Harm is a concept monitored by marking and burning tracks. Just like player characters, creatures and NPCs have merits and tracks to represent their abilities and pursuits; things that can be accidentally or intentionally damaged. Harm represents a specific type of damage towards a creature or thing, but it can also represent emotional stress as creatures get unnerved by the events on the battlefield. Most successful attacks against a creature marks a single box on one of their tracks, but this may change based on position, effect, and other factors.
Normally, when a player characters takes harm as a result of trouble, the player chooses one merit and marks all harm on that merit’s track, with any overflowing damage discarded. Once a merit is fully marked it is no longer usable. However, when a specific merit is targeted by an enemy, then any marks of harm must either go towards that merit, or the player can redirect the harm towards a different merit at the cost of taking an additional 2 marks of harm to that other merit.
Different types of harm may be more or less effective against different creatures, both due to the creature’s own natural vulnerabilities and resistances, but also due to side-effects a successful attack can apply. An attack’s Side-effect is a unique effect that takes effect if the attacker’s highest result is a hit (6). In addition to their unique traits, lasting side-effects also count as scene aspects which can be used to aid future actions.
Designer Notes: Side Effects
Side-effects are intended to give an extra “oomf” behind the flavor of various damage types in a manner that forces the victim to alter its actions, but not necessarily to prevent its action fully. Lasting side-effects are made to narrow down a creature’s options, but not limit them to one specific action.
Many side-effects work very well together or right after each other. For example, the frozen condition is removed by bludgeoning harm, but the bludgeoning knockback effect can push a target against another hazard that a target can then be frozen to. Acid can be helpful in removing resistances to allow other types of harm to shine. An attack that combines the blast AOE with another type of harm can inflict the other side-effect on a group of individuals.
Types of Harm
Bludgeoning
Damage from blunt objects and smashing forces.
- Side-effect: Knockback
Push the target away to a nearby location.
Cold
Damage from a sudden and continued drop in temperature and gathering of ice. Generally an environmental hazard from exposure and storms, risking chill, numbness, and even frostbite.
- Side-effect: Frozen
Freeze a target’s limb or object to another adjacent surface. They can’t separate themselves from that surface unless their action includes a method to break the ice, though frozen objects (such as shoes or weapons) can be abandoned freely. The frost is automatically removed by flame, bludgeoning, or blast harm.
Flame
Damage from a sudden increase in temperature, most often from a burning flame or superheated object.
Hacking
Deep gashes or long cutting wounds.
- Side-effect: Brutalize
The target’s next action faces 1 cut. If the target was an NPC, then if a character attempts to avoid or stop the NPC’s action, they automatically gain a +1 scene aspect to their action check.
Stress
Harm to a creature’s psyche – either from magical mental attacks, exhaustion, or from moments of great despair, horror, or fear. Stress builds from mental trauma.
Vulnerabilities and Resistances
Resistances improve a character’s position against a specific type of damage. They reduce the impact of harm against them and make the character immune to side-effects caused by that type of harm. Medium trouble causes them no harm, high trouble deals a medium amount of harm (often only 1 box), and major harm acts as high trouble.
Major -> High -> Medium->Zero
The same could be said to about any effect PCs try against a resistant NPC.
In contrast, Vulnerabilities worsen a character’s position against a specific type of harm, making high threats as dangerous as major threats. Medium -> High ->Major
Scene aspects can be utilized to briefly give a character a vulnerability or resistance. For example, a monster standing in the scene aspect “pool of water” may become vulnerable to electric or cold harm, but gain resistance to flame harm.
Injuries
Once per session, when a player character takes harm to one of their merits they can instead choose to take an injury if they have an open injury slot. Injuries represent long-term wounds, physical, mental, or spiritual, that can make regular tasks more difficult for them. The player should record a short descriptive phrase for the type of disadvantage and assign it a severity level equal to the number boxes that would have been marked if the player had not taken the injury.
When a player character takes an action that acts in contrast to one of their injuries, or in a manner that would be actively hampered by the injury, other players can invoke it against them, forcing them to cut equal to the severity level of the injury. If no one invokes the injury, a player can still invoke it against themselves in hopes of acquiring a lost word should the action succeed. Invoking an injury should always occur before an action check is made.
