Deadened Nerves

Physical Merits & Flaws

4 point Merit

Whether it was a condition you held in life or an odd side effect of the Embrace, your nervous system is missing a few connections. You have very little tactile sense, whether pleasure or pain. The downside of this is obvious: One of your senses is greatly impaired, which can keep you from noticing important warnings (a blade at your back, for instance - or in it). You suffer a +3 difficulty to all tactile-related Perception rolls, and the Storyteller may call for a roll to notice even the blatantly obvious; you might not even notice that you've been shot if the bullet doesn't knock you down outright.
However, your deadened nerves also protect you from pain, allowing you to ignore your wounds until your flesh is literally blasted from your bones. All penalties for wound levels are halved, rounding down; in other words, you suffer no penalties until you reach the Wounded level, where you deduct only one die from your dice pools, and even when Crippled you can still act at a mere two-die penalty.
If the Storyteller is willing, it might be particularly rewarding for the Storyteller to keep track of the character's health levels, and not let the player know exactly how badly his character has been wounded. Even if the character stops to give herself a quick look-over, the Storyteller puts things in the most general terms (i.e., "There's a number of holes in your chest, but you have no idea whether the bullets are lodged inside or not," "Your left arm refuses to move, although you're not sure why," and so on). This is a fair amount of extra work on the Storyteller's behalf (particularly if in the interest of secrecy, the Storyteller makes all the vampire's soak rolls in secret), but can add a lot of tension and verisimilitude to the game.