Merit
Cost: • to •••••
Prerequisites:
- None
This Merit gives your character a teacher who provides advice and guidance.
He acts on your character’s behalf, often in the background and sometimes without your character’s knowledge. While Mentors can be highly competent, they almost always want something in return for their services. The dot rating determines the Mentor’s capabilities, and to what extent he’ll aid your character.
When establishing a Mentor, determine what the Mentor wants from your character. This should be personally important to him, and it should reflect on the dot rating chosen.
A one dot Mentor might just be an old bookworm interested in the occasional coffee chat about academic topics. A five-dot Mentor would want something astronomical, such as an oath to procure an ancient, cursed Artifact that may or may not exist, in order to prevent a prophesized death.
Choose three Skills the Mentor possesses. You can substitute Resources for one of these Skills. Once per session, the character may ask her Mentor for a favour. The favour must involve one of those Skills or be within the scope of his Resources.
The Mentor commits to the favour (often asking for a commensurate favour in return); if a roll is required, the Mentor is automatically considered to have successes equal to his dot rating. Alternately, the player may ask the Storyteller to have the Mentor act on her character’s behalf, without her character knowing or initiating the request.
As a guideline, Mentors who are Awakened mages bought for Mage characters should have Gnosis and Arcana higher than the character — at least half their dot rating higher Gnosis than the character, and twice the dot rating in Arcanum dots above the number of Arcanum dots the character has, while still obeying the rules for how high Arcana may rise with Gnosis. Most Mentors will have an Order or Consilium Status of their own as well.