Jakob's Touch

By Jay Knioum (madafro@trip.net) for the Jakoba bloodline

* Smell of Blood

This power allows the vampire to sense the flow and nature of a creature's blood. This power can be used to discern whether the creature is a vampire, a living creature, or just plain dead.

System: No Blood expenditure is necessary, but the vampire must roll Perception + Medicine, difficulty 7 to discern the nature of another creature's blood. If the vampire also uses Heightened Senses (Auspex 1), this difficulty drops to 6. The amount of successes indicates the amount of detail the vampire may learn about the target creature, as shown below. The Smell's effective range is no greater than thirty feet, although this may be reduced by factors such as smoke, or crowds.

# Successes	Information Gained
Botch	Wildly inaccurate information is gained
0	No information is gained
1	Whether or not the creature is alive
2	General nature is revealed (normal human, supernatural creature*, undead)
3	Specific nature is revealed (mortal, Garou, vampire, Changeling)
4	The presence of Numina or a Gypsies' Blood Affinities can be detected.
5	A vampires' Blood Weakness may be deduced, as may her Disciplines.

^*Garou (or other Changing Breed), Gypsy, Changeling, Mage, etc. Two successes only reveal the supernatural nature of the creature; they do not reveal the exact type.

** Thirsty Claws

This power enables the Jakoba to grow 4-inch, needle-like claws from her fingers, similar in effect to Protean's Wolf Claws. The claws are straight and hollow, and will enable the Jakoba to drain the blood from any creature that she successfully stabs with them, just as if she had bitten them. However, the Jakoba need only strike the victim; no grappling is necessary. The Thirsty Claws produce the same euphoric feeling that a regular feeding produces, after a small instance of pain.

If the Claws are used as an attack, they will inflict aggravated damage levels equal to the vampire's Strength on a strike. However, they may be used carefully, (as a regular feeding), so that no real damage is done, aside from draining the blood. The rate of blood drain is the same as a normal feeding, for each hand. It is possible to double the rate of draining by injecting the victim with both hands, or to inject two different victims at once. This requires two different attack rolls, of course.

System: The Thirsty Claws cannot be used at the same time as Wolf Claws, but one can be transformed into the other (the claws simply change shape). No roll is necessary to grow the Claws, but one Blood Point must be spent to produce them. The claws take a full turn to sprout.

*** Leech's Bite

This power enables the vampire to produce an anesthetic venom from her Thirsty Claws or her fangs. Basically, any victim stabbed or bitten by the Jakoba's claws or fangs while Leech's Bite is activated will not feel the bite of the attack. This is essential for stealthy feedings. The power also injects the strange ichor into the victim's bloodstream, so that the loss of blood/vitae is not noticed by the victim for up to 10 minutes after the feeding.

System: Again, no roll is required, but the vampire must spend another Blood Point in addition to the point spent to activate Thirsty Claws (if that power is used in the feeding). When used to attack and feed from a victim, the vampire must score at least once success on a Dexterity + Stealth roll, difficulty 6 (8 against those using Auspex, or who possess abnormally acute senses) to effectively feed from the victim completely unnoticed.

**** Bloody Thorns

This strange power allows the Jakoba to insert her Thirsty Claws into a victim, and then jettison the claws, leaving them imbedded in the victim's flesh while she remains at a distance. Through a powerful, magickal bond, the imbedded Thorns will continue to drain blood from the victim, transferring it to the Jakoba, even though she may be up to a mile away!

When combined with Leech's Bite, this power gets especially nasty, as the victim may not notice the thorns' drainage until it is too late.

System: The vampire must spend Blood Points to activate Thirsty Claws (and perhaps Blood Leech if she is so inclined) before using this power. To successfully separate and imbed her Thorns into a victim, the vampire must roll Stamina + Occult, difficulty 7. The number of successes indicates how many Thorns she has left in the victim. Each Thorn drains 1 Blood Point per turn from it's host (no more than 5 or 10 on any one use, unless the vampire has more than ten fingers...).

Of course, the vampire must first successfully strike the victim with her claws to use this power, as handled in levels 2-3 of this Discipline. At the Storyteller's discretion, the vampire may even pluck the Thorns from her fingers and shoot them from a blowgun into her target.

The Thorns will drain blood from the victim until they are removed, or they completely drain the victim of her blood. The Thorns cannot Diablerize a victim, but will fall out and turn to dust when they have drained the last drop of blood.

Finally, the Thorns will fall out and crumble if the distance between them and the Jakoba surpasses one mile. The Jakoba may also end the feeding at any time, destroying the Thorns when she does so.

***** Taste the Essence

The most legendary and feared power of the Jakobas' Discipline, Taste the Essence allows the vampire to steal Disciplines from other vampires temporarily. For every five points worth of Blood a Jakoba drains from another vampire, that Jakoba will steal one level from one of the vampires' Disciplines. The stolen levels will return the next night.

The levels are actually stolen. For example, if a Jakoba steals two levels of Presence from a Ventrue, the Jakoba will be able to use the first two levels of that Discipline, and the Ventrue will not have the use of the highest two levels she would normally possess. This situation will persist until the next dusk, when all Discipline levels will return to their rightful owner.

System: When feeding from a vampire, whether normally or by use of this Discipline, the Jakoba must spend a Willpower point and roll a successful Perception + Occult check, difficulty 8 to steal Disciplines. The stolen Disciplines will be completely random unless the vampire uses (and scores 5 successes on) the first level of Jakob's Touch to divine the victim's Disciplines in advance.