Harm & Conditions

You do not run out of hit points in this game. You run out of room. Characters carry a wound threshold — base 3 plus your Brawn, higher if you are holding Juggernog — and that threshold does not count down like a health bar. Instead, harm lands on you as conditions, and the conditions are what kill you.

Wound threshold

Your wound threshold is the number of wounds you can absorb before the horde stops bothering with targets and the GM stops explaining the danger. It is not a pool to spend. It is the wall. Your sheet tracks wounds against it and shows Room Left — when Room Left hits zero you are out of anywhere to go. Specialists and tough characters just have a taller wall; everybody's wall breaks eventually, and the game is built on the fact that you will not have time to fill every gap.

Conditions

Conditions stack. Each one says what it does to you, in number form, and how it clears. A character can be Winded, Bleeding, Broken, Shaken, Frayed, Exhausted, Deafened, or Marked — and several at once, because the horde does not care about your dignity. Three stacks of Winded, for example, become Exhausted. Three stacks of Shaken and you freeze for one exchange at the worst moment.

Your sheet applies the numbers for you. Skill ratings shown on the character sheet already have your current conditions subtracted, so the rating you read is the rating you roll — you never do this arithmetic at the table. Bleeding, Deafened, and Marked deliberately carry no dice penalty; they cost you wound threshold, your warning of what is coming, and the attention of anything with a name.

The GM hands out conditions the way other games hand out damage — with a price attached to why you got it. You did the bold thing? That costs you a condition. The condition is not a punishment; it is the receipt for the heroism, and it is entirely in character to pay it.

Death

Death comes when the room runs out, not when a number hits zero. A character dies when the stacks and the threshold stop leaving anywhere to go — usually because they chose to hold a door, to go back for the body, or to stand still one exchange longer than the room allowed. When it happens it is loud, it is logged in the world state, and it changes the standing of everyone who watched.

Dying, but not dead

The system is not always fatal, and it never forgets a cost. A Bleeding character loses a wound threshold each scene until treated — the zombies favour a bleeder, and the GM gives them the worst spawn. A Broken limb does not heal in the field. A Frayed mind only clears when exposure drops, which mostly means leaving. Characters do not run out of hit points, they run out of room — and the room does not get tired.