Resistance

Trait Description: This trait is important in combat. Resistance allows characters to combat the effects of disease, poison, fatigue, sleep deprivation, pain, extreme temperatures and other harsh or potentially damaging conditions. Characters with this Ability can march carrying heavy loads and swim in ice-cold water.

Specialties: Holding Breath, Enduring Pain, Resisting Poison, Resisting Disease, Going Without Sleep, Moving While Encumbered, In Combat, Extreme Temperatures

Trait Effects: Someone with Resistance 1 can probably keep her head after a night of heavy drinking. Someone with Resistance 3 can run 10 miles without stopping or easily recover from an infection. Someone with Resistance 5 can easily throw off the effects of a deadly poison or stay awake for a week without impairment.

List of Resistance Charms

Dramatic Rules for Resistance

Avoiding/Overcoming Disease (Resistance, Medicine)

In the world of Exalted, plague is a horrifying prospect. The Chosen might be virtually immune to sickness, but mortals have no such protection. See Disease and Infected Wounds. In addition, characters can also become diseased from a magical effect with a Sickness effect keyword. These diseases are sometimes conventional and sometimes sorcerous ailments with their own idiosyncratic rules. Characters who are immune to all illness ignore both natural ailments and those caused by Sickness effects, even if the Charm uses its own rules. Characters who are immune to natural ailments ignore only those diseases that use these following rules.

When a character is first exposed to a disease through its usual vector, roll her (Stamina + Resistance) against a base difficulty of the Virulence of that disease. Reduce this difficulty by as much as two if the contact is brief, or increase the difficulty by as much as two if the vector is practically unavoidable (like the stinking miasma of festering rot in a plague-wracked ruin). If the roll succeeds, the character avoids catching the disease. On a failure, she contracts the sickness.

Once a character has caught a disease, she has a period of time equal to its Incubation before it threatens her life. (She may develop symptoms much sooner, putting her at -1 or -2 internal penalty to all actions from discomfort.) Once this period is up, reroll (Stamina + Resistance) every day against a difficulty of the illness's Untreated Morbidity. If the character receives medical attention from a healer before the Incubation period elapses, the difficulty is the disease's Treated Morbidity instead. With a success, the character’s symptoms never worsen. They fade over a day as her immune system overcomes the malady.

Mortals and animals whose players fail this roll spend a number of days equal to their Stamina rating dying (during which they are at -4 to all actions from pain and exhaustion rather than the usual -2). Exalted and other similarly hardy magical beings are at -2 to all actions as a result of failure, but their players may recheck each day until the characters throw off the disease and have their full health restored. As long as the Chosen carry a sickness, they could be contagious, so they must be careful when they encounter a serious malady that they do not accidentally spread it to others. Spirits and Fair Folk are completely immune to normal disease—they resist magical diseases as Exalted. Only the Great Contagion has ever proved an exception, slaying 90 percent of the world's population regardless of Exaltation, leaving only spirits and the Fair Folk untouched.

Treating a sick character requires an (Intelligence + Medicine) roll with a difficulty rather unsurprisingly based on the disease's Difficulty to Treat. If the disease's difficulty to treat is unknown, it equals the (Essence of the character who caused the Sickness effect + 1). Physicians cannot treat a disease until they have diagnosed it (see Diagnose Patient).

Treating illness is a dramatic action, requiring a minimum of a full hour to administer poultices, herbs and/or other curative regimens (the necessary ingredients of which normally have a materials cost of Resources 1, but may be higher for rare diseases). Village healers and witches often gather their herbs and drugs rather than purchase them, requiring a successful (Perception + Survival) roll (difficulty 2-3) assuming proper ingredients can be found in the area.

For dramatic purposes, Storytellers should allow ingredient substitution so this roll has a chance unless finding a rare and exotic ingredient is a plot point. In such a case, characters might be forced to journey to strange lands or to seek magical assistance from spirits, the Exalted or even stranger beings in order to administer a cure.

If a physician actually spends a full day regularly checking in on a patient, the healer's player gains an additional die on the roll. This bonus increases to two dice if the healer does virtually nothing else but administer treatment throughout the day. Giving treatment to a character who is dying from disease after receiving no aid allows the victim's player a reroll at the disease’s Untreated Morbidity. If successful, the character recovers. On a failure, the character continues dying and without magical assistance will expire. Characters suffering from Sickness effects with no stated Untreated Morbidity automatically shake them off, without a roll, when they successfully receive treatment.

