Supernatrual Flaws

Anachronism
1 to 3 pt. Flaw

Time has passed you by… or maybe it simply hasn’t caught up with you yet. Your beliefs, personality, mannerisms, fashion, and expectations are radically out of step with your surroundings. This could be a deliberate affection on your part (“The Old Days were better than today” /“Why wait for the future to arrive when you can become the future?”), a Time Sphere-related temporal hiccup or Paradox Flaw, the result of paranormal longevity or back-tracking time travel, the manifestation of an especially assertive past (or future) life… hell, even you might not know quite why you’re like this, but you are, and the rest of the world can’t help but notice.

The value of this Flaw depends upon the amount of trouble you get into as a result of your anachronisms:

1 point: You seem a little weird, and potentially offen­sive (“Why are they not sitting in the back of the bus? Aren’t there laws about that sort of thing?”), displaying quirks from a recognizably different past or future that isn’t radically behind or ahead of the current age. Add +1 to the difficulty of understanding current technology and modes of behavior.

2 points: You’re a relic of a distinctly earlier age, or the harbinger of a seriously advanced one. The things you say, wear, expect, and believe are disturbingly out of touch with your surroundings, and can present significant problems… especially if and when you hold forth on silly little things like politics, social mores, sexuality, and the law. Current technology puzzles you, either because it’s inexplicably advanced or staggeringly primitive. Add +2 to the difficulty of all efforts to understand your current era, including social rolls based upon getting along with people in this age.

3 points: You hail from a time so distant that the current era seems as alien to you as you seem to people of this era. Hell, you might not even speak English (a common trait of folks who existed before the expansion of British and American influence in the 1800s), or speak your language with an accent and idioms that essentially turn it into another language entirely (think Shakespeare, or Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange). Your expectations regarding technology and social mores are wildly divergent, and you could easily get yourself into serious trouble. Add +3 to the appropriate rolls, and you may be unable to process certain things (driving, politics, current computer tech, etc.) at all.

Assuming you have a chance to acclimate to your surround­ings, this Flaw can be bought down with experience points. Until that time, your companions will have a lot of explaining to do on your behalf!

Ancestral Soil Dependence
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your flesh yearns for a homeland you have never seen. The voice of Kupala punishes your day sleep if this yearning is not met. The soil from a place important to you as a mortal will not suffice; in addition, you require two handfuls of the tainted Eastern European soil of the ancestral Tzimisce homeland.

This Trait mostly commonly manifests in the childer of koldun and the branch of the Clan thought to be descended from Yorak. It can even manifest in childer sired generations after their ancestors relocated. Characters Embraced in Eastern Europe can’t take this Flaw (they’re already dependent on the local soil).

Anosmia
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your life in the sewer has removed your sense of smell and taste. This means you are unperturbed by even the worst stench or most disgusting flavor. However, it also means you cannot ever succeed at any Perception rolls that rely of taste or smell. It also does not make you immune in any way to gas attacks or poisons; you just won’t be able to tell they are there.

Apprentice
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

Most metaphysical societies, the Technocracy included, employ a mentor /apprentice system. During a members’ early years, an elder member is assigned to, or chooses to, teach a new and inexperienced member. During the later days of membership, an elder is expected to pass on their experience to the younger generation. In addition to the usual training programs a given group may purse, a new recruit often winds up in the care of a seasoned member of that group. And in the case of this Flaw, you’ve got a real winner on your hands.

When you mentor an apprentice a mentor, you’re responsi­ble for someone (whatever his formal title might be) who makes your life difficult. You can’t just kick this person to the curb, but must instead provide discipline, guidance, training, and quite often a support system (room, board, research space, and so forth) so that the newbie can become a successful member of your sect. An apprentice, however, is not a houseplant; even the most cooperative apprentices demand time and attention, and their deeds – good and otherwise – reflect upon your own social status. The more troublesome ones, by extension, can drive a mentor toward curmudgeonly solitude.

As a Flaw, this Trait reflects the range of potential appren­tices and the effect they have upon your life:

1 point: A cooperative and dedicated ideal student who takes up very little of your space and time, reflects well upon you, and seems eager to learn from you while being reluctant to argue very much.

2 points: A typical student who needs a fair amount of hand-holding; makes occasional mistakes of protocol and discipline; and takes up a fair amount of time, space and patience. Even so, this person remains attentive and more or less respectful, providing plenty of reasons for you to be proud of him.

3 points: A rather clueless student whose presence consumes a significant amount of time and attention. This apprentice can be clumsy, obnoxious, thick-witted, and occasionally problematic in social situations and training exercises. He’s got promise, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get him to realize his potential.

4 points: A seriously challenging student whose behav­ior and dedication leave a great deal to be desired. This apprentice may have talent, but the burdens begin to outweigh the potential benefits of his instruction.

5 points: An obstinate, haughty, disrespectful ass whose presence is more trouble than it’s worth. Dangerous to himself and everyone around him (yourself included), he’s a disgrace to the society you share. Why are you training this person, again? There might be a light at the end of the tunnel someday, but it’s gonna take a lot of work and sacrifice before this apprentice amounts to anything more than a waste of your time.

Again, this is a person for whom you are responsible. Unless you dedicate lots of time, attention, and often mone­tary resources toward bettering his condition, your apprentice could get worse as time goes on. Conversely, you might be able to mold a troublesome apprentice into an exemplar of your society. From a game-system standpoint, you can lower the value of this Flaw through dedicated work – the obstinate five-point troublemaker could eventually become a one-point ideal student if you put in the time, work, and roleplaying to make him so. Storytellers: Allow your player to buy this Flaw down through experience if and when she makes an effort to straighten up a problematic apprentice, but also feel free to raise the Flaw’s drawbacks if the player lets things slide too often and too far.

Despite the usual preconceptions of age and experience, an apprentice could be older than his mentor. He may have originally belonged to a different sect (say, a Verbena defecting to the New World Order or Bata’a), and has a head full of ideas about how things “should” be done – ideas that run counter to your own teachings. Or he might be a new mage who Awakened in middle age, and who therefore has problems taking orders from an experienced mage he considers to be a kid. Even the best students make mistakes, and so no level of this Flaw is without headaches – that, after all, is why it’s considered a Flaw!

Once again, this character-based Trait represents a full-fledged Storyteller character whose personality, needs, problems, and agendas make him far more than just a list of dots on a character sheet. In an experienced roleplaying trope, you might let another player run this apprentice, as either a supporting character or as their main mage. In such cases, of course, the student will be less powerful and experienced than the teacher, unless he began his Awakened life as a mage from a different group. In any case, the apprentice ought to be a major part of the chronicle, and may eventually even become the center of the tale (as in the Harry Potter saga) if and when the apprenticeship goes well. A rotten apprenticeship, on the other hand, could still earn that character a starring role in the chronicle: as an antagonist whose close history with the mage just makes the fight nastier for everyone involved.

Arcane Curse
'''1-5pt. Flaw'''

Because of either your studies or someone else’s, you suffer from a magical curse. It might be an aversion or allergy, or even a strange magical effect.

The level of the flaw depends on how debilitating the curse is. Curing the affliction may be impossible, or require some sort of quest or advanced research.

Aura of the Typhon
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Something slithers beneath your skin, coiled in your very essence — something that causes the Lupines to stalk you for some dread purpose you do not understand. Their howls follow in your wake. You catch glimpses of blurred motion and the gleam of eyes and teeth in the dark.

They get closer every night. What do they want from you?

Banshee-in-Waiting
'''5pt. Flaw'''

The Fugue is gradually driving you towards madness. If your temporary Willpower ever reaches 0, you automatically gain a derangement which can never be removed. You may remove other derangements you gain in other ways as usual.

You may gain a maximum of three of these permanent derangements from losing your Willpower before being consumed by it. Should it happen a fourth time, you immediately lose yourself to the Fugue and become a character under the control of the Storyteller, walking in whatever direction the music takes you and killing anything you come across.

Beacon of the Unholy
'''2pt. Flaw'''

You radiate palpable evil. Clergy and devout mortals know instinctively that there is something horribly wrong with you, and react accordingly.

Beast Within
5 pt. Flaw

You’ve got a truly infernal temper: one so violent it feels like a volcano in your soul. As with a werewolf or vampire, you’re subject to the dreaded frenzy that turns you into an engine of hot rage. Under intense stress, you risk losing every shred of enlightenment you possess. Driven to such extremity, you let loose with the most immediately destructive powers at your command, and “vulgarity” be damned! Everyone in your vicinity becomes a target, and the consequences matter to you only when this inner storm has passed.

System-wise, this Flaw sends you into deadly rages as per the Berserker /Stress Atavism Trait. Instead of rolling your Willpower to avoid the frenzy, however, you roll your Avatar rating plus one die, with your Willpower as the difficulty of that roll. If, as an example, young Vyper Trabia suffers from the Beast Within Flaw, with an Avatar of 4 and a Willpower of 5, Vyper’s player rolls five dice against a difficulty of 5 when that Akashic hothead is under ferocious stress. A failure on that roll sends Vyper into a berserk rage. Yeah, this probably happens pretty often. Vyper’s friends don’t stick around for long when things go poorly.

Considering that the Avatar could be seen as your inner Beast, a character with the Pattern Essence cannot take this Flaw. It’s best suited for Dynamic Essences, although a Quest­ing or Primordial Avatar could attain frightening rages too.

A berserk mage cannot employ rituals or employ complicated tools; only the most direct methods of attack – magickal or otherwise – will do. Although mages rarely suffer from such grotesque lapses of self-control, an Awakened Ghoul (as in that Merit), a cyborg, a Victor, a Shapechanger Kin (again, as per the Merit), or an animalistic shape-changer could possess such inhuman monstrousness.

Bedeviled
6 pt. Flaw

Oh, you poor bastard! A mysterious power has decided to fuck with you, and it’s perfectly capable of making your life a chronicle of woe. Misery and setbacks are your bread and butter; should things start looking up for you, you begin looking up as well to spot the inevitable anvil dropping toward your head. This sort of thing goes way beyond simple misfortune or even a paltry little curse. Your enigmatic foe is a dedicated cuss, and whatever it might be (it’s not necessarily an actual devil, though it certainly seems like one to you!), that force has apparently unlimited resources and a very sick sense of humor; in short, then, it’s your typical Storyteller.

A story-based Flaw, this wretched Trait essentially grants the Storyteller a license to give your character the starring role in a twenty-first-century Book of Job. (And again, check out Tragedy.) There ought to be a certain rhyme and reason behind this metaphysical fuckery, of course, but the source of your agonies, and the way you could potentially end them, are for your Storyteller to know and you to find out… should you be fortunate enough to live so long.

Bestial
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You are closer to animals than humans, and it shows. In addition to the Nosferatu Clan weakness, you have an additional weakness: whenever you frenzy, you gain an animal feature, similar to the Gangrel Clan weakness With Storyteller permission, permanently acquired animal features may be justification to acquire certain Merits after character creation, such as Lizard Limbs or Monstrous Maw.

If so, the Storyteller can simply award them, or require an experience point expenditure (such as two times the Merit point value). Similar Flaws can also be taken, but cannot grant additional freebie or experience points.

Betrayer’s Mark
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Even though you are loyal to House and Clan Tremere, for some reason you are branded with the mark of the antitribu. It might be that you have returned to the Clan after leaving the Sabbat or that you unwittingly or as part of an undercover operation took part in the Vaulderie.

Whatever the reason, the mark makes other Tremere wary of you. You will have to go that extra mile to prove yourself, and few among the Clan will trust you with positions of power and responsibility.

Bizarre Hunger
2 to 5 pt. Flaw

You prefer – maybe even need – to eat weird shit… quite possibly in a literal sense of that expression. Perhaps you’ve sworn a vow, suffered a curse, been treated (or created) with unhallowed rituals or arcane hyperscience, or initiated into an occult fellowship with… interesting admission demands. In any case, you must consume substances that may be degrading, unpleasant, expensive, or downright illegal.

The more inconvenient the substance, the more this Flaw is worth:

2 points: Easy to procure, though not as easy to devour (paper, fresh eggs, poop, etc.).

3 points: Unpleasant, hazardous, and perhaps illegal to consume (rotten meat, swamp water, raw cannabis, and so forth).

4 points: Specialized, foul, criminal, and /or expensive chow (human blood, custom-brewed potions or meals, and the like).

5 points: You really shouldn’t eat such things… but you must (live humans, toxic sludge, gold dust, highly specialized food-like concoctions, and other similar forms of sustenance).

