Techniques

“You like latin, old man? How’s this for latin: Quid pro quo.” — Smiling Jack

Techniques aren’t disciplines; each technique is a learned methodology that integrates the use of two or more disciplines at once in order to create a unique effect. Such twisting of the blood is very difficult for vampires with great potency, as their blood is too thick for this sort of mongrel cogency. Elders have static blood, are resistant to change, and are unable to adapt to the swift mutations necessary to entwine two powers in such a way. These powers are the province of vampires who possess thinner, more transmutable vitae. Individuals of the 8th generation and below can cause their blood to vacillate between powers they have mastered, twisting those effects into a combination of those powers. Vampires can purchase techniques without a teacher, even if one or more of the prerequisites include out-of-clan disciplines for that character. The character simply needs to already possess the prerequisites for the specific technique she wishes to learn.

Techniques cost 12 XP for Neonate and Ancilla vampires. Vampires of the 8th generation must spend 20 XP per technique, rather than the standard 12. Luminary and Master Elders cannot purchase techniques at all. Techniques have no attribute focuses and typically do not gain magnified results if you achieve an exceptional success.

Techniques marked with a * in the title indicate techniques not commonly available to PCs due to restricted disciplines.

An Da Shealladh

Prerequisites: Dementation ••• and Auspex ••

To some, the second sight is a blessing. To others, it is a curse. Knowing someone deeply can provide a tremendous advantage. Malkavians who learn this power often use it to learn the best ways to prank another individual by playing on her hopes and fears.

System: The power known as An Da Shealladh (pronounced an-DAH-she-alla) was created by a branch of the Malkavian clan that lived in the Scottish highlands. By combining the powers of Eyes of Chaos and Aura Perception, you can unravel a host of information about your target. Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Dementation test pool. If you succeed, you learn your target’s Archetype, derangements, current number of Beast traits, and number of current Willpower.

Animal Succulence

Prerequisites: Animalism •• and Fortitude •

A true predator knows how to make a quick, clean kill and how to utilize every portion of her prey’s vitality. You are such a vampire, and because of this ability, animal blood refreshes you as though it were human vitae.

System: You draw additional energy from animal blood, more than other vampires retain from such prey. When feeding from animals, the potency of the blood you draw is not reduced. You do not need to spend a downtime action to feed, so long as you feed on animal blood.

Animal Swarm

Prerequisites: Protean •••• and Celerity ••

Within the one, there are many. Our consciousness moves in all things, and as a swarm of beasts instinctively knows the will of its leader, so too can you divide your flesh and incarnate into many creatures at once — each unified by your mind.

System: When you activate Shape of the Beast, you may choose to turn into a swarm of animals instead of one creature. You transform into slightly smaller versions of the same animal you would normally become by using Shape of the Beast. If your Shape of the Beast allows you to turn into a bat, you can turn into several smaller bats using Animal Swarm.

This swarm consists of one animal for each dot of Celerity you possess. Elder powers and Celerity-based techniques do not increase the number of animals created by Animal Swarm. Each animal can act independently and can take one simple and one standard action each turn. While using Animal Swarm, you cannot spend Blood and lose access to all other powers. Even powers that were activated before using Animal Swarm stop functioning while in this form. Activating Animal Swarm does not reverse permanent physical alterations. For example, if your heart is removed it will not reappear when you activate this power.

Each of your animals has your Mental attribute, Social attribute, focuses and skills. By default, these animals inflict 1 point of aggravated damage with a successful Brawl attack. If your character possesses any Potence powers, your animals’ attacks are armor-piercing and inflict 2 points of aggravated damage. Each creature has 5 health levels (1 Healthy, 2 Injured, and 2 Incapacitated). Your merits, flaws, and powers do not affect the health levels of your animal swarm. If your character possesses any Fortitude powers, each of your animals automatically negates 1 point of normal or aggravated damage each time they suffer damage. If your animals attempt to retest in combat, each animal must spend Willpower separately; they use your Willpower pool to do so.

While swarming in your flight form, each animal gains a +1 bonus to Dodge-based defensive test pools and can fly at your normal movement speed. In flight form, your Physical attribute is considered 1 when you are attacking.

While in fight form, each of your animals has a Physical attribute equal to half of your own Physical attribute (round up). Other bonuses from Shape of the Beast do not apply while using Animal Swarm.

