Strength + Athletics + Specialty + Charms/Sorcery/Gear, and compare to the chart.

• Lifting or breaking objects is a diceless action.
• Breaking something takes 1 minutes outside of combat, or use the chart Core Book p.135-154
• You can lift, pull or push objects as a miscellaneous action in combat (see pp. 143-145)
• THROWING something requires feat FIVE dots higher than you can lift.
  • Attack : (Dex + Thrown), Speed 5
  • Range : (Str + Ath) yards horizontally
  • Accuracy : -3 penalty
  • Damage : Bashing/Piercing, Str+Ath needed to lift it, plus the attack's successes
• Channeling a Virtue adds the virtue level directly to the Feat of Strength total
• Spending a Willpower point allows the player to roll Willpower and add successes to the total
• Cooperation = Every assistant adds one point to the total (max bonus = leader’s Athletics rating)

Core Book p.127

• Vertical Distance = Strength + Athletics
• Spending a Willpower point adds +2yds
• Virtue channeling add yards equal to the bonus dice normally added
• Wound penalties and mobility penalties from armor both directly subtract yards from a character’s jumping distance.
• Horizontal Distance = (Str+Ath) x 2

• In standard narrative time, characters have however long they need to reach their destination.
• Movement rolls based on quickness use (Dexterity + Athletics).
• Long-distance running and swimming is a matter of endurance rather than speed, using a pool of (Stamina + Resistance). This is handled like any other strenuous activity.

• Ascending a slope is (Dex + Ath) vs difficulty of slope/environmental hazards.
• Success means the character climbs without incident.
• Failure means the character cannot find purchase and must start over.
• Botch indicates a fall, with the severity of the botch determining where in the ascent the character lost his grip.
• Storytellers can also choose to break a climb into an extended check for added drama.
• If a character is belayed, she shouldn’t fall except in the worst possible botch.

Characters who fall onto a hard surface suffer levels of bashing damage (see pp. 148-149) equal to half the number of yards fallen, rounded down. This damage is considered piercing, though terminal velocity prevents damage from rising above 25B. Falling damage can be soaked normally, but a character soaks it completely, the minimum damage is simply reduced to one die rather than one level. Falling onto spikes, jagged surfaces and the like converts the damage from bashing to lethal. If the terrain is particularly soft or yielding, such as falling into deep water, halve the damage or (if the character is particularly lucky) assign no damage at all besides cosmetic bruising.

Players of heroic characters should receive a reflexive (Wits + Athletics) roll when their characters fall to save them from certain doom, typically by them grabbing onto the edge of a cliff or pit or snagging some outlying rock or fl agpole on the way down. For a particularly long fall, a successful roll might mean the character bounces off the side of a wall and takes standard damage for falling that far but doesn’t continue falling any farther. If it is absolutely impossible for a character to grab hold of anything mid-plummet, every success on the roll provides an additional point of soak as the character tumbles and rolls to absorb the shock of impact. Minor characters seldom receive such protection.

Willpower points are regained whenever your character gets a chance to rest or restore his self-confidence. The Storyteller is always the final arbiter of when and how Willpower is regained. The following methods are entirely optional, and they should encourage roleplaying.

• Each morning when the character awakens, roll Conviction. Each success regains a point of temporary Willpower.
• If your character performs a stunt that furthers her Motivation (see stunts, Chapter Four, p. 123 for details).
• Your character may receive one or more points if she achieves some special success or affirms her capabilities, such as rescuing a friend, discovering a significant plot point, or defeating a hated enemy.
• Rather than receiving motes of Essence for an ordinary two or three-die stunt, you may, instead, regain a point of Willpower.
• Your character gets points equal to her Willpower score at the end of a story (not a single game session). The Storyteller may modify this return somewhat if significant story elements remain unresolved.
• When your character suffers a Limit Break, she gains points of temporary Willpower equal to the rating of the Virtue whence her fl aw springs. The character gains the full rating of the Virtue, even if this means her temporary Willpower rises over her permanent Willpower or even over 10. This gain is the only way that a character can ever have a temporary Willpower higher than her permanent Willpower. The character does not recover this Willpower if she partially controls the Limit Break.

When a physician examines a patient to detect and/or gauge the seriousness of wounds or illnesses, roll the physician’s (Perception + Medicine). This is a dramatic action requiring five minutes of poking, prodding and taking note of symptoms. In the case of injuries, the difficulty is only 1 for external wounds and 2 for internal injuries (such as broken bones or internal bleeding). Success allows the healer’s player to know how many levels of each type of injury the patient currently suffers, which the character interprets in an appropriate in-game context. For example, a patient suffering three levels of bashing device and a single level of lethal damage might prompt the physician to say, “It looks worse than it really is. Mostly, you’re just banged up. Get some rest, and stay off that leg for a few days, and you’ll be fine.”

Illnesses are more variable, with a diagnosis difficulty based on the distinctiveness of the symptoms rather than the severity of the disease. For instance, the common cold, infected wounds and bubonic plague are all difficulty 1. Other examples include cholera and smallpox (difficulty 2) and yellow fever (difficulty 3). Only extremely rare and/or magical illnesses should have a diagnosis difficulty greater than 3. If it is a Sickness effect without a stated difficulty to diagnose, the difficulty is the Essence of the character who caused the effect.

Without knowing what ails a patient, physicians cannot administer treatment, so quick and accurate diagnosis is critical. Players should keep in mind that physicians risk contracting communicable diseases they encounter. Taking precautions, such as maintaining strict hygiene, can provide bonuses to avoid catching illnesses, but these might not be sufficient, particularly where such horrific maladies as plague are concerned. For all their compassion, doctors often impose quarantine where they suspect a possibility of severe contagious disease rather than get close enough to risk personal exposure.

Without powerful magical drugs, mortal physicians can do relatively little to speed the healing of wounds besides convincing overenthusiastic heroes to take their injuries seriously and rest. However, healers can help prevent or treat complications associated with injuries, including bleeding (see p. 151), infection (see pp. 151-152) and disabling wounds (see p. 152). The rules for helping with each condition may be found in the respective write-up for those states.

Actual internal surgery (such as to remove tumors or growing parasites) is beyond the skill and resources of all but the most skilled physicians. The difficulty of such feats is at least 5 and climbs rapidly with increasing procedural complexity. Moreover, such surgery takes at least three hours per point of difficulty to perform and inflicts a number of unsoakable dice of lethal damage on the patient equal to the procedure’s difficulty. Only the Exalted can reliably perform such wondrous feats of medicine.

Crippling injuries, meaning those inflicted by a Charm with the Crippling descriptor, must first be diagnosed to be treated. If not stated in the Charm, the difficulty to diagnose is the Essence of the character who used the Charm. The difficulty to treat it is the (Essence + governing Ability of the Charm that caused it).