Risen Template

By: The Wyld - from the official World of Darkness forum
Posted with permission by: Evo Shandor

Rarely, when a necromancer’s spell goes awry or a man simply refuses to rest quietly, a Risen is formed. Driven by fear of death and tremendous willpower these things reanimate and roam the world. Concepts include things like the zombie who breaks free of the spell that controls it, the man driven by vengeance, or the person so afraid of death he simply won’t die. This is a lesser template.

Powers
As a reanimated corpse it is immune to the effects of hot or cold climates (though not offensive versions of heat or cold), poisons, disease, and fatigue. Risen do not sleep or need to breathe.

Risen do not suffer pain penalties from wounds.

Risen bodies are tough. Any damage inflicted on them is automatically downgraded to bashing unless its aggravated or appropriately catastrophic (a bomb or having a house fall on you). They can restore damage by spending Willpower on a one for one basis. Risen will automatically regenerate one lethal or bashing at sundown. Aggravated may only be healed with one of the Risen Merits below..

As undead Risen unsettle humans and animals. They are at -2 penalty to appropriate social rolls (except for Intimidation which gains a +2 bonus). Risen are relatively whole and fresh and not automatically identified as animated corpeses until somebody does a closer inspection or they have the Rotted Flaw.

Risen are re-animated by Willpower. They need to spend one Willpower at sunrise everyday to maintain their existence. Failure to do this destroys the Risen.

Since Risen do not sleep they do not regain Willpower every day. Instead they must act upon their Vices and Virtues to restore Willpower.

Risen Merits:

Undead (Attribute) (** or ****)
Prerequisites: Risen and appropriate Attribute at 4 or better.
The Merit represents an array of nine supernaturally enhanced Traits; one for each Attribute. For two dots you gain a +1 modifier to any rolls based on that Attribute. For four dots you gain a +2 modifier to any rolls based on that Attribute. For rolls based on two or more Attributes you only take the best modifier, this Merit doesn’t stack.

As Good As New (***)
The Risen looks alive and healthy and can fake breathing or a pulse for a turn if he concentrates. The social penalty for being a Risen is reduced to -1.

Cannibal (* or ***)
The Risen may consume the flesh of a human corpse to repair it’s own damage. For 1 Willpower damage equal to the corpse’s Size is repaired. This takes one hour. This may also repair Aggravated damage but only at the rate of 1 point per 5 Size (this is the 5 dot version).

Brains! (***)
The Risen may eat the brains of a fallen human. For 1 Willpower this gives the benefit of Encyclopedic Knowledge regarding the victim’s life. This lasts one hour.

Idle Hand (***)
The Risen may detach and animate one of his limbs, an eyeball, tongue, or whatever. It has a effective dice pool of 1-3 (depending on the limb) for any actions it can undertake and moves at a speed of 2. If it’s a sensory organ the Risen my use it to spy up to 100 feet away (with his own Perception pool). This costs one Willpower and lasts 1 hour.

Flaws:
Rotted: The Risen is an obvious corpse that looks like its been dead for a long time. It can also be used to represent obvious death wounds (like that axe blow that took off half the Risen’s face).

Other Physical Flaws can represent various stages of damage and decomposition.