Thursday, April 18, 2013

Pain and Suffering

An invisible, serrated shard of glass piercing the flesh.  Mind numbing agony which emanates through the body.  That incessant ache which permeates everything and clouds the senses.

I find that pain isn't represented very well, or at all most times.  For instance, if someone were to suffer from a blow from a truck the pain would be debilitating.  Even if said person were to then be magically healed, the pain might continue to linger unless directly addressed.  A victim suffering from damage should be suffering penalties, and the greater the damage...

Pain
For every ten points a victim suffers damage to their wound pool, in a single attack, the victim gains one Pain.  Pain is healed with rest (like pools and other modifiers).  Every point of Pain gives -1 to all rolls (except during lunacy rolls add Pain).  All undead and golems are immune to pain.

Threshold (Sage Lore - Stm)
Add the Threshold modifier to Pain, a victim can never receive a positive modifier this way.  (Eg: A victim with 2 Pain and Threshold +4 would have no negative or positive penalty due to Pain.)
Shock
When a victim's Pain penalty equals their Stm, they go into shock.  When in shock, a victim is limited to one check or move and may not use mana or prayer pool.

Using Power and Pain
Soothing Touch (Water, Healing) - DoS removes Pain from target.
Transference (Telepathy, War, Air, Summoning) - DoS removes Pain from target which the caster receives.  (War could then be used to make a pool to hit, transferring the Pain to the target.)

Skills and Pain
The skill torture should be noted, due to being able to give things pain points (equal to the DoS).  The intended target should be immobilized to use this as a check and no damage is done.  Torture could also be stacked with a damage roll, which would double the amount of Pain received from the attack.

Aid can be used to reduce pain, temporarily.  An aid check will negate Pain at one per DoS, which will go down at one every round.

A non-lethal called shot could also be used to double the Pain from an attack.

Tormentor (Priest Source)
A person might chose to specialize in producing and spreading pain to harness the dark energies it produces.  A tormentor does this by hurting themselves and others and then using it as a weapon against their foes.

Starting Level: +1 Threshold, 1 knowledge point, 3 weapon uses.
Level Advancement: +1 Threshold, 2 weapon uses.

Using Pool:  A tormentor can use an amount of prayer equal to the amount of Pain near them, including themselves, up to five times their Threshold modifier.
-Scathe: Pool to hit, attack DoS equals Pain received by target.
-Transfer: Threshold DoS equals amount of Pain to be transferred from one target to another willing target.
-Override: Caster may ignore one Pain modifier for each 5 prayer used.
-Incite: Pool to hit, attack DoS adds to an immediate lunacy roll.
-Agonize: Target loses an amount of wounds equal to Threshold DoS, to a maximum of their Pain.

Other Sources and Pain
Any source which gives a modifier to MS would instead gain a modifier to Threshold.

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