Animals created by Animal Swarm can separate and perform individual tasks, but must remain within one mile of each other. You can use a standard action to return to your human form at the location of any animal created by this power. When you revert to human form, you automatically reabsorb any of your animals that are within your line of sight. Animals not within your line of sight crumble at the same moment, turning into ash. When Animal Swarm ends, you take 2 points of aggravated damage for each animal that was destroyed, 1 point of aggravated damage for each animal that was injured or incapacitated, and you lose 2 Blood for each animal that was outside of your line of sight when you reformed. Damage taken from reverting to human form cannot be reduced or negated, but may not kill your character (although it may result in torpor). If all of the animals in a swarm are destroyed, the power’s user dies.

Animals created by this power are considered to be one entity for the purpose of powers that modify an individual’s behavior. If one animal is Dominated, all of the animals in the swarm suffer the effects of that power. If one animal cannot break an individual’s Majesty, none of the animals in the swarm can attack that individual.

*Armor of Darkness

Prerequisites: Obtenebration ••• and Fortitude ••

By blending the disciplines of Obtenebration and Fortitude, a vampire can toughen her flesh into a rime of shadow, cloaking and merging her skin with the stuff of the Abyss. This creates a dark, ever-murmuring mantle of chill nightfall, shielding her from both the sun’s rays and the bane of fire.

System: Armor of Darkness does not require an action to activate or maintain, but can only be activated on your initiative. Spend 1 Blood to sheath yourself in darkness so potent that even sunlight cannot dispel it easily. Unlike most Obtenebration powers, Armor of Darkness is not automatically disintegrated by sunlight; it is supported by the denseness of Fortitude in order to form a more lasting protection. Armor of Darkness lasts for one turn without further expenditures, but you can extend its effects by spending 1 Blood per turn.

While Armor of Darkness persists, you are immune to damage caused by sunlight. You also reduce aggravated damage caused by fire or incendiary weapons to normal damage instead.

Banshee’s Wail

Prerequisites: Melpominee ••• and Dementation ••••

Banshees keen at the death of important personages, howling out their sorrow as a warning of impending death. Those who possess this power can tell when a loved one is injured and can lash out at murderers from afar.

System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a standard action to mark a willing target with your Banshee’s Wail. The next time your target suffers damage, this power activates, and the individual who caused damage to your target is affected by Voice of Madness as though you had used that power. If you succeed in your Voice of Madness challenge, that target gains a fear based derangement with the original target of Banshee’s Wail as the trigger. If Banshee’s Wail is not triggered before sunrise, it fades away. You cannot have more than one application of this power in effect at any one time.

*Blind the Sun

Prerequisites: Temporis •• and Fortitude ••

By shifting time and calling on the steadfast qualities of your physical form, you can remain awake during a portion of the day without suffering ill effects. Although you cannot leave your location, younger vampires often use this power to maintain the Masquerade, posting online, making phone calls, and otherwise making it appear as if they were mortal to an unsuspecting world.

System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a standard action to activate this power. For the next eight hours, it is still considered to be night at your location, which must be a single enclosed room. While you remain in this room, you do not fall asleep due to sunrise, and you do not suffer the negative effects of being awake during the day. Other individuals who are also present in the room when you invoke the power gain the benefits of this time alteration, but individuals who enter the room after the power activated do not. When this power ends, vampires are affected as though the sun has risen.

Bull’s Eye

Prerequisites: Auspex ••• and Celerity •

You can combine the powers of Auspex and Celerity to shoot a firearm with deadly accuracy.

System: Once per turn, spend 1 Blood and target a single individual with a firearms attack. You automatically hit your target without a challenge, gaining a normal success. Effects that allow an individual to automatically avoid your attack are effective against Bull’s Eye, but powers that provide defensive bonuses are not.

Alternately, once per turn, you can spend 1 Blood when you achieve a normal success on a firearms attack against a single target. That normal success becomes an exceptional success.

The two effects of Bull’s Eye cannot be combined. You can use this power to automatically hit, or to turn a normal success into an exceptional success, but you cannot use both effects on the same attack. Bull’s Eye can only be applied to attacks using the Firearms skill.

You cannot use Bull’s Eye when using weapons that attack multiple targets, such as weapons with the Automatic or Spray qualities.