For each dot in your Stamina Trait, you can go one day without satisfying your special dietary requirements. After that, you lose one health level per day until you either consume your particular substance, or else die of hunger or thirst, suf­fer the punishment of a vow unfulfilled, or otherwise endure whichever other consequences might result from denying your bizarre hunger.

For a related (and probably essential) companion Trait, see the physical Merit: Cast-Iron Stomach.

Blood Magick
5 pt. Flaw

Your Arts demand blood… specifically, your own blood. And while many practices employ small amounts of ritual cutting or bloodletting, this degree of sacrifice demands an injurious amount of vital fluid each time you cast a spell.

With this Flaw, you must suffer one unsoakable health level in bashing damage whenever you employ an Ef­fect. Story-wise, you cut yourself, slash designs in your skin, or otherwise hurt yourself enough to shed the required amount of blood. This sort of thing can, of course, add up quickly if you’re throwing lots of magick around without giving yourself a chance to heal, as bashing damage soon leads to lethal damage.

Meanwhile, your bloodletting looks pretty gross and obvious (often vulgarly so), and tends to make a mess as well. Your companions might appreciate the results of your magick, but may well object to the methods you employ… especially since blood magick has a rather unsavory rep among all but the most primal of practices.

Blood Weakness
'''4 or 7pt. Flaw'''

The Gargoyle bloodline began as an experiment in manufacturing a Kindred from diverse bloodlines. They perfected the alchemical process, but somewhere along the way, a weakness in an ancestor caught hold. It manifested in your Embrace.

In addition to the weaknesses you possess, you also possess either the Gangrel or the Tzimisce weakness. For four points, choose one of the two weaknesses. For seven points, you possess both.

Warrior Gargoyles with the Gangrel weakness version of Blood Weakness may gain both animal features and stone features from one frenzy.

Additionally, choose one of the four Disciplines available to the Gargoyles. For you, this Discipline is considered out of Clan and costs the higher amount of experience points to advance.

Blood-Hungry Soul
2, 3 or 5 pt. Flaw

In a previous incarnation, you had been a ghoul in thrall to an unholy addiction to vampiric blood. Now, you must resist the call of that ravenous past life and its fixation on intoxicating Kindred vitae.

The deeper your thirst for this damning fulfillment, the more this Flaw is worth:

2 points: You recall the glorious temptations of the blood, but remember it like a poor choice from long ago. If the opportunity presents itself to you, however, you’ll need to make a Willpower roll (difficulty 5) in order to resist the urge to pursue that addiction again. If you succumb to that temptation again in this life, your difficulty to resist further temptations rises to 6 every time the chance to consume such blood arises again.

3 points: That temptation is stronger. Now the roll to resist that first taste is 6, and the roll to resist further crimson snacks becomes 8.

5 points: You’ve got it bad. Really bad! Obsessed with the memories of glorious mystic blood, you must beat difficulty 8 in order to resist your old habits, and diffi­culty 10 each time you try to deny that thirst after you’ve fallen back to that damned addiction again.

This is so not going to end well… See the sidebar Mages, the Blood Bond, and the Effects of Vitae, p. 76, for the long-term effects of such fatal addictions.

Body Trail
'''4pt. Flaw'''

Whether the Nagaraja is just too sloppy and prone to overlooking details during her kills or she is especially fond of leaving a signature for every kill to send a message to others, others can use this to track her down. Each time there are items at a scene of a crime that could link directly back the Nagaraja, causing her to always look over her shoulder.

The police are always one step away from busting her, or the Camarilla’s assassins have her in their sights. In any case, leaving a trail is a terrible thing. For every person they kill during a single story, the difficulty to Survival checks for tracking are reduced by 1. This penalty resets at the beginning of a new story… if they survive to the next story, that is.

Bound
5 pt. Flaw

Mentor always told you not to make bargains with strange entities. But did you listen? Nope. Now you’re in deep to someone whose power dwarfs your own, and your prospects for getting out of bondage are laughable at best. Haunted by thoughts of the payment to come, you live on borrowed time and realize that the worst is yet to come…

Sometimes known, with minor variations, as Faust’s Bargain, Bound puts your character in the Faust-like position of getting something interesting in return for something sig­nificant – her life, her soul, a thousand years of servitude, or a similarly awful fate that no one in their right mind would want to risk. Still, occultists are infamous for short-term thinking, and literal devil’s deals are common currency in the magickal world. The specifics of that deal are for you and your Story­teller to arrange; you might have received some Merit(s) and / or Abilities in return for the debt (purchased with the points from this Flaw), escaped an awful situation (“You want out of this death-trap, dear wizard? Very well – what do you have to offer me?”), saved someone who was important to you (“Sure, I’ll bring your mother back from the brink of death – let us discuss the terms of this favor…”), or otherwise blew a standoff with an Otherworldly entity.

Bound to the Clan
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You have done more than just drink from the blood of the elders. Whether as punishment or by choice, you have become fully blood bound to Clan Tremere. You cannot act against the Clan, and find everything you do works in the service of the Tremere. You might not like it, but you can’t help yourself doing it. Of course, now you are bound to the Clan, you cannot be bound to another individual.

Many older Tremere have this Flaw, as it has been common in the past to completely blood bind new Tremere.

Branded
3 to 5 pt. Flaw

You’ve been found guilty by a Traditions Tribunal, who Branded your Avatar with a sigil that indicates your crime. Folks who can see that sigil recognize that you’re a criminal of some sort, and the worse the Brand, the more severe your crime and the more appropriate their reaction will be. Those reactions won’t always be negative; considering the sort of people who’d be favorably inclined toward a known criminal, though, do you really want the goodwill of such people?

3 points: A temporary Brand for a Low Crime (see below), which fades after one to three months. At the end of that period, this Flaw goes away. This Brand raises the difficulty of your social rolls by +1 for “average” Tradition mages and +2 for especially law-biding ones.

4 points: A lasting Brand for a Low Crime. This Brand lasts for a year or more, and marks you as a rather notorious offender. The difficulty of your social rolls rises by +2 among most mages who can recognize the Brand’s significance, and +3 among mages who take such offenses and punishments seriously.

5 points: A lasting Brand for a High Crime, which will not fade for at least nine years and may be essentially permanent. The Brand raises the difficulty of your so­cial rolls by +3 for any character who cares at all about Tradition justice and the people who incur its pun­ishment. Certain parties will target you for additional punishment, and others will consider you to be prime meat for their recruiting efforts.

Brittle Body
'''2 or 4pt. Flaw'''

Your already disfigured corpse doesn’t handle the physical demands of being a Kindred as well as it should. Your bones break at inopportune times, your skin tears if you move too quickly, and you have to be careful on a nightly basis.

The 2-point version of this flaw gives you a +2 difficulty to all Physical rolls because of the delicate nature of your body.

The 4-point version means that you also hang onto physical damage longer than other Kindred.

You may still heal health levels as normal, but any dice penalties remain until the next evening when you awaken. This is in addition to the penalty to Physical rolls.

Broken Antitribu
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You are one of those most pitiful things — an Assamite antitribu who still labors under the Tremere Curse. You have pledged yourself to the Sabbat, but you cannot perform diablerie and can only partake of Kindred vitae already transubstantiated through the Vaulderie. As a result, the difficulty of all Social rolls against other Sabbat members is at +2.

Bulimia
'''4pt. Flaw'''

You hunger for blood, and like all vampires, you will eventually feed, but the thought of it still makes you sick. Maybe you’re just not cut out for an eternity of bloodsucking, or you had an eating disorder in life that has followed you to the other side of mortality.

Whatever the reason, you can’t hold your blood. Whenever you feed, make a Stamina roll with a difficulty 8. If you fail, you vomit out the fresh blood before it can be absorbed into your body, spraying it everywhere (embarrassing at best, a breach of the Masquerade at worst). Note that blood taken in frenzy is absorbed normally, though this carries its own risks.

Can’t Cross Running Water
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You believe in the old folklore, and cannot cross running water unless you are at least 50 feet (15 meters) above it. Running water is considered to be any body of water at least two feet (half a meter) wide in any direction and not completely stagnant.

Carrion Presence
'''2pt. Flaw'''

This affliction represents the Baali’s true connection to the decrepitude their bloodline commands. Pestilence is attracted to the Baali; flies leave their delicious carcasses to circle around the vampire, rats crawl along their limbs and squeak their praises, and vultures can be seen circling them at almost all times.

The degree to which they are afflicted differs from character to character, but there is no getting rid of their swarm. Swatting their flies simply calls others to take their place. While quite disgusting to most, these vampires wear such a thing with pride. It does, however, make dealing in non-Baali circles quite difficult.

Cast No Reflection
'''1pt. Flaw'''

You actually cast no reflection, just like the vampires of legend. This can have a detrimental effect when trying to pass as a human.

Vampires of Clan Lasombra automatically have this Flaw (and you may be mistaken for one of them if you possess this).

Cast No Shadow or Reflection
1 to 2 pt. Flaw

According to certain legends, witches cast no shadow. And while that isn’t true of most mages, it’s somehow true for you. Maybe you suffer from a lingering Paradox Flaw, manifest your own cultural fears, or made a bargain that cost you your shadow or reflection. In any case, your shadow and/or reflection are absent from your presence.

For one point, you’re missing one of those things, for two points you lack them both, and although most folks won’t notice this consciously, they do tend to feel uneasy in your presence even if they’re not sure why. (Techno­logical machines record this phenomenon, too.)

Add +1 to the difficulty of all your Social-Trait rolls under most circumstances, and +2 to the difficulty if a witness makes a perception-based roll (difficulty 7) and figures out why you seem so weird.

Chandala
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Being a member of the lowest jati, the Chandala, is a mixed bag. You are responsible for the disposal of corpses, as well as many other foul tasks, but at the same time, you are often ignored. Your Social rolls against other Ravnos are made at a +2 difficulty.

You do not have to take this Flaw to be a member of the Chandala jati, but only members of the Chandala jati may have this Flaw.

Clan Weakness
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Despite your failure to adopt your original Clan’s other abilities, you did inherit their weakness. While this can be deadly to the unprepared vampire, a canny Caitiff might turn this to their advantage to better blend among the parent Clan. Some Nosferatu, for example, would likely never notice, and might even stand up for the Caitiff even amidst accusations from outsiders.

Cloistered
'''2pt. Flaw'''

You have spent almost all of your undead existence in the halls of the chantry, making Kindred society rather new and confusing for you. You suffer a -2 dice penalty to any social interactions with those outside the Tremere.

Cold Breeze
'''1pt. Flaw'''

A chill wind follows you everywhere you go. While it may make for dramatic entrances, this effect also discomfits mortals (+1 difficulty on all appropriate Social rolls) and marks you as obviously supernatural. Cold winds sweeping through executive offices or crowded nightclubs can raise all sorts of questions.

Consumption
'''5pt. Flaw'''

There is something hungry inside of you. But what is it? Portions of the Antediluvian? Your Vicissitude gone horribly wrong? Whatever it is, it is active, acting like a cancer, devouring you from the inside out. Your very blood is wrought with corrosive, flesh-eating bacteria. At the beginning of each evening, you suffer one health level of lethal damage that cannot be soaked nor healed with blood. The only way to counteract the effect is by ingesting one-tenth of your body-weight in flesh to supplement your depleted carcass. Whether you kill and devour the skin from humans or raid the biohazard containers of liposuction clinics for siphoned fat, you need your ration of human flesh in order to survive.

If you try and ingest this macabre meal before damage is done, you’ll simply vomit it out like any other food — this does not impart the benefits of the Eat Food Merit.

Contagious
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Your body has died on the inside, filling you with noxious bacteria, spores, and even fungi. Mortals that touch you or on whom you feed must make a Stamina roll (difficulty 9) not to fall ill.

The illness puts them in bed with fever and sickness, and each week they may attempt the Stamina roll again. The Storyteller might reduce the difficulty if the target is receiving proper medical attention. On a success they recover, but if they fail, they remain feverish.

At the end of each month the victim remains ill, they lose a point of Stamina; if they are reduced to zero Stamina they die.

If the Nosferatu knows of their contagion and infects someone maliciously, the Storyteller might call for a Humanity (or appropriate Path of Morality) degeneration roll if they die. Supernatural creatures generally have the ability to heal or cure such sickness in themselves, and vampires are immune to these germs of the dead.

