Merits are special capabilities or knacks that add individuality to your character. They’re purchased during character creation or with experience points over the course of your chronicle.
The Merits in this chapter are organized alphabetically into three broad categories: Physical, Mental and Social. Some apply to your character’s basic traits to enhance them in particular situations. Some have prerequisites that must be met before they can be purchased. For example, a character with the Gunslinger Merit must have a Dexterity of 3 and Firearms of 3 or higher to be able to accurately fire two weapons at the same time. By the same token, some Merits apply drawbacks that balance out their inherent advantages. A character with the Fame Merit, for example, is treated like a star wherever he goes — but has a hard time blending into the crowd when he wants to.
Each Merit has a number of dots (•) associated with it. These dots represent the number of points that must be spent to purchase the Merit. Some Merits allow for a range of dots (say, • to •••). These allow you to purchase a low rating if it’s appropriate to your character concept, or you can start with a low level and increase it over time with experience points.
A character is born with some Merits or develops them early in life, while others can be acquired through trail and error, training and effort later in life.
The first kind can be acquired at character creation only and are labeled as such. The second kind can be acquired during play with experience points.
Merit dots must be purchased sequentially with experience points. You have to buy • and then •• before your character can have ••• or more.
Your character possesses an item of power but questionable providence. Though the character may use the item from time to time for an advantage, that advantage always comes at a price. See “Cursed Items,” p.112, for examples of what a character may possess with this Merit.
Your character is remarkably resistant to being Urged, Ridden or Possessed by spirits or ghosts. The character adds two dice to all contested rolls against spirits’ attempts to affect her in that way (or with other forms of mental control), or adds two to her Resistance traits (if subtracted from a spirit’s roll). Whether this is because of a hardening experience in her past or some hereditary predisposition depends on the story.
Drawback: Many spirits are angered by strong resistance and eager to get revenge. Others just want to eliminate such people so they never spawn more. Either way, your character becomes a target once her resistance becomes clear.
Your character knows how to relax and let a spirit or ghost possess her. She forgoes any contesting roll or Resistance trait, and the possession takes place as long as the spirit rolls a single success. Possessing spirits gain full, penalty-free control over the character’s faculties immediately, without any muss or fuss. She remains aware of what is going on during the possession and has a couple of extra options.
She may allow the spirit to continue controlling her body for longer than a scene, if she likes. Or, if displeased as the possession progresses, she may try to eject the spirit. She and the spirit make the normal contested roll they would normally have made during the original possession. Success on the spirit’s part allows it to remain for the rest of the scene, and ties must be rerolled the next turn. The character may only try this once per scene.
Drawback: As a well-trod soul, the character suffers a –2 dice penalty to any contesting rolls or Resistance traits applied to prevent (or end, as above) a possession. She also earns a reputation as “easy” among local spirits, who may seek her out when they need a quick body for something, even if she’s not likely to go willingly.
Your character can be possessed even by spirits that cannot normally use the Possession Numen. All the spirit needs to do is fetter to the character, and then it can possess him for a scene with a contested Power + Finesse versus Resolve + Composure roll. The character can serve as a mouthpiece for spirits too weak to normally interact with the material world on a meaningful level, but also gets sought out by more powerful spirits who would prefer to abuse the character’s ability.
Your character can draw Essence from a locus, an ability normally reserved for spirits, werewolves and some mages. This requires a Morality roll that the character can only attempt once per day. Each success allows the character to draw out one point of Essence, and each point requires one minute of meditative effort. The character still has no ability to store that Essence within himself or use it for any means, but he can channel it to objects or creatures that can (such as spirits or the Cup of Life fetish, see p. 120). If the character somehow has the ability to use Essence, he may bend this Essence to that use immediately (but still cannot store it).
Drawback: Possession of this Merit makes the character a threat to some (endangering their supplies of Essence) and a resource to others (potentially doubling their daily Essence acquisition). If the character isn’t careful with his ability, others may try to eliminate him or use him as a tool.
Strange things happen around your character. This is because, for whatever reason, spirits like his presence. The character might have an emotional resonance that is universally enjoyable for denizens of the Shadow Realm, or maybe they just like your style. The bad news is that spirits tend to flock around the character, making him one of those people who is always in the “right place at the right time” with respect to otherworldly events. The good news is that, as a general rule, the spirits don’t mean the character ill. Unless they get territorial or jealous. The character gains a +1 bonus to Persuasion and Socialize rolls to affect spirits.
Your character releases spirit energy — Essence — into the world when her blood spills. And spirits can sense it. No one has ever been able to explain why to the character’s satisfaction, but it’s true. Because Essence is such a valuable resource to spirits, the character has some measure of influence over them. She can bribe them for information or favors, and all it takes is a splash of blood. Each point of lethal damage the character suffers frees one point of Essence into the air, as long as the injury actually causes blood loss. For the next several turns before the Essence dissipates, any spirit nearby may take an action to consume the Essence.
Drawback: While most spirits would rather preserve a renewable source of Essence, not all are so careful. Some might try to slaughter her all at once when they really, really need the Essence. Others notice her as a resource of their enemies and might decide to make a surgical strike against them (but at her). In short, the character becomes a target or potential possession to those spirits who don’t want to barter with her.
Spirit’s do not like your character’s presence. She might make spirits uncomfortable because of her extraordinary faith (per the Merit’s name) or maybe she has a less earthly reason for disturbing them. A mighty spirit might have blessed or cursed her when she was young, or declared her off-limits to others for inscrutable reasons. Either way, she has a little influence on them, and they don’t like her. She gains a +1 to Intimidate rolls against spirits, and to attempts to abjure or exorcise them from places or human hosts (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, pp. 213–124). They may also be unwilling to harm her or disrupt her life.
