House Rules/Awareness
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Awareness is available to all races. Although some races, justification is required and only approved at staff discretion.
These rules apply to rolling Awareness to detect the use of a supernatural power.
- They apply to anything in the 'Powers' section of a PC's +sheet, as well as magic items in +equip or +notes.
- They do not apply to other uses of supernatural pools (e.g. Garou spending Rage for extra actions).
- They do not apply to other uses of Awareness (e.g. demons rolling Manipulation+Awareness to cast Lore of Firmanent 4).
Contents
When can you roll Awareness?
- Each player with Awareness can roll Perception + Awareness once per effect.
- Players without Awareness cannot roll Perception by itself.
- Because this is a passive roll, players cannot spend Willpower for an automatic success.
- If the effect is an extended action, each core-mechanic roll (e.g. Arete for mages) triggers a check.
- If you don't OOCly know a power was used, staff may do your roll secretly and inform you only if it succeeds.
- Awareness itself is not a power and can not be sensed by Awareness or other powers.
- Awareness can only be rolled when an effect has activated.
- Example: A standing rote that deflects flying anvils does not grant an awareness check. When that same rote actually deflects an anvil, it grants an awareness check.
- Exception: Truly continuous effects don't trigger Awareness except when initiated. This includes effects that alter what others notice, even if observers come and go. (Examples: A vampire uses Obfuscate. A mage uses Life to increase their Strength.)
- An effect that is rolled and fails (including being fully resisted) still counts as 'activated'.
- The resisting effect (if any) also triggers an Awareness check, as it just deflected something.
- Does not include cases where the person is incapacitated first, or otherwise prevented from even trying.
- To roll Awareness, the player must be in the same room as the source or victim of the effect.
- In addition, if they're in different layers of reality (e.g. Shadowlands), the effect must occur in (or cross into) a level of reality that the player can currently see.
- Scrying through time only triggers an Awareness roll if:
- The scry targets you specifically, not just a location you've visited.
- You have at least one dot in Time, Chronos, or another relevant stat at ST discretion.
Difficulties
| Power level | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| 5+ | 4 |
| 4 | 6 |
| 3 | 7 |
| 2 | 9 |
| 1 | 10 |
- Power without an obvious level: Treat as level 1, but discuss with staff afterward
- +1 difficulty if the power is used only for sensing
- -1 difficulty if the power is targeting the player doing the roll
- +2 difficulty if the power is from a different game line than the player doing the roll
- Mortal+ is grouped with the closest supernatural race
- For a kinmage, this affects disciplines, but not spheres or gifts
- +2 difficulty if the power is used to conceal something (e.g. Obfuscate)
- If the final difficulty is greater than 10, the roll automatically fails
Degrees of Success
| Successes | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Gives the player a sense that 'something' has happened, but not what/where/degree of effect. |
| 2 | The player knows what happened, but not where/degree of effect. Examples:
|
| 3 | Player knows what happened/location of the source/and degree of effect.
|
| 4 | Player knows what/where/degree of effect and some extra insight into the power used.
|
| 5 | Player knows what/where/degree of effect and has a full understanding of the result. This is not the same as understanding the power itself.
|
Understanding the nature of powers requires the appropriate Lore at 3.
- e.g. "Bob's mind has been influenced" vs. "Bob's mind has been influenced by a vampire using Dominate"
Timing
- Awareness checks ICly happen at the moment the power is used.
- For extended actions, each core-mechanic roll (e.g. Arete for mages) provides one Awareness check at the end of its duration.
Countermagic (active on-the-fly counter-effects, e.g. mages and some sorcerers)
In combat:
- Counts as a defensive action and happens simultaneously with the 'attack' (similar to physical dodging), regardless of initiative order.
- You can abort-to-countermagic (MtA 154) (similar to abort-to-dodge) if all of the following are true:
- You have a reasonable IC suspicion (via Awareness or otherwise) that hostile magic may be incoming
- You still have an unused action (which gets replaced by the countermagic)
- You satisfy any other relevant requirements (e.g. mage countermagic uses your Arete, and your Arete can only be used once per turn)
Extended actions (usually out of combat):
- Once you have a reasonable IC suspicion (via Awareness or otherwise) that hostile magic may be incoming, you can attempt countermagic once per core-mechanic roll (including the one whose Awareness check gave you that suspicion).
Demons
This partly overrides DtF 172.
- If the demon is in the same room as the source or victim, then use the above rules.
- Otherwise, the demon must be actively trying to sense a power, and must have some idea what they're looking for. ("Someone approaching my house", "someone in town targeting me", "someone doing something in this PRP" are all okay. "Anyone in town doing anything" is not, as it would be impractical to enforce.)
- Ability: Awareness, not Alertness.
- Difficulty: Use the above rules.
- Results: Limited to the chart from DtF 172.
- Range: Up to (demon's Faith) miles (DtF 172) from source or victim.
- Duration: Up to (demon's Faith) hours after the power was used.
Kenning
Kenning may be substituted for Awareness, but at +2 difficulty unless the effect being detected is a cantrip, or fae-adjacent (e.g. Chimerstry, Mytherceria).
Awareness may not be substituted for any of the other things that Kenning does.
