“Awareness” is used here as a general umbrella term for Abilities that provide a limited perception of supernatural occurrences nearby. For the Vampire and Mage spheres, this is Awareness; for Werewolf and Fera, it’s Primal-Urge; for Changeling, it’s Kenning. Insofar as the rules below are concerned, all three Abilities work identically.

The core rules generally do not provide much in the way of guidelines for how to use these Abilities, and this has been the cause of much argument. We’ve opted for a specific set of rules that govern their use; this makes them somewhat less flexible, but for a game with very limited Storyteller time, we feel they’re a reasonable compromise.

• Some supernatural powers or abilities may already have specific written rules for their detection. These guidelines for Awareness supplement those rules, rather than replacing them. If you fail to penetrate another character’s Obfuscate using Auspex, you may still sense, via Awareness, that something unusual is going on.
• Nothing below should be construed to alter the workings of any of these Abilities except as specifically concerns perceiving the supernatural. Garou continue to roll Primal-Urge to change form, and so on. Any changes to these base rules for a specific sphere will be found on that sphere’s house-rules page, rather than here.
• Awareness is strictly passive. It does not require the character to take an action to use, and characters cannot use Awareness to actively seek out and identify the supernatural (except where explicitly permitted as part of using some other power to do so). Use of Awareness itself cannot be detected using these rules.
• Awareness has a relatively short range — about 10 yards or meters is as far as most effects are detectable. However, a character who is the target of a supernatural occurrence may roll to see if they detect it even if the person invoking the power is outside normal Awareness range.
• For the purposes of Awareness, “supernatural occurences” include the use of any Disciplines, Thaumaturgy or Necromancy Paths, Thaumaturgy or Necromancy Rituals, Gifts, Rites, Fetishes, Spheres, Blessings, Wonders, Arts, Treasures, or any PC or NPC ability that is not available to a vanilla mortal.
  • If an object of power has mundane functions as well as supernatural abilities, then using their mundane functions is not a “supernatural occurrence”. Shooting a lightning bolt from your magic sword of lightning is supernatural; stabbing someone with it is not (unless, of course, your sword has magical effects when used to stab someone).
• Changing shape or traveling to an Otherworld (the Umbra, the Dreaming, etc.) is considered a supernatural occurrence, even if it does not require any of the above.
• Vampires draining blood is not considered a “supernatural occurrence.”  Vampires using Vitae to increase their Attributes is considered such an occurrence.
• An ability is “in use” if it is being invoked, is having some effect on the world or on the character, or is providing otherwise unavailable information to its user(s).
  • A vampire using Vitae to increase their Attributes is “in use”, but once increased, it is only “in use” when the character is making use of their increased attributes. 
  • A werewolf transforming into Hispo is “in use”, but the mere presence of a werewolf in Hispo is not “in use.” 
  • A mage with a defensive Entropy effect that reduces the effectiveness of attacks against them is not “in use” unless an attack is actually being affected. 
  • A changeling under the effects of Dragon’s Ire 5 counts as “in use” when they are expending successes.
• Effects that are intended to conceal the presence of someone or something count as “in use” only if the person affected is interacting meaningfully with the world around them.
  • A vampire under the effect of Obfuscate 4 walks past someone sitting on a park bench. No Awareness roll is permitted.
  • A mage under an invisibility effect opens the door to someone’s home when the homeowner is present. This counts as “in use.” 
• Awareness cannot sense supernatural occurrences that do not in some way affect the world someone is presently in. If there’s a werewolf in the Umbra nearby and they use a power that affects only the Umbra, someone in the material world will sense nothing with Awareness. Someone else in the Umbra may roll Awareness normally. Any effect that in some way crosses between Otherworlds (e.g., someone in the real world reaching into the Umbra) can be sensed on either side.
• Dice Rolls: If you are rolling dice for something that constitutes a “supernatural occurrence” as defined above, you must roll publicly to ensure that people who might detect it know they have a chance to do so. (It’s okay to use +roll/terse, but you may not roll privately.) If you are rolling Awareness to detect such an occurrence, you need not roll publicly, but must at minimum roll to yourself and the character whose powers use you are attempting to detect.
• Difficulty: The base difficulty of an Awareness roll is 10, modified as detailed below. If circumstances increase the difficulty above 10, the roll cannot be attempted
  • For each dot of a power or level of a Gift used by a particular effect , the difficulty is decreased by 1. If you have five dots in a power but are only using the first, you’re only “using” one dot.
  • Effects from the same sphere (vampires detecting Disciplines, werewolves detecting Gifts) decrease difficulty by 2. “The same sphere” requires that you be able to buy powers specific to that sphere — the “Supernatural Ties” Merit is not sufficient, even if defined as having blood ties to the sphere in question.
  • The difficulty of Awareness rolls is reduced by 2 for powers that are directed at or cause some sort of change in the character attempting to detect them. (Other characters nearby do not benefit from this reduction, unless the power is also affecting them.) Any effect that is capable of determining whether a creature is in some way supernatural is always considered to fall into this category. 
  • A general sensory effect that is not directed at a specific target and affects only the character invoking it increases detection difficulty by 2.
• For example:
  • A vampire gazes deep into a werewolf’s eyes and uses Dominate 1 to tell them to “Flee!”  The werewolf may roll Awareness at difficulty 7 (10, -1 for the first dot of Dominate, -2 because it is directed at them). Anyone else nearby may roll, but at difficulty 9.
  • A mage uses a Prime 5 effect to create a Node at their favorite coffee shop. Anyone with Awareness may roll at difficulty 5 (10, -5 for a 5-dot effect), which is why mages with any sense don’t try to create Nodes at coffee shops.
  • A werewolf activates the Heightened Senses Gift to sharpen their senses supernaturally. No Awareness rolls are possible (10, -1 for a 1-dot effect, +2 for a general sensory effect).
• Success on an Awareness check only tells the character that something strange is going on. It does nothing to abate or nullify the effect, and does not inform the character of the nature of the effect, who the source of the effect is, or who is being targeted. In some cases it may seem self-evident (e.g., there is only one other person nearby), but this remains an IC assumption on the part of the character, which may be mistaken — someone invisible might be nearby, for instance.
  • A character who succeeds on an Awareness check for an effect of which they are a target will realize that they are being targeted. They are still not informed of the nature of the effect or the source of it.
• Generally, the more reasonable and less unusual an effect, the less likely characters who detect it are to associate it with the creepy feeling they’ve just had. If someone uses their powers to make a character jump up and down while flapping their arms and clucking like a chicken, the targeted character is much more likely to assume they were the victim of a supernatural effect than if the same power was used to make them go and get a glass of water — especially if someone asked them politely to do so.