Susceptibility over time

[dsatow]

Say a character buys a susceptibility to some normally instant effect, like being hit with blessed items.  What happens if a part of the blessed weapon gets embedded in the character?  Do they take damage over segments or phases?  Or is instant always just a single occurrence?

[Steve Long]

Sorry for the delay in responding — the latter part of February was unusually busy, and then food poisoning/a stomach bug sidelined me all last week. I’m only now catching up with things.

 

Strictly by the rules as written, an “Instant effect” Susceptibility should only apply in the Segment when the character is first exposed to the substance/phenomenon. In most cases that’s sufficient, since the substance/phenomenon usually doesn’t “linger” in any way. But in a case like you describe, the GM might decide to have the Susceptibility continue to apply — there are some great roleplaying and combat possibilities involved. In that case, it’s up to him to decide how often the Susceptibility continues to apply, based primarily on dramatic sense (“How will this best play into the campaign story and be fun?”), but also on common sense, special effects, and other considerations.

 

In most cases the Susceptibility shouldn’t affect the character too often, or else he’s effectively out of the campaign. Taking the damage every Hour or Day would work pretty well from a dramatic standpoint in most situations — it’s frequent enough that the character can’t entirely ignore it, but gives him enough time to keep functioning so he can resolve the problem. Every 1, 5, or 20 Minutes would be a lot more harsh and give him a lot more incentive to get the substance/phenomenon away from him. That would work well if you want the character to solve the problem in the same game session that he acquired it, rather than having it affect the campaign for multiple sessions.