Control the Savage Beast

Prerequisites: Animalism ••• and Dominate ••

Your Beast is a dominant hunter, savage and controlling. When it becomes aware of another of its kind, it instinctively attempts to leash it, demanding its obedience.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to overpower the mind of a vampire who is frenzying near you; to a degree, you can control her actions. The target must still fight, feed, or flee as required by her particular type of frenzy, but you can decide which target your victim attacks, which mortal’s blood she drinks, and in which direction she flees.

Control the Savage Beast doesn’t require a challenge to activate and only works on vampires experiencing natural frenzy. Frenzies brought on by use of the Animalism discipline cannot be controlled with this power.

*Death’s Grip

Prerequisites: Thanatosis •• and Potence ••

Flesh rots in your grip, providing a morbid handhold. By mastering this power, you gain the ability to punish your enemies for breaking out of your holds, forcing them to leave a pound of flesh behind.

System: When you Grapple and use a Thanatosis power on your target, you slip your fingers into the target’s newly rotting flesh. If the victim breaks free of your Grapple, portions of her flesh, muscle, and bone tear away in your hand. The target takes 1 point of aggravated damage, which cannot be reduced or negated. This power has no effect if you willingly release your target.

Denial of Aphrodite’s Favor

Prerequisites: Presence •• and Dominate ••

Developed by the Ventrue clan, this power is designed to defend a vampire against the very powers that clan wields. As much as Kings relentlessly manipulate others, they have a disdain for being manipulated themselves. With this power, you can protect yourself against those who would beguile you.

System: You automatically ignore the Presence power Awe, and you gain a +3 bonus to any attempt to resist Dread Gaze or Entrancement.

Devious Feint

Prerequisites: Auspex ••• and Presence •

By subtly pushing your opponent’s emotions until she reacts, you create a weakness in her defense that you discover and exploit.

System: Instead of spending a point of Willpower to use a combat maneuver, you may choose to spend 1 Blood instead.

Echo Psychosis

Prerequisites: Dementation ••• and Presence •

Your grasp of madness allows you to see through the cracks in other people’s social masks. The instant their concentration flickers, you break through the walls, grasping the moment and assaulting their psyche with the depths of your madness.

System: Any time someone spends a point of Willpower to ignore your Awe, you can reflexively target her with Passion on the same initiative. If you have Majesty and a character attempts to break your Majesty and fails, you can immediately target her with the Haunting. To successfully use Passion and the Haunting with Echo Psychosis, you must make all of the appropriate challenges, but you are not required to spend Blood or use an action to activate those.

Using Passion or Haunting through Echo Psychosis does not break your Majesty.

Fearful Blow

Prerequisites: Potence •• and Presence ••

For centuries, the mere whisper of a vampire in the area was enough to send mortals into hiding. Even in modern times, the power of fear is a potent and tangible thing. A vampire’s courage and prowess in battle can be enough to strike terror into the heart of her enemies.

System: After successfully hitting an opponent with a Brawl attack that inflicts at least 1 point of damage after the target has applied all armor and damage-reduction powers, you can spend 1 Blood to immediately use Dread Gaze on the same target. This use of Dread Gaze requires a normal opposed challenge using the Presence test pool to successfully affect your target, but its use does not require an action.

Fearful Blow cannot be used during Celerity rounds. Fearful Blow cannot be combined with other powers or merits that augment Dread Gaze.

*Feast of Shadow

Prerequisites: Obtenebration •• and Potence •••

The sentience within the Abyss is ever-hungry, ever aching for something to fill the void of its existence. You can summon forth the power of the Abyss, which swirls around you, whispering and carrying the deep chill of the void. With an inhalation of breath, you draw this energy into yourself, consuming it as though it were blood.

System: Use both your simple and standard actions to draw forth and consume the power of the Abyss as though it were blood. Feasting on the energy of the Abyss provides you with up to 10 points of Blood. Additionally, using this power raises your maximum Blood pool by 5 for the next five minutes. Blood gained from this power acts like normal points of Blood in all ways.

Consuming the Abyss takes a toll. Every time you use Feast of Shadow, you gain a Beast trait, which does not fade normally. Instead of fading when you rest during the day, a Beast trait caused by Feast of Shadow fades only after one game session or two weeks, whichever is longer. While you have Feast of Shadow Beast traits, your eyes are jet black and your essence is tainted with the energy of the Abyss.

