Pulp Resilient Talent

[Grimmshade]

First, there's some confusion because the example of using Luck to halve Sanity Loss makes it sound like you can only use Resilient after doing this. 

Second, the NPC Resilient Talent is different, only allowing 5 Sanity to be erased with Luck. Which is correct?

Third, has anyone had a PC with this Talent in a game? Is it overpowered? Feels like it will make Sanity a non-issue (which may be fine for Pulp anyway)

[rykemasters]

On 4/18/2022 at 5:05 PM, Grimmshade said:

Third, has anyone had a PC with this Talent in a game? Is it overpowered? Feels like it will make Sanity a non-issue (which may be fine for Pulp anyway

I've found it depends on how much Luck is used by the character in the course of the game. It did make this character pretty much immune to Sanity effects in that campaign (which I didn't mind that much), but she was pretty lucky and didn't spend very many Luck points outside of using Resilient. Some other characters spent a whole lot of Luck just to stay alive and wouldn't have been able to use Resilient that much (if they had it in the first place). I would say in general, if your sessions are action-filled and have people using Luck regularly, they should be wary of spending it to negate every Sanity loss.

House-ruling it to a max of 5 sanity erased at once would be a perfectly OK choice as well, I think.

[Grimmshade]

Thanks for the input! I think I'll let it ride this campaign, and if it seems overpowered I'll limit it to 5 next campaign. 

Only 1 PC took it, and they are a melee fighter so they will have their own problems anyway. 

[KarlF]

Similar to @rykemasters I have one character in my Two Headed Serpent campaign who has it and, because the player is generally very jammy with their rolls - i.e. very rarely has to use Luck on a stat/skill check - they have effectively become immune to SAN loss. A cap might be a good idea, or I was toying with making it a 2 Luck per Sanity point cost without a cap.
Another thing is that this particular character is up to 90-odd SAN now - they've got the rewards while avoiding the penalties - so they probably won't fail any SAN rolls in the near future which also reduces/negates the need for the Resilient Talent so perhaps that's a small cost for the character in a way i.e. they have a talent that they very rarely use anymore.

[Grimmshade]

It's funny you mentioned the high san making the talent worthless. As my player with the talent just got a bunch of san rewards for the first chapter of two-headed serpent without taking any san loss because of the talent, I just realized he'll be using the talent a lot less because he won't be losing san anyway.

[KarlF]

I was thinking of adding another house rule to the Resilient talent - and this is the one I'm most likely to bring in - is that it cannot be used to reduce San loss as a result of the character's own actions i.e. if they start going murder-hobo on everyday people or similar then they lose San for it no matter if they have Luck to burn, 'cos they are choosing to act inhuman. Not that I expect this to happen but just in case...

[Grimmshade]

That's a good rule.