Essence Drain
Type: P Action: Complex
Range: LOS Duration: Instant
This power allows a critter to permanently take away another being’s Essence and add it to its own. Essence Drain can only target physical, sapient beings (characters and non-astral critters with the Sapience power). The target must be sapient (or achieve sapience) on its own; attempts to use spirit pacts or other methods to imbue mundane critters with Sapience solely for use as a source of Essence do not work.
Essence can’t be drained while the victim is actively, physically resisting. They must either be willing or subdued (restrained, paralyzed, mentally controlled, etc.). Essence transfer can only take place through a strong emotional connection, whether that emotion is passion, anger, or terror. The emotion must also be focused on the critter using the power. Abstract terror is not enough; the victim must be specifically terrified of his attacker in order for the attacker to drain the victim’s Essence. Though there is often a transfer of living material involved in an Essence Drain attack (a vampire drinking his victim’s blood, for instance), nothing but the emotional connection is actually required for this power to work.
Draining a point of Essence takes an Extended Charisma + Magic (10 – target’s Essence, 1 minute) Test. If the critter is disturbed or interrupted before this test ends, the Essence point is not drained. Lost Essence affects a target character’s Magic or Resonance Rating (see Essence, p. 52, CRB). If a target character’s Essence is drained to 0, the character dies.
A critter can only increase its Essence to twice its natural maximum. Any Essence drained beyond this point is lost; the critter’s astral form can only hold so much at a time.
The psychic stimulus of the act of draining has the side effect of creating either agony or euphoria in the victim, depending upon the circumstances of the attack. Willing victims are most likely to feel a sensation of ecstasy, which could be addictive. A willing victim being drained must make a psychological Addiction Test (p. 413, CRB) with a threshold of 2.
A critter that drains Essence can pump their stolen life force into other attributes, including Magic, with a Simple Action. Every point of Essence spent may temporarily boost one Physical or Mental attribute, or Magic, by +1. Multiple points of Essence can be pumped into a single attribute if so desired, but only one point can be used per Simple Action. While more than one attribute may be boosted at a time (for example, Strength and Intuition can both be boosted at once), only one attribute may be so increased per Simple Action. The maximum boost an attribute can receive in this fashion is +4. This attribute boost wears off after 12 hours, and the Essence points used to fuel the boost are lost.
(p396-397 CRB)