Health and Disease Rules
Just as deadly as zombies, disease, starvation, dehydration, and more lurk waiting for the wasteland survivor. Those who don’t take care of their body can find it failing them at the worst times, so it's important to know the signs and symptoms of neglecting yourself.
The Health Track
Your health track measures your general fitness: how well fed, well hydrated, and well rested you are. It is as follows:
Very Healthy: Tip-top shape. You’re ready to conquer the world. Achieving this state is rare, and can only bestowed by the GM after a particularly restorative event, like a giant feast or pampered guest stay.
Healthy: Your usual state of being, as long as you’re eating and drinking right. This is the place you want to be at.
Tired: The result of pushing yourself too hard; while you’re still functional, the strain is beginning to show. You have a -2 to FORT saves, begin the first round of combat dazed (limited to one standard action), and are considered fatigued (half movement) while outside of combat.
Exhausted: Hard neglect that puts a real strain on your body. While in this state, you have the ‘exhausted’ condition (-2 to all actions, half speed), in addition to the -2 to FORT saves and starting combat dazed.
Dying: You’ve been refused vital supplies for so long that your body is beginning to actively fail. You are permanently dazed, fatigued, disabled (-5 to checks), and vulnerable (half defenses). In addition, you may be asked to make a WILL save just to stay upright or perform certain actions without collapsing. If you don’t get whatever vital supplies you neglected to get you in this state within the next 24 hours, you will die.
In most cases, you will move down the health track due to not consuming necessary supplies; not drinking a unit of water for a whole day, for instance, moves you one down the health track. You can move one up the health track by consuming double rations for the day: 2 units of food and water.
The Disease Track
In a world without modern infrastructure, even ‘minor’ diseases like the common cold can be deadly. Surviving is more than just being well-fed, it’s also about keeping out the microscopic invaders.
At certain times, you may be asked to make a disease roll with a given DC. If you are, make a FORT roll and compare it to the table below:
(As a reminder, this works by degrees of failure, which is measured in fives. So failing the check by 3 would be one degree of failure, by 8 would be two degrees. To fail by 5 degrees requires failing the check by at least 26.)
Success: Your body is strong enough to fend off the infection; the disease has no effect.
Fail by 1: The infection lands, but your body is fighting it off. You have a -1 to all FORT saves while your body repairs itself.
Fail by 2: The infection hits hard. You have a -2 to all FORT saves.
Fail by 3: The infection has found a welcoming place to spread inside your system. You have a -4 to all FORT saves and are exhausted (half speed, -2 to all checks) until the disease runs its course.
Fail by 4: The strain that has entered your body is particularly virulent and is quickly overwhelming your immune system. You have a -5 to all FORT saves, are exhausted, and move one space down the health track.
Fail by 5: The strain is near fatal proportions. Your FORT saves decreases to -6 and you instantly move to the ‘dying’ state on the survival track. If you don’t receive critical care within the next 24 hours, you will perish.
Once you have the disease, all you can really do is support your body and wait out the infection. While diseased, you can make another FORT save against the disease every 24 hours, advancing or falling down the track by the result; consuming double rations the day before gives you a +2 circumstance bonus to this save. You can only make this save every 24 hours unless something triggers another save, such as a medicine check from an ally or the use of medical supplies.
FORT save penalties from different sources are cumulative. So, for instance, if you failed the disease save by two, are at ‘tired’ on the health track, and haven’t eaten food in three days, you have three different FORT penalties at -2, -2, and -3, for a total penalty of -7. Shrugging off the common cold may be easy most of the time, but it’s a different story when you’re tired, hungry, thirsty, and on the run.
GM note: Since you guys are freaky mutants, you’re immune to the zombie strain. Yay! But there’s still plenty of nasty bacteria in the human mouth. If you get hit with a ‘bite’, you still have to make the attached disease save; the only difference is you’re saving against the disease track above, instead of the zombie plague.
Wounds and Scars
Life is hard, and certain events have the potential to traumatize you, either physically or mentally. When this happens, you gain a wound.
A wound is a special kind of complication you gain after a particularly damaging event. They can be either physical or mental, and are handed out at the GM’s discretion.
Physical wounds are permanent injuries to your body, such as ‘missing leg’, ‘weakened immune system’, or ‘lost eye’. They can be gained by:
Being rehabilitated back to life after falling to the ‘dying’ state on the health track.
Being incapacitated during combat and raised back by an ally.
Struggling with a disease for an unusually long time.
Being physically tortured
Mental wounds are psychological ticks, such as ‘paranoid’, ‘afraid of the dark’, or ‘hallucinating’. They can be gained by:
Being severely hurt by a specific enemy in combat
Failing a WILL save after watching a traumatizing event
Failing a WILL save after committing a heinous act, forced or not
Being psychologically tortured
When a wound is invoked, either by the GM or the player, they do NOT reward the player with a Hero Point. These problems are fresh, debilitating, and not yet internalized by the victim. Once a wound is gained, the only thing that can be done is to begin the healing process into a scar.
A scar is a wound that has been healed or dealt with by the character in some way. For instance, the condition ‘missing leg’ can advance from a wound to a scar by creating a prosthetic limb, finding a doctor to surgically repair you, or just putting in effort to adjust to the disability. Similarly, a mental wound can be overcome by finding a therapy source or performing some difficult task despite your mental state, such as rescuing an ally from a poorly-lit basement while ‘afraid of the dark’.
Now that you’ve conquered your wound, it evolves into a scar; it’s still there, but you’ve found the strength to push past its limitations. Once a wound has been healed into a scar, it transforms into a normal condition; your character still has the condition, but it awards the player with a Hero Point when invoked. Permanently getting rid of a scar is a different matter altogether, and is the source of a grand personal quest if embarked upon.