Effect: Your character can hear surface thoughts and read minds. With the five-dot version of this Merit, he can broadcast simple messages to others’ minds. He hears these thoughts as if they were spoken, which means they can sometimes be distracting. He can only hear thoughts at the range he can normal conversation, regardless of any ambient noise (so a telepath can hear the thoughts of someone next to him at a loud concert, even though he can’t actually hear the subject talk, but cannot hear the thoughts of someone a football field away under quiet conditions).
Spend a point of Willpower to activate Telepathy, and roll Wits + Empathy, minus the subject’s Resolve if the subject is unwilling. If successful, the subject’s player must tell you the foremost thought on the character’s mind. Additional successes allow you to ask the subject’s player additional questions from the following list. The questions can be asked at any time within the same scene. With the five-dot version, every success offers a single phrase the subject hears as if your character said it. As before, these phrases can be communicated at any time during the same scene.
• What does your character want right now?
• What does your character fear most right now?
• What is your character hiding?
• What does your character want mine to do?
• What does your character know about [relevant topic at hand]?
• What turns your character on right now?
• What’s something shameful or embarrassing about your character?
Drawback: Sometimes your character hears things he probably shouldn’t. Once per chapter, the Storyteller can give your character a message of terrible things to come. Perhaps he overhears the mad, internal ramblings of a cultist in a crowd. Maybe he hears a plot to hijack a plane. Maybe, just maybe, he hears the incoherent thoughts of the God- Machine. These heard thoughts never just occur. They always happen when your character has something else, something important and pressing going on. When this happens, the Storyteller gives you a Condition such as Spooked or Shaken.