Continuing Attack

General; DX/Very Hard

Default: Specialty for related weapon at same penalty as
weapon default.
Prerequisite: Imbue 3.
This skill causes wounds from a damaging weapon to
worsen after the initial attack. Choose an effect consistent with
the attack you’re enhancing – acid or big grubs eating away at
the victim, bleeding, rotting, sticky napalm, venom, etc.
Whatever the visuals, the effect is to give the attack a form of
Cyclic (pp. B103-104).
An unmodified roll means that if the initial attack injured
the target at all, he will suffer the same injury again in one
day’s time.
Modifiers: For a shorter interval, roll at -2 for 1 hour, -4 for 1
minute, -6 for 10 seconds, or -8 for 1 second. Repeated cycles are
possible: for standard 1 day intervals, roll at -1 per cycle after the
first; for other intervals, multiply the time penalty by the total
number of intervals (e.g., -24 for three cycles 1 second apart).
This is injury that comes right off HP – not damage that
must penetrate DR again, be multiplied for damage type, and
so forth. Should it matter, the effects are consistent with the
original attack’s damage type. For instance, enough continuing
injury from a burning attack would reduce someone to char-
coal, while the same HP loss to cutting injury would leave
ground meat.
When imbuing an attack that has a linked or follow-up
effect, you must specify which part of the attack is continuing.
You can’t enhance more than one part of a linked attack, or
both a carrier and its follow-up attack.
Unless your Imbue advantage is Cosmic (+50% or +300%),
you must specify some reasonably obvious way to halt the con-
tinuing injury: dousing flame, picking out grubs, applying dis-
infectant to rotting flesh, etc. This isn’t likely to matter for
short intervals, of course!