Enduring Hardship (Resistance)

Most living beings require certain basic essentials to remain healthy: air, sustenance and sleep foremost among them. The need for air is addressed in "Holding Breath" (the next entry). Characters can go a number of days without food equal to half their (Stamina + Resistance) total without penalty, rounded up. For every day that passes thereafter, characters suffer a cumulative -1 to all actions. When the total penalty exceeds a character's (Stamina + Resistance), she dies. Characters who imbibe insufficient nourishment starve more slowly, treating two (or even three) days as one for the purposes of assessing penalties. Eating a full meal removes -1 from the penalty, but characters accrue penalties automatically for periods of nutritional deprivation until they have eaten sufficient meals to reduce the penalty to zero. Thirst can kill even quicker than hunger. For each day without water past the first, a character is at a cumulative -1 to dice pools. When the penalty exceeds (Stamina + Resistance), the character dies. Drinking proper fluids for a day removes all thirst penalties.

Compared with starvation, sleep deprivation is a mere nuisance. For every day that a character goes without sleep beyond the first, she is at a cumulative one-die internal penalty to all pools. This penalty cannot exceed three dice. Furthermore, players of characters suffering any penalties from sleep deprivation must roll (Stamina + Resistance) at standard difficulty whenever their characters are left alone without anything to do. Failure indicates the character falls asleep for eight hours or until awoken. Once a character sleeps eight hours, all penalties from sleep deprivation fade.

Characters track penalties from all forms of deprivation separately, but only the highest of the three penalties actually applies. In place of deprivation, a final hardship condition of note is pregnancy. Mortal pregnancies last three seasons, imposing a Dexterity-based dice pool penalty of two during the second season and four during the third. Exalted pregnancies last a full year, with the characters not even showing until the fifth month or penalized at one die until the 13th. In the final month, Exalted increase the penalty to two. When mortals give birth, roll (Stamina + Resistance), difficulty 1. On a botch, the mother dies. Exalted are immune to death from childbirth.

Holding Breath (Resistance)

Characters can safely hold their breath for (Stamina x 30) seconds, plus an additional 30 seconds per success on a (Stamina + Resistance) roll. The difficulty of this roll is normally 1, but it may increase as high as 3 for swimming in cold water or if the character didn't have a chance to draw a deep breath. Once a character passes the safety limit, she must breathe or she begins asphyxiating, suffering one level of unsoakable bashing damage every 30 seconds. This damage cannot be healed by any means until the character is breathing normally again.

Strenuous Activity (Resistance)

Characters can perform continuous heavy exertion for a number of hours equal to their (Stamina + Resistance + pertinent specialty). Such exertion includes running, swimming, sex or any other athletic activity. For each subsequent hour of activity after that, characters suffer a cumulative one-die internal penalty to all actions from fatigue. Spending a Willpower point negates all fatigue for one action and reduces total fatigue by one. Channeling a point of Conviction negates fatigue for the next minute and reduces fatigue by a character's Conviction rating. When the fatigue penalty exceeds a character's (Stamina + Resistance), the character passes out and remains unconscious until she has slept for at least one hour (which removes one die of penalty). Every additional hour of sleep or three hours of rest removes another one die until the penalty is removed. Until the penalty is completely gone, the character automatically begins accruing more penalty dice for doing anything strenuous. Characters who are treading water will drown unless they have a buoyant object to keep them afloat while they rest.

Particularly extreme conditions of temperature (in either direction) can penalize a character's effective (Stamina + Resistance) total for the purposes of determining resistance to fatigue. Generally, such conditions do not impose a penalty greater than -3.

Withstanding Poisons/Environmental Damage (Resistance)

Although the bodies of the Chosen are supernaturally resilient, they are not completely immune to the dangers of poison and epic overindulgence. For mortals, most toxins of any severity mean certain death unless they can find immediate medical treatment from a skilled herbalist or alchemist.

(Damage/Interval, Toxicity, Tolerance/Interval, Penalty)

In Exalted, poisons have a number of statistics. First, they have a Damage value separated from a time interval by a slash. The initial value in this pair indicates the maximum damage a single dose of the poison can inflict, while the second value indicates the interval at which the poison inflicts one damage die. In combat time, an interval of one second means that damage is applied every tick. An interval of "action" indicates the poison inflicts damage every five seconds of narrative time or the beginning of every tick that a character acts on during combat time. Therefore, a poison with 5L/1 hour would inflict one die of lethal damage when it first entered a character's system and an additional one die every hour until damage had been rolled five times. (See Damage.)

Multiple doses of the same poison stack their Damage ratings, effectively prolonging the duration rather than increasing the damage suffered at every interval. The countdown is always made at an interval from the current damage, so two doses of a 5L poison would become 10L and would need to roll damage 10 times from receiving the second dose in order for the poison to fully run its course. Poison damage cannot be soaked, but it may be fought at each damage interval with a reflexive (Stamina + Resistance) roll at a difficulty determined by the listed Toxicity rating of the poison (or the number of doses the character has consumed, if higher). Mortals add two to the Toxicity of all poisons unless the Toxicity is marked with an "M" tag. Willpower cannot be spent on this roll for an automatic success.

