BASIC
LEVEL 1 Alacrity
Your reflexes are finely honed. Even as you watch
others act, you can spring into action, completing your movements before
they can respond.
You can gain the ability to preempt any physical actions
taken against you, as long as you are aware of them (face to face mugging
- yes; sniper attack - no). Also, for example, if someone declares
an attempt to pull out a hidden weapon and shoot at you, you can preempt
that action to pull out your own gun and fire back (instead of being regulated
to dodging).
(The ability to use your reflexes to block or react to
other’s reactions)
LEVEL 2 Swiftness
With shocking speed, you move faster than humanly possible.
Even as others are recovering from events, you are making your next move.
For example, you can swing a sword twice, run twice as far as normal, fire
a gun then duck behind cover, or otherwise perform multiple feats.
INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Rapidity
Even other Vampires are dazzled by your superhuman speed.
You routinely catch dropped objects and the speed of your passing whips
clothes and loose debris about. Declaring Rapidity, you can perform
actions where speed is of the essence, such as dodging an attack, throwing
a knife or grabbing something out of someone’s hand.
LEVEL 4 Legerity
Moving faster than the human eye can track, you blur
across the landscape with the speed of a cheetah.
Is this just a more advance form of Swiftness?
ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Fleetness
Calling on this discipline, you burst into a whirlwind
of motion. Your passing extinguishes small flames, whips up flurries
of debris and confuses slower-moving entities.
Using Fleetness, causes you to perform all actions with
the utmost speed. This power imparts an extra physical action in
a combat post.
LEVEL 6 Projectile
Despite the fact that a Vampire with Celerity moves at
incredible speeds, by some quirk of metaphysics any bullets he or she fires
or knives they throw while in this state don’t move any faster than they
normally would. Scientifically minded Kindred have been baffled by
the phenomonenon for centuries, but more pragmatic ones have found a way
to work around it.
Projectile enables a Vampire to take his preternatural
speed and transfer it into something he has thrown, fired or launched.
As this power affects objects, rather than the body of the Cainite, this
power does not impart any extra physical actions per combat round.
LEVEL 7 Flower of
Death
In combat, speed kills. A proper application of
Celerity in combat can turn the meekest Cainite into a walking abattoir.
How much more deadly, then, is a Vampire with the ability to utilize his
preternatural speed to the utmost in combat? The answer to that question
is “Rather a lot.” Flower of Death allows a Vampire to take his or
her Celerity levels up to this point and apply it to each hand-to-hand
or melee attack he or she makes. Flower of Death is limited only
to hand to hand combat or melee weapon attacks. Firearms, bows and
whatnot are excluded. Flower of Death is not cumulative, although
it can be invoked as many times as one wishes. The consecutive attempts
at invoking Flower of Death are pointless because the Celerity bonuses
up until this point have already been achieved. The use of this power
imparts two extra physical actions per combat round.
LEVEL 8 Blink
This power allows the Cainite to travel from one point
to the next in the literal "blink of an eye." Spending three blood
points or traits increases the vampire's level of speed to incredible limitations,
the human eye unable to follow their movements, time almost standing still
while this fearsome speed is attained. This power enables the vampire
to make an additional five physical actions per combat post.
Zephyr
Zephyr produces an effect vaguely similar to ones of
the legendary comic-book style uses of enhanced speed, allowing its practitioner
to run so fast he can run across water (he’s moving so fast he doesn’t
have time to sink). Particularly successful applications of Zephyr
allow a Vampire to go so far as to run up walls and, in at least one recorded
instance, across a ceiling, though the latter is more of a parlor trick
than anything else.
Unfortunately, Zephyr requires such extremes of concentration
that it cannot be combined with any form of attack, or indeed, with most
any sort of action at all. As this extreme power cannot be used in
combat, it imparts no bonus actions per combat round.
LEVEL 9 Blur
Travelling faster than even a very imaginative mortal
could envision, the vampire who has invoked the power of Blur moves with
such speed even Cainite eyes cannot clearly perceive the vampire at this
awesome speed. A literal "blur," the vampire leaves trails of pure
flame from friction as she moves, burning up the terrain with her awesome
speed. Moving at this mind-boggling speed, a vampire is capable of
conducting an additional six physical actions per combat post, at the expense
of four Blood Points or Traits.
Velocity
This ability, while outstripping the speed of Zephyr,
does not require the intense and inhibiting concentration of Zephyr.
The vampire capable of attaining this level of Celerity has honed their
mind to the point where intense concetration on such speedy efforts is
all but second nature. The use of this power imparts seven extra
physical actions per combat post, and the speed level is almost double
that of Zephyr, making the Cainite all but invisible to mortal eyesight.
LEVEL 10 Dervish
Named for a mythological demon
possessed of incredible tornado-like speed, this power lives up to its
namesake, allowing the Cainite using it to travel at speeds even the comic
book character Superman would be hard pressed to keep up with. By
spending five Blood Points or Traits, the Cainite invokes a devilish speed
that even the most experienced Cainite eyes cannot behold but in a featureless
blur of motion, unable to do much but hopefully survive the onslaught of
power. Use of this power gives an incredible ability to perform ten
physical actions as though they were but one action during a combat post.
No other Discipline, mental or physical, can be invoked as one of these
actions, they must be entirely physical actions, but what a way to deliver
a hellish attack or defense. The drawback to this power? The
Cainite's Celerity is exhausted for a full round, or ten RT minutes, following
the use of this power. |