Drawback: Some spirits are not unwilling to harm her, and may even see it as a challenge — after all, she has a level of notoriety. She suffers a –1 die penalty to all Expression, Persuasion and Socialize rolls against spirits. A given spirit may be unwilling to involve itself with her at all, which could cause complications.
Your character knows a place where she can ask questions and get information. She has reasonably free access to this place — which may be the urinal in a cathedral, a dank cave in a national park, the manhole that a murderer used to dispose of bodies or nearly anything else — and can occasionally go there to get answers. She does not know what entity she asks.
For each answer the Shadow Contact provides, it asks a price. This price often has some tangential relation to the nature of the question, but may well not. The more urgent or esoteric the question, the stranger and more disturbing the price. Frivolous questions are discouraged by incommensurately outrageous demands. If the character asks whether and why her creepy neighbor is stealing locks of her hair, the voice may request a Barbie doll hanged in a noose made from a young girl’s hair. Asking whether she should change her hairstyle, the entity may demand all the hair shaved from three young girls.
The character only pays the price if the Shadow Contact has the answer. The Storyteller (who likely knows just who or what the Shadow Contact is) may simply decide, or he may roll the character’s rating in the Merit to determine either way.
Drawback: If the character receives an answer from the Shadow Contact, she must pay the price or make the contact reluctant to speak with her. Each time the character fails to give the Shadow Contact its dues, her rating in the Merit drops by one dot. She may purchase greater trust with proper roleplaying and experience points. This will often involve meeting the reneged-upon deal, with interest. If the rating drops below three dots, the contact refuses to speak with her any longer. She must purchase the Merit anew from zero dots, which represents finding a new mysterious font of information — no easy task. Note that the Merit degrades only if the Shadow Contact decides that her payment is officially past due. Clever characters may be able to delay the entity for some time.
Your character owns or can take refuge in a location that spirits have trouble finding. Maybe the location has no reflection in the Shadow Realm or has a peculiar resonance that confounds spirits. The location may have a bad reputation in the spirit world, in a way similar to the worst streets in a mortal city. Whatever the cause, spirits rarely go there and rarely think to go there. The character may hide there with reasonable surety that denizens of the Shadow Realm will not find him. Each dot in this Merit applies a –1 die penalty on spirits’ attempts to track the character to that location or reason out where he might be hiding.
Drawback: This Merit is fragile. When a spirit does manage to find the character in the marked location, word begins to spread. The location’s reputation diminishes, or the presence of a spirit alters the resonance that once kept them away. Each such event reduces the Merit’s rating by one. On the other hand, when something bad does happen to the spirit there — the character manages to discorporate it, or the resonance infects the spirit — such events serve as excellent reason to increase this Merit with experience points.
Your character has a knack for understanding spirits. Perhaps one whispered to his mother as she was pregnant or sang him to sleep (and nightmares) as an infant. Today, even though their alien minds speak human tongues only poorly, the character always understands exactly what the spirit meant to say. This is by no means a conscious process of translation, and the character has no means of more effectively communicating to spirits, just understanding their words. On a mechanical level, the character gains +1 die bonus to use the Empathy Skill on spirits and to use the Subterfuge Skill to detect their lies. The character also ignores penalties based on poor understanding of the spirit’s words.
This is the two-dot version of the Merit, and only available at character creation.
The four-dot version of the Merit does not grant the above. Instead, that version of the Merit makes it possible for the character to piece together and infer meaning from the glossolalia that spirits speak naturally when not forced to communicate with humans. The character may attempt to assemble a rough idea of what a spirit is saying in that tongue with a Wits + Empathy roll at a –3 dice penalty. Other penalties may apply, especially if the speech is hard to hear or the spirit is deliberately being vague or opaque. For characters who possess the two-dot version of Spirit Ear, the four-dot version costs only three dots. Other characters must purchase it at four dots.
Your character has a sixth sense about spirits and the strange phenomena that surround them and their world. Regardless of how much the character knows about the occult or the Shadow Realm (she may know absolutely nothing), she has some instinctual understandings and can often sense when spiritual events are going on around her.
Each dot in this Merit adds a category of phenomenon to those that the character can sense. The character reacts when phenomena of the included sort are present. How the character reacts varies from one to the next. The hairs on her neck may stand up, a chill may run down her spine or anything appropriate.
• The character may sense verges and loci, feeling the emotional weight of the area around her. With an extended Wits + Composure roll, the character may be able to feel what sort of resonance the area has. The number of required successes is equal to 10 minus the locus’s rating, and each roll represents one turn.
•• The character may sense when spiritual Numina or Aspects are used in her vicinity (within 20 feet). This kicks in when the acting spirit or the Numen’s target is in that range, not otherwise. When a Numen or Aspect targets her, she may roll a reflexive Wits + Composure roll at a penalty of the offending spirit’s Finesse rating to get a rough idea of the Numen’s effect. Even on a success, her knowledge is very vague. Only exceptional successes are at all clear.
••• The character may sense when a spirit in Twilight passes within 20 feet of her. She may roll a reflexive Wits + Composure roll to determine the rough direction the spirit is moving and whether it is hurrying. If the spirit is attempting stealth, roll its Finesse as a contested roll.
•••• The character may sense when spirits riding humans or animals pass within 20 feet of her. She may roll a reflexive Wits + Composure roll, contested reflexively by the spirit’s Finesse, to pick out which creature is ridden.
Unseen Sense (Spirits) has a drawback, but only in that characters who act on their subtle impulses can attract unwanted attention from spirits who don’t like to be noticed.