Disciplines

By drawing on the feral instinct and predatory drive of the Beast, a vampire can communicate with and control animals, establishing mastery over more primitive beasts. Animalism can be used on birds, mammals, marsupials, and fish. It cannot be used on insects, nor on creatures whose minds are too simple to understand rudimentary communication, such as mollusks or worms.

The five senses of smell, touch, taste, sight, and hearing can all be sharpened with the use of Auspex. This improved awareness can go beyond the physical senses, expanding a vampire's powers of concentration, perception, and consciousness beyond the ability of mortals. Auspex can also pierce mental distractions and illusions, such as those created by Obfuscate or Chimerstry.

Celerity is the discipline of extraordinary speed and precision. When in need, a vampire can expend her Blood to fuel her actions, moving with startling quickness. Celerity allows additional actions in special Celerity rounds. You can only take Physical actions during a Celerity round — the character may move, attack, or activate a Physical power, but cannot engage in any Mental or Social challenges.

Chimerical illusions are shaped from the stuff of dreams, a quasi-substantial essence that members of the Ravnos clan call maya. Items made with this power are not real, but they are also not entirely insubstantial. A chimerical gun has the appropriate weight and heft; a chimerical flag will sway in the wind and cast a shadow. However, illusions can add to the world but can never subtract from it. Items or creatures made with this power cannot cause harm.

Subtle, potent, and wholly evil, the powers of Daimoinon are the signature discipline of the Baali. This discipline was perfected in the deepest sacrificial pits and the more torturous dungeons of the Dark Ages, and carries forward those horrors into the modern age. These are the black gifts of evil, torn from the tongues of sorcerer-kings and unlocked within the vicious, corrupted hearts of betrayers.

The Embrace ravages the minds of Malkavians, twisting and shattering their psyches, but also expanding their consciousness to a point where there is very little distinction between madness and insight. Their signature discipline, Dementation, carries this madness forward, spreading it throughout the world. The discipline unlocks the doors of the subconscious and frees the ego, ravaging a victim's logic and supplanting it with chaos. A character must have a Derangement to purchase any dot of Dementation.

There are many legends describing a vampire's ability to put people under her spell by staring deeply into another person's eyes. Through the use of Dominate, a vampire exerts her will over another, issuing commands that must be obeyed. Dominate cannot force directly self-destructive actions. To use Dominate on a target, that individual must have her gaze or attention focused on the Dominate user.

Some vampires are true juggernauts, shrugging off even agonizing physical trauma and brutal injury. Their bodies have become resistant to wounds, ignoring pain that would send a normal mortal into fatal shock. Each dot of Fortitude represents an additional increase to physical resilience, and each dot stacks with all other mechanical bonuses granted by other dots. Fortitude powers are always active and do not normally cost Blood to activate.

Kineticism draws power from motion and force, storing it to augment the abilities of its practitioner. A proprietary discipline for the clanless, somehow learned but not exactly taught, its advent is relatively recent with no confirmed accounts older than 25 to 30 years. As a Caitiff accumulates kinetic charges during combat, she can channel them to enhance movement, discharge devastating attacks, dampen incoming damage, and redirect projectiles. Charges manifest as visible crackling energy, preventing supernatural invisibility (such as Unseen Presence), though disguises and object concealment still function.

The Greek muse of tragedy, Melpomene, was said to inspire madness and great emotion through her music. Through sound and song, the user of this discipline twists emotion and even stirs insanity, affecting the very depths of a listener's soul. Deaf subjects or individuals unable to hear the vampire are still affected so long as the singer's voice naturally reaches their location. The effects of Melpominee cannot be captured by recordings nor carried by microphones, bullhorns, or other electronic or mechanical means.

Mytherceria is a discipline of twisted perceptions. These powers blur the line between reality and dream, drawing both on the vitae of its user and on the fae vitality present in the natural world. Mytherceria is a discipline of riddles and puzzles, enigmas and conundrums, and many of its powers provide effects that befuddle a target's mind. Mytherceria also encompasses a heightened talent for acquiring obscure knowledge, and for creating and solving riddles.

The gentle power of Obeah was once respected and valued, as were its inceptors, the Salubri. However, over the centuries, both the clan and the power have been tarnished, and now any sign of the Obeah discipline is likely to be treated with disdain and suspicion. The power itself can cure both psychological and physical wounds. Use of any Obeah power beyond the first causes a third eye to manifest upon the user's forehead, opening and glowing throughout the use of these powers.