If this roll succeeds, the damage type is reduced by one level, so aggravated becomes lethal, lethal becomes bashing, and bashing toxins inflict no damage. With double the number of successes required, the damage type decreases two categories. Some extremely deadly venoms have an "L" tag beside their Toxicity, indicating that they normally inflict levels of damage rather than dice. With such toxins, a successful Resistance roll first removes this tag, while double successes drop the damage type one category. The next poison statistic is its Tolerance, which indicates how many doses of the substance a character can safely have in her system before she starts risking damage. This statistic is attached to a time interval indicating how long it takes for the character's body to purge itself of each dose.

If the intervals of damage and dose reduction sync, the dose fades before the Resistance roll. A dash in place of the interval indicates the drug runs its course until it inflicts all damage, and then, it is completely flushed out of the system. The last statistic is the poison’s Penalty, which indicates the internal penalty imposed as a result of pain, hallucination or some other effect as long as the character has more doses of the drug in his system than the substance's Tolerance rating allows. (The penalty equals the number of doses taken, if greater than the usual penalty.) Penalties from poisons do not apply to Resistance rolls against them. If a player successfully makes the Resistance roll for an interval, the Penalty is halved, rounded down. Although not technically a statistic of the poison, each toxin has an associated Resources cost to obtain a dose.

Putting all this together, alcohol has the following traits: (2B/1 hour, 3M, Stamina + Resistance/1 hour, -1). For the purposes of these rules, a dose of alcohol is one drink, which translates roughly to a large beer, a glass of grape wine, several glasses of rice wine or a shot of harder liquor. Because alcohol has a Tolerance equal to the drinker's Stamina, a character with Stamina 2, Resistance 1 could safely hold three drinks in her body without noticeable effect. Each dose fades after an hour, so as long as she doesn't drink more than a glass per hour, she'll be fine. If she unwisely imbibes a row of eight shots in quick succession, this is five doses above her tolerance, changing the statistics of the alcohol within her to (10B/1 hour, 5M, Stamina + Resistance/1 hour, -5). Her player immediately rolls (Stamina + Resistance) at difficulty 5. (If she fails, the character suffers one die of unsoakable bashing damage.) After an hour, her body purges one dose, reducing the statistics to (8B/1 hour, 4M, Stamina + Resistance/hour, -4); another failed resistance roll would result in another die of bashing damage. This repeats each hour until her body finally purges the last excess drink. She is then sober but still at her limit until another three hours cleanses the remaining drinks from her body.

Some rare poisons do not inflict conventional damage, but instead cause some other deleterious effect on a failed Resistance roll. Some inflict no form of damage at all, but still have a Damage statistic to help determine how long they last. Many recreational drugs fall into this category.

Poisons Table

Name	Damage	Toxicity	Tolerance	Penalty	Resources
Alcohol	2B/1 hour	3M	(Stamina + Resistance)/1 hour	-1	1-3
Arrow Frog Venom	8L	4	—/—	-4	3
Arsenic	2L/1 day	3	(Stamina)/1 month	-0	2
Coral Snake Venom	6L	3	—/—	-5	1
Marijuana	4*/hour	2M	—/—	-2	1
Yozi Venom	10A/minute	5L	—/—	-5	5 (when available at all)

* No actual damage.

Some Charms cause effects with the keyword Poison. These often use the rules for poison as outlined here but may also have more arcane effects. The rules in individual Charms supercede the rules in this section. Characters who are immune to all poisons ignore both those that use this rules section and Charms with the Poison keyword. Characters who are immune to natural toxins are immune to only those poisons that use this section of the rules and those Charms that state that their effects are the result of a natural toxin.

A variation of the preceding rules also handles conditions inimical to life, ranging from temperature extremes to acid baths. Environmental effects substitute Trauma for Toxicity and do not have a Tolerance, Penalty or associated Resources cost. By default, mortals roll at the same difficulty as Exalted, so the "M" tag is assumed. Moreover, damage is not always inflicted one die at a time, so the listed damage indicates the actual damage inflicted at every interval of exposure. Exalted characters who do take damage subtract their natural lethal soak as normal (to a minimum of one die).

Example: A bonfire has a Damage of 4L/action and a Trauma of 3. The player of a character unwisely standing in the middle of a bonfire would need to make a reflexive difficulty 3 (Stamina + Resistance) roll every five seconds of narrative time or at the beginning of every tick in which she acted. The Resistance roll would reoccur at this interval for as long as the character remained in the flames. On a success, the damage would be 4B; on a failure, 4L. In either case, the character could reduce this damage with natural soak to a minimum of one die.

Environmental Effects

Name	Damage	Trauma
Acid Bath	5L/action	5
Blistering Heat/Numbing Cold	1B/hour	1
Bonfire	4L/action	3
Severe Sandstorm	1L/minute	2
Supernatural Ice Storm	2L/minute	2
The Silent Wind of Malfeas	6A/action	5L