[2ed Homebrew] Mekhet Bloodline

[Horodrigo]

[2ed Homebrew] Mekhet Bloodline

Hello everyone, I'm trying to design a new Mekhet Bloodline for a campaign that I'm currently playing, I'm having some trouble with the fine details, but I think I have a very solid idea of what I want. So, I decided to share some of my notes with you guys, to see if a brainstorm might help me.

The bloodline idea is to get the natural obssession Mekhets have to know things and direct it at knowing everything about someone, to the point of becoming capable to mimic and look like them.

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"I just wanna love, live and die my way. Since I'm dead already. I wanna be even more like the people I loved."

Need to create some stories about other members for this bloodline.

Background: The NameNotDecidedYet are a diverse bunch. It’s not that the bloodlines does not have any parameters for the Embrace. It's just that, their sires tend to choose from people they themselves were obssessed to begin with, and that can be anyone. I'm a way, no single criteria affects how the NameNotDecidedYet select childer. They Embrace based on nothing more than personal whim.

The Becoming: The process of becoming a NameNotDecidedYet is a slow one, the childer spends some good time still being observed and copied by his Sire.

In the Danse Macabre: Need to think how they do politics.

Nickname: Doppelgangers
Clan: Mekhet

Bloodline Bane: Something about being obssessed with another person, but different from the Blood Bond mechanic.
Bloodline Disciplines: Auspex, Celerity, Obfuscate, 4thDiscipline


Bloodline Gift: Copy-cat?

Gift needs to be something that allows them to mimic their obssessions, how they speak, how they move, how they react, almost like looking into a mirror.

[Yossarian]

I feel like Protean would make a good fourth. It's got shapeshifting baked in, and you could do some cool Devotions with Auspex and Obfuscate with regard to mimicry.

For an easy bane, maybe the gain the Daeva curse? Or, since you want it to be less reflective of the blood bond system, perhaps they grow Addicted to the people they feed on. Or the ones they use their mimicry powers on.

[Corrigan]

This is something I used in a different game; I thought might be an interesting bane/power/odd feature for a vampire inclined to mimic others:

Blood taken in will alter the form slightly; Drinking blood from an individual makes incremental changes to the vampire's appearance; a vampire feeding regularly from an individual will, over the course of months, start to resemble the victim. One who drinks from a wide variety of people becomes non-descript -- the literal average of the local human population. Unfortunately, the process is similar for a Kindred who limits themselves to animals -- one who feeds predominately off cattle, for instance, will gradually (over the course of years) start to gain features of cattle – larger ears, coloration, broader and longer face, closely-aligned toes, and so on. Likewise, drinking from a Kindred will effect a transformation rapidly -- the stronger the blood, the more of an effect.

[Live Bait]

Protean Is the obvious 4th discipline but I can also see Dominate working but it takes the bloodline in a certain direction that you might not want.
Bonuses to interacting with your obsession giving 9 or 8 again depending upon how long you have been watching them. This would give them a way to be useful politically.
A weakness that involves them getting lost in another’s identity could work.

[Tessie]

For the Bloodline Gift I'd recommend a series of inexpensive Devotions based on Obfuscate, Protean and Auspex to mimic different aspects of others. The underlying idea is something I'd allow anyone to develop through Devotions (Obfuscate 4+Protean 3 (3-4 XP) to physically take someone's form, and Obfuscate 4+Auspex 4 (4 XP) to mimic someone's mannerisms (or even just Obfuscate 4+Protean 3+Auspex 4 together to do the whole thing (5-6 XP)) so it needs to either have additional advantages and/or be much less expensive to learn and use. One advantage would be to have the Devotions have much lower prereqs, making it much more accessible for this Bloodline.

[DubiousRuffian]

There's a covenant in Danse Macabre where members start to literally turn into their "mentor" figure as they lose Humanity.

The Bane: So maybe the bane is that bloodline members have a "target", and the member takes a number of personality traits equal to the their Humanity's penalty to interacting with humans. So it builds up kind of like the Nos Bane. Or, when losing Humanity or suffering a breaking point, Roll Humanity. On a Failure, take on a personality trait from the "target".

Implementing Traits: I don't know how seriously to implement a personality trait. Maybe it's a behavior enforced by a Condition, modeled after the Dependent Condition. Maybe the traits are literally like additional Banes. Or maybe you represent them as literal changes in character stats. I wouldn't do the last one without a set, quick cooldown though.

The Gift: Maybe the bloodline gift is that the Mekhet gain WP for learning something about the target, or gain a WP when mimicking the target? Or maybe it's the ability to impose different personality traits on a victim - so a Auspex+Dominate devotion? Or, closer to your idea, literally steal stats from the victim - take specialties (with memories), take merits, take dots in skills, take Disciplines/supernatural traits, take attributes (with physical transformation).

[DubiousRuffian]

Sorry for the double post, but I had an idea that I really like. Combine your Bane and Gift. The Bane is that you can ultimately lose yourself and end up like the character Doe. Your Gift is that you can mix and match people's personalities (or even bodies). When you lose some aspect of yourself (with Humanity loss), regaining Humanity only works by replacing what you lost with someone else's. An elder ends up with a fractured, patchwork soul.

Call the gift Copy Cat. For anyone to be on the "receiving" end of the discipline, the "recipient"/victim must have ingested blood from the giver. The discipline has access to a number of people equal to the number of dots in Copy Cat. Copy Cat works over any distance and the effects are relatively quick. For anyone to be on the "receiving" end of the discipline, the "recipient"/victim must have ingested blood from the "giver".

Each dot should probably telescope in effects.