Merits
Prerequisites: Mortal
When taking damage from any source, spend a point of Willpower reflexively to activate Damn Lucky. This Merit “absorbs” up to one lethal damage or two bashing damage per dot, protecting your character from that harm. At any point in the same scene, you may choose another character to suffer that harm. The Storyteller decides just how this manifests. The victim may potentially avoid the harm with a successful Wits + Composure roll, requiring successes equal to your dots in this Merit. If successful, she may act normally (potentially requiring Initiative rolls) or apply her Defense. If the Storyteller needs to make a dice roll for the phenomenon, use twice your Merit dots, but do not apply the successes as additional damage.
For example, if your character has Damn Lucky •••, and takes a bullet to the chest for four lethal damage, you may spend a point of Willpower to activate this Merit. The bullet would only cause one lethal damage; the bullet may have hit the book he’s keeping in his coat pocket. You may choose to have that damage apply to his shooter. The Storyteller decides that happens when a ricochet knocks down a chandelier.
The shooter’s player rolls Wits + Composure, and gets the required three successes. So the Storyteller makes an attack roll for the chandelier, but applies the shooter’s Defense to the roll.
If the total damage absorbed is less than your Merit dots, you may absorb damage from multiple sources, but only up to a limit of your total dots in a scene.
(Chargen-only)
Prerequisites: Atariya, Damn Lucky
Any time your character might die (or should die) in a scene, you can cash in one dot of this Merit. Fate conspires to save you at the last minute. You’re moved up to some stable state and removed from immediate danger. You’ll pop up later okay — banged up, whatever, but alive. Characters with this Merit do not necessarily know how many lives they have left. Because of the nature of being lucky, it’s very hard to tell if what they had was a brush with death or just a brush with misfortune.
Notes: Dots of Nine Lives can only be purchased at character creation. When you cash in a dot of Nine Lives, you can change it out with the Sanctity of Merits rule (see the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook, p. 43).
Prerequisites: --
This Merit reflects your character’s disposable income. She might live in an upscale condo, but if her income is tied up in the mortgage and child support payments, she
might have little money to throw around. Characters are assumed to have basic necessities without Resources.
The dot rating determines the relative amount of disposable funding the character has available, depending on your particular chronicle’s setting. The same amount of money means completely different things in a game set in Silicon Valley compared to one set in the Detroit slums. One dot is a little spending money here and there. Two is a comfortable, middle class wage. Three is a nicer, upper middle class life. Four is moderately wealthy. Five is filthy rich.
Every item has an Availability rating. Once per chapter, your character can procure an item at her Resources level or lower, without issue. An item one Availability above her Resources reduces her effective Resources by one dot for a full month, since she has to rapidly liquidate funds. She can procure items two Availability below her Resources without limit (within reason).
For example, a character with Resources •••• can procure as many Availability •• disposable cellphones as she needs.
(Style)
Prerequisites: Dexterity •••, Athletics ••
Your character is a trained and proficient free runner. Free running is the art of moving fluidly through urban environments with complex leaps, bounds, running tricks, and vaults. The is the type of sport popularized in modern action films, where characters are unhindered by fences, walls, construction equipment, cars, or anything else the city puts in your way.
