Merits and Flaws

The following Merits and Flaws may only be taken by Nosferatu characters, unless permitted by the Storyteller. At your option, certain vampires who have been subjected to the Tzimisce Discipline of Vicissitude might also display these physical anomalies.


Lizard Limbs (1pt Merit)
Long Fingers (1pt Merit)
Oversized Fangs (1pt Merit)
Oversized Mouth (1pt Merit)
Disgusting (2pt Merit)
Slimy (2pt Merit)
Swarm Attractor (2pt Merit)
Tough Hide (2pt Merit)
Foul Blood (3pt Merit)
Patagia (4pt Merit)
Blunt Teeth (1pt Flaw)
Club Foot (1pt Flaw)
Nosferatu Caitiff (1pt Flaw)
Stench (1pt Flaw)
Parasitic Infestation (2pt Flaw)
Putrescent (3pt Flaw)

Lizard Limbs (1pt Merit)
When your limbs are restrained or grappled, you may spend a Blood Point and make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8). If you succeed, you may "shed" a limb, leaving it in your opponent's grasp while you escape. The limbs may be regrown normally. If you shed enough limbs, you can escape nearly any bonds, though it is difficult to flee the scene of captivity when one has no legs....
Nosferatu with this Merit often use it for practical jokes (Let's shake on it...).

Long Fingers (1pt Merit)
Your fingers are unnaturally long and spidery. You gain one extra die to Dice Pools involving digital coordination or grappling.

Oversized Fangs (1pt Merit)
When you grew your fangs, you really grew 'em. Your fangs are enormous, snaggly things resembling cobra fangs or possibly even tusks. Your bite does one additional die of damage, and you may add one to your Intimidation Dice Pool.

Oversized Mouth (1pt Merit)
Your mouth is huge and you are able to open it to prodigious width. You may drink an additional two Blood Points from your victim each turn.

Disgusting (2pt Merit)
You have the ability to contort your body and face in all sorts of shocking and grotesque ways. You can drool blood, pop your eyes out to double their width, spontaneously grow and burst boils on your flesh, extend your tongue three feet out of your mouth, etc. In addition, you are an accomplished practitioner of the fine art of disgusting others, and take considerable pride in your ability to gross out anyone or anything. By concentrating for a turn and spending a Blood Point, you may will your body to do something vile, making a Wits and Intimidation roll (Difficulty of the opponent's Wits + Self Control). Each success on this roll subtracts one from the opponent's Dice Pool for any action taken next turn. (The opponent is so repulsed and horrified by your antics that concentration is broken.)

Slimy (2pt Merit)
Your skin secretes slime like that of a worm or mollusk. Opponents must score two more successes than normal to grapple you, and your difficulty to soak fire damage is reduced by one.

Swarm Attractor (2pt Merit)
You must have at least one dot in Animalism to take this Merit. Your skin exudes a grease that attracts flies, gnats, bees, and other flying insects. While these insects normally buzz passively about you in a thick cloud, you may command them in a limited fashion. The bugs may travel up to 20 feet from you to sting and distract your foes. The swarm does no actual damage, but any being caught in the swarm must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 7). If the roll fails, the victim loses two dice from her Dice Pool that turn; if it botches, she may take no action whatsoever.

Tough Hide (2pt Merit)
Your skin is thick and leathery, resembling that of a pachyderm. You gain one extra die on your soak Dice Pool (though not to soak fire and sunlight).

Foul Blood (3pt Merit)
Your blood tastes truly awful. Opponents who bite you in combat must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 6) or spend the next turn retching and gagging; the idiot who actually tries to commit diablerie upon you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 9) and score three successes to complete the process.

Patagia (4pt Merit)
You have grown large flaps of skin under your arms, like those of a pterodactyl or flying squirrel. You may use these patagia to glide for short distances, provided there is an updraft or strong wind.

Blunt Teeth (1pt Flaw)
Your teeth are huge and square, not sharp like those of most other Vampires. You must score one extra success to do damage with a bite, and once you have locked your teeth into your prey, you automatically cause the victim one additional Health Level of damage for every two Blood Points taken (you have to chew and chew and chew...).

Club Foot (1pt Flaw)
One of your feet is gnarled and deformed. You move at only half normal speed.

Nosferatu Caitiff (1pt Flaw)
You were Embraced by a Nosferatu, but failed to meet the standards of even that clan, and were subsequently rejected by your sire. As you did not complete the Becoming process, you were not fully transformed, but you still look rather odd. You begin the game with an appearance rating of 1, and raising your Appearance costs double the number of experience points. In addition, you present a tempting target for just about any bully - other Caitiff may not have much to kick around, but a "Nosferatu reject" certainly offers possibilities for abuse.
Not all Caitiff sired by Nosferatu have this flaw; nobody knows why some do and some don't.

Stench (1pt Flaw)
Few Nosferatu smell good, but you reach a new nadir of odiferousness. Even other Nosferatu are repulsed by your stink, and your Stealth Dice Pools are reduced by two against any creature that can smell, unless you are upwind.

Parasitic Infestation (2pt Flaw)
In many ways this Flaw is the negative counterpart to Swarm Attractor (above). Several species of hemovores - ticks, lice, mosquitoes, gnats, chiggers, leeches and the like - find your blood particularly tasty. These creatures crawl and hide among the creases and folds of your skin despite your best efforts to remove them. Particularly persistent are those vermin that drink from you three times and thus become enormous, bloated, Blood Bound ghouls.
You may not command the vermin in any fashion; they are too intoxicated on your vitae to be of any use (though they do love you, for what it's worth). The parasites also drink from one to four of your Blood Points each night (roll a die, and divide by three, rounding up.) This forces you to hunt more often. Finally, the constant itching and irritation increase by one the difficulties of all your rolls to avoid frenzy.

Putrescent (3pt Flaw)
The mystic processes that inhibit the natural decay of the vampiric form were less effective on you. As a result, you constantly rot, though a day's rest checks and to some degree heals the effects. Your soak Dice Pool roll is reduced by one, and if you are jarred or hit violently (more than three successes after soak) you must make a Stamina roll (difficulty 6). If you fail, one of your facial features or fingers falls off; if you botch, one of the levels is aggravated and one of your limbs falls off. This will regrow when the aggravated wound is healed.