Crucial Component
2 to 5 pt. Flaw

Your metaphysical practice demands specialized instru­ments. It’s not simply that you need fuel for your hypermodded Porsche 911 Turbo S – you need your own specially prepared blend of fuels, or the car won’t go. A simple rowan wand will not suffice – your spells demand a hand-carved branch cut from an unscarred rowan tree at high midnight on Samhain Eve. In game terms, at least one of the instruments in your magickal focus must be specifically created, harvested or modified to work with your magicks. No lesser tool will suffice.

How hard is it to procure or employ this specialized com­ponent? That depends on the value of the Flaw:

2 points: Easy to procure and /or employ (sunlight, yoga postures, motor oil, strong emotions, a book commonly found in the New Age section at your local bookstore, etc.).

3 points: Challenging to procure, employ, or replace (open flames, the Kurmasana posture, professional racing oil, genuine sorrow, an out-of-print occult text, and so on).

4 points: Pretty damned hard to obtain, employ, and replace (liquid fire, the Vrschikasana pose, alchemically formulated oil, deep-core grief, a genuine Roman text of De Daemonum Socrates by Apuleius, and other rare and precious instruments).

5 points: Unique, obscure, forbidden, cumbersome, or some combination of those four (a bottle of alchemically distilled sunfire, an impossibly complex yoga posture invented by the practitioner, personally formulated and distilled hypertech lubricating oil, the heartfelt scream of a grieving mother, a woodcut-illustrated Renaissance Grimoire of Honorius inscribed on flayed human skin, and similarly rarified instruments).

When used, the chosen instrument functions as a Person­alized Instrument – possibly a Unique Personalized one in the case of a five-point component. In your case, however, you cannot employ the magick that’s connected to that instrument at all unless you’re also able to employ that particular instrument. If Lee Ann Milner depends upon a unique vengeful centipede yoga posture in order to employ certain Forces Effects through her yoga practice, then Lee Ann is SOL unless she can assume that posture in time to deploy the necessary Effects.

Cursed
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

Misfortune of apparently supernatural origins makes your character’s life difficult; the more points the Flaw gives you, the greater the character’s misfortune.

1 point: Minor quirks of fate. Examples: You have a hard time keeping secrets; tech suffers tiny malfunctions in your presence; people tend to think ill of you.

2 points: Small but annoying problems. Examples: You stutter at inopportune moments; tires go flat and warning lights go on when you depend upon your car; expensive clothes wind up ruined by stupid accidents.

3 points: Chronic misfortune. Examples: Tools break when you use them; children fear you; red lights slow you down whenever you absolutely, positively need to be somewhere on time.

4 points: Major problems arise. Examples: People dislike you on principle; your greatest plans collapse or no predictable reason; your bank account keeps suffering unexpected withdrawals from sources that aren’t you.

5 points: Pervasive bad luck. Examples: Your endeavors inevitably fail; tech never works the way it’s supposed to function; chronic pain or poor health sap whatever vitality you possess.

The Storyteller determines the eventual effects of your curse, as well as the methods you might use to lift it. In any case, the curse becomes a major part of your character’s story and cannot be dispelled without some major effort on his part.

Cyclic Magick
3 pt. Merit /Flaw

The strength or weakness of your Arts is tied to some periodic cycle – the phases of the moon, night or day, your menstrual periods, the rise and fall of the stock market, and so forth. At the peak of your cycle, your magick flows most easily; at its nadir, you find it challenging to work with your magick at all.

System-wise, this Trait is both a Merit and a Flaw, granting bonuses at one point in the cycle and penalties on its opposite point. At the highest point, you reduce your casting difficulties by -3 for one hour, while at the lowest point you increase them by +3 for one hour. On either end of that cycle, you subtract or add -1 /+1 to your casting difficulties for each hour on both sides – the surge and the ebb – of that cycle: -2 or + 2 for the two hours on each side of the peak or nadir, -1 or +1 on the two hours on the side of those two hours, and no modifiers during the rest of the time in between. If, for example, Victoria Ashley-Croft bani Flambeau has a peak at midnight and a low at noon, her player would receive a peak modifier of -3 difficulty at midnight, -2 difficulty at 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, a -1 difficulty at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, and no modifiers otherwise, aside from the reverse modifiers (+3 at noon, +2 at 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM, and +1 at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM) at the opposite end of that cycle.

Naturally, you’ll need to decide just what this cycle is when you select this Trait, and then determine what the highest and lowest points of that cycle would be.

This Merit must also be tied into your focus – intrinsically connected to the beliefs you hold and the practices you follow. Your choice of instruments is often tied to such cycles too; cycle-bound instruments include celestial alignments, crossroads and crossing-days, formulae and mathematics, group rites, money and wealth, music (peaks and lulls in a song, movements in a symphony, etc.), numbers and numerology, and offerings and sacrifices (“when the stars are right”). A stockbroker will be watching the peaks and ebbs on Wall Street, while a witch pays attention to the cycles of the moon or her blood. By observing your cycles, you’ll have a good idea about the best and worst times to use your Arts. And by observing you, your allies and enemies may be able to figure those things out too.

Dangerous Secret
'''1-5pt. Flaw'''

You have come to know something you really wish you hadn’t discovered. Worse yet, the people you have the dirt on know that you know. It might be that you have discovered the Prince’s haven, or that there are infernalists hiding in the diocese. Whatever it is, you are not sure whom you can tell, and if you do, you will only make the subjects of the secret more enthusiastic about getting rid of you. You may even be implicated in the secret and risk going down with them.

The more potent the Flaw, the more powerful the people in question are, and the more they want it silenced.

Dark Aura
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Even without the use of Auspex, the Baali seems somehow wrong to anyone they interact with, emitting a terrifying aura of sickness and power. The character is always at a slight disadvantage when dealing with other vampires or those touched by the divine, as they sense the depravity of the Baali’s soul. Baali with this Flaw suffer a +2 difficulty to all Social rolls, unless they are using Intimidation.

To those who use Auspex to view the Baali’s aura, it appears as a thin, red mist surrounding the character with the occasional watchful eyes appearing within.

Dark Fate
5 pt. Flaw

You’re screwed. No matter what you do, regardless of your heroic deeds (possibly because of them), there’s a terrible end in your not-too-distant future. Prophecies speak of it, visions remind you of it, and other folks seem to know it too. You realize this fact, and it weighs upon you. From time to time, you must spend a Willpower point in order to shrug aside the dread of your impending damnation; otherwise, you lose one die from all rolls for the rest of that day.

It is up to the Storyteller to determine the exact nature of this fate, and when it will occur. This is a difficult Flaw to roleplay; ironically, though it may seem as though it removes all free will, the knowledge of one’s death can be quite liberating.

Dead Inside
'''4pt. Flaw'''

You feel nothing but pain and numbness. While others find ways to make their lives worth living, you sometimes don’t get that thrill. Once per session, the Storyteller may cancel any gain of Willpower you made by playing to your Nature or Demeanor.

Deathsight
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Everything appears rotted and decayed to you. The world appears to you as a corpse; mortals look diseased or skeletal, buildings seem decrepit, and your fellow Kindred seem to be walking, moldering cadavers.

You are at -2 difficulty to resist all rolls based on Appearance, but by the same token you are at +2 difficulty on all Perception-based rolls. In addition, you find social interaction difficult and are at +1 difficulty on all Social-based rolls.

Demented Eidolon
3 pt. Flaw

There’s someone in your head, and it’s not you. Despite your commitment to logic and reason, a mad heretic rants through the inside of your skull, insisting that what you do is magick, not science. This rough voice drives you toward Su­perstitionism and Reality Deviance. Not that you would ever consider such insanity. No, really – seriously, never.

A Flaw for Technocratic operatives and other techno­mancers who refuse to view what they do as “magic,” this Trait pits your conscious-self against an Avatar hell-bent on reclaiming the identity of mage. The Eidolon (Technocrat-ese for Essence) invested within your Genius (Avatar) whips that paragon of Enlightenment into Deviant directions. While most Technocratic Geniuses behave themselves for the most part, this one assumes a flagrantly supernatural mien and batters at the fortress of Reason (and Social Processing) that protects you from Deviant thoughts. It may even be entertaining to have a different player assume the role of your Genius, especially during a Seek… I mean, during one of those meditative interludes which allow you to process the enigmas of Enlightenment. Ideally, this Flaw compliments a Genius (Avatar) Trait rated at 3 or higher, and it goes well (from a “dramatic roleplaying” standpoint, anyway!) with Backgrounds like Past Lives, Destiny, and Legend, Merits like Twin Soul and Avatar Companion, and Flaws like Throwback, and – as one may imagine – Dark Fate.

Devil’s Mark
Vampire:

'''3pt. Flaw'''

Whether product of your Embrace or gained through exposure to infernal or other unholy power, you’ve been branded with the “Devil’s Mark,” an anatomical aber-ration that manifests the taint of the demonic.

Possible deformities include, but are not limited to: bestial or inhuman eyes, hooves, horns, unnaturally colored or scaly skin, a birthmark in the form of a sigil, parasitic in-festation, claws, misshapen teeth. or ineffectual (perhaps additional) limbs. You may never remove or “improve” these disfigurements, although magic or Disciplines can hide them from plain sight.

A Devil’s Mark confers the following mechanical effects: Lower the maximum rating in one Attribute by one (if the maximum rating is 5, it becomes 4), while the cost to raise said Attribute increases by one (1 + the current rating x 4).

If the mark becomes visible or is known to a mortal, it confers a -1 difficulty on Intimidation rolls when dealing with her, but in turn increases the difficulties for all other Social die rolls by one.

Players should work with a Storyteller to determine an appropriate Devil’s Mark, and the Physical Attribute best suited to their mark.

Mage:

1 pt. Flaw

A pact or some other metaphysical occurrence has left you with what old-school witch-hunters consider a “devil’s mark”: a minor but noticeable deformation that remains insensate to pain and yet allows a creature to draw your Quintessence out through your body in physical form. Despite preconceptions, the origins of this mark might not have come from a pact with some infernal entity. That fact doesn’t keep people – Sleepers and otherwise – from looking askance at you if and when this mark can be seen, especially since there’s often something disconcerting about the way it appears – a third nipple, a red or black growth, a vaguely demonic face or sigil embedded in your flesh, and so forth.

Thankfully, you don’t have to worry too much about witch-hunters in the technologically industrialized world. (Other regions are a different story; even rural areas of so-called advanced nations still hold people who will harm or kill someone who’s “different.”) The mark’s disconcerting appearance, though, may lead you to cover it up anyway. Folks who do believe old-fashioned ideas about “witches” will not take kindly to that devilish brand, so it could become a real problem under the wrong circumstances. On the plus side, however, you actually can nurture a Familiar (as in the Background Trait of that name) on the mark, and do so without physical discomfort. Of course, the idea of a talking, midnight-blue winged tarantula taking hits of Quintessence off your body may be uncomfortable in its own right.

Dreadful Mara
'''4pt. Flaw'''

You drank something that still lives within you and hates you, exerting alarming control over your thoughts and actions. Each night, the Storyteller may convert a single rolled success into a 1, potentially leading to a botch.

At the Storyteller’s discretion, the entity may also whisper advice or insults, which can lead to increased difficulty during attempts to concentrate.

Echoes
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

You display some of the weird phenomena associated with sorcery. Maybe the air quivers with strange vibrations, or music plays without a visible source, or shadows gather in your presence. It could be that Resonance has marked you in noticeable ways… or perhaps your own beliefs send out vibrations too strong to ignore. Some curse or blessing might have marked you for favor or damnation.

This Flaw fits in well with certain Backgrounds (Blessing, Destiny, Influence, Totem), and can be used as a simple rule system for Resonance if your group doesn’t want to employ the optional rules associated with that phenomenon.

In this case, one point in the Flaw could reflect a single dot in Resonance, with more points reflecting more points in that Trait. The flaw, under these circumstances, could go up and down; the player, however, gets freebie points only for the level of the Flaw at the beginning of the chronicle, and so the number of freebie points involved does not go up or down unless the character loses the Echoes Flaw completely.

As with other variable-cost Merits and Flaws, the different levels reflect increasing degrees of effect, their specific phenomena depending upon the mage and her overall temperament. The following five-level spectrum could complement the five dots of the Resonance/ Synergy Trait described in Chapters Six and Ten, showing the severity of the effects associated with really high levels of Resonance or Synergy.