Designer Note: Injuries with Real World Representations
Many injuries that characters may have in-game are also represented in the real world, and there is a wide variety of opinions of how those injuries should be represented within games. Even the word “injury” may be offensive to some people and inoffensive to others. In this game, injuries represent negative effects taken from harm, but due to magic, even something like ADHD could be considered an injury by the game’s rules.
For your own games, when taking an injury, consider the other players within the group, and if uncertain, ask if everyone is comfortable with you roleplaying a character with that injury. Remember that your experience roleplaying a character doesn’t give expertise on the topic, even if it has helped you better empathize and understand it. Ultimately, different groups will have different perspectives on it, which may change across several games, and so we encourage players to be open to feedback in their roleplay of injuries especially.
Poisons
Rather than list poison as a specific type of harm with a set, singular effect, poisons are best handled as single-track hazards that can be imparted upon a character (normally by another hazard).
Players who wish to use a poison should create them as they would any other Temporary Merit, but instead use each box of the TM as a single ‘dose’ of the poison which can be used. The poison itself should have it’s own track for it’s effect – normally a 4 box track though a GM may decide to increase or decrease the track based on the poison. The track should also have a trigger to denote what causes the poison to progress. Most often that will be once a night, but with the right combination of lost words and esoterics, any trigger is possible, such as every time the victim’s name is spoken and heard by them, or whenever the victim runs and physically exerts themselves.
There are 4 categories which denote how a poison acts with every tick of it’s track.:
- Persistent
Perhaps the most classical behavior of any poison. The poison simply has the same medium effect which acts with every tick of the track. - Diminishing
A poison with a powerful initial kick but a much smaller impact after later ticks.
The poison’s initial tick starts with a high effect while the second and onwards have limited effects. - Worsening
The opposite of a diminishing poison, these start out with a minor impact but worsen as the poison ticks onwards.
The poison’s initial two ticks start with a limited effect, third tick has a medium effect, and final tick has a high effect. - Countdown!
The initial effects of the poison are minor and mostly visual, but the final tick is disastrous, with a major effect.
Though by know means an exhaustive list, here are several ideas for poison effects which might take hold.
- Harmful
A classic and dangerous type. Harmful poisons deal harm of a specified type to the victim. Note, most limited effects cannot deal harm, which makes persistent and countdown poisons the most effective behavior patterns of a harmful poison. - Truth Serum
Great for pulling information as long as the interrogator times their most important questions with the peak timing of the poison. A countdown’s poison may even fully remove a character’s ability to lie, forcing them to act similar to the Fae. - Sickness
Nausea, headaches, and stomach aches – the poison puts the victim through the wringer. These poisons make taking actions difficult, forcing a character to cut on many checks. - Hallucination
The poison alters the character’s perceptions in some way, causing them to see or hear things that aren’t real. The poisoner’s ability to detail and control the hallucination depends on the poison’s effectiveness. - Other possible effects include: Slowness, fear toxins, paranoia, anger, blindness, muteness, hunger, slippery sweat, laughter,
Creating a antidote for a poison is similar to creating a poison itself, with players creating a Temporary Merit to nullify the poison’s effects. Each box used of the antidote negates a tick of the poison. This means players may want to wait to use some antidotes to block the worse effects of a poison rather than using it too early – especially if the poison is on a countdown.
Death
When a player has marked the final box on their final merit, their character has either died, or depending on the type of harm, become to unstable to function as a player character. At this point, all boxes on the character’s sheet are burned and the player should prepare a new character for future game sessions within the same story.
That is, unless the players want an alternative story. The world is fantastical and death may not be the permanent end. In a game with necromancers who raise the dead, spiritualists who talk to ghosts, and Fae who trade for untradeable goods, who’s to say which deaths must be concrete. For a player who wishes for their character to return from the dead, they can speak to the GM if they (or even another player willing to GM), is willing to create and run a story needed to return the character. The surviving group has a heavy task ahead of them. Each burned merit of the old character needing to be restored before they return, changed but still themselves.