Tap the Torpid Mind
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Effect: As the boundaries between the psyches of Kindred in a House blur, the Kindred may develop a truly remarkable ability to channel one another’s personalities — and powers of the blood. This very rare benefit of the House connection takes a great deal out of the Kindred who uses this Merit, but it can allow a vampire to pull a trick or two out of his hat that his enemies would never have anticipated. A character with this Merit can gain brief access to one Skill or non-physical Discipline possessed by his House’s slumbering member. To invoke the psycho-sanguine connection, the character must spend one Vitae and one Willpower point as an instant action while within range of the torpid member (as determined by his dots in the Speaker for the Absent Merit).
To use a torpid member’s Skill, the character then simply forms a dice pool using his own Attribute paired with the Skill and Specialty (if any) of his torpid partner. Notice that this may allow a character to temporarily access a Skill with more than six dots. For the rest of the scene, the character may take a number of actions using that Skill equal to his dots in this Merit.
To use the Discipline of a torpid partner, the character must use the dice pool of the vampire whose power he is tapping, with a –5 penalty imposed by the murky conduit of the blood. This penalty is reduced by one for each dot the invoker has in this Merit. Only a single Discipline power may be invoked in this way before the connection must be invoked again. Only the Disciplines of Animalism, Dominate, Majesty, Nightmare and Obfuscate can be used in this way. The Discipline power’s cost in Vitae or Willpower must be paid separately from the cost for invoking this Merit.
To use a torpid member’s Skill, the character then simply forms a dice pool using his own Attribute paired with the Skill and Specialty (if any) of his torpid partner. Notice that this may allow a character to temporarily access a Skill with more than six dots. For the rest of the scene, the character may take a number of actions using that Skill equal to his dots in this Merit.
To use the Discipline of a torpid partner, the character must use the dice pool of the vampire whose power he is tapping, with a –5 penalty imposed by the murky conduit of the blood. This penalty is reduced by one for each dot the invoker has in this Merit. Only a single Discipline power may be invoked in this way before the connection must be invoked again. Only the Disciplines of Animalism, Dominate, Majesty, Nightmare and Obfuscate can be used in this way. The Discipline power’s cost in Vitae or Willpower must be paid separately from the cost for invoking this Merit.