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TALENTS SKILLS KNOWLEDGES |
| Grace - Your ability to function "smoothly" in a social setting. * Novice: Debutante ** Practiced: Senator *** Competent: Hollywood celebrity **** Expert: Public relations director ***** Master: Vampire prince Specialties: First Impressions, Gossip, Rumor Control, Schemes, Veiled Threats and Innuendoes Instruction - You have a knack for imparting information and skills to others. You can explain things and demonstrate techniques in such a way that anyone who listens to you can easily learn. You can teach any of your Skills or Knowledges to another character, but you can never raise a student's score above your own. Every month spent Instructing another character allows the instructor to make a Manipulation + Instruction roll (difficulty of 10 - the Students Intelligence, or 9 - Intelligence if the student has the Merit Quick Learner). Each success on the roll gives the student one experience point to put towards the Skill, Knowledge or Discipline in question. * Novice: Boy Scout merit badge instructor ** Practiced: Elementary school teacher *** Competent: Calculus IV professor **** Expert: World-renowned lecturer in your chosen field ***** Master: Socrates Specialties: Dialects, Lore, Gifted Students, Lecture Interrogation - You are able to extract information from people by fair means or foul. * Novice: Small-town newspaper reporter ** Practiced: Vice cop *** Competent: Psychiatrist **** Expert: KGB "physician" ***** Master: Voivode from the Old World Intuition - The quality that lets some individuals sort clues from a sea of false information and feel with perfect clarity when something is right. * Novice: Your guesses usually point you in the right direction. ** Practiced: Your first answer is usually the best *** Competent: You get a funny feeling when your suspicions are valid **** Expert: You sense what's wrong and who's behind it ***** Master: Your insights come with perfect clarity Specialties: Sense Lies, Gambling, Trouble, Flashes of Inspiration Masquerade - This Talent cannot be taken during character generation, and is available only to vampires. Masquerade reflects how skilled a character is at appearing to be mortal: feigning respiration, creating a heartbeat, producing pink skin (by bringing blood to the surface), sneezing, masking vampiric tendencies, et al. * Novice: You can pass in an unobservant crowd ** Practiced: You can fool a casual observer. *** Competent: You can fool someone who's examining you **** Expert: You can pass a routine physical exam ***** Master: Even the Society of Leopold would think you mortal Specialties: Breathing, Heartbeat, Skin Tone and Warmth, Reflexes and Muscle Twitches, Sexuality Mimicry - You have a very versatile voice, and can imitate accents, people and sometimes other sounds. * Novice: You can passably duplicate a few accents, and can perform impressions of a couple of well-known personalities. ** Practiced: You can duplicate a range of accents well enough to fool anyone but a native speaker, and can convincingly imitate a range of celebrities and others. *** Competent: You could do this on stage. You can pick up someone's vocal mannerisms by studying them for a couple of hours, and subsequently imitate them well enough to fool someone who doesn't know the person well. You can also manage birdcalls and some other natural sounds. **** Expert: You can pass as a native speaker, as long as you have command of a specific language. You can even fake various regional and dialectal accents. You can imitate a specific person well enough to fool someone who is a close acquaintance, as long as they can't see you. You can duplicate a range of animal and technological noises. ***** Master: There is almost no accent, person or animal you can't imitate. With a few hours' study, either of real person or of recordings, you can duplicate their voice and speech patterns well enough to fool their closest friends Specialties: Accents, Celebrities, Birds and Animals, Studied Subjects Style - You may not have been born good-looking, or possessed of a natural charm, but you know how to dress and make the most of your appearance. Note that this Talent only applies to people's reactions to your appearance; once you get closer, it's up to you. * Novice: Good taste ** Practiced: Your friends always take you along for advice when they go shopping *** Competent: You stand out among the sheep **** Expert: Your outfits grace the bodies of magazine fashion models. ***** Master: Your ideas influence international fashion trends Specialties: Classic, Ethnic, Street Fashion, Haute Couture, First Impressions Throwing - You know how to throw things in general, and how to use various types of thrown weapons - anything from spears to hatchets to knives to baseballs (yes, if thrown hard enough, they make fine weapons). * Novice: You sometimes get the ball over home plate. ** Practiced: You were feared in food fights *** Competent: Your squadmates never had to duck when you were on the grenade practice range **** Expert: You can pin an enemy's hand to the wall or make a 70-yard touchdown pass ***** Master: You can pin an enemy's pants to the wall without touching his skin. Specialties: Sports, Specific Projectiles, Trick Shots, Competition Ventriloquism - You have the ability to throw your voice, making to appear to come from somewhere else. This Talent can be used for entertainment - or deception. * Novice: You could do a ventriloquist act at a children's party. ** Practiced: You could get a spot with a local amateur vaudeville club. Someone standing next to you can be made to "speak." *** Competent: You could almost make a living from your talent. You can make someone (or something) within five yards of you appear to speak. **** Expert: You could take your act to Vegas. You can make your voice appear to come from any spot within 30 feet of you. ***** Master: Young hopefuls bombard you with questions, and Variety calls you the savior of a lost vaudeville art. You can make your voice appear to come from anywhere within earshot. Specialties: Distance, Dummy, Other People, Inanimate Objects Hobby Talent - This category encompasses anything that the Storyteller deems to be mainly self-taught and is usually (though not always - e.g. Style) more active than intellectual. Storytellers should first examine the list of existing Talents and Secondary Talents to determine if a particular activity might fall under one of those (for example, Swimming and Climbing would be specialties of Athletics). * Novice: You've dabbled ** Practiced: You've got a good grasp of your hobby's basics *** Competent: Other practitioners regard you as fairly skilled and competent. **** Expert: You are familiar with the subtle nuances and applications of your Talent. ***** Master: You could write a book on what you do. Perhaps you already have... Suggested Hobby Talents: Carousing, Diplomacy, Fortune-Telling, Negotiation, Scrounging |
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