1 point: Slight manifestations of no real consequence: perhaps your shadow flickers, milk sours in your presence, or a vague scent that’s appropriate to your nature follows in your wake.

2 points: Mild echoes cause noticeable effects: animals shy away from you or follow you around; you send out vibes that a sensitive person can notice; you feel profoundly uncomfortable around energies, symbols, locations, or people who’re opposed to your kind.

3 points: People who know what to look for recognize you on sight… not simply as a mage, but as the sort of mage you are: plants bloom or wither in your presence; sounds or music echo through the air; holy or unholy symbols repulse you (possibly forcing you to make a Willpower roll to remain nearby).

4 points: You stand out in ways that even Sleepers notice: your shadow moves of its own accord; you don’t cast reflections in mirrors or liquid; cold winds blow even in a still room. People who know traditional folklore might be able to disrupt your magicks if they know the proper legendary precautions to take, essentially performing countermagick with a successful Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty is the targeted mage’s Arete Trait +3).

5 points: Reality shifts when you’re around, rippling with paranormal energies: animals adore you or run away when you approach; people feel sick or energized when you stand near; environmental shifts – rain, cold, shadows, warmth, etc. – radiate outward from you. A person who knows the proper folklore can try to attack or repel you using traditional charms or counterspells, inflicting one lethal health level of damage for each success they win in a contested Willpower roll against you.

Eerie Presence
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Mortals have an unconscious awareness of your undead nature, which makes then anxious and ill at ease in your presence. Because of this, difficulties of all rolls relating to social interaction with mortals are increased by two.

Enemy Brood
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You have made an enemy of another group of Nosferatu. Unlike your usual enemies, they know the places you like to go and aren’t too squeamish about following you there. They keep you on the move, hunting you from sanctuary to sanctuary. The sewers themselves might not even be safe for you anymore. If you move to a new city, they use their contacts to pass on the word to their allies to keep hounding you.

Sooner or later, you are going to have to take them down to rid yourself of them.

Faceless
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You have escaped the tyranny of physical self-identity. Call no face your own. Every sunset, you awaken to a new visage, an amalgam pieced together from memory and dream. Your features, ethnicity, even gender become fluid things while you sleep. While this Flaw exemplifies the extreme ideals of Azi Dahaka (and should impress most Metamorphosists), it can cause complications for vampire concerned with maintaining recognition, reputation, or a mortal alias.

Every sundown, the player rolls one die and is subject to the results on the following table:



This Flaw affects some Backgrounds.

Without a stable face, Alternate Identity and Fame cannot be maintained. Backgrounds like Allies, Contacts, Influence, and Status might be complicated by the lack of a solid identity as well. The vampire can use Malleable Visage and a mirror to reconstruct her true face from memory, but this requires at least three successes at difficulty 8 to make her recognizable, and five successes for a flawless copy.

The Mistaken Identity Flaw cannot be taken. Other Merits/Flaws may be affected, at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Characters must have at least one dot of Vicissitude to take this Flaw.

Fangless
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Considered the mark of a true mongrel, you never developed your fangs, or you lacked teeth before the Embrace. Either way, you have to use a knife or otherwise drink from bleeding wounds. You have no natural way beyond Disciplines to inflict aggravated damage.

Faulty Enhancements
2 to 5 pt. Flaw

Well, crap. The warranty on your cybernetic gear has expired (assuming, of course, that it ever had such assurances in the first place), and now you’re stuck with malfunctioning hardware that has literally gotten under your skin. Does your BCI keep crashing? Do your legs keep seizing up? Is your bioware constantly trying to eject your iron? Whatever the problem might be, this Flaw gets rated by the amount of misery it causes you:

2 points: You suffer constant disorientation and pain.

3 points: The malfunctions keep you in such severe discomfort that you need to take specialized medication, or employ other forms of pain relief, at least once a day. Failure to do so costs you one die from all dice pools until the problem is rectified.

4 points: Your Enhancements fail you at critical times (generally on a botched roll), crash or freeze up, and must then be repaired by a technician who understands the gear you’ve got.

5 points: That shitty gear consistently conks out when you need it most. Roll one die against difficulty 7 whenever you employ cybertech in some important way (lifting heavy things with bionic arms, sensor-scanning for enemies, deflecting incoming enemy spells, and so forth). If you succeed, then the Enhancements function normally; if you fail, they fail and must be rebooted; if you botch, they lock up or shut down until a skilled technician manages to repair them.

Obviously, this Flaw means nothing unless you’ve got the Background: Enhancements. Although such glitches occur with Technocratic bioware, they’re far more common in cybernetics that have been installed by factions whose people haven’t main­tained a systemic and standardized approach to human upgrades for the last few centuries. Wonky Etherites and overambitious Virtual Adepts invent crappy iron all the time, and so this Flaw is especially appropriate for cyborgs from those zealously individ­ualistic Traditions, as well as for ex-Technocrats who’ve managed to go rogue and survive the experience thus far.

Flawed Reality
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your illusions always contain a notable flaw, and as such, are easier to disbelieve. The difficulties of all rolls to disbelieve your illusions are reduced by two.

Forked Tongue
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your tongue is forked, flickering, and inhumanly reptilian. Upholding the Masquerade becomes difficult for you. Note that this tongue does not inflict aggravated damage, nor draw blood.

Gremlin
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

There’s a perverse imp running around your home. Okay, maybe it’s not an actual imp – it could be a malfunctioning robot companion, a vain and selfish bioconstruct, a trouble­some spirit, an obnoxious beast, that talking winged tarantula we mentioned a few entries ago… the form of the creature is unimportant. Like the Flaw: Apprentice, this Trait reflects a companion character who, despite being supposedly on your side, remains a constant pain in your ass.

Originally presented as the adversarial Background for Familiar, this Flaw becomes more significant as the power of the creature, and its attendant nuisance, grows:

1 point: A creature of unusual, but minor, ability, which busies itself with trivial annoyances.

2 points: An entity whose power and intellect (or at least its cunning) make your life frustrating but not actively hazardous.

3 points: A being of notable power whose mischief has begun to shade into actual damage to your property, health, status, and relationships.

4 points: A metaphysical pain in the tuchus whose powers cause lasting harm to you and to the things you consider precious.

5 points: A walking plague of significant power and malignancy. Said critter might not actually mean to be bad, but its effects on your life are inescapably destructive.

As with an Apprentice Flaw, above, you bear a certain amount of responsibility to this creature – it’s not simply your enemy, or even a nemesis, but a being with whom you share a vital bond. Also as per the Apprentice Flaw, your treatment of this “gremlin” (a legendary being that sabotaged airplanes for fun) may reduce or intensify the value of this Flaw. A formerly malignant entity could be tamed and eventually become a Fa­miliar (as in that Background), while a poorly-treated familiar might become a gremlin, and a previously annoying gremlin could be annoyed into becoming a serious threat to the mage and his surroundings. As an optional rule, you might even – with Storyteller approval – be able to purchase the Gremlin Flaw in addition to the Familiar Background, to reflect a helpful yet perpetually troublesome companion.

A gremlin, as with all other Trait-based characters, is an entity in its own right. Chances are good that the trouble it causes for your mage has an understandable foundation – a reason that seems inexplicable to the mage yet remains perfectly reasonable to the gremlin. A mage who explores the reasons behind this misbehavior may calm her temperamental com­panion; then again, an attempt to understand the gremlin’s grudge might only piss it off further…

Grip of the Damned
'''4pt. Flaw'''

There is no ecstasy in your Embrace — only terror and pain. Mortals upon whom you feed struggle and shriek while you attempt to feed, requiring you to grapple with them for as long as you wish to take their blood. For vampires with high Humanity, this experience may require a Humanity roll, at the discretion of the Storyteller.

Giovanni cannot take this Flaw.

Haunted
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You are haunted by an angry and tormented spirit, most likely one of your first victims. This spirit actively attempts to hinder you, especially when feeding, and does its utmost to vent its anguish upon you and anyone in your presence. The Storyteller determines the exact nature of the spirit, its powers, and whether or not it can eventually be laid to rest.

Heartless
'''4pt. Flaw'''

You have lost your heart. Either you removed it via The Heart of Darkness, or an elder did it to you, but either way you no longer have easy access to it. The heart might be in the possession of a foe, or simply missing. If it turns out that a Cainite possesses the heart (say a Setite elder, or your sire) you must obey their every command. If it’s merely missing, the anxiety and obsession to find it interferes with your nightly existence, and may increase the difficulty of Willpower rolls by +1 at Storyteller discretion.

Ignorance
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Many sires abandon their Caitiff progeny without a word of instruction or warning about their new nature. For most Princes, ignorance is no excuse for a breach of the Masquerade, and Sabbat packs are quick to notice weakness.

The character starts with no knowledge of the abilities, customs, or politics of the undead, and must learn from their mistakes or find a mentor. Of course, any vampire willing to take on a Caitiff will most likely blood bond the poor wretch, leading to a completely new set of problems. Ignorance is deadly for a vampire, and doubly so for the Clanless.

Illiterate
'''1-2pt. Flaw'''

Perhaps you communicate best through illustration, dance, or impassioned speech; but you can’t read or write. This is either a temporary Flaw (1pt.) that can be rectified with a patient teacher, or permanent (2pt.) due to a disability inhibiting your understanding. This Flaw is enough to get you ostracized by others of your bloodline (Kiasyd) if you do not conceal it.

Inbred
'''1-5pt. Flaw'''

Inbreeding, a common occurrence among the incestuous Giovanni Clan, can take many forms. The Inbred Flaw covers all manner of physical, mental, and emotional defects.

A one-point Inbreeding is something simple and unobtrusive, such as eyes too close together or an underbite (+1 difficulty on Appearance rolls).

A three-point Inbreeding is more severe: a congenital health condition (for mortals) or a crippling physical deformity (+2 difficulty on appropriate Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina rolls).

Five-point Inbreedings are grossly disabling or emotionally crippling — everything from uselessly atrophied legs to a permanent Derangement — decided on mutually by the player and Storyteller.

Inbred conditions may or may not be immediately discernible, though their point cost should be relative to their magnitude, as decided by the Storyteller.

Incoherent
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Human speech is impossible for you. It might be that your mouth is too misshapen after the Embrace, or that years of living in the sewers have made you forget how to communicate. While you can understand what is being said to you, you cannot respond. Telepathy works on you as normal, and you have no problem communicating with animals, but human speech is barred to you.

Infectious
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Madness flows within your blood, but your bite carries a taint as well. Mortals take a temporary derangement for every three points of blood you take from them. The derangements stay until the mortal restores the lost blood.

Insubordinate
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You like to be in charge so much you have a hard time following anyone else’s orders. When given a plan or told to do something, you tend to do the opposite on principle.

Whenever you are ordered to do something, you must make a Willpower roll with a difficulty depending on the importance of the superior and the danger of the task (difficulty 7 is typical for someone directly above the vampire assigning them a moderately dangerous task). If you fail, you will do anything except what you’ve been told to do.

Jinx /Infernal Contraption
2 to 10 pt. Flaw

Stormbringer. The One Ring. The Monkey’s Paw. Sure, that paranormal doohickey may possess amazing powers, but it’s also a sack of miseries the likes of which few humans can imagine. And you’ve got one. Lucky you…

As with the Background: Wonder, this Trait reflects an uncanny item or device. In this case, however, the “treasure” is more trouble than it’s worth. Perhaps it’s cursed with mis­fortunes, poorly made, haunted by malignant spirits, seething with Paradox emanations, or too experimental for its own good. It could be the earthly form of an unpleasant entity (“I was a thousand times eviler than thou…”), an alien artifact, or the remnant of a culture that passed into dust millennia ago – and good riddance to them! Or maybe it’s simply a truly wondrous treasure that dislikes you personally, like the Sword of Fighting in JourneyQuest. For whatever the reason might be, you own this mystic /hypertech millstone, and can’t easily get rid of it.

Like all variable-point Flaws, the value of this Trait depends upon its ability to screw up your life. In this case, however, the value of the Flaw is deducted from the Background cost of a Wonder. In order to avoid nightmarish catastrophes of math, every two points in the Flaw are worth one dot in the Wonder Background’s cost. That cost, however, cannot drop below one dot (two points), and so any points that get “left over” between the value of the Flaw and the two points in that Wonder are added to the owner’s character sheet, reflecting the proverbial dead albatross around the character’s neck: a mighty burden he can’t just toss away.

For expanded rules regarding Wonders, see the section of that name in Chapter Two, pp. 139-165.

