How should I roleplay Trait levels of 6 or more?

Question

Vampires of 7th or lower Generation may have permanent Trait rating of 6 or higher. It is pretty easy to roleplay physical attributes at such levels -- you are just stronger, or quicker, or your flesh is more resilient to punishment. It is very easy to play any stat mechanically -- 6 is just one die more than 5.

However, I prefer to move the game without actually rolling dice, so the story isn't determined by luck, just keeping character traits in my head and, taking rough estimates of rolls that I calculated by AnyDice into account (sometimes), describe what characters are capabable of doing. And there is a problem when it comes to pretty much all other stats at levels 6+.

Let's say, a character has some experience with guns. He has 4 dots in Firearms, and I tell the player that his character is an experienced sniper. He has 1 dot, and I tell the player that his character was instructed on how to load the gun, but didn't actually have any firefight experience, etc.

What is it to have 6 dots in Empathy? In Survival?

Any Trait at 6 dots means something beyond the ability of a human. How do I describe capabilities of such a character?

The question becomes even more important if one player starts with 7th Generation, which is possible in Dark Ages, however, such powerful characters may enter the chronicle as NPCs at any time.

Answer 1

Having played some, admittedly brief, stories with such powerful characters my best advice would be just to describe these abilities as being alien or otherworldly. Their abilities are all but incomprehensible to mere mortals and they should make people around them feel ill at ease when used obviously.

To some extent it may just seem like they are supernaturally lucky, but in reality they are just incredibly capable and manipulating the odds in their favour.

Here are some examples:

• Firearms — They fire five times and six people fall over.

• Empathy — They walk into a room and can gauge the tone and feelings of every occupant at once. They aren't guessing what each person is feeling, but they know it and can see through any attempt to disguise or hide thoughts and emotions.

• Survival — No matter what environment they are in, they somehow just make do. Do they find shelter? Of course. Do they find sufficient food? Sure, for everyone in the group. Tracks on the ground? It's because 7 people and their dog passed this way 18 hours ago and one of them had a limp.

Once they have a 6 in an ability then it isn't even a question of whether they will succeed at a relevant task (unless opposed by something supernatural), but a question of how much they succeed by.

Answer 2

One way I've seen this done is to essentially count those as always on supernatural powers, especially in the description. A creature with a 6+ Wits isn't just ridiculously clever, he's so on the ball that it might as well be precognition. He's always five moves ahead of a Chess Master.

I can't find the book now, but if memory serves one release of Mage had a sourcebook for epic scale mages like this, and that's how they handled it, they essentially got "free" magic effects that were always on. A 6 stat would give them a free rank 1 effect, no roll, etc.

Answer 3

Attribute and abilities are normally rated on a 1 (poor) to 5 (peak human capacity) scale. Peak human capacity are people such as athletes who win medals at olympian events (Usain Bolt, Ian Thorpe, ...), the once-a-generation genius (Stephen Hawking), master chess players (Garry Kasparov), ...

And now we need to go beyond that. In a very long running chronicle (about a year and a half) of epic scale I played a 6th generation Ravnos. I and some other Elders were sent forth to investigate what the hell happeened in India during the Week of Nightmares. My character had 6 Charisma and 7 Perception.

Charisma has the following descriptions:

4 Exceptional: You have significant personal magnetism.

5 Outstanding: Entire cultures could follow your lead.

So a 6 would be in the line of that you could lead continents if you felt like it. Other examples:

• I was the center of attention for any room I entered (and the talk of that room for the rest of the evening when I left).
• If I talk with you, you will tell me your deepest secrets, because you want me to stay longer.

For Perception we find:

4 Exceptional: Almost nothing evades your notice

5 Outstanding: You instantly observe things almost imperceptible to human senses.

If you want an example of somebody with 5 Perception, go look at the excellent BBC Sherlock series and just see how they show Sherlock noticing stuff. Then extrapolate that to level 7:

• I would notice ambushes from miles away (a pack of werewolves in one case)
• I combed through a burned down haven and found enough information to have a good idea about the events before the fire started (and discovered that the prince had lied about something)
• I could relate modern day events to the Karavalanisha Vrana (epic poem which describes the birth of the Ravnos) which resulted in further understanding of the events that had happened in the Week of Nightmares. This happened while waiting in a hotel for a local contact and watching a Bollywood movie.