Damage

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You run the risk of being injured in combat. Everything from exhaustion to bleeding cuts and broken bones is summarized as damage. How much damage you can take is determined by your Health score.

Starting Health - When not injured, your total Health score is equal to your STRENGTH. Talents can modify your maximum Health total.

Armor - To protect yourself from harm, you can wear armor (see Chapter 5). The effectiveness of a piece of armor is represented by its Armor Rating. You can only wear one suit of armor at a time. When you take damage from an attack, roll a number of Base Dice equal to your Armor Rating. Each (target) you roll lowers the damage inflicted by one point. The armor roll does not count as an action for you.

Recovery - When you are no longer Broken, you recover one point of lost Health per Turn (5–10 minutes) of rest. Critical injuries can still affect you after all your Health is restored, however.

Healing - Each critical injury has a specific effect that you suffer during the healing time indicated, which is measured in days.

* CARE: If someone tends to you daily during the process of healing a critical injury (or several) and makes a MEDICAL AID roll, the remaining healing time is reduced by half. Any earlier roll to save your life does not count towards this. A new roll is required to reduce the healing time.

* HEALTH POINTS: Note that you can recover all your lost Health points, but still suffer the effects of a critical injury.

Getting Back Up - Being Broken is not fatal in itself—only critical injuries can actually kill you. There are two ways to get back up after being Broken, assuming you’re not dead.

* FIRST AID: Someone can help you back onto your feet by administering first aid to you using the MEDICAL AID skill. This is a slow action. Certain medical equipment can give bonuses to the roll (see Chapter 5). If the roll is successful, you get back up immediately, regaining Health equal to the number of (target) in the skill roll. Administering first aid to someone who isn’t Broken has no effect.

* ON YOUR OWN: If you’re Broken and no one is around to help you, you automatically recover one point of Health after one Turn (5–10 minutes) has passed, and can then get back up on your own.

Broken - If you drop to zero Health, you are Broken—in effect, taken out of the action. Immediately roll for a critical injury. If you’re not dead, you can crawl and mumble through the pain—you can’t perform any other actions and you can’t roll for any skills. You can’t go below zero Health, but each further attack that causes damage will give you another critical injury.

Coup de Grace - A Broken character is defenseless. If it’s a human being and you want to kill your target outright, you must fail an EMPATHY roll (roll for the attribute only, without Stress Dice). Whether or not you succeed at killing your target, you increase your STRESS LEVEL by one— killing in cold blood is not that easy. If you have the Merciless talent, you can kill defenseless enemies without this negative effect.

Critical Injuries - As long as you still have Health left, damage points represent fatigue, bruises or smaller cuts—painful, to be sure, but possible to overcome. Critical injuries represent a much more dangerous form of injury. These can maim or kill you. When knocked down to zero Health, roll a D66 on the critical injury table on page 100.

Death - If you suffer a critical injury listed as fatal, you must make a Death Roll when the listed time runs out. A Death Roll is a roll for STAMINA, but you cannot push the roll and you are not allowed to roll any Stress Dice. If the Death Roll fails, you die. If you succeed, you linger on but you must make another Death Roll when the listed amount of time has passed again.

* SAVING YOUR LIFE: To save your life when you have suffered a fatal critical injury, someone must give you first aid before you fail a Death Roll. First aid is a slow action and requires a MEDICAL AID roll. Note that some critical injuries are so severe that a negative modification is applied to the MEDICAL AID roll. If you recover a Health point by yourself (after one Turn, see above) before you fail a Death Roll, you can try to give yourself first aid, but you get a –2 modification to the roll. Each character who attempts to treat you can try only once—to get a second chance, better medical equipment is needed.

* BROKEN: If you are both Broken and have sustained a fatal critical injury (or several), two separate MEDICAL AID rolls are needed: one to get you back on your feet, and another to save your life. These two rolls can be made in whichever order you prefer.

* INSTANT KILL: Note that there are four critical injuries (results #63–66) that kill you outright. If you roll any of these, your character shuffles off their mortal coil. No Death Roll is allowed.