2 points: Your Jinxed item features an annoying drawback that, while not deadly, makes life difficult for the person who owns it. Examples: it attracts ghosts, smells bad, makes irritating sounds at inconvenient times, or radiates a pervasive aura of discomfort.

4 points: The Jinxed item has several annoying drawbacks (as above), or perhaps one or two problematic ones. Examples: It must shed blood each time it’s employed, has a contentious and unpleasant personality, attracts malignant spirits, or tempts the owner to violate her moral code.

6 points: Your item features a host of annoying drawbacks (at least six of them), three or four problematic ones, and /or a major flaw. Exam­ples: The item belongs a powerful paranormal entity that wants it back, it inflicts constant pain on whomever uses it (three bashing health levels per turn of operation), the object radiates an aura of corruption and decay, or it steadily drives its owner toward atrocities.

8 points: In addition to at least six annoying drawbacks and /or five problematic ones, plus two or more major flaws, the item also backfires if you fail a roll of Wits + Esoterica (or Wits + Hypertech, if the item employs advanced technology), against difficulty 7. The Storyteller is encouraged to get creative when deciding how that backfire manifests.

10 points: In addition to the previous level of difficulty, the Storyteller essentially has an open license to make your life difficult in unexpected, creative, and often mysterious ways. Examples: A bloodthirsty cult that’s after the treasure, a demonic entity imprisoned within the item, a cross-dimensional vortex of probability fluxes and quirks of physics that manifest in the object’s vicinity, and so forth.

These flaws, of course, should be based in the nature of the Jinxed item and its relationship to the owner. That said, there’s no reason that a robot can’t be possessed by evil spirits or a primeval artifact can’t be a technological hazard using unknown technology. Stranger things, in Mage, happen all the time.

Kiss of Death
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Should you drain a mortal vessel of all blood minutes after their heart stops beating, the corpse rises as a zombie. These zombies are free-willed, hostile toward you, and cannot be directed without some sorcerous or necromantic means to command them.

Light-Sensitive
'''5pt. Flaw'''

You are even more sensitive to sunlight than other vampires are. Sunlight causes double normal damage, and the light of the moon can cause lethal damage in a manner similar to the sun, though it must shine directly upon you. Even bright lights hurt your eyes, requiring the use of sunglasses.

Followers of Set and related bloodlines cannot take this Flaw, as they already have a worse version of it.

Lightweight
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Shamefully, you cannot imbibe the blood of any creatures other than mortals, ghouls, and vampires. Whenever you attempt to drink from another entity, you’re forced to purge the contents immediately after and gain no sustenance from it.

Locked Vidare
1 pt. Flaw

Mages view the Otherworldly Penumbra through a meta­physical perspective called the Vidare. Most of them can alter that perspective by changing their point of view. Not you. For you, the Periphery remains “locked” into a single perspective: the glittering clarity of the Vidare Astral, the primal luminosity of the Vidare Spiritus, or the rotting deathscape of the Vidare Mortem. Essentially, your metaphysical perspective is frozen in place. This is literally the way you view the world around you, and that view never really changes.

In addition to shaping the way your Storyteller describes the Vidare to you, and guiding your reaction to what you perceive, this Flaw also influences your personality, your sense of fashion, your philosophical and metaphysical paradigms, your magickal focus, and so on. When you perceive things in a certain way, after all, that perspective tends to color most aspects of your life.

Lord of the Flies
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Buzzing harbingers of decay swirl around you everywhere. Their constant presence makes it difficult for you to interact socially (+1 difficulty when appropriate) and nearly impossible to sneak up on someone or hide effectively.

The buzzing of the flies inevitably gives you away — all Stealth rolls are at +2 difficulty.

Lord of the Night
'''3pt. Flaw'''

In your presence lights dim, tiny flames extinguish, and shadows cling to you or languidly move about with a surreal unlife, making it impossible to pass as anything other than inhuman.

The particular shadow you cast is a malicious entity with a will of its own. It lashes out at friends and enemies alike, tearing at the scenery, and snarling at passers-by.

These effects can be suppressed for a scene by spending a point of Willpower.

Lost Svadharma
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You once knew your svadharma, but when the time came to fulfill it, you failed. Now that destiny has passed you by, and there may never be another chance to make it right.

Other Ravnos know the tale, and hold your failure against you. You are scorned, and your confidence has been thrown into doubt. Your total Willpower score is permanently reduced by one and you may not spend Willpower when performing actions where other Ravnos are directly involved.

Mage Blood
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Your blood is so tied to magic that you find you are unable to use any Discipline apart from Thaumaturgy (and for Kindred who are not Tremere, it is still paid for at out-of-Clan rates). While no path or ritual is barred to you, you may not gain any dots in any other Discipline.

Member of the Pack
'''2pt. Flaw'''

You can only summon, speak to, and command a specific type of animal — ravens, rats, and so forth — with Animalism. Your Storyteller is the best adjudicator of what types of animal are appropriate for this Flaw, but the choice should be fairly limiting. Other animals do not respond to your uses of Animalism at all.

Mortal Flashbacks
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Your body remembers your death. Every night when you awaken, you vividly remember the pain of your death wound. The wound reopens during the night and closes itself shortly before you rise. This traumatic reminder of your mortality starts your night off in a bad way.

You lose a point of Willpower each night when you awaken, because of the trauma of dying again.

Multiple Curses
'''3pt. Flaw'''

In addition to the normal curse imposed upon you by your caste or sect, you suffer one additional one associated with the Assamite Clan.

Most likely, you are a rare vizier or sorcerer within the Sabbat who suffers the Baali Curse in addition to your normal caste-imposed curse, but at the Storyteller’s discretion, other combinations may be possible.

Oathbreaker
Mage:

4 pt. Flaw

Sworn oaths are powerful things, especially when magick is involved. And yet, you have broken your vow – not a simple promise, but an oath of serious significance. “I’m sorry” won’t cut it here; you need serious atonement in order to make things right, and until that point, anyone who can read auras or listen to gossip within the proper circles will know you for the faithless swine you are.

A story-based Flaw, Oathbreaker marks your character out as someone who is not to be trusted. People who place great value in honor will shun her, and others will exploit what they consider her generally dishonorable nature. Beyond that, other characters may be hunting her, with the intention of exacting penance or revenge… maybe both! Resonance, Paradox, Seek­ings, and Quiet will reflect the metaphysical dimensions of this broken vow.

Some sort of penance should be available to an oath-break­ing character. She might not know what that atonement is, though, and the quest for such rectification could be the seed for powerful stories (cf. the tragedy of Oedipus Rex). Atonement is rarely a pleasant matter (again, see Oedipus), but the successful performance of such rituals should erase this Flaw… at least until you make and break another promise, that is.

Vampire:

'''2pt. Flaw'''

Making an oath ties one person’s svadharma to another, linking the two spirits until the oath can be fulfilled. With this in mind, a Ravnos never breaks her word once given in good faith, and so long as it was done with proper ceremony.

If the Ravnos spits into her palm and shakes on her word, then the oath cannot be broken without negatively impacting the vampire’s svadharma (or so Ravnos superstition dictates). The oathbreaker will lose her way, falling into vice and worthlessness, until the broken oath can be redeemed.

Anyone who looks at your aura can see a sickly red slash indicating the broken oath. You may not spend Willpower to ignore your Ravnos vice, and you do not gain Willpower from fulfilling your Nature.

Obvious Predator
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your innate Brujah rage always percolates below the surface no matter how hard you try to project an image of calm. Mortals find you intrinsically menacing, and instinctively fear you for the violence you promise to unleash.

System: The difficulty of all Social rolls made against mortals other than Intimidation rolls increases by 2.

Out of Phase
'''2pt. Flaw'''

The character is a little too aware of time and the possibilities surrounding them. People often seem to be in slightly different places, and speech frequently echoes in their ears. They see layers of alternate timelines in too much detail.

Any perception rolls they make are at +2 difficulty, as they try to see past the unreal.

Thousand Meter Killer
'''1pt. Merit'''

You have proven yourself worthy to join the Thousand Meter Club through your remarkable skill with the sniper rifle. The difficulty of all rolls associated with sniping is reduced by -1. You also double the normal range when using a sniper rifle as a weapon.

Outcast
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your have rejected the ethos of the caste into which you were Embraced. Perhaps you are one of the few viziers or sorcerers to support the Web of Knives or pursue the Path of Blood. Perhaps you are a warrior who has little stomach for combat, preferring instead to be a diplomat or a student of the occult. Perhaps you made some kind of public spectacle that revealed your disdain for your fellow caste members.

Your sire now rejects you, as do the other members of your caste. The difficulty of all Social rolls against members of your caste is at +2.

Overstimulated
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Malkavians notice things that many others do not. That means keeping their eyes and ears open far longer than anyone else does. That makes you easily distracted when trying to focus. Take a +2 penalty to all rolls involving Perception.

Paper Trail
'''2pt. Flaw'''

You’ve spent some time in state institutions like prisons or asylums, likely before your Embrace. Most people have some sort of information that relays date of birth and other bits of fact. This information is hard to eliminate, and may endanger the Masquerade.

Enemies with the right influence may be able to track down the information and use it against you. It may lead to vulnerable targets or clue hunters to where your haven is located.

Paranormal Prohibition or Imperative
2 to 8 pt. Flaw

Also known as Geasa and Magical Prohibition or Imper­ative, this Flaw represents a thing you either must do, or are forbidden from doing, on pain of awful consequences. Generally, this imperative comes from an oath you swore, a curse that was inflicted upon you, or a legacy that follows your family lineage. Faerie grudges, infernal pacts, godly inheritances, ancient proph­ecies, Fortean quirks of physics… any one of them can inflict such a burden upon you. So long as you never cross that line, you should be okay – and may, in fact, possess some blessing (a Merit or Background Trait) that’s linked to this Flaw. Ah, but life has a way of pushing us to do things we don’t want to do, and that’s especially true in the case of people who have a curse or geas upon their heads!

The value of this Flaw is based on your chances of vio­lating the prohibition, and the consequences that occur if / when you do:

1 point: You break the prohibition only with an easily avoided circumstance (never kill a cat, go to London, or have sex with a married person), or find it easy to fulfill your imperative (you must shave all your hair off, walk outside every day, or wear blue clothing).

2 points: Your prohibition is easy to break (never tell a lie, leave your home town, or have sex with anyone), or your imperative is challenging to fulfill (you must always cover your head, walk at least three miles every day, or go barefoot at all times).

3 points: It’s very hard to not break your prohibition (never speak, have a home of your own, or fall in love or lust with anyone), or to honor your imperative (you must blindfold yourself every day even though you can see, walk everywhere you go, or remain naked at all times).

The consequences vary depending on the severity of the flaw.

+1 point: Inconvenient consequences – you botch your next three rolls, suffer a migraine, develop a rash for several days, etc.

+2 points: Annoying consequences – you lose your voice for a day, lose a die from all your pools for a week due to constant pain, add +2 to all your social rolls with members of your faction until you can atone from breaking your oath, and so forth.

+3 points: Painful consequences – until you can atone, you go blind or mute, lose one dot from an Attribute, lose an Ally, Mentor, or Familiar, take the Flaw: Oathbreaker (below), or suffer a similarly awful fate.

+4 points: Crippling consequences – until you atone, your Avatar abandons you, you lose a total of three dots from various Attributes, you take the Flaws: Oathbreaker, Deranged or both, or else endure a related punishment.

+5 points: Fatal consequences – either you’re gonna die soon, you’ll be whisked off to an Otherworldly punishment Realm, or both. Atonement, if it’s even possible, will be very harsh, so do NOT break this oath or forsake this imperative!

This Flaw makes an excellent companion to numerous Backgrounds (Familiar, Legend, Past Life, Totem, Wonder, and potentially others at the Storyteller’s discretion) and Merits (pretty much anything, really, depending on how you define the source of that Merit).

Although this does not reduce the cost of that Trait (despite the description of this Flaw in Mage Revised, which employed a complex and potentially abusive rule system that’s not found in other World of Darkness games),  a Prohibition /Imperative can represent vows, obligations, and /or legacies associated with the beneficial Trait. If, for example, Riordan Manseragh were to have sworn a mystic oath in order to win his hawk-spirit familiar, that oath would represent a Paranormal Imperative, with painful consequences (the loss of his Familiar Background) if he breaks his promise.

