Because I can't leave well enough alone with these guys. You can find the original here.
Why am I revising them? Because my first go was really more of a really beefy Supernatural merit, rather than a template. Plus, the first go is too much of an adaptation - I'm going to be putting a bit more of my own stamp on them this time.
So yes - my apologies, Dr. Moran.
What can we say about the Titovs?
We can start with the facts - the Titovs are an old, extended Russian family with ties to Russian organized crime. They seem to have a strange knack for convincing people to do things, and a family history of PTSD. If they called a full family reunion, there'd probably be over a thousand people attending, including people who've married into the bloodline.
Or we could start with the stories. Because rumours have it that the Titovs are witches. Oh, the stories are different - involving anything from Old Scratch to Baba Yaga to modern inventions like Hachishakusama - but they all agree that a long time ago, the Titovs made a deal. More specifically, that deal wasn't with the monster - it was to keep that monster caged. And in exchange, they got magic - no-one's sure exactly how it works, but they always seem to have exactly what they need to convince someone to do anything.
Even if that "thing" is a cure for cancer, or your soulmate.
The Titov Family Magic (• - •••)
Prerequisites: Mortal only, a member of the Titov family.
Effect: You're a member of the Titov family. You can (safely) take part in their rituals to keep their "guest" sealed away, and can use the Titov magic to help yourself. It's simple, really - reflexively spend one Willpower and make your "wish". You may demand benefits from your magic that have an Obstacle equal to or lower than the number of dots you have in this merit.
Drawback: Of course there's a drawback to this. Each time you make a wish, you suffer from [Obstacle] separate and simultaneous Breaking Points. Whenever you suffer a Breaking Point due to one of your wishes, you may ignore it and take the Strained condition.
The Titov Wishes
The Titov have the power to grant wishes - their own, and those of others. Some wishes are harder than others; as such, each wish has an Obstacle that it must meet.
I'm Fine (Obstacle 1) - The Titov may hide her madness with her magic - she may suppress any outward signs of madness or emotional turmoil, negating any appropriate Social penalties for a Scene. As an exception to the normal use of the Titov's magic, she may use this wish without spending Willpower whenever she suffers a Breaking Point.
What I Need (Obstacle 1 or 2) - The Titov may use this wish to twist the world into bringing them what she needs. When making this wish, state a desire - at Obstacle 1, the wish merely assures that she will run into someone or something that can fill that need within the next few days. At Obstacle 2, the wish makes it easier to get what she needs - reduce the Availability by 1, remove one Door in the way of convincing someone to help her, and add one additional Success to any successful roll made to pursue that someone or something. If a person that fulfils the need does not exist within range (or is shielded from this magic in some way), this wish instead defaults to I Need This.
What You Need (Obstacle 1 or 2) - The Titov may use this wish to determine what someone wants. At Obstacle 1, a glance at his face lets her know what she would have to give him to secure his cooperation - if she can get it to him, he gains one Willpower, and treats it as both soft leverage and as if it fulfilled an Aspiration for the purposes of Social Maneuvering. At Obstacle 2, she can hold onto that desire - in addition to the benefits of this wish at Obstacle 1, giving it to him prevents Social Maneuvering from failing due to requiring him to suffer a Breaking Point or rendering one of his Aspirations impossible. More importantly, the next Breaking Point roll he suffers at her request does not happen - her bribe was good enough to literally kill for.
This Is For You (Obstacle 2) - The Titov may make this wish to fill an object with emotional meaning. As a result, anyone who accepts it as a gift gains an appropriate instance of the Strong [Emotion] condition - note that, for the purposes of this wish, she may give "gifts" of things such as hate mail and death threats.
I Need This (Obstacle 3) - The Titov pulls, and the world complies. At it's most basic, this functions like an Obstacle 2 version of What I Need, except that all of the benefits are doubled. However, it can call for people that don't actually exist - the magic of the Titov can create them out of thin air, or out of the earth at their feet. As a rule of thumb, consider people made out of nothing to be Empty; they generally have the Obsession condition concerning what they were created for.
I'm... Normal (Obstacle 3) - The Titov can't really grant this wish - she can't really stop herself from being magic, or from knowing that anyone can be bribed to do... well, anything. But she can try. This wish acts like a powered-up version of I'm Fine - it suppresses any and all pre-existing Conditions she might have related to her mental or emotional state (other than the Strained condition). What's more, she gains Normal as a second Vice, and gains a point of Willpower whenever she completes an Aspiration related to a mundane life. This wish immediately ends if she fails a Breaking Point roll - it's ultimately a lie, after all.
Appropriate Merits
Beyond the core merit of their "template", members of the Titov family may take the following merits:
Dynasty Membership (B&S p. 112)
Special: Members of the Titov family may substitute Status (The Titov Family) for Clan Status for the purposes of this merit.
