Potence

POTENCE

Hulking | Blood's Might | Percutio

This is a popular saying among the members of Clan Brujah: “You only underestimate our strength once.” Potence is vitae-fueled strength above and beyond other vampires’ capabilities. More powerful than any performance-enhancing drug, more unnatural than the physique of any bulging bodybuilder, Potence is the Beast let loose through the fists, feet, limbs, and raw bodily power of a vampire. The Discipline is used for more than just hitting things, though it is certainly good for this task. It is the vampire’s ability to force their body into actions impossible for mortals to replicate.

Potence trumps the other Disciplines in sheer incongruity – an elderly looking Nosferatu strikes harder than a mortal heavyweight boxer or a Brujah Embraced as a child can decapitate a target with one blow.

CHARACTERISTICS

• Type: Physical

• Masquerade Threat: Medium to high.
  Lesser exercises of the Discipline might be passed off as “hysterical strength,” but once pavement cracks and buildings start to crumble that explanation loses what little credibility it had.

• Blood Resonance: Choleric.
  The strong and healthy; athletes and young men and women in their prime, gym rats, wrestlers, construction workers and lumberjacks, longshoremen.

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

_{Core Book, pg. 264}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 264}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 264}

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

_{Players Guide, pg. 79}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 264}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 265}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 265}

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

_{Players Guide, pg. 79}

LEVEL 4

CRASH DOWN

Potence ••••

Prerequisite: Soaring Leap

Having honed their capabilities, the vampire now sticks the landing on their Soaring Leap in a big way. The vampire can come to an unstoppable halt at their location, causing damage to anyone they land on or around.

Cost: One Rouse Check

Dice Pool: Strength + Potence

System: Upon using Soaring Leap, the vampire may activate Crash Down, and deal damage to a small area of effect. Anyone within a three-meter radius is subject to an attack roll of the user’s Strength + Potence against their Dexterity + Athletics, suffering Superficial Damage equal to the margin. Anyone suffering three or more levels of damage or a total failure on their defense test is knocked down (see Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 122).

Duration: N/A

_{Players Guide, pg. 79}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 265}

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.

• Critical Win: No effect.

• Win: Lose action.

• 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

_{The Black Hand, pg. 84}

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.

• Critical Win: No effect.

• 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

_{Core Book, pg. 265}

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

_{Core Book, pg. 266}

SUBTLE HAMMER

Potence •••••

Suffused by inhuman prowess, every part of the vampire’s body becomes able to project the sum of their strength. A flick of their finger can be made to convey the power of a full-body punch, and a punt of the toe becomes a concrete shattering kick. Note that this power does not make the vampire stronger, but they are able to use what strength they have through minor, subtle movements.

Cost: Free

System: Performing unarmed melee attacks or feats of strength now counts as two-dice minor actions (see Minor Actions in Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 298). A character can perform only one Subtle Hammer minor action per turn, though, and cannot make further attacks in the same turn. The ability to concentrate one’s full strength into any part of the body also has other benefits, and any feat of strength where the user’s movement is limited (such as breaking out of bonds) receives a four-dice bonus or more, at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Duration: Passive

_{Players Guide, pg. 79}