When you are injured in combat (that is, when you lose a combat round), you get more focused and fiercer. At any time during the combat, you may spend a Point to focus and use your pain for the rest of the Combat. For the remainder of this fight (regardless of how many rounds it takes), while you are still injured, and will have to recover afterwards, you can turn your pain into strength. For every point you are down in actual damage, you instead gain that point in combat. So if you are down -3 in injuries, you fight at +3 until the combat is over. This only continues to the end of this particular fight: at that point, you have to recover from your injuries.
This comes at a cost, however: you cannot maintain your precious control indefinitely. The more injured you are, the fiercer you get. By the time you get to -3, you are getting positively bestial, and you hate that.
As normal, if you are injured enough to be subdued, then you go down. This ability is not invulnerability, merely the ability to use your pain for a limited time.
Characters In Game: Von Pinn
All Characters: Von Pinn
The following are notes made while this was in development. They do not necessarily represent the current state of this ability.
Pain is Von Pinn's constant companion, so much so that a bit more does nothing but focus her attention. Minor combat damage doesn't slow her down at all -- indeed, when she is injured in combat, she can spend a point to get stronger than she was before temporarily raising her combat ability. It requires major injury to slow her down, and even that does so less than it does most people.
If the combat rule of "When doing something dramatic, spend a Point to get +N" is used, the above "spend a Point when injured to gain a bonus" should either be better than a +3 or last for multiple rounds. Otherwise, it's kinda pointless. Fair enough. I've boosted to the point where it is very powerful, but probably correctly reflects how dangerous Von Pinn is.