Those who look upon your aura will see a dark, brooding serpent of shadow wrapped ouroboros-like around your soul. You can repeatedly drink from the Abyss using Feast of Shadow, but the penalties are cumulative. For example, if you use Feast of Shadow twice in one evening, you gain 2 Beast traits. One Beast trait will fade after the next game session; the second will fade after two game sessions. Feast of Shadow can never raise your maximum Blood pool by more than 5.

Only the character invoking Feast of Shadow can feed from the Abyss; you cannot share this Blood with anyone unless they feed directly from you, in which case, they are drinking your blood, not the Abyss, and gain no Abyssal taint or bonuses.

Fenrir’s Boon

Prerequisites: Potence ••• and Animalism •

Like the forest gods of ancient superstition, you have the ability to grant strength and courage to those animals who look to you as their pack leader. When you fight surrounded by the creatures of the wilderness, you have a worthy advantage.

System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a standard action to boost the fighting prowess of nearby animals. While under the effects of this power, all of your animal Retainers and animals currently controlled by your Animalism gain a +2 bonus to Brawl test pools, and they inflict aggravated damage. These creatures must be within your line of sight to gain and keep this advantage.

Fist of Stone

Prerequisites: Visceratika ••• and Potence •••

Your punches carry the weight of boulders, knocking people and objects out of your way with the force of your directed rage.

System: When you successfully hit an opponent with a Brawl attack, you may choose to forgo some or all of the damage you would ordinarily deal in exchange for knocking your opponent back. For each point of damage you forgo, you can knock your target up to two steps away.

*Flame’s Bane

Prerequisites: Daimoinon •• and Fortitude ••

Even as infernal beasts are said to exist on planes of hellfire, so too can this power’s user render herself immune to the vampiric bane of fire.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Flame’s Bane. For the next hour, you are immune to fire damage. You take normal damage from weapons with the Flaming or Incendiary Ammunition qualities, and you do not risk frenzy from being close to fire. Derangement triggers and other effects of fire are not affected by this power.

Guardian Lion

Prerequisites: Visceratika •• and Animalism ••

By shaping the form of a creature out of stone and marking it with your blood, you cause that statue to come to life and obey your commands.

System: By spending 1 Blood to mark a statue of a medium-sized land-bound animal (usually a lion or a dog), and expending three standard actions in concentration, you can animate a small statue and cause it to serve you. Treat this statue as a level 3 Retainer; additionally, it has the Full Body, Hardened, and Ballistic armor qualities. The statue is intelligent enough to understand complex commands, but not creative enough to extrapolate if a situation changes, nor to alter its instructions without your directive. If left without instruction, the statue will stand perfectly still, in its original pose, waiting for your command. This power ends at the next sunset, making a Guardian Lion the perfect protector for havens or other locations. You can only have one Guardian Lion in existence at any one time.

The creature created by Guardian Lion is a creature of stone, not a real animal, and cannot be targeted by Animalism.

Instinctive Command

Prerequisites: Celerity ••• and Dominate ••

You have so mastered the first power of Dominate that you use it almost instinctively, issuing orders faster than the blink of an eye.

System: You can use the first power of Dominate, Command, as your action during Celerity rounds. This use of Command must fulfill all other requirements of the power; you must expend a standard action and speak a simple one-word command or make a gesture that the target can understand.

Instinctive Command cannot be combined with other powers or merits that augment Command.

This power is an exception to the rule preventing use of Mental actions during Celerity rounds. Note that an individual can only be targeted by a single Mental power during each round.

Ligeia’s Lament

Prerequisites: Melpominee •• and Dominate ••

A properly trained voice has great power to command and to cajole, expressing deep emotion and forceful control at the same time. By combining the power of Dominate with the musical expression of Melpominee, you have mastered the ability to impart simple commands even when your target cannot be seen.

System: You can activate the powers of Command or Mesmerism through the power of Phantom Speaker, so long as your target has her attention focused on you. In this manner, you can use these Dominate powers on someone you are speaking with over a telephone, or on someone staring at you across a crowded, noise-filled room.

