Resilience

Resilience

Vampire The Requiem Sourcebook

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Legends abound of vampires who are able to withstand even the most brutal punishment to their unliving forms. While all Kindred possess a certain degree of the toughness of which these tales speak, those with the Discipline of Resilience are commensurately more stalwart. Vampires with several dots of Resilience are capable of walking through a hail of bullets, shrugging off even the most punishing blows, and even resisting the deadly claws and fangs of supernatural foes.

• Cost: 1 Vitae per scene
• Dice Pool: Resilience is unlike many other Disciplines in that it is not actively rolled. Rather, it provides an augmentation of physical potential that lasts for the scene in which it is activated, and which affects other rolls.
• Action: Reflexive

The following two changes are made to Resilience: Activation is Reflexive The downgrade pool can be refreshed with the expenditure of a Willpower point.

Each dot of Resilience increases the character’s Stamina by one for the scene in which the Discipline is active. This bonus also increases the character’s Health dots during the scene. Resilience may not be invoked more than once per scene. That is, you may not spend a second Vitae and double the benefits of the power.

Example: Prince Asa Clarke is a Ventrue with Resilience 4 and Stamina 4. While returning to his haven, he encounters a resentful Kindred whom he snubbed at Elysium two nights before. Just to be sure, Asa activates his Resilience — his Stamina increases to 8 and his Health dots increase to 13 (Size 5 + Stamina 4 + Resilience 4).

Downgrading Damage

Additionally, Resilience “downgrades” a number of aggravated damage points per scene equal to Resilience dots. This damage becomes lethal instead. Aggravated wounds suffered in excess of the character’s Resilience dots remain aggravated, however. This downgrade doesn’t apply to any aggravated wounds that the vampire already possesses, just to newly acquired ones suffered while Resilience is active. (In the preceding example, Asa would be able to downgrade no more than four points in total.) Example: Maxwell is engaged in combat with a witch-hunter, who clubs him with a flaming torch. The torch inflicts five points of aggravated damage — but Maxwell’s Resilience of 4 downgrades that to four points of lethal damage, with one point of aggravated damage remaining.

Upgraded / Wraparound Damage

Also, if a character suffers damage that upgrades her Health chart, Resilience does not downgrade it. For example, if a character with seven Health dots and a single dot of Resilience suffers nine points of lethal damage, that ninth point stays aggravated. The other eight points are recorded normally as lethal (seven for the Health dots plus one for the Resilience), but the ninth stays aggravated as it upgrades the leftmost box on the character’s Health chart. If that’s all the damage the character suffers by the end of the scene, another of those points of lethal damage upgrades to an aggravated wound once Resilience ceases and the character’s Health dots drop to seven again. Kindred with Resilience are advised to be wise in combat, though they might feel invulnerable while invoking the Discipline.

Extra Dots and After-Effects

Note that the extra Health dots a character gains in a scene while Resilience is active can have consequences later. If a vampire suffers more damage than he has his usual Health dots, those excess wounds upgrade existing wounds (bashing becomes lethal, lethal becomes aggravated) as per the damage rules on p. 171-172 of the World of Darkness Sourcebook. In other words, once the character’s Resilience “powers down” at the end of the scene and the extra Health dots that the power confers are lost, he might have to contend with more serious wounds than initially harmed him unless he heals them while Resilience is still active. See the “Temporary Health Dots” sidebar on p. 173 of the World of Darkness Sourcebook to see what happens when extra Health is lost.