Discipliner
The Embrace gifts some vampires with startling speed and reflexes. They can use Celerity to move with amazing swiftness in times of stress. Mortals, and even Kindred lacking this Discipline, move as if in slow motion compared to the astonishing blur the vampire becomes.
Celerity is common among the Assamite, Brujah and Toreador clans. The Assamites use this ability to strike down their foes before the victims are even aware of the attack. Brujah delight in the advantage this Discipline gives them against superior numbers of opponents. Toreador are more likely to use Celerity to lend prenatural grace to live performances such as dance or extraordinary speed when creating sculptures or paintings - however, they can be as terrifying as any Assamite or Brujah when angered.
System: The character spends a single bloodpoint. The next turn, she gains a number of additional full actions equal to her Celerity rating. These additional actions must be physical (e.g., the vampire cannot use a mental Discipline like Dominate multiple times in one turn). So a vampire with Celerity 4 who spends a bloodpoint may perform a total of five physical actions in her next turn. The actions occur at the end of the turn (the vampire's regular action still takes place per her initiative roll).
Normally, a character without Celerity must apply a dice pool penalty if she wants to take multiple actions in a single turn. A character using Celerity performs his extra actions (including full movement) without penalty, gaining a full dice pool for each separate action. Extra actions gained through Celerity may not in turn be split into multiple actions.
Advanced Celerity
Few Kindred can even conceive of any use for Celerity other than that of speeding up one's actions so that one might pop off a few more TEC-9 rounds in combat. While that approach is all well and good, there are other potential applications of the power available to ancient, learned or clever vampires. Under normal circumstances, advanced mastery of Celerity means that the normal progression of powers predominates. Unless the character makes a special effort to learn an alternate power or to create one, each additional level of the power from 6 to 9 means that once the Discipline is activated, the vampire simply receives another additional action per turn.
If, however, the vampire chooses to take an alternate power, she forfeits that normal progression (which can later be made up through experience) and takes the new manifestation of Celerity instead. She does not gain the extra action in addition to the special power; it's an either/or situation.
Note: Yes, there are fewer alternate Celerity powers listed than there are for any other Discipline (save Potence and Fortitude). No, this is not an oversight - there has been less impetus for practitioners of these three Disciplines to develop variations than there has been on masters of, say, Auspex.
Projectile
This power sharpens all of the vampire's senses, effectively doubling the clarity and range of sight, hearing and smell. While her senses of taste and touch extend no farther than normal, they likewise become far more acute; the vampire could taste the hint of liquor in a victim's blood, or feel the give of the board concealing a hollow space in the floor. The Kindred may magniiy her senses at will, sustaining this heightened focus for as long as she desires. At the Storyteller's option, this may make hunting easier.
Occasionally, this talent provides extrasensory or even precognitive insights. These brief, unfocused glimpses may be odd premonitions, flashes of empathy or eerie feelings of foreboding. The vampire has no control over these perceptions, but with practice can learn to interpret them with a fair degree of accuracy.
Expanded senses come at a price, however. Bright lights, loud noises and strong smells present a hazard while the vampire uses this power. In addition to the possibility for distraction mentioned above, an especially sudden stimulus - like the glare of a spotlight or a clap of thunder - can blind or deafen the Kindred for an hour or more.
System: This power doesn't normally require the use of dice, instead being defined through the Storyteller's descriptions and the player's imagination. In certain circumstances, use of this power requires a die roll: for a normal Perception roll (the Storyteller may reduce the difficulty by the character's Auspex rating), to notice a subject using Obfuscate, or to perceive a threat (the Storyteller privately rolls the character's unmodified Auspex rating, applying whatever difficulty he feels best suits the circumstances). For example, in the last instance, sensing that a pistol is pointed at the back of the character's head may require a 5, while the sudden realization that a rival for primogen is planning her assassination may require a 9.
This power does not let characters see in pitch darkness, as does Eyes of the Beast, but it does reduce difficulty penalties to act in pitch darkness from + 2 to +1, and the character may make ranged attacks in pitch darkness if she can hear, smell or otherwise detect her foe.
Precision
[CB:As]
Tireless Tread
[GttA]