Obfuscate is the power of fogging another's mind, lowering her perception, and making her miss small details or notable inconsistencies. With this power, a vampire can change her physical appearance, steal or conceal valuable items, and even cloak a small group of individuals from sight. Obfuscate affects all five senses — it can visually conceal an individual and also mask sounds, alter the user's voice, disguise odor, or even make a ratty jacket feel like rich leather.

The masters of Obtenebration can command darkness itself, ordering it to carry out their will. Obtenebration is wholly unnatural, calling on the essence of the Abyss and drawing it into the physical world. This darkness mutes sound, absorbs light, and seems almost tangible. It is willful, twisting and writhing with a sentience of its own, unless tightly controlled by its wiELDER. Spirits of all kinds fear the Abyss. All powers of Obtenebration are automatically dispelled if exposed to sunlight.

Each dot of Potence represents an additional increase to a character's physical strength, and each dot stacks with all other mechanical bonuses granted by other dots. Potence powers are always active and do not normally require Blood to activate. Potence powers cannot be used outside of hand-to-hand and melee combat range, unless a power specifies otherwise.

Through the use of Presence, vampires practice subtle manipulation. Where Dominate is a hammer, Presence is an iron hand in a velvet glove. This discipline sways the emotions and may not even be noticed, if the effects are applied cunningly enough. Presence doesn't alter thought processes or change a subject's personality; it simply enflames the target's affections and sentiments, compelling her with newborn emotions.

The Protean discipline, developed first among the Gangrel, allowed a vampire to find shelter in the soil of the earth, or to travel as swiftly as a bat could fly or a wolf could run. Protean was essential to vampiric survival in the Middle Ages, and even in modern nights, it remains one of the most cinematic and renowned disciplines of the children of Caine.

The Quietus discipline is sacred to members of Clan Assamite, who view its use as a reverent practice. Based on elements of blood alteration, vitae control, and pestilence, Quietus focuses on weakening and injuring a target so that she may be more easily destroyed. Through the use of this discipline, a vampire can become a fearsome assassin, causing death and leaving behind only a trace of blackened blood to tell the tale.

In ancient Egyptian temples and sleek, modern sky rises, the clan of serpents practices its arts and worships its founder: the vampiric god, Set. Setites consider the Serpentis discipline to be a gift of Set's benevolence, and they treat its practice with reverence, praising Set with each use and invocation of these powers.

Wielding enigmatic and secret shamanistic magics, Ahrimanes transcend the limitations of their thaumaturgical powers, gaining a greater connection and control over the world of spirits. As an Ahrimane learns Spiritus, she can not only interact with the spirit world but harness its power to aid her own physical form. Practitioners undergo a spiritual awakening that bestows awareness of the umbral realms, and the most powerful are said to have been able to cross fully into the realm the werewolves referred to as the Umbra.

Those who control the powers of Temporis have the capacity to comprehend the permutations of time, speeding and slowing its effects to suit their desires. Temporis channels the mystical force that makes a vampire immortal, rendering her body immune to the ravages of time. Users of Temporis tend to become increasingly meticulous and nearly obsessive about the small details of daily life, growing detached and callous by experiencing the passage of ages.

The corpselike bodies of vampires are intimately tied to death, trapped in a state of eternal, arrested decay. Thanatosis draws on that connection, encouraging and feeding on blight and deterioration. These are the powers of atrophy, decrepitude, putrescence, and rot. In some ways, Thanatosis grants control over the curse itself, temporarily suspending a vampire's immortality and causing even her eternal flesh to suffer rot and decay. Thanatosis is the signature discipline of the Samedi bloodline.

Fighting to defend their clan in dark and troubled times, warrior Salubri created the Valeren discipline. Unlike its sister discipline, Obeah, Valeren is definitely not a healing DISCIPLINE_POWER. It is a manifestation of war, anger, and spiritual chi. Use of any Valeren power beyond the first dot causes a third eye to manifest upon the user's forehead, opening and glowing throughout the use of these powers.

The Tzimisce are legendary for their ability to twist and shape mortal flesh, bone, and tissue. The Fiends harbor ancient secrets that make other vampires shudder with horror at the sight of their handiwork. These powers require physical contact for the vampire to shape and contour another creature's physical form. Supernatural characters affected by Vicissitude can undo the effects through further applications of Vicissitude or by healing the affliction as though it were 5 points of normal damage.

With the power of Visceratika, you can harden your skin and become one with stone, much like the angelic and demonic gargoyle carvings of old. Members of the Gargoyle bloodline were slaves when they first evinced this discipline, as rituals cast repeatedly upon them somehow became permanent, fusing with their magical nature. Possessing Visceratika notably toughens and hardens a vampire's skin, tinting it with faint shades of grey.