Your psychic has the ability to see into the past. If the roll to activate this power is successful, you are allowed to ask a variable number of questions about a past event based on your successes. The effort suffers a dice penalty based on temporal proximity, and the Storyteller should always roll for the player who uses Postcognition, since the player may be able to deduce when something might have occurred by noting the penalty applied, even if the roll is unsuccessful. Each success on the roll allows the player to ask one question about the past event viewed.

The effort faces additional penalties if the character lacks any sort of sympathetic connection to the scene he wishes to view. If the psychic is present at the location where the past event took place, he suffers no penalty. If he is in the presence of a person who was present at the past event, the player suffers a –2 penalty. If the psychic is in possession of an object that was present at the scene of the past event, he suffers a –4 penalty. At the Storyteller’s discretion, these penalties might be reduced, depending on the situation. For example, if a psychic attempts to view a violent murder by handling the murder weapon, he might suffer only a –2 penalty, while touching the actual murderer could eliminate any penalty.

Example: Detective Halloran, who secretly uses his Postcognition abilities to help him solve crimes, examines a bloody knife used in a brutal homicide. The Storyteller rolls Halloran’s Wits + Occult, applying a –1 penalty (due to the fact that the murder took place more than a day but less than a week ago) and a –2 penalty (for not actually being at the crime scene, but simply holding the murder weapon). The roll yields three successes, and Halloran gets a brief glimpse of the murder itself. His player can ask three questions about the vision. Triggering the vision costs the player one Willpower point.

Psychics with this Merit commonly possess the Precognition Merit, too. If the psychic does have the Precognition Merit, the cost of Postcognition is only one Merit dot. If the psychic acquires the three-dot version of this power, he does not need Precognition as a prerequisite.

Cost: 1 Willpower
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult
Action: Instant

Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
The seer has a wildly false or misleading vision. Since the Storyteller makes the roll on the player’s behalf, allow the player to ask an arbitrary number of questions, say one to three, and invent erroneous or misleading information about the scene observed.

Failure:
Failure indicates that the seer fails to produce a vision.

Success:
The character has a postcognitive vision. The player may ask one question about the vision per success. No more than one successful vision about a specific scene may be had every 24 hours.

Exceptional Success:
Additional successes are their own reward. The Storyteller may point out signifi cant details about which the player does not think to ask.