Fatigue

Fatigue Checks

  Characters performing extended strenuous activity need to pass fatigue checks to avoid accruing penalties from fatigue.   Every time a duration of time dictated by the chart signifies a check, roll Stamina difficulty 3 for the first fatigue check. Difficulty 4 for the check. Difficulty 5 for the third check, and so on and so forth. Resting resets the difficult back to 3.   Failure on a check results in a one die penalty on all dice rolls until the character gets sufficient rest. A second failure result in a two-dice penalty. A third failure results in a three dice penalty. A fourth failure results in the character falling unconscious. Botching causes a character to pass out outright.   A character can retroactively undo a failed Stamina check by spending a temporary Willpower point. A character can retroatively also turn a botch into a simple failure. This the is only exception where you may spend your Willpower after rolling.   In the vast majority of everyday situations, it is completely unnecessary to roll fatigue checks. When to take fatigue checks is entirely at the Game Master’s discretion. Characters on a long journey do not need to roll fatigue checks every day they travel, they only need to roll fatigue checks on days they have special or dangerous encounters where it's critically important to know exactly how alert and well-rested they are when the dangerous event manifest itself.   If your characters are traveling somewhere and they are not in a hurry, they can rest whenever they are tired, so you can probably forgo fatigue checks entirely. If time is very critical such as characters racing ahead of an invading army to warn their allies to make preparations, then you should almost certainly roll fatigue checks.   A lot of animalistic predatory and intelligent adversaries plan to ambush their foes when they are tired. A group of characters about to face a surprise attack of this sort should probably roll fatigue checks, but a group of characters having a safe normal day probably shouldn’t bother.  

Fatigue Check Time Chart

  Casual riding 4 hours   Unhurried travel on foot 3 hours   Hard riding 3 hours   Marching 2 hours   Forced marching (jogging long distance) 1 hour   Swimming 20 minutes   Running 10 minutes   Light work (copying manuscripts, cooking) 3 hours   Medium toil (chopping wood, pulling weeds) 2 hours   Heavy toil (hauling large stones, military drills) 1 hour   Fighting 5 to 10 minutes    

Fatigue Check Difficulty Modifiers

  Wearing armor or carrying heavy loads adds a modifier to the base difficulty of the Stamina roll.   Light armor +1   Medium armor +2   Heavy armor +3   Plate armor +4    

Additional Modifiers

  Heavy load of gear +1   Hot day +1   Wet +1   Underfed +1   Dehydrated +1   Ill +2