Harm & Healing

When enemies attack or hazards threaten you, harm comes in two forms.

Light Hits reduce your Protection score by 1. They represent accumulated stress, glancing blows, and minor injuries that wear down your defenses over time.

Hard Hits force an immediate Protection roll. Roll 1d12 against your current Protection score + Reflex bonus. This is a capacity roll with pass/fail only and no critical results.

• Pass: Your defenses hold. No wound.
• Fail: Mark one segment on your wound clock. Because this is a failed capacity roll, you also gain 1 balance token.

As light hits erode your Protection score, hard hits become increasingly dangerous. When you're Exposed (Protection at minimum), all light hits automatically become hard hits, and every incoming attack threatens serious injury.

Reflex is a rating from 0 to 4 associated with your Protection capacity, primarily gained through clockwork armor. When making a Protection roll to resist a hard hit, add your Reflex rating to your current Protection score.

Unlike Protection, Reflex never degrades during play.

Example: A character with Protection 3 and Reflex 2 makes a Protection roll against a hard hit. They roll 1d12 and succeed on a 5 or lower (3 + 2).

Your wound clock is a circle divided into segments by life lines. All characters start with 1 life line, creating a 2-segment wound clock. Additional life lines come from lineage talents and standard talents; each new life line adds 2 more segments, up to a maximum of 6 life lines (12 segments).

Wounds represent significant injuries. Unlike temporary Protection loss, wounds persist until treated during intermissions. Each wound brings you closer to a reckoning with the Fates.

Soak (from aetherial armor) prevents wounds. When you would mark a wound segment, you may mark a soak point instead. Once all soak points are used, wounds must be marked normally.

Soak is only restored through specific talents or certain cutscenes. When aetherial armor absorbs wounds equal to its soak capacity, it becomes Broken (see Talents & Equipment).

When you would mark a wound but your clock has no empty segments, you must choose one of three bargains:

Clotho's Last Strand

For heroes who believe in going out in a blaze of glory.

Take three consecutive actions in the spotlight with three bonus dice on any risky rolls. During these actions, failures do not give the DM the spotlight and the DM cannot interrupt. After these three actions, your character dies heroically. Nothing can prevent it.

Lachesis' Tax

For heroes who aren't done yet.

Pay 3 balance tokens to remove one wound from your clock, freeing a segment and keeping you alive.

Atropos' Bargain

For heroes willing to linger as echoes.

Your character dies immediately but persists as a shade. As a shade, you can communicate with other characters and use the instant talent Whisper of Fate.

Whisper of Fate

PREREQUISITES: Atropos' Bargain TARGET: Anywhere, 1 friend

Instant: After a friend declares a risky action roll, reduce any of your capacity scores by 1 to add 2 dice to their roll. If they fail, you may spend one of your balance tokens on their roll (in addition to their own).

Your shade persists until all your capacity scores reach their minimums.

Wounds are healed during intermissions through the Heal Wounds cutscene (see Intermissions). There is no wound recovery during active scenes unless a specific talent provides it.

Protection scores, along with all other capacity scores, return to their maximums at the start of each intermission.