Merits are special capabilities or knacks that add individuality to your character. They’re purchased during character creation or with experience points over the course of your chronicle.
The Merits in this chapter are organized alphabetically into three broad categories: Physical, Mental and Social. Some apply to your character’s basic traits to enhance them in particular situations. Some have prerequisites that must be met before they can be purchased. For example, a character with the Gunslinger Merit must have a Dexterity of 3 and Firearms of 3 or higher to be able to accurately fire two weapons at the same time. By the same token, some Merits apply drawbacks that balance out their inherent advantages. A character with the Fame Merit, for example, is treated like a star wherever he goes — but has a hard time blending into the crowd when he wants to.
Each Merit has a number of dots (•) associated with it. These dots represent the number of points that must be spent to purchase the Merit. Some Merits allow for a range of dots (say, • to •••). These allow you to purchase a low rating if it’s appropriate to your character concept, or you can start with a low level and increase it over time with experience points.
A character is born with some Merits or develops them early in life, while others can be acquired through trail and error, training and effort later in life.
The first kind can be acquired at character creation only and are labeled as such. The second kind can be acquired during play with experience points.
Merit dots must be purchased sequentially with experience points. You have to buy • and then •• before your character can have ••• or more.
Something is off-kilter in your undead state. The physical stasis that marks the Kindred is grossly deficient in you. When you’re injured and heal, rather than return to your eternal state, your body grows thick lumpy scars.
Serious injury like burns over wide areas of your body transforms whole sections of flesh into calloused cracked scar tissue. Over time, this dense tissue has formed across enough of your body to act as armor. Each dot in Armor of Scars grants 1 point of Armor that works equally well against all forms of attack.
Drawback:
The scars that protect you also make you hideous and gross. You have the Deformity Flaw as described on p. 209 of the World of Darkness core book, but the penalty is equal to your rating in Armor of Scars. The scars also reduce your sense of touch, imposing a penalty equal to the rating on such rolls.
Once you’re in, you’re in. The Bugman knows you. The Bugman knows you’re real and the Bugman knows you’re worth knowing. This is a coveted position. It’s also a precarious one. If a Carthian ends up bothering the Bugman too much, he will quickly grow frustrated and cut the cord.
At 3 dots, the hook-up is fairly basic. The character can email the Bugman up to three times a month and get an answer to something obscure, although not mad, bad or dangerous to know. In mechanical terms, this allows the character access to any piece of information covered by any Mental Skill, assuming it is capable for research to uncover such a thing.
The answers aren’t always simple. The Bugman could send a .PDF of a relatively obscure text or send the character a package of xeroxed pamphlets he thought might be interesting. In fact, sometimes even without asking, the Bugman may surprise the character with an odd book or packet of information, just because it seemed “what I know you’re into.”
At 5 dots, the Bugman can find just about anything for the character, even incredibly dangerous shit. He could provide a handbook written by Anoushka Tepes (written in mirror writing and copied in Greek) on how to learn the Coil of Banes, or a fifteenth-century textbook written in Persian about how to deal with a stranger from the wrong side of the sky. It’s hard to tell what he’ll come up with, except that, in some form, it’s an answer to the character’s question. The Bugman trusts his contacts not to misuse the information, and that trust can be revoked at any time.
Drawback:
While it seems as if the Bugman can get anything for a character, remember that he’s not infallible. Learning something from the Bugman might have disastrous consequences, especially if the information is flawed or inherently dangerous. He’s also not as discreet as he thinks he is; using the Bugman for government records, for instance, could be very dangerous.
The Dragons hoard information like few other creatures in the World of Darkness, but are not the best at separating the truths from the fictions, keeping a great deal of esoteric information at their fingertips. The particulars of any given Chapter Library tend to vary greatly from those of any other library, as the media and subjects of research tend to be extremely personal.
For each dot in this Merit, the player chooses a subject of interest. Research rolls made in regard to this subject take the usual amount of time but gain an equipment bonus equal to the rating in the Merit. Furthermore, characters utilizing this Merit may substitute any appropriate Mental Skill for Academics when making a Research roll. For example, an alchemist with a weak understanding of the Liberal Arts might substitute Occult or Science when using Chapter Library (Alchemy) to research his chosen field.
Even the best-stocked library doesn’t hold the answer to every question. The information that can be gleaned by digging through the character’s personal library is left to the Storyteller’s discretion.