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Flow |
Your character reacts instinctively to any obstacles with leaps, jumps, and scaling techniques. When in a foot chase, subtract your Parkour from the successes needed to pursue or evade. Also, ignore environmental penalties to Athletics rolls equal to your Parkour rating. |
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Cat Leap |
Your character falls with outstanding grace. When using a Dexterity + Athletics roll to mitigate damage from falling, your character gains one automatic success. Additionally, add your Parkour rating to the threshold of damage that can be removed through this roll. Parkour will not mitigate damage from a terminal velocity fall. |
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Wall Run |
When climbing, your character can run upward for some distance before having to traditionally climb. Without rolling, your character scales 10 feet + five feet per dot of Athletics as an instant action, rather than the normal 10 feet. |
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Expert Traceur |
Parkour has become second nature for your character. By spending a Willpower point, you may designate one Athletics roll to run, jump, or climb as a rote action (reroll all failed dice once). On any turn during which you use this ability, you may not apply your character's Defense to oncoming attacks. |
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Freeflow |
Your character's Parkour is now muscle memory. She can move without thinking, in a Zenlike state. The character must successfully meditate in order to establish Freeflow. Once established, your character is capable of taking Athletics actions reflexively once per turn. By spending a point of Willpower on an Athletics roll in a foot chase, gain three successes instead of three dice. |
Prerequisites: Manipulation •••, Occult •••, Weaponry or Firearms ••
Your character has a weapon with a mind of its own. It could be haunted by a vengeful ghost or possessed by a spirit of violence. When she’s using it, the entity inside makes her weapon more effective, so long as its own needs are being fulfilled. Once per scene she can add her dots in Assertive Implement to an attack roll. She can choose to add a +1 bonus to her weapon’s damage for every two dots of Assertive Implement, instead. The weapon is also more resilient than an ordinary tool; it regenerates a point of Structure every night even if it’s been “destroyed.” If, however, the entity itself is removed through exorcism or other means, then the object is destroyed automatically.
Drawback: The weapon is not a servant, it’s a partner. If the Storyteller determines that an action goes against the entity’s whims, he can inflict a reflexive penalty equal to dots in Assertive Implement. Also, if the weapon has an opportunity to fulfill its needs and your character hesitates, then the weapon can attack on its own using your dots in Assertive Implement as its dice pool.
Prerequisites: Wits ••• or Dexterity •••
+1 Initiative per dot. Your character's reflexes impress and astound; she's always fast to react.
Prerequisites: Dexterity •••
Your character might have been a contortionist, or spent time practicing yoga. She can dislodge joints when need be. She automatically escapes from any mundane bonds without a roll. When grappled, subtract her Dexterity from any rolls to overpower her, as long as she's not taking any aggressive actions.
Prerequisites: Manipulation •••, Subterfuge ••
Your character commits crimes, and is always a step ahead of pursuers. Because of his methodical planning, any roll to investigate him suffers the Incomplete Clue tag unless it achieves exceptional success.
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Personal Traits
Vice: Isolation
Virtue: Generosity
Breaking Points
1. What is the worst thing your character has ever done?
Once, Drew stole an antique from someone to sell to a buyer. It turned out to be the last connection her victim had to his father, which she found out while she was in the processes of stealing it. But she took it anyway, for the money, baby. Breaking Point: Causing deep emotional trauma to someone who doesn't deserve it.
2. What is the worst thing your character can imagine himself doing?
Testing the limits of her own luck, to the nth degree. Breaking Point: Taking a fatal risk for naught but curiosity's sake.
3. What is the worst thing your character can imagine someone else doing?
Up close and personal, prolonged maiming. Breaking Point: Being forced to endure extended pain enacted upon her.
4. What has your character forgotten?
Once upon a time, Drew met with a weaver-tainted creature who trapped her in a sort of Tron-themed hallucination. She has suppressed this and doesn't even remember the creature itself. Breaking Point: Seeing/hearing/etc what isn't truly there.
5. What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to your character?
A time when she was stealing from the wrong person. They caught her and kept her restrained in a cellar. It took days for her to break free. Getting out of their compound was also harrowing and she was recaptured before ultimately getting herself free. It may have included breaking her own wrist. Breaking Point: Being restrained or captured and unable to get away.
Assertive Implement
A special gun was passed to Drew from her mother, who got it from her mother and so on. It is a brass-looking handgun with some victorian-inspired flourishes. These are for form, not for function. It looks both antique and quite fancy. The entity within claims is it a spirit of Justice, righting wrongs and all that. And perhaps that was true at some point in the past. But the spirit has been corrupted for some time, through centuries of wielders using it for revenge instead of justice. Drew knows it to be a spirit of Vengeance now, but she hopes to one day find a way to soothe the spirit and return it to its original purpose. But as it stands, the gun demands blood, and sometimes it takes it for itself.
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