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BRUJAH
The Pacific Northwest has a long history of attracting outcasts and drifters, those looking to keep some level of anonymity and independence. The Brujah have never been a large part of the Seattle Kindred community, but when they do show up to a party, they make their presence known immediately. Many of the Seattle Brujah are leftovers from failed Anarch movements in the past century, most choosing to remain unaffiliated or loosely affiliated with the city’s political factions – or at least, they like to claim that.
Generally, Brujah gather at a “bash”, which can be loosely summed up as a sort of fight club for the undead. They use these events to assert their physical superiority to the rest of the clans and to celebrate the raw power of their bloodline. That’s not to say they don’t invite other clans to enter, but it’s rare that any but the Brujah dominate the bash. The champions of these fights are rumored to make good money hiring themselves out as muscle for anyone who can afford them. Supposedly, business is booming in Seattle these nights…
POTENCE
The signature Discipline of the Brujah imbues their undead bodies with the pinnacle of raw Kindred strength. Nobody underestimates the strength of a Brujah twice.
• Fist of Caine (Blood Cost: 2), Potence’s first active power, allows the Brujah to deliver a devastating punch that turns walls into rubble and throws enemies through the air, tearing of limbs and causing collateral damage. The • • slot enhances these devastating effects even further.
• • • Earthshock (Blood Cost: 2), the second active power, smashes the ground with titanic force. The impact causes a shockwave around the player, damaging and knocking down anyone who dared to stray too close. After further upgrades with the • • • • and • • • • • slots, the ground cracks under the Brujah’s onslaught, sending fissures outwards and damaging anyone caught in this cataclysm.
Use of Potence powers in front of unsuspecting mortals is a Masquerade Violation.
CELERITY
Some Kindred strike faster, dodge quicker, and escape more nimbly than any mortal creature could hope to. They use Celerity, the Discipline of pushing their bodies’ speed beyond all limits.
• Unseen Storm (Blood Cost: 2), the first active, allows the vampire to dash in a direction of their choice at such a speed as to momentarily disappear from view, allowing them to land attacks, dodge around enemies, or get away before the dust has time to settle. Characters struck along the way of the dash get knocked down. The • • slot further enhances the Unseen Storm.
• • • Accelerate (Blood Cost: 5), the second active, opens up speeds so fast that everything else in the world appears to slow down to a virtual standstill. Assailants seem frozen in their attacks, cars crawl forward, bullets zip by lazily, and the vampire can get up to the kinds of stunts that, with a popular 80’s synth track in the background, would make an awesome movie scene. The • • • • and • • • • • slots allow the vampire to further improve their acceleration.
Use of Potence powers in front of unsuspecting mortals is a Masquerade Violation.
Bloodlines' disciplines were cool in concept, but mostly wasted potential in practice. Dominate would have been more interesting if it allowed you to possess a human, using them to scout ahead or for some other tactical purpose. Celerity would have been more interesting if it increased your movement speed and jumping distance (of course, the levels would have needed to be redesigned around this increase in mobility). Basically, they should have taken inspiration from immersive sims.
Bullshit. The disciplines in Bloodlines were all vampire-themed and made me feel cool, dark, and better than human, with weird effects completely appropriate to the genre. Punching the ground as a combat technique to battle people with earthquakes is comic book silliness, on par with stretching powers or turning into a car.
"I know! I'll encase him in a sphere of pure sound!"
I won't argue about balance, but I don't accept that the flavor of the Bloodlines powers was off.
In VTM? Wow, that's news to me. I never played the PnP. I still think it's dumb.
It's a 6+ tier ability originally (seven dots to be specific, so all the way NPCs only bs, like ZA WARUDO and almost every Vicissitude card in Eternal Snuggle), debuted in Guide to the Camarilla IIRC. V5 adds it as the other five dot for Potence (as mentioned, Potence and Fortitude now have abilities instead of only a passive effect now, and Celerity also has additional abilities instead of just a scaling active; this is a very welcome change IMO), it doesn't deal damage like the old version used to and honestly the other five dot for Potence is better since that's the Aggravated damage melee now instead of Protean claws (again, welcome change, even if even at five-dot I'll have my reservations about aggravated being available). In vidya its different because vidya is not PnP and can never be so it needs to concern itself with being vidya.
