Custom Combination Discipline / Technique

Through hard knocks, careful cultivation of the Beast’s instincts, and simple meanness, a vampire can learn to fight as if his pack were at his back, even should he find himself alone and outnumbered. His eyes dart from opponent to opponent, and he snaps like a cornered rat at anything that comes too close. This is essentially a supernatural heightening of an instinct common to all animals, weaponized through the power of the blood.

Activating this ability costs one willpower trait, and its effects last for the remainder of the current scene. While this power is active, at the end of any turn in which no ally of the character took any combat action (such as when the only other characters in the scene are enemy combatants, ie. the character with this power is fighting alone), the character recovers one lost physical attribute trait (if applicable) and may take an additional action which must be used to make a brawling or melee attack. The additional action takes place after all other sources of “extra actions” (such as Celerity) have been resolved. Activating this power does not activate any of the character’s other Celerity powers, though normal Celerity may be invoked separately while this power is in use.

This state of heightened aggression is extremely taxing to a character’s Beast, more so even than frenzy. In the next scene following any use of this power, the character suffers the effects of having “lost” his Beast (as per Drawing Out the Beast), save that he will recover automatically at the end of that scene. Additionally, though a character using this power is not in frenzy, and can still frenzy normally while it is active, it is a similar enough state that any effect that would prevent or forcibly end the character’s frenzy (such as Quell the Beast) will end or prevent its use as if it were.

As should be readily apparent, only a character with a Beast can learn or use this ability. Ghouls, dhampirs, and revenants, possessed as they are of weakened or fragmentary Beasts, cannot learn this power, nor can it be duplicated by any effect that does not also make a character susceptible to frenzy.

This combination power taps into the darkness of the Beast as expressed by the Nosferatu clan, and as such can only be learned by Nosferatu characters.