Searching for an Obfuscated vampire that just disappeared would break the obfuscation?

Question

Unseen Presence, the level 2 power for Obfuscate states (emphasis mine):

The vampire remains ignored indefinitely unless someone deliberately seeks him out or he inadvertently reveals himself.

So far so good. You can be Obfuscated, altering people's mind, buy if someone is looking out for you, they can "break" the effect.

But the level 4 power, Vanish from the Mind’s Eye says that you can disappear from someone's face (you can make them forget that you were entirely there, but not always) and then says:

When fully invisible, the vampire is handled as described under Unseen Presence, above.

So my question is: If the vampire disappears in front of someone and that person says "Hey! where did he go?", the vampire would immediately appear before his eyes? It seems like the power is not too strong if that's the case. Is this correct? or I am misreading something?

Answer 1

I think you are.

1. The phrase "the vampire is handled as described under Unseen Presence" is meant as shorthand to avoid rewriting the rules for an invisible vampire twice.
2. Immediate revelation is the consequence of taking an action that would break concealment. That's not what's happening in your example. At most, going "Where did he go?" would use the second system, the one for trying to shake off the "mental haze" of remembering an Obfuscated vampire's actions — A Wits + Awareness check at difficulty 7.

Answer 2

As written, this is indeed the case, though don't forget that the target needs to pass a Wits+Courage roll to avoid being totally stunned, and therefore unable to look for you.

Turning fully invisible is, of course, only possible on a very good success. In practice I have found that it doesn't come up that much. You're more likely to get the 'profoundly disturbing ghostly shape' result, and the mechanics for that are fully described in the power.

As a GM, I would personally rule that you can use VftME as just part of your action, and make use of the rest of your turn to duck out of sight. If you're hidden then of course investigators would need to look in exactly the right place to find you.