In the violent stories of film noir, the lives of characters always hang by a thread. An argument can unleash a violent bar fight with broken bottles and a chase can culminate into deadly gunfire. The violence in Blacksad becomes very present and, therefore, the mortality of these stories.
Resistance stats
These represent the character’s vigor, resistance to physical harm, and usually their value triples their Endurance stats. When a character suffers a certain amount of damage points, these must be subtracted from their Resistance points.
The character does not suffer penalties because his Resistance stats drop: they are more like an abstract measuring tool of how much a character can endure until he yields. So, when it reaches 0, the character becomes unconscious.
Resistance points represent exhaustion, pain and shock more than real harm or injuries, in such a way that they recover with great speed. Once the character has time to rest, the Resistance points are completely recovered.
In combat, the character can spend a Drive point in their strip to recover half of their lost Resistance points, even if the character is unconscious.
Health and injury stats
Every time a character receives damage from an attack, the inflicted damage must be compared to their Endurance. If the damage is less than said value, it will then produce a loss of Resistance points and nothing more: it’s not serious enough to injure the character. However, if the damage is equal to their Endurance or more, it additionally produces and injury.
The gravity of an injury is determined by how many times the damage surpasses the character’s Endurance. If it’s the same or more, but it doesn’t double it, it’s a minor injury. If it’s equal or it doubles Endurance, without being tripled, it’s a serious injury, and so on. The following table shows the kind of injury inflicted based on the damage.
Inflicted damage | Kind of injury | Health stats
Less than Endurance | None | 0
Equal or more than Endurance | Minor | 1
Equal or more than Endurance ×2 | Serious | 2
Equal or more than Endurance ×3 | Grave | 3
Equal or more than Endurance ×4 | Lethal | 4
When a character receives an injury, their health bar advances towards their death a number of times based on the gravity of the injury. So, if the character suffers a serious injury, the health bar will advance two levels from being healthy to being injured. If the character then receives a minor injury the health bar will move to badly injured.
- Healthy: The character is in good shape and hasn’t suffered any kind of serious injury.
- Bruised: The character is harmed, but he can act normally.
- Injured: The character is seriously wounded. All of his actions have an automatic failure that is added to the results of the player’s dice rolls. While he’s wounded, the highest value of Resistance points he can have are double his Endurance points.
- Badly injured: The character has multiple injuries and possibly even a bone fracture or a damaged organ. He receives two automatic failures in all of his actions and, while he’s in this state, he cannot have Endurance values surpass his Resistance.
- Dying: The character’s life is hanging by a thread because of his injuries. The injuries won’t stop bleeding and his body might very well have reached its limit. The character only has a few seconds to say his last words and he will then inevitably die if someone doesn’t do something fast.
