Damage and Stress

Your vitality is modeled by two values - damage and stress. Whenever you are physically harmed, you take damage and whenever you are mentally harmed, you take stress.

Damage

You start the game with 0 damage and you can take a maximum of 40 damage plus the modifier of your ability toughness. This may be additionally increased by talents.

As long as you have taken at least half of the maximum damage you can take, you have the aspect injured. As long as you are injured, your movement is halved and you gain 1d6 disadvantage to ability checks for physical and mental abilities.

If you reach the maximum damage you can take, you fall unconscious, start dying and gain a trauma. If you take even more damage or you are not stabilized within the next few minutes, you are dead. If you are stabilized within time, you heal 1 damage and regain consciousness after finishing a long rest.

Stress

You start the game with 0 stress and you can take a maximum of 40 stress plus the modifier of your willpower ability. This may be additionally increased by talents.

As long as you have taken at least half of the maximum stress you can take, you have the aspect stressed. As long as you are stressed, you gain 1d6 disadvantage to ability checks for social and combat abilities.

If you reach the maximum stress you can take, you suffer from a mental breakdown and gain the aspect panicking until the breakdown is over. If the stress gain leading to your breakdown has an attributable source (for example a terrifying enemy or a warlock that is enchanting you), you must take every possible action to get away from it as fast as possible. If you do not see any possibility to escape, you cower on the ground in fear and cannot perform any actions. The breakdown is over when the source of your stress does not pose any danger to you anymore. Then you gain a trauma and heal 10 stress.

If there is no such source (for example when taking stress through a trauma) that has caused your mental breakdown, you must do something otherwise extreme and rash.

Sanity Check

Under mentally straining circumstances, the GM may ask you to make a sanity check against a certain difficulty. In that case, you make a willpower check and subtract your result from that difficulty. If you fail the check, you take an amount of stress equal to the difference.

For example, if you make a sanity check against difficulty 12 and the result is 9, you take 3 stress. If the result is at least 12, you do not take any stress.

A sanity check may occurr if your light sources fail, you encounter a terrifying enemy or supernatural phenomenon.