Auspex

Auspex enhances perception beyond mortal limits and ultimately allows the vampire to perceive across dimensions of reality unavailable to ordinary senses. At high levels it enables telepathy and full astral travel.

Sensory overload risk: Heightened Senses creates vulnerability to sudden stimuli. When using Auspex, bright lights, loud sounds, or overwhelming smells may force a Willpower roll (difficulty 4, rising with intensity) to avoid momentary disorientation.

Auspex vs. Obfuscate: When Auspex and Obfuscate are in direct conflict, compare ratings. If Auspex exceeds Obfuscate: the observing vampire rolls Perception + Awareness, difficulty (7 minus the difference). If Obfuscate exceeds Auspex: the target stays hidden. If equal: resisted roll — Perception + Awareness vs Manipulation + Subterfuge, both difficulty 7. Children and animals are treated as Auspex 1 for contesting Obfuscate.

Auspex vs. Chimerstry: Same mechanic as vs. Obfuscate, but the observer must actively declare the attempt — passive Auspex does not automatically pierce illusions.

Powers

● Heightened Senses

Cost: None | Pool: Automatic; sustained with no roll unless risking detection | Duration: Sustained (toggle)

Double the effective range and clarity of all senses. Perception-based roll difficulties decrease by the vampire’s Auspex rating. At this level, the vampire can:

Hear conversations across rooms
Smell blood in veins through skin
See clearly in near-total darkness
Detect subtle details invisible to normal senses

The Storyteller may roll unmodified Perception + Auspex to detect hidden threats even without the player asking.

Downsides: sudden loud sounds or bright light while active can blind or deafen the vampire for up to an hour. The vampire may not notice they’re being overwhelmed until it’s too late.

●● Aura Perception

Cost: None | Pool: Perception + Empathy, difficulty 8 | Duration: Instant (one reading per subject per scene)

Read the emotional aura that surrounds every living and undead being. Auras are visible as colors and patterns.

Success quality:

1 success: detect a single color/shade
2: identify the dominant emotional tone
3: read shifting patterns and emotional complexity
4: subtle variations and concealed feelings
5: complete aura including contradictions, history, and concealed nature

Aura colors and meanings: Diablerists show black veins in their aura for years after the act. Vampires show a pale cast. Those using magic or Thaumaturgy display shimmering or sparkling overlays. True Faith mortals display a bright silver or golden halo.

●●● Spirit’s Touch

Cost: None | Pool: Perception + Empathy, variable difficulty | Duration: Trance state while active

Touch an object or corpse and read its psychic history — who held it, what they felt, what happened around it. Not perfect recall — impressions, images, emotions, fragments.

Difficulty and success quality:

Diff 5–6 (recent, emotionally charged): basic impression (gender, mood)
Diff 7 (days/weeks old, moderately significant): second and third details
Diff 8 (months old, significant): age, state of mind
Diff 9 (years old, briefly touched): a name, a relationship
Diff 10 (decades old): full reconstruction possible at 5+ successes

Objects connected to intense emotion (murder weapons, cherished heirlooms, places of trauma) read more easily than neutral objects.

●●●● Telepathy

Cost: None (1 Willpower for undead or supernatural targets) | Pool: Intelligence + Subterfuge vs target’s Willpower | Duration: Sustained

Project thoughts into a target’s mind or read their surface and deep thoughts. Layered access by successes:

1: Surface thoughts (what they’re actively thinking right now)
2: Emotions behind the thoughts
3: Short-term memories (last day or so)
4: Deeper memories and long-term concerns
5+: Deep secrets, hidden motivations, suppressed memories

Projecting thoughts to an undead target makes the intrusion obvious — the target knows someone is in their head.

●●●●● Psychic Projection

Cost: 1 Willpower to activate, 1 Willpower per scene to maintain | Pool: Perception + Awareness, difficulty 5 (local), 7 (across city), 9 (another continent) | Duration: Scene by scene

Separate consciousness from body. The vampire’s physical form enters a torpor-like state; a silver cord connects them to the body. The astral form travels at approximately 1,000 mph and can pass through physical matter.

The astral form can:

Use Auspex normally
Manifest physically for 1 turn (costs 1 WP) — solid enough to be seen and interacted with
Use other non-corporeal Disciplines at 3+ successes on activation

Astral combat: Wits replaces Dexterity, Manipulation replaces Strength, Intelligence replaces Stamina. Willpower serves as health levels.

If the silver cord is severed (attacked and damaged while projecting), the vampire may be permanently lost. The body remains in torpor until the vampire returns or is lost.

Elder Powers

Sibyl’s Tongue (●●●●● ●)

Cost: None | Pool: Wits + Investigation, difficulty 8 | Duration: Instant

Malkavian elder power.

Draw an answer from the gestalt-mind of the Malkavian clan — if any Malkavian anywhere knows something, the elder may be able to retrieve it.

The vampire spends a turn focusing on the collective madness, then rolls. On success, each additional success adds clarity to the returned answer. If a Malkavian somewhere knows the answer, it comes back.

Failure: The collective madness overwhelms the vampire. Two derangements (Storyteller’s choice) immediately for the rest of the scene. Botch: One of those derangements becomes permanent (removable only through normal derangement-removal process, not the Malkavian clan weakness process). For particularly dangerous questions, the Storyteller may impose temporary derangements even on success.

Babble (●●●●● ●)

Cost: None | Pool: Automatic | Duration: Sustained

Malkavian elder power. Can be taken as Auspex 6 or Dementation 6.

Link multiple minds into a shared telepathic conference. All linked participants communicate by speaking aloud — what they say is heard directly by all others in the link, at the actual ambient sound level of the speaker’s location (a whisper in a library travels as a whisper; a shout on a dance floor travels as a shout to everyone in the link).

The vampire may link a number of targets equal to their permanent Willpower. Malkavians may extend this to Willpower + Empathy if all subjects possess at least one derangement and do not resist. Malkavians with the Time Specialty may use Awareness instead of the default Telepathy skill.

Seeing the Unseen

Auspex passively makes a vampire more likely to pierce supernatural concealment even when not actively looking. The Storyteller may secretly roll Perception + Auspex when a hidden or illusory threat is present.

Active detection attempts follow the Auspex vs. Obfuscate rules above.