Post by Tami on Mar 15, 2007 10:03:19 GMT -5
Celerity
Celerity is one of the three physical disciplines that are common to most Cainites. Even those clans whose members don’t actively favor celerity (that is, those who are not the Brujah, Toreador and Assamites) find the power just too useful to be without. Celerity enables a vampire to accelerate his reaction time up to speeds that the mortal eye can barely follow, letting him move more quickly or fell a half a dozen foes in a few heart beats. Some Toreadors use Celerity to enhance their ability to perform physical arts such as dance; Assamites, Brujah and most other clans use it to swiftly end fights, either by fleeing or by brutally dropping foes before they can react.
Most Cainites assume that Caine or the Antediluvians developed this ability to enable them to hunt more effectively, which is a paradox of sorts, since using it for any length of time costs the user as much blood as she might gain from a successful hunt. Other vampires claim that Celerity is part of Caine’s curse on his undead children, as the great speeds it bequeaths a vampire are fleeting, and leave the Discipline’s user exhausted, hungry and impatient with the ordinary, slow pace of nightly life, Perhaps the world’s speed might catch up with a Celerity-using vampire’s desires in the distant future, but for now, he must suffer through a quiet world of horse-drawn carts and trudging through the dark from city to city.
System: Vampires with Celerity can use the Discipline to take multiple actions in a turn without the normal penalties to their dice pools. These actions can include movement, enabling the Celerity-user to sprint at unheard-of speeds.
Each point of Celerity allows up to one extra action, and the vampire may use his entire dice pool for each additional action he takes. The character must spend one blood point per extra action taken per turn, and she may spend blood points beyond her normal generation maximum. For instance, an 11th generation Brujah with Celerity 3 may spend three blood points to gain three extra full-dice pool actions. The Blood points must be spent at the beginning of the turn, and they cannot be mixed with any other blood expenditure. Additionally, the actions provided by Celerity cannot be further divided into multiple actions – the character may use her basic action for multiple actions as much as she likes, but each action granted by Celerity is “indivisible”. Also, Celerity-granted actions must involve physical action. The Discipline does not allow a vampire to translate a text or perform a Thaumaturgy ritual more rapidly.
Celerity has no separate powers below the sixth dot; each point simply grants an extra free action. Rumors abound of alternative abilities for elder Cainites who posses level in Celerity above 5, but these are only rumors.
Extra actions granted by Celerity do not take place until after each character has taken one ordinary action, so that everyone gets to act once before anyone acts twice. Everyone able to act twice does so before anyone takes a third action, and so on. The only exception to this rule is using Celerity actions to provide for emergency defense: A character may use a celerity action to dodge or block even if he’s already taken his action, for instance.
These extra actions may be taken to provide extra movement, allowing the character to move across a battlefield, room or sunlit field very quickly. Each action can provide a full turn’s movement.
Celerity is one of the three physical disciplines that are common to most Cainites. Even those clans whose members don’t actively favor celerity (that is, those who are not the Brujah, Toreador and Assamites) find the power just too useful to be without. Celerity enables a vampire to accelerate his reaction time up to speeds that the mortal eye can barely follow, letting him move more quickly or fell a half a dozen foes in a few heart beats. Some Toreadors use Celerity to enhance their ability to perform physical arts such as dance; Assamites, Brujah and most other clans use it to swiftly end fights, either by fleeing or by brutally dropping foes before they can react.
Most Cainites assume that Caine or the Antediluvians developed this ability to enable them to hunt more effectively, which is a paradox of sorts, since using it for any length of time costs the user as much blood as she might gain from a successful hunt. Other vampires claim that Celerity is part of Caine’s curse on his undead children, as the great speeds it bequeaths a vampire are fleeting, and leave the Discipline’s user exhausted, hungry and impatient with the ordinary, slow pace of nightly life, Perhaps the world’s speed might catch up with a Celerity-using vampire’s desires in the distant future, but for now, he must suffer through a quiet world of horse-drawn carts and trudging through the dark from city to city.
System: Vampires with Celerity can use the Discipline to take multiple actions in a turn without the normal penalties to their dice pools. These actions can include movement, enabling the Celerity-user to sprint at unheard-of speeds.
Each point of Celerity allows up to one extra action, and the vampire may use his entire dice pool for each additional action he takes. The character must spend one blood point per extra action taken per turn, and she may spend blood points beyond her normal generation maximum. For instance, an 11th generation Brujah with Celerity 3 may spend three blood points to gain three extra full-dice pool actions. The Blood points must be spent at the beginning of the turn, and they cannot be mixed with any other blood expenditure. Additionally, the actions provided by Celerity cannot be further divided into multiple actions – the character may use her basic action for multiple actions as much as she likes, but each action granted by Celerity is “indivisible”. Also, Celerity-granted actions must involve physical action. The Discipline does not allow a vampire to translate a text or perform a Thaumaturgy ritual more rapidly.
Celerity has no separate powers below the sixth dot; each point simply grants an extra free action. Rumors abound of alternative abilities for elder Cainites who posses level in Celerity above 5, but these are only rumors.
Extra actions granted by Celerity do not take place until after each character has taken one ordinary action, so that everyone gets to act once before anyone acts twice. Everyone able to act twice does so before anyone takes a third action, and so on. The only exception to this rule is using Celerity actions to provide for emergency defense: A character may use a celerity action to dodge or block even if he’s already taken his action, for instance.
These extra actions may be taken to provide extra movement, allowing the character to move across a battlefield, room or sunlit field very quickly. Each action can provide a full turn’s movement.