Adventuring

Travel. Choose a daily travel rate, multiply it by the terrain percentage, and test Fatigue only where the selected pace requires it. Also known as daily travel, overland movement.

Daily pace

Daily rates assume ten hours of travel in fair conditions. When it matters which group arrives first, make an opposed Athletics test for travellers on foot or Riding test for mounted groups.

Multiply the chosen rate by the worst terrain crossed for a substantial part of the day.

Navigation

Once per uncertain travel day, make a Natural Lore navigation test. Make another test after a material route change.

On a Success, make full progress. On a Failure, lose one quarter of that day’s progress. On a Fumble, make no progress and become lost.

Weather, steep slopes, navigation errors, forced stops, and exceptional mounts may alter the final distance at the Gamemaster’s discretion.

Light and Darkness. Illumination penalises sight, attacks, and Movement from -1P to -3P; alternate senses improve or bypass only what they can perceive. Also known as illumination, vision, night sight.

For vision and attacks, use illumination reaching the observed target; for Movement, use light reaching the mover. A light source illuminates its listed radius; weaker outer bands extend from there. Mist, fog, foliage, and smoke are obscurity, not illumination; apply their ranged-combat modifier along the sightline separately.

Shaped light or obscurity pays for its mechanical outcome; any mundane illumination it creates then uses these bands.

Other senses

• Night Vision: Natural surface night counts as Illuminated. It does not help underground, in a sealed or supernatural darkness, or against obscurity.
• Night Sight: Treat Partial darkness as Illuminated and Darkness as Partial darkness. Pitch black is unchanged.
• Blind Sight (sense): Ignore illumination for a target the named sense accurately perceives. It gives no colour, writing, fine visual detail, or eye contact. State what blocks it, such as a wall blocking heat or loud noise masking hearing. Use only the best applicable sense; senses do not stack.

Fatigue and Deprivation. Fatigued applies -1P, three-quarter Movement, and -3 Combat Order; Exhausted applies -2P, half Movement, and -6 Combat Order. Also known as exhaustion, exposure, starvation, thirst.

After strenuous activity such as a long fight, sprint, hard climb, or strong-current swim, the Gamemaster may call for a Fatigue test: a Resilience test. Test after the activity unless exhaustion could prevent its completion.

• A failed Fatigue test makes a fresh character Fatigued.
• Strenuous activity while Fatigued calls for another Fatigue test at -1P; failure makes the character Exhausted.
• A fumbled Fatigue test causes unconsciousness for 3D6 minutes. The character awakens Fatigued.
• 20 − CON hours of complete rest, minimum 1, removes Fatigued or Exhausted.

Reduced Movement is never less than 1 metre.

Exposure, starvation, and thirst

After three days without food, Fatigue tests suffer -1P even if the starvation grace period has not ended.

Once a grace period ends, make one Fatigue test at -1P for that deprivation each day. The character also takes 1D6 damage per day for each active deprivation. This damage cannot recover naturally until adequate shelter, food, or water remedies its cause.

Healing and Recovery. Healing stops Bleeding and Dying; a Wounded patient needs successful Surgery before natural recovery can begin. Also known as wounded, bleeding, dying, surgery, natural healing.

A post-armour hit that deals damage equal to or greater than the target’s Major Wound Level makes the target Wounded and Bleeding after damage is applied.

• Wounded: -1P to every skill test.
• Bleeding: Lose 1 HP at the end of every round.
• Dying: At 0 HP, fall unconscious and die at the end of the third round unless stabilised.

Further Major Wounds apply damage normally. An active Wounded or Bleeding condition does not stack with itself; a later Major Wound can restart Bleeding after it was stopped.

Battlefield Healing

A helper can spend their entire round and make a Healing test while adjacent to the patient. Both remain stationary. Success removes Bleeding and Dying, but restores no HP. At 0 HP, a stable patient remains unconscious until restored to at least 1 HP.

Healing requires a Healing Kit; without one, the test suffers -2P.

Treating ordinary damage

After an encounter, a character who is not Wounded may receive one Healing attempt before their next full rest. Success restores 1D4 HP. The limit is one attempt per patient, not one success.

Surgery and natural recovery

A Wounded character cannot recover HP naturally until successful Surgery or equivalent treatment. Surgery:

• uses Healing and cannot be attempted during combat;
• requires safe working conditions;
• restores 1 HP on a success.

A character performing no more than light activity recovers a quarter of CON in HP per 24 hours, up to maximum HP; a Wounded character begins this recovery only after treatment. Wounded ends once current HP is greater than Major Wound Level.

