Mental Skills

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Mental Skills

Mental Skills depend almost entirely on specialized knowledge, as well as on the character’s core intellectual gifts.

Academics

Academics reflects understanding, higher education, and ability to research fields within the humanities and the liberal arts. Historical study, for instance, is hardly “just academic” if your immortal enemies lived – and left traces – in that period. When you take this Skill, you get a free specialty. For foreign languages, use the Linguistics Merit (p. 179).

• Basic primary and secondary education; a night class at community college
•• Basic university education or tutelage from a mediocre mentor; a four-year degree.
••• Advanced university education or dedicated personal tuition; an excellent four-year degree, a doctorate.
•••• Advanced specialized study beyond university, learning into subjects few understand.
••••• Refined and advanced scholarship, likely to be sought out for advice and tutelage.

Specialties: Architecture, English Literature, History of Art, History (specific Field or Period), Journalism, Philosophy, Research, Teaching, Theology

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Awareness

Awareness handles your perceptions. You may spot a Child of Haqim before a strike occurs, spy a key dropped in the trash, or sense a lingering perfume.

• You have a history of knowing when something is out of place.
•• You can spot erratic or pattern behavior in an individual.
••• You can see through most disguises and sense concealed dangers or hidden clues.
•••• Even when you are distracted, few things are beyond your notice.
••••• Your senses are those of a wild animal.

Specialties: Ambushes, Camouflage, Concealed Objects, Hearing, Instincts, Smell, Sight, Traps, Wilderness

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Finance

Finance allows you to identify trends in the market, invest well, manipulate stock, and know when a fall is coming. It also allows you to assess – and trace – the wealth of others and broker financial deals. You can generally appraise art, property, or any other noncriminal good. Ventrue value this Skill more than some Disciplines.

• You can run a business and keep books.
•• You can manage a corporate division or bank branch; you file impeccably plausible tax returns.
••• Thanks to international trading, you make a fine broker on foreign stock exchanges.
•••• Investment banks follow your financial lead. You have no trouble concealing fraud.
••••• You can make money do anything, including stick to your pockets – or crash countries.

Specialties: Appraisal, Banking, Black Markets, Corporate Finance, Currency Manipulation, Fine Art, Forensic Accounting, Money Laundering, Stock Market

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Investigation

Intimidation is the power to bully, coerce, threaten, and strongarm your way to a social victory. Vampires who rely on Intimidation do not hesitate to crush the wills – and occasionally the finger bones – of their foes.

• You can cut a scathing insult effectively.
•• You can push your way around most humans without difficulty.
••• Your swagger and your cruel behavior have earned you your reputation.
•••• You're far past mere physical threats.
••••• Even fellow Kindred may step back if you step up.

Specialties: Extortion, Insults, Interrogation, Physical Coercion, Staredowns, Veiled Treats

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Medicine

Leadership grants you the ability to lead a crowd, command a detachment, boost the morale of your supporters, or subdue a riot. A strong Prince or Baron must possess Leadership or risk losing their throne.

• You have led informal clubs before and can organize Kindred of like mind.
•• Your voice makes itself heard in council, and even your superiors sometimes listen.
••• You can command on the battlefield and lead your soldiers into death.
•••• You can inspire the injured and dying to action, so long as you are there to lead them.
••••• Your words fill a vampire’s heart with enough strength to make it feel alive and beating.

Specialties: Command, Inspiration, Oratory, Praxis, Team Dynamics, War Pack

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Occult

Performance covers a range of arts, from dance to poetry and comedy to storytelling. You may be an inspired performer in your own right or simply an enthusiastic student of the arts.

When you take this Skill, you get a free specialty.

• You are the life of the party, but you wouldn’t take your act on stage.
•• You have performed for others, to mixed reviews. Some love you, others hate you.
••• You are an expert student of your chosen performing art.
•••• You perform your practiced art form stunningly, winning over even Toreador far and wide.
••••• Improvisation holds no terrors for you: every night a different audience, every night a different show.

Specialties: Comedy, Dance, Drama, Drums, Guitar, Keyboards, Poetry, Public Speaking, Rap, Singing, Violin, Wind Instruments

In theory, the Storyteller could break these specialties down endlessly – can even a five-dot pop star also perform as a coloratura soprano and a country crooner? But in practice, unless the whole chronicle happens in a musical or theatrical milieu, allow broader specialties.

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Politics

Use Persuasion when trying to convince others that you know what’s best for them, and that one bite won’t hurt at all. Skilled persuaders can play on victims’ emotions and appeal to peers’ reason. Persuasion applies in law courts and princely courts, in boardrooms, barrooms, and bedrooms.

• You can sell to a motivated buyer.
•• You can always swing a discount or get on the inside track of the latest gossip.
••• You can always figure out a compromise in a given conflict.
•••• The other side starts looking for a settlement when they see you in court, human or Kindred.
••••• You may be the original silver-tongued devil.

Specialties: Bargaining, Fast Talk, Interrogation, Legal Argument, Negotiation, Rhetoric

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Science

Streetwise enables characters to talk the language and negotiate the societies of the streets and the underworld. You can understand code words and slang, interpret graffiti tags, and emulate gang signs.

• You know where to score drugs and sex in your domain.
•• You know which gangs operate in the area, including their colors and rivalries. You may have your own graffiti tag.
••• You can tell the good shit from bad, score guns, and blend in seamlessly with street people or gangbangers.
•••• When gangsters say “I know a guy,” you’re who they know.
••••• You can hire, orchestrate, or arrange almost any criminal activity anywhere in your city.

Specialties: Arms Dealing, Black Market, Bribery, Drugs, Fence Stolen Goods, Gangs, Graffiti, Personal Rep, Sex Trade, Urban Survival

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Technology

Subterfuge is the art of lying convincingly, spinning a yarn, and making good excuses for bad actions. This Skill defines your talent for intrigue, secrets, and double-dealing. Subterfuge can also used for seduction and imitating mortal behavior.

• You can tell believable, simple lies.
•• You can hustle naive people, old and young, into giving you their things.
••• You can operate on multiple levels, telling lies intended to be uncovered to bolster other lies.
•••• You can operate endlessly in deep cover: a perfect double agent. Perhaps you are!
••••• Nobody believes you have even a single dot in Subterfuge.

Specialties: Bluff, Feign Mortality, Impeccable Lies, Innocence, The Long Con, Seduction

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Attributes
Attributes:	Physical Attributes ♦ Social Attributes ♦ Mental Attributes
Skills:	Physical Skills ♦ Social Skills ♦ Mental Skills