Your Prohibition /Imperative must be tied in with your character’s backstory, and probably has a connection to all three elements of her magickal focus (paradigm, practice, and instruments). The conditions must be something that could conceivably present an obstacle for your character (no prohibitions, for example, against having sex with Voormas, or imperatives to get out of bed in the morning), and your Story­teller will, of course, make a point of throwing said obstacles in your path at various points during the chronicle. That said, we also urge Storytellers not to abuse this Flaw, or to apply it out of proportion with the points the Flaw is worth.

Although it’s rather unusual, a technomancer could have a metaphysical pact or prohibition too. She may, for instance, need to work on a Mac, employ only steamtech, or invent all of her own technology to avoid suffering some paranormal malaise. Thus, this Flaw is not always “mystical” in nature, even if the line separating mysticism from paranormal phenomena is more a matter of semantics than of metaphysical principles.

Parasitic Infestation
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Living in the dark has made you a home to all manner of creepy crawlies and bloodsuckers. Your skin is crawling with ticks, lice, and leeches of all descriptions. They constantly bite and burrow, and having fed on your vitae, they have become very hard to kill.

Not only can you not command them, you have tried everything to get rid of them and still they persist. Whatever the reason, they find you so succulent they reduce your blood pool by the result dirt on know that you know. It might be that you have discovered the Prince’s haven, or that there are infernalists hiding in the diocese. Whatever it is, you are not sure whom you can tell, and if you do, you will only make the of one die divided by 3 (round down) each time you rise. The constant itch also keeps you on edge, increasing the difficulty of any Self-Control or Instinct rolls by 1.

Permanent Paradox Flaw
2, 4 or 6 pt. Flaw

Following a nasty brush with Paradox, you’re got a Flaw that just won’t go away. System-wise, select a trivial (two points), minor (four points), or significant (six points) Paradox Flaw as described on Mage 20, p. 551. That Flaw is now part of your character’s life until you buy off this Flaw, preferably with ex­perience earned through some extraordinary adventure that’s related to the Paradox Flaw in question and the mishap that created that Flaw in the first place.

Permanent Third Eye
'''2 or 4pt. Flaw; Salubri and Tremere only'''

While most sealed third eyes are visible as a slight scar, yours remains permanently open on your forehead. For 2 points, the eye is merely open, and may be closed for a on a successful Willpower roll (difficulty 6). For 4 points, the eye sheds light, increasing all Stealth difficulties by 2.

Phylactery
7 pt. Flaw

Your magick, perhaps your very soul, resides outside of your physical self. Maybe you’ve placed your soul within a ring, a jar, or a wooden doll in order to protect yourself from possession and control. Or perhaps you believe that your wand, not your Will, is the source of your mystic powers. You could have built a robot as an extension of your Genius, or crafted a jacket into which you’ve instilled the very essence of who you are. The receptacle itself is not important except with regards to its portability. This Flaw reflects the fact that you must have the receptacle before you can employ your Arts. Without it, you’re just another Sleeper.

All told, a phylactery offers a few powerful benefits in ex­change for some pretty significant drawbacks. On the plus side:

Mind 5 /Spirit 5 can place your Awakened consciousness into a new body for you.
 * A phylactery allows you to preserve a part of your con­sciousness outside your mortal body. That body may be destroyed, but your soul and consciousness live on until or unless the phylactery is destroyed. With Mind 4, you can project that consciousness into another body or an astral form, while a character with

vulgar with witnesses. (Yes, the usual Paradox applies.)
 * If the phylactery is taken from you, or you’re taken away from it, you can retrieve it, or return to it, with a successful application of the Correspondence Sphere. The difficulty for this return Effect is 4 if the return would seem coinci­dental to a witness, 5 if it’s vulgar without witnesses, and 6 if it’s

areas, the check-in difficulty may range from 7 to 10.)
 * A living phylactery retains a psychic bond with you, as if you’re in constant empathic and telepathic contact with that character. (No roll necessary.) If the phylactery is a place, then you retain an awareness of that place, and can check in with it by using Perception + Awareness, difficulty 6. (For very large


 * With the addition of the Merit: “Immortal” at the seven-point level, your physical body may continue to survive until the phylactery is destroyed… which, if you don’t mind going without your magick for a while, could render you more or less immune to death if you then hide your phylactery away in a safe location. Traditionally speaking, that’s why many mages make phylacteries in the first place: to preserve their mortal lives indefinitely.


 * So long as your phylactery remains safe and undamaged, you remain immune to Gilgul and other soul-trapping attacks. Your body may be possessed, but your soul cannot be stolen or destroyed unless someone attacks your phylactery instead… in which case you’re screwed, as described below.

Those are the good points. The downsides are as follows:
 * And if you invest your soul into a place, you literally carry the essence of that place within yourself, while a part of you always remains there. For practitioners of certain an­cestral forms of magic (or simply for hardcore romantics), that’s a very powerful reason to do such a thing.


 * If the phylactery gets destroyed, your ability to use magick in this life gets destroyed along with it.


 * You cannot perform magick or recharge your Avatar unless you have some form of physical connection to your phylactery. That form could involve a physical gateway to virtual contact, as with a computer that accesses a mainframe, but you still need that gateway in order to reach a distant phylactery. (Yes, you may use Correspondence Sphere magick to reach the phylactery, and you are always counted as being one success away from your phylactery when you use Correspondence to reach out to it.)


 * If your phylactery is a place, you must be in that place in order to employ the Spheres. If it’s a living thing, then that character has got to be within touching range before you can use the Spheres. (Explains a lot about Blofeld and his cat, doesn’t it?)


 * If you’re using your phylactery to cast magick, you need to be rather obvious about it – shouting commands to your hypertech robot pal, holding your mystic crown aloft, hewing your demonic sword through enemies as you shout invocations to your patron god, that sort of thing.


 * If your Avatar communicates to you through an embod­ied phylactery character, then you need to purchase the Merit: Manifest Avatar to represent the Avatar’s physical form.

Creating a phylactery of this sort demands high-level magick – Correspondence 5 /Prime 5 /Spirit 5 /Mind 4 to be exact, plus Matter 4 to invest one’s self into a material item, Life 5 to invest it into a living thing, and Life 5 /Matter 4 in order to instill it into a place with an active biosphere – a forest or lake, as opposed to a bare room or large metal box.
 * If your phylactery is an item, then it’s considered a unique personalized instrument. It can be broken, stolen or repaired, but cannot be replaced if it’s totally destroyed.

Unless your mage is already a Master of the appropriate Spheres, this Flaw assumes that some stronger power invested (or trapped) your Avatar and consciousness into that phylactery for you. According to some practices, a magical practitioner must create a phylactery in order to use their most potent Arts; although that’s not true in the greater scheme of Mage, that doesn’t mean people don’t still believe that it is.

Plague of Demons
'''4pt. Flaw'''

No matter what, demons are constantly drawn to the Baali. Once in a while, this can be a benefit (Baali with this Flaw are at -1 difficult to summon a particular demon), but most of the time these nefarious spirits are distractions. They scream in the Baali’s ear, tug at her clothes, or screw with her possessions… and always at the worst possible moment.

The character is at +1 difficulty for any rolls involving Perception. Further, once per session, the Storyteller can convert one of the Baali’s dice rolls into a botch.

Primal Marks
3 pt. Flaw

You’ve been marked by some god, spirit, myth, or other metaphysical entity… and the mark is not a pleasant one. Maybe you share Papa Ghede’s nasal voice and crude sense of humor, or Coyote’s grotesquely huge cock, or Christ’s bleeding stigmata. Essentially, this Flaw is the flipside of the Merit: Mark of Favor; in your case, though, the mark complicates your life, twists your body, and alerts people who understand the significance of that mark. In certain circles – say, being marked by Satan while living in a deeply religious region – a Primal Mark can be a life-threatening affair. Such marks can also indicate the profound displeasure of the entity in question, like the Mark of Cain (in a non-vampiric sense, anyway) which set the First Murderer apart while sparing his life for a long-enduring punishment. But even if the entity in question likes you, this particular mark is more of a burden than a blessing. If, for instance, you stink like a goat and have the heavy, hairy features of Pan, that’s not going to make you terribly popular with the ladies… especially not if you’re female to begin with!

Obviously, you should define the appearance of this feature, and decide the sort of reaction people have when they notice it. Because this is a Flaw, of course, that reaction should be negative in some way – the “primal mark of the Jolie-Pitt Clan” is not exactly a Flaw unless you’re dealing with paparazzi. The “mark” could also be a tone of voice, a distinct way of moving (birdlike, catlike, Papa Legba-like), or a certain vibe that nearly anyone can sense. Whatever their source and manifestation, these Primal Marks are obvious, and they tend to carry over even when a mage changes shape. People recognize you even when you’d rather not be recognized, and that sort of distinction can be rather unhealthy too.

This Flaw goes well with Backgrounds like Blessing, Destiny, Legend, Past Lives, and, as suggested earlier, Totem. It could be taken as a genetic Flaw for Enhancements, or as a reflection of an especially potent Avatar. For extra fun, you might not even know why you’ve been so marked, who marked you, or what may come as a result of the mark. As with so many elements of a mage’s life, these Primal Marks could be mysteries whose answers lay at the end of a long and winding Path… if, indeed, those answers ever reveal themselves at all.

Privacy Obsession
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Perhaps it is a trait carried in the blood. Perhaps your strict sire carved this lesson into your mind and flesh. Either way, you carry the Tzimisce respect for privacy to extremes.

You must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 6) to enter another being’s dwelling without being invited, though you can go to fiendishly clever lengths to garner an unwitting invitation. When disturbed in your haven by an uninvited guest, you must make a Self-Control or Instincts roll (difficulty 7) to avoid frenzy.

Private Life
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You have a completely separate life that no other Kindred know about. It may be your mortal family that you have turned into ghouls, or a YouTube channel that you use to talk in metaphor about your frustrations with Kindred society.

If discovered, this could risk other vampires accusing you of breaching the Masquerade (if Camarilla), consorting with humanity instead of being a superior vampire (if Sabbat), or just overall paranoia and suspicion on why you’re keeping such deep secrets.

Prone to Quiet
4 to 5 pt. Flaw

In an effort to avert the inevitable stresses of Awakened life, you tend to drop into metaphysical Quiets more easily than most other mages do. The easier you fall into them, the more this Flaw is worth:

4 points: Quiet is your default Paradox backlash, and so a backlash of five points or more automatically sends you into Quiet.

5 points: Quiet is your default backlash, and you can fall into it even without a Paradox discharge. Roll your Intelligence + Enigmas dice pool when you’re faced with an unusually stressful situation; if you succeed, then you’re able to puzzle your way out of the fall – and if not, well, then, welcome back to Quietville… (The roll’s difficulty ranges from 6 to 10, depending upon the severity of the stress and whether or not you’ve dealt with this particular kind of stress before.)

Although it’s most often noticed in Virtual Adepts and other Netizens, who tend to set off into the Digital Web in order to escape physical unpleasantness, any mage can suffer from this Flaw.

Psychic Vampire
5 pt. Flaw

Also known as the Reaper’s Touch, this dreadful curse makes you a life-force siphon. Your presence consumes vitality from your surroundings and the living things who happen to get too close to you. Unless you do so, however, your own life-force withers. Despite your best intentions, you’re essentially a walking void into which life itself pours in order to sustain your own existence.

Story-wise, you’re a drain on the energy of your compan­ions. Insects and small plants perish in your presence, while children and animals smaller than a horse feel ill when you stand near them. System-wise, any character who’s in physical contact with you for an hour or more loses one health level per hour to bashing damage. If you’re unable to soak up someone else’s life-force, though, then your own vitality drains away. In system terms, you lose health levels in the reverse order that you would heal lethal damage, dropping to Bruised after one day, to Hurt after three days, to Injured after one week, and so on.

If you employ Life Sphere magicks, your difficulties for healing or improvement-type Effects are raised by +2, while your difficulties with corrupting, damage, or illness-related Effects are lowered by -2. (In both cases, the usual maximums and minimums still apply.) Each health level you inflict on someone else with Life Sphere magick heals you of one health level if you’re injured, or else forestalls the “starvation” loss of your own health levels by one day per health level inflicted.

An inversion of the Merit: Spark of Life, this Flaw darkens your aura, makes your blood taste awful as far as vampires are concerned, and keeps your close associates constantly sick with low-level ailments. Life-affirming mages consider this to be a mark of profound misfortune or outright evil, while folks who love corruption (Nephandi and the like) see you as a ripe candidate for recruitment. Mundane science can’t do a damn thing about this metaphysical malady, and dismisses such fluffy concepts as “life-force energies.” The Technocratic Union, on the other hand, takes this sort of thing seriously, and tends to view psychic vampires as Reality Deviants of the most unfortunate kind.