Eye For Quality (• or ••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic ••, Taste
Effect: Normally, the Titov wishes are somewhat crude - you can get your hands on whatever you need, but it will generally be of average quality. However, you know how to find diamonds in the rough - or, more pertinently, you can wish them up. Whenever you What I Need to locate an object, you may increase the equipment bonus of the item by as much as your dots in this merit. Additionally, you have the 9-again quality on any relevant rolls made with objects enhanced through this merit.
Drawback: Any increases to the equipment bonus you create through this merit also apply to the Obstacle of What I Need.
In Hot Pursuit (••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic ••
Effect: As long as you are under the effects of What I Need, you gain an additional +1 bonus on any relevant roll where you've spent Willpower - this counts as part of the benefits of What I Need for the purposes of I Need This. As long as you are under the effects of I Need This, any roll you spend Willpower to penalize suffers an additional -1 penalty.
Special: If you have a merit that allows you to spend successes to gain a bonus on a particular type of roll, treat that bonus as if it were from spending Willpower.
Letting Off Steam (••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic • or Actively Oblivious
Effect: Whenever you satisfy your Vice, you may choose to reduce the penalty from Strained by one instead of gaining a point of Willpower. If this would reduce the penalty to 0, the Strained condition ends without being resolved.
Market Sense (Here p. 9)
Special: Members of the Titov family may take this merit, substituting their dots in The Titov Family Magic for their (non-existent) Wyrd.
Titov Warden (•)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic •, Occult ••
Effect: Besides your normal ability to make self-serving "wishes", you also know some of the family's secret techniques for keeping spirits and monsters bound. You may use Binding against Horrors. More importantly, you may make an Obstacle 1 wish while attempting to Bind a character to ignore the normal requirement of incorporating that being's Bane into your ritual - this Obstacle increases to 3 if that Bane was unique (or didn't exist in the first place).
Drawback: Unfortunately, using a wish to short-circuit the normal requirements of a Binding links you to the resulting boundary - you suffer a Breaking Point if the boundary is broken prematurely.
Members of the Titov Family start with The Titov Family Magic •, Status (The Titov Family) •, and ten dots of merits. They may select Supernatural merits as if they were a normal mortal - it is quite common for them to have the Cursed merit, and the Aura Reading, Medium, Mind Control, and Object Reading merits aren't unheard of.
Why am I revising them? Because my first go was really more of a really beefy Supernatural merit, rather than a template. Plus, the first go is too much of an adaptation - I'm going to be putting a bit more of my own stamp on them this time.
So yes - my apologies, Dr. Moran.
What can we say about the Titovs?
We can start with the facts - the Titovs are an old, extended Russian family with ties to Russian organized crime. They seem to have a strange knack for convincing people to do things, and a family history of PTSD. If they called a full family reunion, there'd probably be over a thousand people attending, including people who've married into the bloodline.
Or we could start with the stories. Because rumours have it that the Titovs are witches. Oh, the stories are different - involving anything from Old Scratch to Baba Yaga to modern inventions like Hachishakusama - but they all agree that a long time ago, the Titovs made a deal. More specifically, that deal wasn't with the monster - it was to keep that monster caged. And in exchange, they got magic - no-one's sure exactly how it works, but they always seem to have exactly what they need to convince someone to do anything.
Even if that "thing" is a cure for cancer, or your soulmate.
The Titov Family Magic (• - •••)
Prerequisites: Mortal only, a member of the Titov family.
Effect: You're a member of the Titov family. You can (safely) take part in their rituals to keep their "guest" sealed away, and can use the Titov magic to help yourself. It's simple, really - reflexively spend one Willpower and make your "wish". You may demand benefits from your magic that have an Obstacle equal to or lower than the number of dots you have in this merit.
Drawback: Of course there's a drawback to this. Each time you make a wish, you suffer from [Obstacle] separate and simultaneous Breaking Points. Whenever you suffer a Breaking Point due to one of your wishes, you may ignore it and take the Strained condition.
The Titov Wishes
The Titov have the power to grant wishes - their own, and those of others. Some wishes are harder than others; as such, each wish has an Obstacle that it must meet.
I'm Fine (Obstacle 1) - The Titov may hide her madness with her magic - she may suppress any outward signs of madness or emotional turmoil, negating any appropriate Social penalties for a Scene. As an exception to the normal use of the Titov's magic, she may use this wish without spending Willpower whenever she suffers a Breaking Point.
