Designing Taint

Because Taint serves primarily to weaken characters, games where Taint is present tend to be more challenging. As such, once Taint affects one or more member of a group, it is treated as part of every encounter. Taint counts towards the total Challenge Rank of an encounter, depending on how extensive and debilitating the Taint is. More potent Taint that affects more Traits is weighed more heavily than more limited Taint.
TAINT 	TAINT
Challenge Rating: 1-5 (see below)	Resistance: Fortitude or Will
Taint weakens those who are exposed to it. Choose one of the following types of affliction, and whether the Taint is Physical or Mental. Physical Taint is resisted by Fortitude, while Mental Taint is resisted by Will. If the subject does not have the affected trait, the subject is not harmed by the Taint:
* Challenge Rank 1: Taint affects a single trait (such as Melee Attack, the Damage FX, etc.). It cannot affect all uses of an Ability Score at this level, but can affect individual skills.
* Challenge Rank 2: Taint can benefit any trait suiting your Descriptors, one at a time.
* Challenge Rank 3: Taint affects all of a group of traits at once (any one ability score, feats, or FX of a particular type or descriptor). Each affected trait is affected by the Taint.
* Challenge Rank 4: Taint affect all of the subject's FX at once, or all physical ability scores, or all mental ability scores.
* Challenge Rank 5: Taint affects all of the subject's traits at once, and thus will affect everything a character does.
If a character fails his or her resistance check, that character begins to suffer Taint. The Taint Dice a character has are used in place of any normal dice that would be rolled. While this isn't much of a problem with a low level of Taint, once a character accumulates multiple Taint dice, his or her odds of succeeding at affected tasks tends to plummet.
TAINT 	TAINT 	Condition
Fail 	Marred 	-1 Action + Taint die
Fail by 5 	Spoiled 	-2 Actions + Taint die
Fail by 10	Defiled 	Helpless + Tainted die
Recovery 	Prolonged	Fortitude or Will
==Removing Taint==
Depending on what Taint represents, it may be easier or hard to remove it. By default, this module strikes a balance where Taint can be removed with dedicated treatment over the course of 1 Week, or 1 Month of rest if the character is left to his or her own devices. This makes Taint is problematic within the course of a single adventure, but if tended to between adventures, characters are likely to keep Taint to a controllable level. How often characters can lose Taint Dice will affect the pace of your game: if removing Taint Dice takes hours, a game where the adventure proceeds day-by-day is quite likely. If, on the other hand, Taint takes weeks or months to remove, adventures could be spaced out over the course of months, with characters needing a significant amount of time to rest between.
Characters who have become Tainted are entitled to a Fortitude check (for Physical Taint) or a Will check (for Mental taint) every Month (DC 10 + the number of Taint Dice the character has accrued). If successful, the character loses 1 Taint Die. If the check succeeds by 5 or more, the characters loses 2 Taint Dice. If the check succeeds by 10 or more, the Character loses 3 Taint Dice. A tainted character must wait 1 Month from the last time he or she gained a Taint Die, so a character who is continuously exposed to Taint is unlikely to recover on his or her own!
In addition, Physical Taint can be treated with a Science check (DC 10 + the number of Taint Dice the character has accrued). Mental Taint requires an Academics check (DC 10 + the number of Taint Dice the character has accrued). This check takes 1 week. If successful, the character loses 1 Taint Die. If the check succeeds by 5 or more, the characters loses 2 Taint Dice. If the check succeeds by 10 or more, the Character loses 3 Taint Dice. Thus it can take several weeks for a badly Tainted character to recover fully.
Depending on what the Taint represents, other skills may be appropriate for recovering from or treating Taint. The GM should decide in advance what skills will be used to manage Taint.
===Acute Taint===
However, it is also possible for Taint to be something which can be treated relatively quickly. This is appropriate for psychological Taint like Fear, where simply having a few hours to rest can help a character lose Taint Dice. Acute Taint can be treated in just an hour (with Science or Academics for Physical or Mental Taint, respectively) and characters who can rest for 6 hours are entitled to a Fortitude or Will check to rest.
===Chronic Taint===
On the other hand, Taint may be extremely difficult to recover from. Chronic Taint requires months of treatment or years of convalescence. Rather than the normal time, it takes 3 Months to treat Chronic Taint with Science or Academics, and it takes 1 Year without accruing additional Taint Dice before a character may make a Fortitude or Will check to remove Taint dice.
==Drawbacks==
A character may also lose Taint Dice by accepting Drawbacks, which are discussed later in this module.
Category:Rulebook
Category:Action
Category:Taint