*Mercurial Vitality

Prerequisites: Vicissitude ••, Potence •, and Fortitude •

The body is mutable, and all flesh can change. With concentration, and by calling on your vampiric vitae, you can shift your physical structure, supplanting your bone with muscle tissue, or increasing your muscle mass by lowering your bone density.

System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a simple action to temporarily increase both your Potence and Fortitude by 1 dot each for the rest of the turn. Mercurial Vitality cannot be used to raise a power above the 5th dot.

Monologue

Prerequisites: Obfuscate •• and Presence •

Perhaps it is the sound of your bewitching voice, the labyrinthine wit of your spurious logic, or your sheer and unadulterated gall in the face of true danger, but you have the ability to grasp your enemy’s attention and hold it like a vice. You engage your targets in conversation, preventing them from initiating an attack until you have had your full say.

System: Spend 1 Blood and start talking to activate Monologue. Monologue lasts for one full turn for each dot of the Subterfuge skill you possess or until you stop talking. While this power is active, anyone who intended to attack you must either engage you in conversation without attacking or leave. You cannot force others to like you or divulge specific information, but they must engage in conversation as long as you continue talking, or until you reach the maximum duration allowed by your Subterfuge skill.

Once your Monologue expires, opponents can attack you normally, and you cannot activate this power again for the next hour. If you attack, use a supernatural power that targets another character, or attempt to move away from aggressors, Monologue ends immediately.

Monologue does not protect your allies. Individuals affected by Monologue do not lose the ability to attack, only the ability to target you with an attack.

Misplaced Affection

Prerequisites: Presence ••• and Obfuscate ••

It’s one thing to make someone fall in love with you. It’s another thing to cause them to fall in love with the idea of you — or with someone else, entirely. Such deceptions are a sign of a true artist, and only the finest courtesans and bards are capable of using their talent and skill in such a difficult task.

System: When you successfully entrance another individual, you may choose a nearby ally to be the focus of your target’s Entrancement, instead of attracting the target to yourself.

The secondary subject must be willing to be a part of this ruse. If she declines, your Misplaced Affection fails, and your target is entranced normally, with you as her focus.

The secondary subject of your Entrancement must treat the target well and follow all other requirements for a successful application of that power, or the Entrancement will break.

To the target, it appears in all ways as though your secondary subject was, in fact, the individual who entranced her, and she must obey all dictates of that power.

Misleading Wounds

Prerequisites: Obfuscate ••• and Fortitude •

Those who rely on their eyes to determine their enemy’s condition often find that they have sorely misjudged their prey. Battle prowess is not solely a measure of physical capacity, but also of a cunning mind.

System: Any time you take damage, you may choose to appear as though you have more or less Fortitude than you actually possess.

When you take damage, you may choose to appear as though you resisted some, all, or none of that damage, regardless of how much damage you actually resist. You may also choose to appear as though you’ve spent Blood to heal, or conversely, you can spend Blood to heal your wounds without the results being apparent. By using this power, you might spend 1 Blood to heal 1 point of damage and make it appear as if you spent 4 Blood healing 4 points of damage.

Alternately, you might spend 3 Blood healing and mask the effects from mortal observers, preserving the Masquerade.

This power does not change the actual amount of damage you take or heal; Misleading Wounds only affects appearances. Characters with Auspex can attempt to pierce these powers and determine your actual wound levels, using the same system for seeing through the powers of Obfuscate.

*Nightingale's Song

Prerequisites: Mytherceria •• and Dominate ••

Our conscience stirs in dreams, causing us to murmur our guilt, pain, and darkest thoughts even as we sleep. With your knowledge of fae dreaming, and your ability to tap into Dominate’s raw authority, you can bring up a person’s secrets and cause her to whisper them forth, without her consent.

System: Spend 1 Blood, expend your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Mytherceria test pool. If you succeed, you trigger the target’s dreaming subconscious, causing her to tell you a secret — something she knows but thinks you definitely shouldn’t be allowed to discover. The target may choose the specific secret, but topics which are already on her mind are most likely to spill out. You can affect the outcome by speaking to your target first, bringing up a specific topic, and then utilizing Nightingale’s Song on the target while that topic is foremost on her mind. You can only use Nightingale’s Song on an individual once per night.

