040: VARIABLE TRAITS

Each of these traits shares a quality that sets it apart from the others you have defined for your character so far: They are likely to fluctuate over the course a session, story, or chronicle, and not simply as the result of the player improving the traits through experience. In some cases, there are permanent ratings (that act much like other traits) and temporary ratings (that are expended in play). In other cases, the rating simply fluctuates according to the sways of the character’s experiences. The two fluctuating traits covered here are Willpower and Health.

WILLPOWER

Willpower measures a character’s determination — not courage precisely, nor conscience, but everything that leads to persistence in the face of adversity and to effort that transcends her normal limits in a moment of supreme crisis. It is rated from 1 to 10, but has two ratings: one for permanent potential and one that varies up and down depending on circumstances.

The permanent rating indicates your character’s overall will in much the way other traits function. It serves as a dice pool when you must roll Willpower, and it can be increased with experience. The temporary rating varies in play, and you can spend its points for various immediate effects. Doing so makes your character more prone to outside influence, however. When someone challenges your character with Willpower as the difficulty rating, use the temporary rating.

• Spineless
•• Weak
••• Unassertive
•••• Diffident
••••• Certain
••••• • Confident
••••• •• Determined
••••• ••• Controlled
••••• •••• Iron-Willed
••••• ••••• Unshakable

Spending Willpower
Willpower serves several particularly useful purposes, so your character’s temporary Willpower score is likely to move up and down faster than any other trait. Be sure that you understand these applications, as they can make the difference between success and failure at crucial moments.

• Ensuring Success: Spend one temporary Willpower point to get an automatic success on a single roll. You can spend only one Willpower this way for a particular action and modify only one action in a single turn this way. Nothing cancels out the success, not even rolled botches. If your character puts forth that special exertion, at the least he will get something to show for the effort. When the task involves extended effort, you can spend one Willpower each turn to reinforce the results of sequential rolls. Note: You must spend the Willpower point before you roll. This isn't a replacement for a bad roll, but ensures a success, no matter the roll.

• Resisting Instinct: Some actions are automatic: stepping back from a dangerous precipice or barely controlled flame, for instance. Your Storyteller may allow you to spend a Willpower point to have your character avoid the reflexive response. This is a discretionary matter, and the Storyteller need not always provide the option, though it is suitable. Sustained conquest of reflex may require additional Willpower expenditure a few turns later.

• Maintaining Sanity: Spend one temporary Willpower point to restrain a derangement from manifesting for the rest of the current scene. Using Willpower thus repeatedly can weaken most derangements over time and even eventually cure them.

• Overcoming Injury: Spend one temporary Willpower point to ignore wound penalties as described under Health for one turn. Doing so allows your character to take heroic actions despite grave injury, in accordance with a long tradition of special vibrancy on the part of notable heroes (and villains). Incapacitated characters (and those in torpor) cannot use Willpower thus.

REGAINING WILLPOWER

Running out of Willpower is an unbelievably dreadful thing for characters. Even though they do not look at their character sheets, characters know the feeling of fatigue and the compulsion to act according to a few particularly deep-seated impulses. It is hard for a character with zero temporary Willpower to do much of anything. Storytellers should not be too harsh in letting characters regain Willpower — this venture is not an adversarial one, and the rules do assume that characters can draw on at least a few points of Willpower as circumstances require.

• Acting In Accordance with Vice: Characters regain one or more points of temporary Willpower when acting in accordance with their Vice, as described previously. When your character reaches zero temporary Willpower, the Vice overwhelms pretty much all other desires until he can act in a way that qualifies him to regain at least one point of Willpower.
• Acting in Accordance with Virtue: Characters regain all of the temporary Willpower when acting in accordance with their Virtue. This is more difficult that acting according to Vice so the rewards are higher.

• Completing a Story: Your character’s Willpower pool returns to its maximum rating at the conclusion of a story- line. This is the point at which your character and his allies have brought resolution to the conflicts facing them and gained the opportunity to rest and reflect after multiple sessions of effort. Limited success may restrict the Willpower your character regains this way, and abject failure may cancel it altogether.

• Resting: At your Storyteller’s discretion, characters can regain one Willpower as they rise from sleep. This gain reflects the renewed determination that comes with rest.

• Triumphing: At your Storyteller’s discretion, characters can regain one or more points of temporary Willpower upon achieving some outstanding goal or victory. Overcoming demon hunters who have penetrated the group’s makeshift home, for instance, is often good for some Willpower reinvigoration, as is a decisive victory in a battle of prestige or the popular acceptance of an artistic or other innovation. In addition to these general matters, where the bonus usually applies to all the participants in the success, individual characters may earn Willpower for acting successfully in accordance with their respective Natures. A character who succeeds in several challenges that require (or allow) her to act upon her Nature’s imperative within one scene may qualify, as can a character who succeeds in at least one such challenge per scene for several scenes in a row. Several notable successes of this sort equal to the character’s permanent Willpower is a good benchmark for progress, though Storytellers can and should vary the details to fit the needs of the chronicle and the moment.

Your Storyteller may produce other situations in which it is appropriate for your character to regain Willpower. Feel free to make suggestions, but respect the Storyteller’s authority in this matter. In general, the faster the Storyteller restores Willpower, the more “cinematic” and action oriented a chronicle tends to become, while restrictions on the recovery of Willpower feed (when things work well) a mood of tension and desperation or (when things do not work so well) an unhappy groping for alternatives in the face of repetitive failure.

HEALTH

The Health trait measures just what it sounds like: the extent to which your character is injured or otherwise impaired. There are seven levels of health, ranging from completely uninjured to outright dead or destroyed. The dice pool penalties described here are not cumulative — characters at Mauled lose only two dice. The dice pool penalties do not apply to soak dice pools or Willpower rolls to abort from announced actions to some other option. The dice pool penalties do apply to damage rolls for Strength-based attacks but not to ones relying on mechanical force like crossbow bolts.
Characters with the Merits Huge and Giant add two levels of Health to the beginning of the table.  So they will take 4 wounds before suffering dice pool penalties.  
Characters with the Flaw Small and Tiny subtract two levels of Health from the beginning of the table.  So they will suffer dice pool penalties from the first wound they receive.

Health Summary

Health Level	Dice Pool Penalty	Movement Penalty
Uninjured	-0	none
Bruised	-0	none
Hurt	-1	none
Injured	-1	halve running speed
Wounded	-2	no running; may not move, then attack
Mauled	-2	max. Speed is halved
Crippled	-5	cannot move
Incapacitated	total	character may not take any actions