What I Need (Obstacle 1 or 2) - The Titov may use this wish to twist the world into bringing them what she needs. When making this wish, state a desire - at Obstacle 1, the wish merely assures that she will run into someone or something that can fill that need within the next few days. At Obstacle 2, the wish makes it easier to get what she needs - reduce the Availability by 1, remove one Door in the way of convincing someone to help her, and add one additional Success to any successful roll made to pursue that someone or something. If a person that fulfils the need does not exist within range (or is shielded from this magic in some way), this wish instead defaults to I Need This.
What You Need (Obstacle 1 or 2) - The Titov may use this wish to determine what someone wants. At Obstacle 1, a glance at his face lets her know what she would have to give him to secure his cooperation - if she can get it to him, he gains one Willpower, and treats it as both soft leverage and as if it fulfilled an Aspiration for the purposes of Social Maneuvering. At Obstacle 2, she can hold onto that desire - in addition to the benefits of this wish at Obstacle 1, giving it to him prevents Social Maneuvering from failing due to requiring him to suffer a Breaking Point or rendering one of his Aspirations impossible. More importantly, the next Breaking Point roll he suffers at her request does not happen - her bribe was good enough to literally kill for.
This Is For You (Obstacle 2) - The Titov may make this wish to fill an object with emotional meaning. As a result, anyone who accepts it as a gift gains an appropriate instance of the Strong [Emotion] condition - note that, for the purposes of this wish, she may give "gifts" of things such as hate mail and death threats.
I Need This (Obstacle 3) - The Titov pulls, and the world complies. At it's most basic, this functions like an Obstacle 2 version of What I Need, except that all of the benefits are doubled. However, it can call for people that don't actually exist - the magic of the Titov can create them out of thin air, or out of the earth at their feet. As a rule of thumb, consider people made out of nothing to be Empty; they generally have the Obsession condition concerning what they were created for.
I'm... Normal (Obstacle 3) - The Titov can't really grant this wish - she can't really stop herself from being magic, or from knowing that anyone can be bribed to do... well, anything. But she can try. This wish acts like a powered-up version of I'm Fine - it suppresses any and all pre-existing Conditions she might have related to her mental or emotional state (other than the Strained condition). What's more, she gains Normal as a second Vice, and gains a point of Willpower whenever she completes an Aspiration related to a mundane life. This wish immediately ends if she fails a Breaking Point roll - it's ultimately a lie, after all.
Appropriate Merits
Beyond the core merit of their "template", members of the Titov family may take the following merits:
Dynasty Membership (B&S p. 112)
Special: Members of the Titov family may substitute Status (The Titov Family) for Clan Status for the purposes of this merit.
Eye For Quality (• or ••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic ••, Taste
Effect: Normally, the Titov wishes are somewhat crude - you can get your hands on whatever you need, but it will generally be of average quality. However, you know how to find diamonds in the rough - or, more pertinently, you can wish them up. Whenever you What I Need to locate an object, you may increase the equipment bonus of the item by as much as your dots in this merit. Additionally, you have the 9-again quality on any relevant rolls made with objects enhanced through this merit.
Drawback: Any increases to the equipment bonus you create through this merit also apply to the Obstacle of What I Need.
In Hot Pursuit (••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic ••
Effect: As long as you are under the effects of What I Need, you gain an additional +1 bonus on any relevant roll where you've spent Willpower - this counts as part of the benefits of What I Need for the purposes of I Need This. As long as you are under the effects of I Need This, any roll you spend Willpower to penalize suffers an additional -1 penalty.
Special: If you have a merit that allows you to spend successes to gain a bonus on a particular type of roll, treat that bonus as if it were from spending Willpower.
Letting Off Steam (••)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic • or Actively Oblivious
Effect: Whenever you satisfy your Vice, you may choose to reduce the penalty from Strained by one instead of gaining a point of Willpower. If this would reduce the penalty to 0, the Strained condition ends without being resolved.
Market Sense (Here p. 9)
Special: Members of the Titov family may take this merit, substituting their dots in The Titov Family Magic for their (non-existent) Wyrd.
Titov Warden (•)
Prerequisites: The Titov Family Magic •, Occult ••
Effect: Besides your normal ability to make self-serving "wishes", you also know some of the family's secret techniques for keeping spirits and monsters bound. You may use Binding against Horrors. More importantly, you may make an Obstacle 1 wish while attempting to Bind a character to ignore the normal requirement of incorporating that being's Bane into your ritual - this Obstacle increases to 3 if that Bane was unique (or didn't exist in the first place).
Drawback: Unfortunately, using a wish to short-circuit the normal requirements of a Binding links you to the resulting boundary - you suffer a Breaking Point if the boundary is broken prematurely.
Members of the Titov Family start with The Titov Family Magic •, Status (The Titov Family) •, and ten dots of merits. They may select Supernatural merits as if they were a normal mortal - it is quite common for them to have the Cursed merit, and the Aura Reading, Medium, Mind Control, and Object Reading merits aren't unheard of.
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