Lethal
From Edge of Darkness Wiki
Attacks made with piercing or cutting weapons -- knives, guns, crossbows or swords -- deliver lethal damage. Fire also causes lethal damage to ordinary people. Mark lethal damage on your character sheet with an "X".
- Lethal damage is "upgraded" to aggravated once a mortal being's rightmost Health box is occupied by Lethal damage.
- Once your character loses all Health from lethal damage, he's comatose.
Vampire Considerations
Lethal wounds are, strictly speaking, much more obvious than bashing damage. Deep cuts, piercing injuries, ragged tears, broken bones and dislocated limbs are all lethal injuries. In a living human, any lethal wound will seriously impair function and may require medical attention to prevent the onset of shock and death. In Kindred, lethal damage represents an injury that may not worsen on its own but still presents a threat to function. Limbs are bent at sickening angles, features are crushed or pushed out of place, long furrows are cut into the flesh and bones or internal organs may be exposed.
Storytellers may wish to associate penalties to certain Attributes with lethal wounds in order to add realism to play. A vampire whose leg is broken by a fall may suffer a –2 dice penalty to his Dexterity until he heals the representative damage, while another who takes a sword-stroke to the face might suffer a –3 dice penalty to Presence until she regenerates. The severity of the penalty should be dictated by the nature of the injury, and in all cases, the penalty should diminish if the character heals part of the wound, and disappear if she heals it completely.
Vampires know quite well that lethal damage can lead quite quickly to torpor and Final Death. There are few Kindred who don’t take lethal wounds seriously, and fewer still who stay ignorant and survive for long. Besides the trauma involved in suffering injuries that would completely debilitate a living mortal, the understanding that an ostensibly immortal creature can be so close to death is more than enough to change a flippant vampire’s mind.
When a vampire character’s rightmost Health box is filled with lethal damage, he falls into torpor instead of bleeding to death.
Any vampire who sustains lethal, flesh-breaking damage near mortal witnesses and doesn’t expend at least one point of Vitae, pushing it out into the wound, is risking the Masquerade. The damage dealt would normally be accompanied by copious blood flow, and onlookers will think it strange if a vampire so injured doesn’t bleed.[1]
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