Health and Helplessness

Damage

All attacks that deal damage are potentially lethal; Endurance measures a creature's ability to resist them (whether that be by dodging, or simply being very large!). When a creature takes damage, its Endurance falls by that much — unless its Endurance already was 1, in which case it is rendered helpless.

note

A creature with 2 Endurance taking 2 damage (from a single attack) would not be rendered helpless, as its Endurance was not 1 when it took damage; it would just be reduced to 1 Endurance.

If a creature is helpless, it can't avoid harm anymore — if a helpless creature would take damage, the attacker may:

• Kill the creature.
• Render the creature unconscious but stable.

Helpless creatures can't resist attacks or spells; they are automatically affected by anything which targets them without rolling defence. They can also be affected by spells which usually wouldn't be able to affect unwilling creatures (i.e. spells which don't specify a roll).

Resting

There is only one kind of rest in this game, simply called a rest. The specifics of this will vary from world to world; it might be just eight hours of sleep for hard-core adventurers, but could extend to a full week of recuperation (or a hospital stay) for more realistic settings.

note

Some worlds may only allow rests between story arcs, or between real-world game sessions. Make sure you know how rests work in your world before your character gets hurt!

Resting resets all your skills back to their base values (their value on your character sheet, before any temporary increases or decreases). You also lose concentration on everything over a rest, and lose all your active potion effects.

Helplessness

Helpless creatures are subject to the following:

• Has no actions on its turn.
• Can't take reactions.
• Cannot concentrate on anything.
• Can't stand.
• Can move by crawling, up to half its usual speed.

Unconscious

Creatures rendered unconscious are out of the fight; they can recover later (at ritual speed) but cannot be revived quickly enough by any means (even magical healing) to contribute to a fight.