Template:Enduring Hardship

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.