Tyrant's Gaze

Dominate 7

This power is an unusually aggressive and overt use of Dominate. With it, a Cainite may weaken the mental faculties, social skills or bodily strengths of a target. The use of the power demands eye contact, unless the wielder possesses Command Obedience, but it does not require words.

System: The Player spends a point of blood and chooses which attribute category to affect: Physical, Social or Mental. She then rolls manipulation + Intimidation (difficulty of the target's Willpower). The target may resist with a courage roll (difficulty of the user's willpower). If the players' roll fails, the target becomes aware that the character was trying to affect her. On a botch, the target becomes aware and is immune to any Dominate attempts from the user for the remainder of the night.

For each net success, the victim loses one dot from one of the attributes in the selected category. The loss is spread as equally as possible, with the user deciding where odd successes go. This loss does no affect reflexive rolls (such as soak and many Appearance rolls), as the loss is purely psychological.

Example: Andreas von Mecklenburg of Clan Ventrue finds that a Toreador named Cassandra has been spreading lies about him and decides to teach the upstart a lesson, weakening her social acumen. During the next meeting of the area's prominent Cainites, Andreas makes brief eye contact with his rival and his player rolls Andreas' Charisma + Intimidation (nine dice) against Casandra's Willpower (6), scoring an amazing six successes. Casandra's player resists, rolling Courage (3) against Andreas' impressive Willpower (9), gaining only one success. Andreas has five successes to weaken Casandra's Social Attributes. One must go into each category, and Andreas assigns the remaining two to Manipulation and Appearance. Cassandra suddenly finds herself less able to be charming (reduced Charisma), much less eloquent (reduced Manipulation) and unable to flash her beautiful, winning smile and walk with the dignified grace that was her trademark (reduced Appearance).