Quickened Blood

Prerequisites: Celerity •• and Fortitude •

Your body is tougher than most, able to utilize its resources more efficiently. With a little preparation and temperance, you can encourage your body to great feats of speed without sacrificing your reserve of vitae.

System: When you spend 1 Blood to activate your Celerity powers for two consecutive turns, Quickened Blood automatically activates. For the next five minutes, you can utilize the first 5 dots of Celerity without spending any further points of Blood.

Radiant Gaze

Prerequisites: Serpentis •• and Dominate •••

The power of your gaze is brilliant and overwhelming, triggering an instinctive desire to obey.

System: After successfully targeting someone with Eyes of the Serpent, you can spend 1 Blood to immediately use either Forgetful Mind or Mesmerism on that same target. This use of Forgetful Mind or Mesmerism allows you to directly implant commands in your target’s mind or alter her memories without speaking. This use of Dominate requires a successful opposed challenge using the Dominate test pool to affect your target, but its use does not require an action.

Reflection of Endurance

Prerequisites: Obeah ••• and Fortitude ••

Obeah and Valeren are related disciplines, like two sides of the same coin. After Saulot made his journey to the East, his clan divided into healers and warriors — but both inherited the same radiance of spirit. That spirit can, with training, be channeled into providing a fleeting reflection of its other side.

System: This power functions like the Valeren power Mens Sana. This combination power duplicates all costs, effects, and focuses of that power (if applicable).

*Reflection of Mercy

Prerequisites: Valeren ••• and Auspex ••

Obeah and Valeren are related disciplines, like two sides of the same coin. After Saulot made his journey to the East, his clan divided into healers and warriors — but both inherited the same radiance of spirit. That spirit can, with training, be channeled into providing a fleeting reflection of its other side.

System: This power functions like the Obeah power Corpore Sano. This combination power duplicates all costs, effects, and focuses of that power (if applicable).

Relentless Pursuit

Prerequisites: Potence •• and Celerity ••

Speed and strength are two sides of the same coin, providing a vampire a great deal of physical prowess. By combining these disciplines, a vampire can push herself to massive leaps, traveling great distances in a single bound. Use of such a power in public is a clear breach of the Masquerade.

System: When an individual you’re fighting against in hand-to-hand combat (within one step) moves away from you, spend 1 Blood and take up to 12 steps towards your target’s new location. If possible, you must end your movement in melee range of your target (within one step). Relentless Pursuit does not require an action, but can only be used once per turn.

Retain the Quick Blood

Prerequisites: Quietus •• and Celerity ••

The Assamite clan created this blood-conserving technique during the original Anarch Revolt. It is a powerful tool, allowing a vampire to call upon the preternatural gifts inherent in vitae without depleting her reserves.

System: Once per turn, when you spend Blood to activate a Quietus power, you immediately regain 1 of the Blood points spent to activate that power. Blood recouped with Retain the Quick Blood does not count toward your maximum Blood expenditure per turn.

Second Wind

Prerequisites: Fortitude ••• and Potence •

Although all vampires can heal their wounds, your ability to repair damage to your flesh and bone is marvelous to behold. With concentration and a short space of time, you can force your body to reject its damage, repairing even the most terrible wounds.

System: Spend 1 Blood and spend two full turns in concentration, taking no other action except movement. By using Second Wind, you can convert all aggravated damage you have taken into normal damage.

*Sympathetic Agony

Prerequisites: Chimerstry •• and Fortitude •••

Illusory pain can be just as real as inflicted suffering, and true physical toughness is as much a matter of will as it is of the flesh. When you are damaged, you can redirect the pain of that injury to your target, momentarily overcoming her with the same pain she tried to inflict on you.

System: Once per turn, when someone inflicts damage on you, you can spend 1 Blood and target your attacker with an opposed challenge using the Chimerstry test pool. If you succeed, your victim suffers a -3 penalty to all Physical, Social, and Mental attack test pools on her next initiative. Sympathetic Agony cannot be used in response to attacks that did not deal damage, or when you negated all damage by using Fortitude or similar powers. Sympathetic Agony can be used during Celerity rounds, but can only be used once per turn.

Telepathic Directive

Prerequisites: Auspex •••• and Dominate •

Most powers of mental control are audible and must be communicated to the subject through verbal orders or obvious gestures. You have mastered the ability to compel others through telepathic communication, placing your instructions directly inside the subject’s mind.

