeding
SPARK OF RAGE
Potence •••
Amalgam: Presence •••
Combining Potence and Presence, the vampire can incite anger and even frenzy in onlookers, as easily as awe or dread. The user must take care not to rile up an angry mob to turn on them rather than the target or each other.
Cost: One Rouse Check
Dice Pools:' Manipulation + Potence
System: When active, the user can add their Potence rating to any attempt to rile or incite a person or a crowd to violence. In addition, the user can activate this power and roll a contest of Manipulation + Potence vs Composure + Intelligence of another vampire. If they win, the opposing vampire must make a fury frenzy test at Difficulty 3.
Duration: One scene
UNCANNY GRIP
Potence •••
Focusing their unnatural strength into their toes and fingers, the vampire grips and burrows their extremities into almost any surface, enabling them to climb and even hang otherwise unsupported from walls and ceilings. Close observation reveals telltale scarring or deformation on these surfaces afterward, however, as this is an application of brute force, not superhero-style adhesion.
Cost: One Rouse Check
System: A vampire using this power automatically succeeds on any Skill test to climb a non-metallic surface. The user might also be able to climb copper or bronze cladding or other softer metal surfaces, at the Storyteller’s discretion. Thin glass surfaces (though generally not the glass curtain walls of modern office buildings) may shatter under the stress. In the same way, a vampire can hang from a wall or ceiling for up to one scene, though only barefoot vampires can hang by their feet.
The climb or clinging leaves obvious tracks detectable by anyone with an Intelligence + Investigation test at Difficulty 2. Detecting Uncanny Grip tracks on glass doesn’t even require a roll.
Duration: One scene
WRECKER
Potence •••
Prerequisite: Prowess
The vampire is able to exert violent, indiscriminate force on a static object in order to shatter, smash, and destroy it. While the lead-up time to summon this strength makes the ability useless in a fight, it comes in handy whenever a door bars the way, a car needs immobilizing, or an example needs to be made of an offending statue.
Cost: Free
System: The user counts their Potence rating twice when using Prowess for feats of strength that involve damage or destruction of an inanimate object.
Duration: As Prowess
LEVEL 4
DRAUGHT OF MIGHT
Potence ••••
The Blood of the vampire becomes saturated with the power of Potence, conveying a part of that power to anyone who drinks of it. This is the Potence equivalent of Draught of Elegance (p. 254).
Cost: One Rouse Check
System: Drinking a Rouse Checks worth of Blood directly from the user gifts the drinker with temporary Potence equal to half the Potence dots (rounded down) of the donor. The drinker gains the same powers as the donor’s, up to that level.
Duration: One night; for vampires, until the next feeding or the vampire reaches Hunger 5
JUGGERNAUT
Potence ••••
Prerequisite: Soaring Leap
You move with sudden speed and smash through anything in your way with a force that knocks down walls and cripples the weak.
Cost: Two Rouse Checks
System: Once per Scene you can smash through anything in your path, moving up to the same distance as your Soaring Leap. Everyone within one meter of your path must make a Dexterity + Athletics roll (Difficulty 2), with results below. Those prepared for the shock (such as your Pack) can shift their results up by one step.
- Failure: Lose action; Take Superficial Health damage equal to the user's Potence.
You smash through walls and obstacles as if you had a Strength of 12 (see V5 Corebook pg. 409). Potence powers such as Lethal Body can augment the damage type caused, but not your Strength or damage rating. While in use you're immune to mundane collision or falling damage. If you hit an object you cannot overturn, your movement ends.
Duration: One use
LEVEL 5
EARTHSHOCK
Potence •••••
Their strength an elemental force, the vampire can slam their fist or foot into the ground, creating a shockwave that throws their opponents prone. One of the more dramatic applications of Potence, this power needs to be carefully employed, lest the user literally bring the house down upon themselves.
Cost: Two Rouse Checks
System: No additional test is needed to create the shockwave. (The ground is hard to miss.) Anyone within a fivemeter radius of the user must make a Dexterity + Athletics roll (Difficulty 3), with the results below. Anyone prepared for the Earthshock (such as the user’s companions) can shift their results up by one step.
- Win: Knocked off balance. Lose current action
- Failure: Fall prone. Lose current action; must spend a turn getting up.
This power causes significant collateral damage. If used on the ground, the earth cracks. If used indoors, furniture breaks and mirrors shatter. On anything but the ground floor the floor might shatter, causing everyone within the radius to plummet to the floor below. This power can only be used once per scene.
Duration: One use
FIST OF CAINE
Potence •••••
The vampire’s bare hands can inflict grievous injuries, lethal to both mortals and other vampires. They can dismember, pierce, impale, decapitate, and even rip a heart out of the chest.
Cost: One Rouse Check
System: For one scene the user can inflict Aggravated Health damage to mortals and supernaturals alike while Brawling, as they literally rend flesh and tear their opponents limb from limb with their bare hands.
Duration: One scene