Alter·Flesh healing at Intensity 3+ counts as equivalent treatment.

Encumbrance. Carry up to STR + SIZ ENC normally; above that, physical tests and Fatigue suffer -1P and Movement is halved. Also known as ENC, overloaded.

Carrying capacity

Encumbrance (ENC) measures both weight and awkwardness. Armour, weapons, containers, and their contents all count toward the carried total.

Items marked — are negligible individually. If carried in a suitable container, every 20 such items count as 1 ENC.

Capacity: A character carries up to STR + SIZ ENC without penalty.

Overloaded: Above Capacity, the character:

• suffers -1P on physical tests, including weapon tests and most tests based on STR or DEX;
• has half Movement;
• suffers -1P on Fatigue tests.

A character cannot carry more than 2 × (STR + SIZ) ENC. Containers make loads practical to carry but do not reduce ENC.

Falling. A fall deals 1D6 per full 3 metres; Acrobatics removes 1D6 on success or 2D6 on a critical, rather than halving the fall. Also known as fall damage.

Falling damage

A fall deals 1D6 damage per full 3 metres and ignores armour. A character damaged by a fall lands prone.

If conscious, unsurprised, and able to control the landing, the character may make one Athletics (Acrobatics) test:

• Success: Remove 1D6 of damage and avoid prone.
• Critical: Remove 2D6 of damage and avoid prone.
• Failure: Apply the fall normally.
• Fumble: Maximise every remaining damage die.

Damage dice cannot be reduced below zero. Soft ground, deep snow, a sloped canopy, or a similar yielding surface may halve the effective distance before counting dice.

Example: A 100-metre fall deals 33D6. A successful Acrobatics test reduces it to 32D6; it does not make the fall survivable by halving the damage.

Suffocation and Fire. After CON rounds without air, test Resilience each round; the first failure deals immediate suffocation damage, which repeats until breathable air returns. Also known as drowning, smoke, burning, heat.

Suffocation

A character can hold their breath for CON Combat Rounds. After that, make a Resilience test each round with a cumulative -1P, subject to the normal -3P cap.

On the first failure, the character inhales the substance and immediately suffers its effect. Apply that effect again at the end of every following round until the character reaches breathable air; do not make further breath tests. Armour does not reduce this damage.

After reaching breathable air, make a Resilience test. On a failure, the character can only retch or gasp for 1D4 rounds.

Fire and heat

Apply damage each round of direct exposure. Metal armour does not reduce fire or heat damage; other protection applies only when it plausibly insulates against the source.

Created magical hazards use their fixed Shaping damage until they become mundane hazards.

Poison and Disease. Poison allows one delayed Resilience-versus-Potency test; disease repeats that test after each Delay until the victim wins. Also known as potency, venom, infection.

Poisons and diseases list a Type, Delay, Potency from 10 to 100, Effect, and—where needed—Duration. Roll Potency like a skill in an opposed test against the victim’s Resilience.

Poison

After the Delay, make one opposed Resilience-versus-Potency test:

• If the victim wins, the poison has no effect.
• If the poison wins, apply its full Effect for its Duration.

A successful Healing test completed before the resistance test grants the victim +1B to that test. Poison still allows only one resistance test.

Gorgon Serpent Venom: Ingested or smeared; Delay 1D3 rounds; Potency 34; Effect 1D3 HP damage and -3 CON; Duration 6D10 minutes.

Disease

After exposure and the first Delay, make an opposed Resilience-versus-Potency test:

• If the victim wins, the disease ends or fails to take hold.
• If the disease wins, apply its Effect, wait another Delay, and test again.
• Continue until the victim wins.

A successful Healing test grants +1B to the patient’s next resistance test. Ongoing effects remain, and damage from the disease cannot heal, while the disease is active. Normal recovery begins after the victim wins.

Magical curing opposes Shaping with Potency and requires Intensity based on that Potency.

The Shakes: Spread by touch; Delay 1D2 days; Potency 50; Effect halves DEX and deals 1D6 damage each day while active.

Damaging Objects. Attacks against stationary objects usually hit automatically; subtract AP from damage and destroy the object at 0 HP. Also known as inanimate objects, doors, walls.

Attacking objects

An attack against a stationary object usually hits automatically. Roll only when pressure, movement, poor access, or precise placement makes failure meaningful.

Subtract the object’s Armour Points (AP) from damage, then reduce its Hit Points (HP). At 0 HP it is broken, breached, or useless. Ordinary weapons may be damaged by repeated blows against stone, iron, or similarly hard material; the Gamemaster warns the player before this risk applies.

Magically created barriers use their Shaping AP and HP, then follow these rules.