System: You can use Telepathy to communicate your Command and Mesmerism instructions directly into your target’s mind. The target hears your voice in her head as though you are speaking, and she recognizes the voice if she has heard it before.

Telepathic Directives are always understandable, as they are conveyed through the common language of thought. Even if your target is deaf or incapable of understanding your gestures, she is still affected by the Telepathic Command. Note that you still need to capture your target’s attention, and you must fulfill all other requirements of the Dominate power you wish to use.

Telepathic Directives cannot be combined with other powers or merits that augment Command or Mesmerism, such as Mass Manipulation.

Unnatural Grace

Prerequisites: Celerity •, Fortitude •, and Presence •

In myth, vampires are often linked to cats. Tales speak of Vlad Dracul striding up a castle’s minarets, of a vampire appearing in a CEO’s board room without entering the building, and of supernaturally agile burglars whisking easily across near-invisible wires. Vampires are known for turning up where you expect them least, and this power is one of the reasons why.

System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a simple action to activate Unnatural Grace. For the next hour, your character can stick to solid surfaces, maintaining her balance at angles up to 90 degrees. Thus, your character can stride up a wall or saunter across a miniscule tightrope, but she cannot walk upside-down on a ceiling.

When you employ Unnatural Grace, you land silently from any fall and take no damage from falling up to one mile. Regardless of the circumstances, you always land perfectly on your feet.

*Visions of the True Form

Prerequisites: Vicissitude •• and Auspex •••

Those who craft flesh at this level of skill can notice almost insignificant imperfections in another creature’s form, realizing instinctively when someone’s shape has been transformed. With sight guided by this instinct, you can glimpse the true appearance beneath the ruse.

System: By purchasing Vision of the True Form, you gain the ability to sense an individual’s true form. If you suspect a character is not in her true form, you can use your standard action and make a challenge using your Mental attribute + Investigation versus your target’s Mental attribute + Willpower to examine the individual. If successful, you gain a brief vision of the subject’s natural appearance.

Visions of the True Form only works on transformative powers and effects, such as Shape of the Beast, Black Metamorphosis, Shape of Beast’s Wrath, and Horrid Form, or powers that physically change the target’s form, such as Fleshcraft. It cannot be used to discern powers that alter only a small portion of the body, such as Feral Claws, or powers that alter the body without transforming it, such as Earth Meld. Visions of the True Form also reveals supernatural conditions, such as the Nosferatu clan flaw.

Will to Survive

Prerequisites: Fortitude • and Presence •

Emotions can control the flesh, calming the heartbeat and soothing the autonomic systems, allowing your body to better recognize injury without interruption. With this power, you have learned to focus your nervous reactions to better support your body’s ability to heal.

System: If you have any damage in your Injured wound track, you automatically regenerate 1 point of normal damage each turn without spending Blood. If you have no remaining normal damage, but still have aggravated damage in your Injured wound track, Will to Survive heals 1 point of aggravated damage every three turns.

Will to Survive heals a character during the everyman round; this power has no effect during Celerity rounds. Will to Survive ceases to function if you have no Blood in your Blood pool or no wounds in the Injured wound track. Will to Survive does not require you to expend an action or Blood. In combat, this healing occurs during your everyman initiative.

Wolf’s Blood

Prerequisites: Animalism •• and Protean •

Vampires are not the only creatures that stalk the night. The massive hunter assaults during the Nights of Turmoil caused many Gangrel to seek any shelter they could find, even hiding among small populations of lupines in a desperate attempt to survive. This activity necessitated a resurgence of an ancient technique used before the New World was discovered: the power of Wolf’s Blood.

System: As long as you adhere to the Morality of Humanity and possess a Morality rating of 3 or more, you can fool werewolves into believing you are one of their kind. When these creatures use powers to determine your creature type, you show all the signs of being a werewolf.

After you purchase this power, the wolf form provided by your Shape of the Beast power and the monstrous form of your Shape of Beast’s Wrath power appear indistinguishable from a werewolf’s hispo and crinos forms, respectively. Wolf’s Blood can only go so far to disguise your nature and does not confer any knowledge of werewolf society upon your character. If a werewolf sees you burning in the sunlight, she’ll likely guess your secret. This technique only fools supernatural powers.

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