Saving the world on a Sunday afternoon
Stats are how we keep track of a character’s injuries, resistance to damage and ability to fight or cast. Characters can buy skills that improve their stats. Full details on stats can be found in the Player Rules, and there are many special things more experienced characters can do which aren’t included here, but this summary should be enough to get you started. If there’s any conflict between these guides and the rules, the rules win.
Knowing whether your character is dead or alive can be very important!
The body is divided into six locations:
A character has Life Points (representing their blood and life force). and Body Points (representing how physically healthy a particular location is). The chest has Body Points equal to 2/3 of your Life Point total, and the other locations each have Body Points equal to 1/3 of your Life Point total.
Example: A human with 30 Life Points has 20 Body Points on their chest and 10 Body Points everywhere else.
Most damage will affect both Life Points and Body Points, but there are some special cases.
If you take too much damage, parts of your body may stop working:
Example: Alice is an elf with 3 Death Thresholds and 2 Willpower. If she drops to -5 Life Points, she is still alive and unconscious, but if she reaches -6 Life Points, she will die.
A location is broken if a single hit:
Broken limbs are very painful and cannot be used at all. It remains broken until:
Note that the Body Points of the limb must be healed separately.
Sometimes a character is injured so that they are bleeding. A character loses 1 Life Point per minute when they are bleeding.
A character is bleeding if they meet any of the following criteria:
Armour and other protections stop you from taking damage. If you resist an attack, let the attacker know by calling:
You may occasionally hear other unofficial calls, such as ‘Clang’ or ‘No visible effect’ – if someone uses a call you don’t recognise, stop and ask what they mean if it isn’t clear.
Armour and defences can get pretty complicated sometimes. Player Rules – The System explains how everything works.
Normal armour is protection against a physical blow. You can gain normal armour from your Toughness stat, wearing armour, or certain spells or miracles. Normal armour reduces the normal damage you take from an attack:
Power armour protects against power damage, which includes most spells and miracles and other non-physical types of damage. You usually get power armour from certain spells or miracles. Power armour reduces the power damage you take from an attack:
Sometimes normal and power damage is combined into a single attack, such as a sword striking for 4 Fire 2. If you take any power damage from the attack, you can ignore any bruise from the normal part. You should only call Bounce if you resist both parts of the damage call.
Dodging lets you evade or reduce the impact of an attack. You can dodge using your Dexterity, and certain spells or miracles. Dodging reduces the damage you take from an attack:
Normal damage from a weapon can be dodged. Some spells and miracles can be dodged, but others can’t. If you are hit with a combined normal and power attack, such as a sword doing 4 Fire 2, then your dodge bonus only reduces the normal damage. However, if you completely dodge the normal damage, the weapon has missed you completely and you don’t take the power damage either.
Each character has a handful of other stats which affect them. For more details, see Player Rules – The System
Death thresholds are a measure of how many times your character can die and be resurrected before they meet Final Death. Each character starts with a certain number of death thresholds based on their race, and you lose one each time you die. You can only be brought back to life if you have 1 or more death thresholds.
Death thresholds also affect how deep you can go into unconsciousness without dying. A character with few death thresholds slips away more easily.
Mana is a measure of how much magical power a character has. Mana is consumed by casting spells. Characters can recharge their mana once per day with the Meditate skill.
Standing is a measure of how much miraculous power a character has. Standing is consumed by casting miracles. Characters can recharge their standing once per day with the Prayer skill.
Willpower shows how strong your character’s mind is. It is used to resist certain attacks, usually mental effects. The more willpower you have, the deeper into unconsciousness you can go before dying, as your strong mind helps you hold on to life.
Toughness represents your character’s natural resilience and ability to shrug off damage. It is used to resist certain effects and also provides normal armour.
Dexterity represents your character’s ability to dodge out of the way of harm. Wearing armour applies a penalty to your dexterity, but this can be reduced with the Manoeuvre in Armour skill.
You don’t have to keep a running total of everything that happens to your character in your head; we use ‘battleboards’ to keep track of damage, healing and power use. Before the game starts a few players (generally one per 3 – 5 players) will write these up; they list the character’s Life and Death Thresholds, what protection the character has on each location, how much mana and standing the character has and how much Willpower, Toughness and Dexterity they start with. They may also record other details for characters from particular Guilds and other details the character’s player might want keeping track of.
During the course of a game there will be stops to keep these up to date – this means that players have a definite record of the state of their character in case they lose track, and the GMs can see how much punishment the characters can still take.