Ladybugs and gentlegerms, allow me to drift your attention toward the Boggan in the back of the auditorium. It seems his mind has reconfigured his latest Flaw creation to make it both more playable and more annoying--as all Flaws should be. He also wants to know if anyone remembers his Active Dreamer Merit/Flaw and if he should repost it. --The gentle giant who has recovered from his greenness.
Engendered by the concept of narcolepsy (simplified for system's sake to being sudden bouts of sleep brought on by stress or acts of ST), necrolepsy is a rather serious Flaw to take. You see, necrolepsy is all about sudden bouts of death. You can only succumb once, so to resist a necroleptic fit you'll need to roll Willpower (and yes, you can Botch this special roll, which results in gaining a Malk-type mental disorder, making you have to roll Willpower that much mort... er, more often) to avoid sudden bouts of Death. Of course, if you don't have time to "wake yourself up" and need to stop your death in a hurry, then you can spend a Willpower like usual to avoid the effects.
When the ST rules that a necroleptic fit is imminent, roll Willpower (diff. 6) to resist your body's urge to kick off. If successful, then you have avoided death and may continue on as normal. If you fail, however, roll half your dice pool for the action you are attempting (min. diff. 8) with a failure denoting your character's slip into endless slumber and success meaning you get to re-attempt your Willpower roll because you managed to get through your action before succumbing.
[Question, does this let them off too easily? I don't think so because this is sudden death we're dealing with here. What's consensus?]
A botch on the Willpower roll will result in two things--the character, firstly, will live, he avoided the call of the grave, secondly, he gained a Derangement from the strain of doing so. Challenging death has consequences, after all. Since you didn't succeed, you still must make your skill roll (min. diff. 8) with half your dice pool.
A botch on the skills test roll also indicates survival, but in his tenaciously refusing to let go of reality the character suffers two Health Levels of damage as well as gaining a Derangement.
Consecutive botches (botching the first Willpower roll, then also the skill roll) results in a special situation. Death has an immediate and sudden attraction for the character, calling with a force not to be denied. The Storyteller will choose (at random, if he wishes) a special effect from the table below to dictate the characters fate.
NOTE: Consecutive botches are pretty spectacular, so the special effects might not always be "bad" in character terms.
[I want feedback on that part. Should it be different?]
1) A botch causing the mortal character to become undead immediately, do not
pass go, do not get nifty powers, just be a walking maggot farm.
2) A botch causing the character to die in a plot-fortuitous way. (i.e.
falling "asleep" at the wheel of the party's RV, taking the whole
shebang off a cliff or some such.
3) A botch causing not straight death, but a coma of sorts that must be
recovered from or even just an experience of the afterlife that, after
the first dozen times, will have the people in the tunnel tugging you
instead of beckoning you in. ("Come on, Frank, pull! She's slipping back!")
4) A botch causing the flaw to mistarget such that another member of the
party has to make the necrolepsy roll.
[Do I need more of these? Suggest some others. And what about the lich bit that follows? I liked the idea, but then again, I'm rarely called the norm. How can I put it in?]
Massive sudden Willpower expenditure (like if you have four Necrolepsy
rolls coming up in the next hour because you're stressed, and you just
blow five or so Willpower to take care of them in one lump) may result
in Lich status, with the character being completely and irrevocably
alive because her mind refuses to let the body die.
NOTE: This often includes the instant Awakening or Ascension of the
character, neatly turning her into an NPC and, effectively, killing her
off for the player. Of course, this could give you a revenant kinfolk
Changeling in Siochan, with access to Spheric Magick and Paradox resistance,
but we'll leave specific interpretation to the ST and the little people.
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