Health, Damage & Recovery
Every character in this world is a body of flesh and blood, and the record of what the world has done to that body is your Health track. It is a short list, and it fills fast. Violence in these streets is quick, brutal, and permanent in ways that matter. This chapter tells you how harm lands, what it does to you, and how long it takes to get over it.
Your Health Track
Your Health rating is Stamina + 3. A runner with Stamina 3 walks around with 6 boxes of Health; a frail scholar with Stamina 1 has only 4. Each point of damage you take checks off one box, from full and healthy down toward death. When you've taken bashing damage equal to your Health, you're down. When you've taken any combination that reaches your Health, you're out of the fight.
Health is not a resource to spend. It is a clock, and every time you step into a fight you are betting against it.
How Damage Lands
A violent attack is a contested roll: your pool of Attribute + Skill (Brawl, Melee, or Firearms) against your target's Defense pool — the higher of their Dexterity + Athletics or their Wits + Awareness. A defender who spends their turn evading adds +2 dice to that pool but doesn't act that turn. A surprised target rolls no Defense at all, and armor adds half its rating (round down) to Defense.
If your successes beat theirs, you win the exchange. Your damage pool is:
Your winning margin + your weapon's damage modifier.
Roll that pool. Each success is 1 point of Health damage. The size of your pool is entirely about getting through and landing a blow that counts — a glancing hit that barely wins the contest is a scratch, not a wound.
Weapon Damage Modifiers
| Weapon | Damage Modifier |
|---|---|
| Unarmed | +0 |
| Knife or small weapon | +1 |
| Club or one-handed blade | +2 |
| Two-handed weapon | +3 |
| Light firearm | +2 |
| Heavy firearm | +3 |
| Claws or fangs | +2, and the damage is aggravated |
The modifier is why nobody picks a fight with a man carrying a greatsword. A knife needs a wide margin to bite; a rifle barrel puts three dice of hurt on the table before you've even rolled.
Damage Types
Every point of damage is one of three kinds, and the kind decides how it heals — and whether it ever truly does.
Bashing — bruises, contusions, the blunt impact of fists, falls, and clubs. Bashing is exhausting and humbling, but your body shrugs it off: each point heals with a few hours' rest. Bashing knocks you out at 0 Health. It scars your evening.
Lethal — knives, blades, bullets, the deliberate work of sharp things. Each point needs treatment, and untreated it takes about a week per point to mend. A lethal wound can kill you at 0 Health if it keeps coming. It steals your week.
Aggravated — claws, fangs, fire, the wounds that burn and tear and refuse to close. These take months to heal, or only supernatural healing of your own. Aggravated damage is the signature of the things that hunt at night. It ends your story.
| Type | Examples | Healing | At 0 Health |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bashing | Fists, clubs, falls | A few hours' rest per point | Unconscious |
| Lethal | Knives, blades, bullets | A week per point untreated | Recovering in a bed, or dying |
| Aggravated | Claws, fangs, fire | Months, or supernatural healing | A mortal can die |
Zero Health: Incapacitation
When your damage reaches your Health, you hit 0 Health and you are incapacitated. You are down. Whether you're out cold from bashing, bleeding into the gutter from lethal, or something worse, you no longer act in the fight.
And there is a sharper rule beneath that: a mortal who is downed and then takes further aggravated damage can be killed outright. A wolf's claws find the throat of the woman who fell. That is how stories in this world end — not with ceremony, but with an extra point of aggravated damage on someone who can no longer defend themselves. When you are at 0 Health, you are one claw away from dead.
Take the difference in tone seriously:
Bashing scars your evening. Lethal steals your week. Aggravated can end your story.
A Worked Example
You corner a bookish vampire hunter in an alley. This has to end now, so you drop your shoulder and go for the two-handed sword slung across your back — Strength 3 + Melee 3, a pool of 6 dice. She spies the motion, but it's too late to run: her Defense is her Wits 3 + Awareness 2, a pool of 4 dice.
You roll 6 dice: a 10, an 8, a 6, a 5, a 4, a 3. The 10 counts as 2 successes; the 8 and 6 count as 1 each. That's 4 successes.
She rolls her 4 dice: a 9, a 7, a 2, a 1 — 2 successes.
Your margin is 4 − 2 = 2. Your sword is two-handed, so its modifier is +3. Your damage pool is 2 + 3 = 5 dice.
You roll 5 dice for damage: a 10, a 9, a 7, a 2, a 1. The 10 is 2 successes, the 9 and 7 are 1 each: 4 successes. The hunter takes 4 points of lethal damage.
She has Stamina 2, so her Health is 5. She goes from full to one badly bleeding box left in a single exchange. One more solid hit like that — say a second margin of 2 with that same sword, another 5-dice pool — and she's at 0 Health, down in the alley, bleeding out at a week per point while you walk away.
That is the pace of violence in this world. It takes seconds to put someone in the ground and weeks to bring them back. Plan your fights like they cost you something, because the Health track is always counting. Spend a Willpower point to add 3 dice to an attack that has to land, get out of a fight you're losing, and remember that flight and surrender are always on the table — the Health track only goes one way, and it does not care how righteous you were.
Recovery
Healing is the reward for surviving. Bashing clears in hours of rest. Lethal clears with treatment — proper medical care, a doctor, time — or creeps along at a week per point untreated. Aggravated demands months or powers beyond mortal medicine. Rest, treatment, and supernatural resilience all matter; the clock for each kind of harm is written above, and nothing in this world heals a claw wound by breakfast.