Dominate V5

Dominate

Known to Clans

Lasombra, Malkavian, Tremere, Tzimisce and Ventrue

Nicknames

Snake Charming, Mesmerism, Mentis Imperium

Type

Mental

Blood Resonance

Phlegmatic

Dominate

Masquerade Threat

Low. Barring someone Dominating an entire auditorium to jump off the cliffs of Dover, it remains one of the more subtle vampiric powers.

About Dominate

Dominate grants the vampire the ability to control the actions of others, manipulate their memories, and force living creatures into acts they would not perform of their own volition. At its most basic, Dominate enables a vampire to make a victim forget the feed they just endured or enjoyed. At its most dangerous, it allows Kindred to enslave entire crowds of kine. This is the Beast at its most cruel and controlling.

Dominate acts as a bludgeon to enforce the Masquerade, create submissive servants, and reinforce the self-assuredness of the vampire. When using this Discipline, Kindred feel omnipotent, although the wisest of them know that this too may be shackles of a kind, slipped upon them by the Blood.

Characteristics

Most Dominate powers require eye contact with the victim. Once they establish contact, Dominate holds the gaze of the victim until the user conveys their command or commands, barring interference. Catching the eyes of someone actively attempting to avoid the vampire’s gaze requires a contest of the user’s Resolve + Intimidation vs the target’s Wits + Awareness. It is of course impossible to catch the eyes of someone squeezing their eyes shut or wearing a blindfold, but that person should be easy prey to other tactics.

Using Dominate in combat or in other frantic situations is limited to people attacking or otherwise interacting with the user directly, as everyone else’s attention is firmly focused on their own peril. Unless the user has supernatural means such as Telepathy (Auspex 5) at their disposal, they must command the victim verbally. The victim must be able to hear the user and understand their language. Without Terminal Decree (Dominate 5), commands resulting in obvious death or serious injury fail automatically. Subjects roll to resist commands resulting in other social or physical harm (such as un-dressing in public), commands that have a character go against their Convictions, and those that would have negative effects towards their Touchstones or their relationship with them. See individual powers for details. Vampires cannot use Dominate to extract information, as the victim becomes a mindless puppet while under its influence. For example, the Compel command “Speak” results in blabbering word salad, while someone Mesmerized to “tell what you know about the assassin” responds “what you know about the assassin.” Dominate can¬not make subjects do something they could not do on command, such as “Sleep.” Ultimately, the Storyteller determines what the Discipline can accomplish, but they should take care that Dominate remains one Discipline of many, rather than the catch-all solution to every problem. Dominate cuts to the core of vampiric mastery and predation. Thus, vampires must resist attempts to Dominate them. A vampire of lower (stronger) generation can resist Dominate attempts from higher generation vampires by spending a Willpower point, negating the effect completely.

On a total failure on the roll of any Dominate power, that vampire can no longer Dominate that target for the rest of the story.
Dominate threatens Humanity, especially if the vampire has any Principles involving personal freedom or forbidding violations of human integrity. Using it may incur Stains.

Powers

• 
  • Cloud Memory: The vampire can make the target forget the past few minutes.
  • Compel: The vampire can issue a short sentance command to the target.​​

• 
  • Mesmerize: The vampire can issue a longer more complicated command to the target.
  • Dementation: Amalgam Obfuscate 2. The vampire can trigger psychotic breaks or nervous breakdowns. 
  • Domitor's Favour: Those Blood Bound to the Vampire find it impossible to defy their orders.

• 
  • The Forgetful Mind: The vampire can rewrite previous memories in the target.
  • Submerged Directive: The vampire can use Mesmerize to embed delayed or triggered commands.

• 
  • Rationalize: The vampire can make victims of their Dominate powers internalize the commands and not realize they were compelled. 

• 
  • Mass Manipulation: The vampire can amplify their other Dominate abilities to affect greater numbers at the same time.
  • Terminal Decree: The vampire can now issue commands that are deadly or harmful to their targets.