Putrescent
'''4pt. Flaw'''

The supernatural process that usually keeps a vampire’s form from rotting after death has failed to work on you. Your body has become putrescent and fragile as it gradually decays.

All soak rolls you make have their dice pool reduced by 1. You may even lose body parts if you suffer a solid enough blow. Should this happen, make a Stamina roll (difficulty 6) and lose a part of your body (Storyteller’s choice) if you fail. Should you botch, you also receive a level of aggravated damage.

These missing parts may regrow, but your body continues to rot.

Rat in a Cage
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Anytime you are penned in or physically restrained (such as by a cage, or with handcuffs), you suffer acute anxiety. The difficulties of any rolls made under such circumstances are increased by two.

Refined Palate
'''1-3pt. Flaw'''

Many Kiasyd self-impose feeding restrictions: refusing to feed from the poor and diseased, or even those still wearing skin, or over a certain age. This manifests akin to the Ventrue Clan weakness, due to conditioning making any blood outside of the Kiasyd’s preference unpalatable.

The severity of the Flaw depends on how narrow the restriction is.

Repelled by Crosses
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You are repelled by the sight of ordinary crosses, believing them to be symbols of holy might. When confronted by a cross, you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 9) or flee from the symbol for the duration of the scene. If you botch the roll, not only must you attempt to flee, but the touch of the cross can cause aggravated damage (one health level of damage per turn that the cross touches your skin).

This damage cannot be soaked, even if the vampire possesses Fortitude.

Repulsed by Garlic
'''1pt. Flaw'''

You cannot abide garlic, and the smallest whiff of its scent will drive you from a room unless you make a successful Willpower roll (difficulty based on the strength of the odor).

Revenant Weakness
'''3pt. Flaw'''

You were once part of a revenant family. Following the Embrace, you suffered both your Clan’s weakness and your revenant family’s limitation. The Storyteller might let you manifest a weakness from a lost or destroyed revenant line.

This could add mystery to your background and allow for a bit of genealogical detective work, certainly making you a curiosity to the Romanian Legacy Foundation.

Scales
'''1-3pt. Flaw'''

Set blessed you upon your Embrace, and you bear his mark. A portion of your skin is covered in scales.

As a one-point Flaw, a small, easily hidden area of skin is covered. As a two-point Flaw, a whole limb is covered, while having a scaled, lipless face is a three-point Flaw.

Kine are frightened and disturbed by the obviously unnatural scales, and Kindred have their own prejudices against the Setites.

All social rolls receive a +2 difficulty when the scales are visible. This penalty does not apply to social interactions with other Setites.

Shadow Scarred
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Since escaping the Shadowlands, you’ve struggled to reacclimatize to the world of the living. You see ravenous Spectres in every shadow.

You must roll your Courage (difficulty 7) or spend a point of Willpower whenever using Necromancy, as you fear the repercussions of touching the Underworld.

Shadow Walker
'''6pt. Flaw'''

The Giovanni Clan is by its nature inexorably tied to the realm beyond the sudario. Giovanni suffering from this Flaw are so tied to the Shadowlands that even in the lands of the living they must interact with the world of the dead on a nightly basis.

To shadow walkers, objects in the Underworld are as real as anything found in the physical world. Such vampires find that the ghosts of walls may impeded their flight, ghostly objects may strike them, and wraiths’ powers work as if the Kindred were on the far side of the Shroud. This Flaw is similar to the Ash Path power Dead Hand, except that Shadow Walker is always on and it in no way allows the character possessing it to perceive beyond the Shroud.

The Storyteller may determine that certain Shadowlands topography interferes with you. Unless you have some ability to do so, you can’t see into the Shadowlands, so you have to be careful in feeling your way about — essentially, a blind man subject to the Underworld landscape. At the Storyteller’s discretion, immaterial walls or environmental effects may restrict you.

Sphere Inept
6 pt. Flaw

A particular element of Reality eludes you. No matter how devoted you might be to mastering its complexities, this field of magick remains a challenge. Essentially, this is the reverse of the Merit: Sphere Natural, described above; one Sphere costs 130% more (rounded up) to learn than the other Spheres cost.

Again, this Flaw can apply to only one Sphere (fortunately!), and comes through in your practice and backstory. Someone who’s inept at understanding, say, Time will have a very wonky relationship with schedules and timing.

Spirit Magnet
3 to 7 pt. Merit or Flaw

Ephemeral entities flock to your presence. The essence of who you are – benign or malignant – draws spirits to you, and they, in turn, affect the essence of who you are. For the most part, these entities cluster around you in the Penumbra, invisible to mortal perceptions; whenever you cross the Gauntlet, though (either with your perceptions or with your body), they’re waiting for you there. Spirits that can manifest physical forms may come across the Gauntlet to visit you, and those that cannot take on physical bodies still energize the spiritual atmosphere in your vicinity. Whether or not this is a good thing for you depends upon whether you select this Trait as a Merit or a Flaw:

The Merit form of Spirit Magnet draws generally benev­olent spirits – Naturae, Lunes, totem and animal entities of the gentler variety, and so on. These spirits protect you from malignant entities, warn you of impending danger, offer advice, help you out when you visit the Otherworlds, and generally make your life easier. Folks who can sense those spirits (mediums, shamans, med­icine-folk, werecreatures, etc.) tend to favor you; after all, if the better sorts of spirits like you, then you must be someone worth knowing.

The Flaw version represents the presence of malevo­lent spirits – Banes, demons, and other nasty Umbral beasts. Summoned by curses or spiritual corruption, these entities seek to tempt you, poison you, feed off your vitality, and otherwise turn your life into a self-contained Hell On Wheels. Spirit-sensitive folk will avoid you unless they’re into that sort of thing, and werewolves will consider you to be “of the Wyrm” (whatever the hell that means), if only because of the company you keep. Although you might not consider yourself a bad person at heart, your spiritual compan­ions say otherwise!

The value of this Merit of Flaw is, as always, based on how helpful or troublesome the spirits can be, how powerful they are, and how many of them you have to deal with when they appear.

3 points: Minor entities occasionally offer aid or hindrance.

4 points: Minor entities show up frequently, or in small numbers.

5 points: Minor entities surround you often, whether you want them to or not, and more potent ones have taken interest in your existence.

6 points: You have the interest of one or two entities of significance, and plenty of minor ones pay great attention to you.

7 points: You’re never alone, even when you probably wish you could be.

This spiritual companionship could be directly opposed to your true nature. A really awful person might attract be­nevolent entities who want to save her, while a veritable St. Anthony could be plagued with demons intent on fucking up his soul. Even so, such constant presence does have an effect on your overall health. Mind, body, and spirit are interwoven whether we want to recognize that or not, and a mortal who attracts Otherworldly entities has got something unusual going on under the skin.

Stench
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Most Nosferatu pick up a certain odor, but you stink so bad even your Clan-mates find you hard to be close to. Your presence is preceded by your stench, removing two die from all Stealth rolls.

Stigmata
'''2 or 4pt. Flaw'''

Oracles are often marked as messengers of the gods. Your markings come in the forms of phantom wounds that seep blood. The bleeding is slight but incessant, costing you an extra blood point every day just before you wake at dusk.

The 2-point version of this Flaw means wounds that can be easily hidden from prying eyes, such as on the hands or the side. You gain a +1 difficulty to all Social rolls when dealing with someone aware of your condition.

The 4-point version can’t be easily hidden, like bleeding eyes. The Social penalty increases to +2, and one of your Attributes also gains a +1 difficulty to all rolls because of the constant seeping blood.

Stone Tongue
'''3pt. Flaw'''

The transformation of the Embrace didn’t just affect your appearance. It made it physically difficult for you to speak properly and clearly. It may be because of a clumsy tongue, some nasty looking tusks, or a raptor-type beak. No matter the cause, you suffer a +2 difficulty to any Social rolls requiring you to speak.

Strangeness
1 pt. Flaw

Your metaphysical prowess occasionally warps reality in your presence, even when you don’t want it to do so. Weird stuff happens when you’re not expecting such phenomena, and those quirks of strangeness seem to be rooted in the sort of magick you pursue. A specialist in Entropy could suffer twists of probability and decay; a Life-attuned healer discovers odd growths and mutations in the life-forms around him, while a Forces-gifted mage bends the physics in his general vicinity. These phenomena ebb and flow without your guidance or control. Perversely, the more skilled you become in magick, the stronger these tides of weirdness become.

System-wise, the Storyteller determines, once or twice per game session, to roll your Arete against difficulty 6. If the roll succeeds, the Storyteller throws in some random occurrence that’s based on a Sphere you possess – most often, on your Affinity Sphere. Grass could grow suddenly, mirrors could crack, psychic impressions could inform you of the sexual habits of the person standing next to you in the elevator – that sort of thing.

If the roll fails, then nothing unusual occurs. If the roll botches, however, then a Paradox backlash expels one point of Paradox in your current pool for each dot you have in your Affinity Sphere; or all of your current Paradox, if you have fewer points than that in your Paradox pool. (If, as an example, Jinx has three dots in Entropy but only one point of Paradox, the backlash dispels that one point in a backlash.) These small backlashes won’t be terribly damaging, but given the unpredictable nature of this Flaw, they could come at very inconvenient times.

Taint of Corruption
7 pt. Flaw

Evil has an intimate hold on you. Your spirit has been corrupted – possibly since birth, as with the reborn Nephandi known as widderslainte – and you are, as the werewolves put it, “of the Wyrm” whether you wish to be or not. This doesn’t necessarily mean you behave in an evil manner – you can choose to resist the evil inside you. On a metaphysical level, however, you bear an innate corruption which tests the ideal of Enlightened self-determination. You may, perhaps, defeat it, but it’ll be a hard struggle before you do.

From a story perspective, this Flaw could come from de­monic possession, the aftermath of an awful Quiet or a badly botched high-level Seeking, corrupt Resonance, one too many deals with malignant Umbrood, a curse, a vile past life, wicked karma, Nephandic heritage, poor life-choices, the influence of the Wyrm, a collection of tainted texts or artifacts, time spent in a hell, or other forms of metaphysical poison. It almost certainly shapes your magickal focus, and the things you do in pursuit of your magicks (that is, your practices and instruments) may well perpetrate this corruption. (Hey, now, hey now now…) To entities who recognize such soul-stains, you are either a mortal enemy (as far as most werewolves are concerned), an object of pity and potential salvation (the nicer sorts of mages), or – most likely – both. (“Hey, it’s a mercy killing, right?”)

Meanwhile, inside your skin, you wrestle with the urges born from that corruption. Whether or not you give in to them (which would, of course, just deepen the decay), your dreams and impulses hold a distinctly unpleasant edge.

Working malig­nant magick is frighteningly easy for you (-2 to your difficulties, up to the usual modifier limits), but your “good” spells are harder to cast (+2 difficulty, as above) and have a tendency to leave traces of corruption even when you succeed.

Your aura crackles or swirls with leprous stains, and your Merits, Flaws, Backgrounds, and other Traits reflect the damnation you carry inside. A truly epic quest might purge this evil (and buy off this Flaw), but maybe it’s just easier to go with the flow, even if that flow leads you straight into the gutter and beyond…

Thaumaturgically Inept
'''5pt. Flaw'''

Something about you refuses to respond to Thaumaturgy. Magic just doesn’t work for you. You cannot take any ability in the Thaumaturgy Discipline or any of its paths or rituals.

For a Tremere this is doubly difficult, as skill in Thaumaturgy is often the key to position within the Clan. While some willingly choose to ignore their thaumatugical studies and serve in other ways, ineptitude is never excused. Only Tremere can take this Flaw.

The Bard’s Tongue
1 pt. Flaw

A curse has rendered you unable to lie. It may even compel you to speak the truth when you struggle to remain silent. Worse still, you tend to say things that later turn out to be true even if you hadn’t known anything about them at the time. (“Don’t try and score food from that guy over there – he’s got a gun and is having a really bad day.”) You often get a certain “look” when the urge to speak truth comes up, and folks who know you have begun to recognize the signs of a forthcoming “honesty blast” before you even open your mouth.

