Presence

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PRESENCE

Enthrallment | Superstardom | Melpominee | Sublimitas


Most vampires are creatures of grace and lethality. Associated with horrific violence and devastating beauty, Kindred embody opposites, alternating between nightmare and dream depending on the onlooker and the vampire’s whims. Presence is a Discipline that expresses this bipolar existence. Used to attract victims or disperse them in fear, Presence allows crowd control, emotional manipulation, and enforced devotion. A mortal’s greatest fear could stand before them and suddenly look like the most radiant creature on Earth.


Many Presence practitioners use this Discipline to easily acquire feeding vessels, while others use it do stalk the night as creatures of horror, making weak-willed kine flee terrified, unsure of what they’ve just seen. Effective as a lure as well as a defense, vampires with Presence enjoy an easier nightlife at the expense of forgetting what feelings projected at them are normal and which are compelled.




CHARACTERISTICS


Discipline presence.png
  • Type: Mental
  • Masquerade Threat: Low-Medium.
    A subtle power, people seldom realize Presence has affected them at all. As with most Disciplines, its higher powers can leave puzzled witnesses behind, especially once the effects wear off.
  • Blood Resonance: Sanguine.
    The beautiful and lustful, those completely infatuated with the vampire, models and actors and movie stars, compelling public and private speakers from politicians to car salesmen, YouTube sensations and Instagram influencers.


Presence affects the emotions of those subject to it, not the minds. While this is useful in that victims are cognizant (unlike Dominate), they are not under the direct control of the user and are thus often unpredictable. In order to be affected by Presence, the subject must be in the physical presence of the user or at least within earshot. The Discipline does not transmit electronically unless the user possesses Star Magnetism (Presence 5). Detecting the use of Presence is very hard unless one has access to Sense the Unseen (Auspex 1) and can even then be too subtle to notice unless one is looking for it specifically.


Presence power effects do not stack, so someone using Awe and Entrancement on the same subject would only add their Presence rating once for any Social-based Persuasion rolls.


In combat, only the Dread Gaze and Majesty powers have any effect, as charm is of little use when someone has decided they want you hurt.