Expanded and Homebrew Merits

Expanded Merits

These merits exist across multiple books and are compiled here for convenience.

Esoteric Armory (• to •••••)

Effect: Your character is the go-to guy when one needs a knife carved from the bone of a martyred saint, a hawthorn stake, rock salt shotgun shells, the powdered remains of cremated suicides or any number of other things. No matter how strange the need, you’ve got it covered. After successfully researching an ephemeral entity’s Bane, compare your dots in this Merit to the entity’s Rank. If the merit is equal to or greater than its Rank, you’ve got what you need in your Armory. You should decide along with your Storyteller where the Armory is, though; a one-dot Esoteric Armory can fit in a large bag, but a four- or five-dot one will fill a house.

Forbidden Rites (• to •••••)

Prerequisite: Library (Occult) ••, Ritual Sorcerer, Sorcerous Knowledge •

Effect: Your character has collected details on more rites than he could possibly hope to learn, but with time, effort, and sacrifice, they may still be attempted. Each dot in this Merit is associated with a Closed Rite the character has not learned. Attempting to enact these rites from the available resources is more costly and prone to failure. Performing the ritual requires sacrificing a Relic or Vestige, a human sacrifice, or a fiend’s assistance in addition to any other requirements, and any rolls to perform it suffer a −2 penalty.

Ritual Sorcerer (•••)

Your character has studied the magical secrets of the world, knows of rituals to evoke them, and, with time and effort, can learn them.

Prerequisite: Any Mental Attribute •••, Occult ••• with relevant Specialty.

Effect: The Merit grants Sorcerous Rite slots equal to the character’s Resolve. You may fill one slot with either an Open Rite Mastery or a Closed Rite. Other slots are “open”, waiting to be filled with rites the character encounters during play. Filling a slot costs nothing, but a sorcerer can’t swap a known rite for a new one. Sorcerers may not invent their own rites without the Sorcerous Knowledge Merit.

Sorcerous Knowledge (• to •••••)

Prerequisite: Ritual Sorcerer or Wyrd Sorcery

Effect: Your character intensifies her study of hidden rituals and secret names, acquiring new slots beyond those granted by her Resolve. The slot may be filled with an Open Rite Mastery or Closed Rite. With the Storyteller’s permission, you may invent a new Closed Rite to fill this slot. Slots gained through this Merit are automatically filled, since they represent specific studies. A sorcerer may never have more dots in this Merit than dots in Occult.

Sorcerous Prodigy (•••)

Prerequisite: Ritual Sorcerer or Wyrd Sorcery, Sorcerous Knowledge ••

Effect: Your character learns and masters Open Rites with ease. When filling a Sorcerous Rite slot with an Open Rite Mastery, each slot may hold two Open Rites. Closed Rites still require an entire slot for each one.

Sandglass (••)

Effect: The energy flowing through your character’s soul has sharpened your perception of time. When encountering unusual disruptions in time, such as mirages, time splinters, or supernatural powers altering the temporal flow, your character perceives the distortion through a unique sensation. One feels extreme thirst, while another feels the grit of sand beneath their fingernails. This sense doesn’t tell the character the nature of the disruption, but a successful Wits + Composure roll can lead them to the effect.

The character can try to ‘Feel the Flow’ to see if she senses that she is in an alternative timestream. This requires an instant action and rolling Wits + Composure, comparing the result as below. Characters can attempt this roll even when in a normal time current. Though this can confirm the normal flow of time they don’t gain Timeless Conditions as a result.

Success: The character knows what kind of alternate time flow she is within, but doesn’t feel sufficient affinity to directly influence it. She may spend a point of Willpower to upgrade this success to an exceptional success and gain the relevant Timeless Condition.

Exceptional Success: The character’s consciousness resonates strongly against the altered time flow. She gains the relevant Timeless Condition and possesses the ability to manipulate local time to her advantage.

Failure: The character knows that time moves differently, but she doesn’t know how. She may change this to a dramatic failure and take a Beat.

Dramatic Failure: The character can’t feel any differences to time and is simply another swimmer caught in its currents.

Vestige (• to •••••)

Effect: The character possesses one or more Vestige with combined total ratings equal to the dots in this Merit. Vestiges purchased at character creation through this Merit may resonate with the character’s Anchors, if the player wishes.

New Merits

Archive Initiation (• to •••••)

A splinter of the Scorpion Cult, this organization exists as part of the Library of Congress and has a mission of collecting rare texts, including occult tomes. They believe that by hoarding occult knowledge, they can achieve their rightful place as the power behind the throne.

• Initiates are expected to learn at least one other language, gaining the appropriate Language merit.

•• Members at this level deepen their studies, gaining a specialization in Academics or Occult of their choice.

••• An established member is given greater access to the restricted library, gaining Library (Occult) ••.

•••• An Archive Librarian gains access to the Ritual Sorcery merit and the Closed Rites of the Archive.

••••• The Loremaster gains three merit dots to spend on any combination of Forbidden Rites, Sorcerous Knowledge, or Sorcerous Prodigy.