Life and Mage chronicles are both filled with times when it’s best to keep a lid on the truth. And so, in order to avoid saying speaking the proverbial inconvenient truth (or worse), you need to spend a Willpower point to keep your mouth shut about it. Repressing that truth may also cost you one health level in bashing damage if the truth you’re clamping down on is one of those “things that really must be said” which isn’t a smart thing to say under the circumstances. (“Yeah, Agent Courage, everybody knows you work every angle with every group – that’s not exactly a ‘secret,’ now is it?”)

The Eighth
'''6pt. Flaw'''

Your sire is one of the Seven, the diablerist Golconda-seekers, trying to ensure the spiritual wealth of salvation would never be lost with their Final Death. They sought you as a successor, and proudly prepared you for your sacred duty. You, on the other hand, smiled at their lies, listened to their bullshit, and ran for the hills the first chance you got. You’re constantly hunted, not only by the Tremere, but by your sire, the other Seven, and their various hangers-on.

You must be at least Ninth Generation to take this Flaw.

The Largest Maw
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Due to the size of the Nagaraja’s shark-like rows of teeth, they find it hard to communicate verbally. Instead, she speaks through pools of spit and sometimes bites her own teeth in the process. This makes them quieter than other Nagaraja, but can also affect situations where clear speech is mandatory, such as when giving speeches or reciting delicate rituals.

All difficulties for rolls where speech is a factor are raised by +2.

Throwback
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

Haunted by a past life (often as per the Background Trait of that name, described above), you suffer from awful memories and act out in ways that are, shall we say, not pro­ductive to your current incarnation. Perhaps you still loathe the clergymen who tortured a former “you” for witchcraft 400 years ago; the smell of cooking meat still sends you into panic attacks. Or you’ll get vertigo and acrophobic surges from that time a previous incarnation fell off a castle wall. You may slip into archaic accents, foreign languages, or terminology that is not exactly au courant (or socially acceptable) in today’s world. Flashbacks, time segues, inappropriate behavior – it’s all part of the package in this life you lead today.

For each point in this Flaw, up to a maximum of five points (and dice), the Storyteller will roll one die against difficulty 8 when the potential arises for a past life to affect your present life. The more successes he rolls, the more that past life affects you. The symptoms of this “throwback syndrome” generally depend upon the Storyteller’s whim, but you could collabo­rate with him to hash out a backstory (or several backstories) for the previous incarnations your character recalls, and then roleplay symptoms that seem appropriate to those histories. For especially strong flashbacks (three successes or more), you may need to roll your Willpower (again, difficulty 8) to suppress the reaction to what your character recalls.

Described in Guide to the Traditions as an adversarial Background of Past Life, this Flaw makes a fitting companion to that Background, the Dream Background, and to other Merits and Flaws related to reincarnation (Twin Souls, Shat­tered Avatar, and similar Traits described within this section). With a few appropriate changes to the symptoms, you could also describe the Throwback Flaw as manifestations of a Leg­end Background, or as memories from a life that goes several centuries. You’d rather forget the things you did, and endured, back during the Conquest of the Americas, but you never really can.

Tortured Artist
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Nothing is ever good enough for your work. No matter how much praise is lavished upon you, you can only see the flaws and mistakes. This leads to long periods of ennui, which makes your artistic work irregular at best. Further, you throw yourself into business arrangements and social situations with intensity, which often leads to heartbreak, which leads to the pain and passion that fuels your next work.

You are at +1 difficulty on Social rolls in which you are being praised, complimented, or treated with respect.

Touch of Frost
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Plants wither as you approach and die at your touch. Your touch leeches heat from living beings, as though you were made of ice.

Unblinking
'''1pt. Flaw'''

Your eyes do not close. Ever. Perhaps you have left your humanity too far behind to upkeep such habits, or perhaps you fleshcrafted some form of transparent eye-scale or nictitating membrane.

Your quirk probably makes astute observers uncomfortable, adding +1 to the difficulty of friendly social interactions with humans, Kindred on Humanity, and others with mortal sensibilities.

Uncanny
1 to 5 pt. Flaw

No matter how unobtrusive you try to be, you remain re­markably memorable to anyone who encounters you. You’re the very opposite of “arcane,” which is why this Flaw was originally described as an adversarial Background for the Trait of that name; rather than moving through life with near-invisibility, you stand out like a HIT Mark at a Verbena barbeque.

Why are you memorable, exactly? Is it an inhuman glow behind your eyes? An unsettling tone in your voice? A meta­physical miasma that hangs about you despite your apparently mundane appearance? Does grass grow or die in your shadow? Maybe dogs cower when they sense your approach. There could be a low buzzing in your presence, like a chorus of flies, or a disconcerting crackle of electricity that radiates from your skin, disrupting electrical systems in small but noticeable ways. Whatever it is that causes people to remember you, that facet of your presence is a constant reminder that you are not like other folk.

Once again, the point-value of this Flaw depends upon the extent to which it interferes with your life:

1 point: You stand out in a crowd.

2 points: It’s pretty hard to conceal your oddities.

3 points: People remember you long after you’re gone.

4 points: You creep people out simply by existing.

5 points: You scare people simply by existing.

By its nature, this Flaw represents an unmistakable impres­sion. Each point in this Flaw adds one die to the dice pool of anyone who’s trying to notice you, recognize you, or penetrate your attempts at stealth or concealment. (You didn’t really think those wailing damned souls were gonna shut up just because you were trying to get past the guards, now did you?) You may, however, attempt to cover up your uncanny presence with a roll of Intelligence + Subterfuge, assuming you have a method of doing so – it’s easier to conceal your glowing red eyes with sunglasses than to get those wailing damned souls to piss off for a few minutes! The difficulty of such attempts is generally 5 + the value of your Uncanny Flaw; if, for instance, the clever bioconstruct Victoria Carliotti gets two points in Uncanny for her too-perfect skin, rippling muscles, and impossibly green eyes, her concealment difficulty would be 7. That said, this Flaw does not increase the difficulty of social rolls and may, depending on what you’re trying to do, decrease such difficulties instead (Storyteller’s option).

Despite the potentially grotesque nature of this Flaw, your uncanniness doesn’t necessarily have to mean that your physical features are fearsome in themselves. An inhumanly gorgeous or disturbingly ordinary person can be Uncanny in their own ways. This Flaw makes an excellent companion to a variety of Physical Merits and Flaws – Enchanting Feature, Hyperflexible, Hideous, and so forth – and fits in with Back­grounds like Legend, Past Life or Totem quite well too. (See the appropriate entries for details.)

Although the Flaw: Echoes can manifest similar odd phenomena, this Flaw reflects a constant and recognizable distinction. While it probably embodies certain elements of your metaphysical practices, it’s not tied to your Resonance or activities – it’s an innate part of who you are. Your uncanniness could represent physical features (hulking physique, metallic skin, eyes that reflect eternity, and so forth); metaphysical quirks (an unearthly aura, echoing disembodied voices, a chilling radius around you, etc.); weird companions (a parade of pink-winged kittens, smoldering butterflies, howling coyote spirits, or similar inexplicable critters). Essentially, any sort of localized kink in normalcy’s tail could be considered a sign of your Uncanny nature. By “uncanny,” incidentally, we don’t necessarily mean “supernatural.” The unnatural stillness of a Black Suit, the flawless skin of a Victor, the predatory charisma of a Syndicate “magic man” – they’re all examples of uncannily Enlightened technology.

Uncommon Vitae Preference
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your preferred source for vitae is rarified even by the standards of your Clan, such as “only Korean War vets,” “only Federal Court Judges,” or “only virgins over the age of 40.” The difficulty of all hunting rolls for your character is increased by +2, to a maximum of 9.

Uncontrollable Night Sight
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Your night vision is good, but you can’t turn it off. While you can see easily into the deepest shadows, any light is almost blinding to you. You suffer penalties the brighter the area you are in is lit, inversely proportional to the standard penalties for darkness. Even just standing in a well-lit room is uncomfortable to you.

Unproven
'''3pt. Flaw'''

Somehow, you have failed to prove yourself worthy of the name Lasombra. Maybe your sire did not test you well enough, or an opportunity to prove yourself has not come up. Whatever the reason, you are not truly considered part of the Clan.

All social dealings with other Lasombra suffer a -3 dice penalty. You may also not be chosen to sit in judgment in the Courts of Blood.

Unsanctioned Embrace
'''2pt. Flaw'''

Lazarus decreed no Harbingers should Embrace, but your sire failed to listen. You’re hopelessly green and unworthy of the vitae in your veins. Until you perform acts befitting the nobility of your blood, your existence is shunned as a bad omen.

Increase difficulties of all Social actions involving your bloodline by two.

Vassal of the Clan
'''6pt. Flaw'''

Through natural predisposition or a curse, you bear a permanent one-point blood bond to those one Generation lower, a two-point blood bond with those two Generations lower, and a three-point blood bond to those three or more Generations lower than you within your own Clan.

These blood bonds override any other blood bonds you may earn during play. This can be a great risk for Hand members, as the blood forces allegiances to potentially risky vampires, or worse, to heretical ideologies.

Veiled
5 pt. Flaw

For some reason, you’re not immune to the Delirium. Gifts such as Part the Veil and the Rending of the Veil rite have no effect on you. You do receive a +1 bonus on the Delirium chart (p. 263) and retain all memories of what you see, but the sight of a Garou in Crinos form still invokes some sort of instinctive, uncontrollable reaction in you. This may convince Garou you’re not really Kinfolk, reduce your likelihood of finding a Garou mate, or throw your heritage into question.

Venomous Bite
'''2pt. Flaw'''

You have developed venom glands in the roof of your mouth. The venom is a virulent neurotoxin, fatal to mortals, although Kindred and other supernatural creatures are unaffected by it. You, of course, are immune.

The problem is you have no control over your poison glands. When you bite, you always inject this venom, usually killing your human victims. You must learn to feed in other ways, perhaps drawing the blood you need with a syringe or razor, if you do not wish to kill every time you feed.

Vulnerability
1 to 7 pt. Flaw

Some perilous substance may spell your doom. Thanks to a paranormal weakness – a curse, a Paradox Flaw, a quirk of belief or cultural legends – you suffer extraordinary harm from that malignant material. Perhaps you shrivel up in sunlight, flee from the scent of roses, or melt when obnoxious farm girls throw water in your face. This substance isn’t generally fatal to most folks (Awakened or otherwise), but it’s potential death for you.

Your vulnerability to this substance in question has two potential levels:


 * Weakening, which inflicts one aggravated health level on your character every turn she’s in contact with the substance; and…


 * Mortal peril, which inflicts three aggravated health levels for each turn she’s in contact with the substance.

The value of this Flaw is based upon two factors: How common the fatal substance is, and how badly it affects you:

2 points: You can be mortally wounded by contact with something that’s almost impossible to acquire (the sound of Pan’s pipes, a splinter from the True Cross), or weakened by a very rare substance (a chunk of moon rock, the tooth from an aged lion).

3 points: Mortal injury from a very rare substance, or weakness caused by something that’s relatively scarce and not obviously harmful (saffron, grave dirt, a raven’s feathers).

4 points: Mortal injury from something that’s relatively scarce, or weakness from a common substance (rainwater, silver, a baby’s cry).

5 points: A common substance inflicts mortal injury on you.


 * +1 point: You die instantly upon contact with the substance in question.


 * +1 point: The mere presence of the substance means instant death to you.


 * -1 point: The substance must first inflict damage on you through a typical injury (a stab wound, ingested poison, a silver bullet) before it can harm you.

Damage from this Flaw cannot be soaked unless you’re wearing an appropriate type of armor to prevent exposure to that substance. (Being aggravated damage, it shouldn’t normally be soaked anyhow, but mages have ways of getting around such trivialities.) Your backstory should feature the reason for your potentially fatal vulnerability to this substance. That vulnerability ought to be tied into your magickal focus, too – an Alpha Male tycoon isn’t likely to burn upon contact with holy water, although it might be fun to fling a few dashes of the stuff around Wall Street and find out for sure! (That would certainly explain a few things.)

Wolverine’s Palate
'''3pt. Merit'''

Though many do not know this, the dreaded wolverine is one of only a few creatures in the world that can eat their prey entirely, whether larger or smaller. The Nagaraja with this Merit has the ability to eat bone just as easily as flesh, sapping even more spiritual essence from her victim and converting it to blood points.

With one bite, she can cut through flesh and bone and swallow it all at once with no ill effect. This also means she may gain up to 5 additional blood points from a body by consuming the bones.