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Combat

Page 7 of 11

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Damage From Other Sources

Most of the time, characters will be taking damage from enemy attacks. However, there are many other less common ways of taking damage, any of which can be just as fatal.

Cold:

Being caught in the open, in freezing temperatures (or even just cold temperatures) can be lethal, given time. A character has a grace period before he starts suffering damage, the length of which depends on the temperature and the amount of shelter a character has. If the PCs forgot to wrap up warm before heading into the tundra, that’s their problem. It’s called natural selection.

This grace period is equal to the character’s Toughness in hours.

Unfortunately, this grace period assumes a character has all four of the following survival elements:

• Specialist cold climate clothing.
• A limited degree of shelter, such as a survival tent, unheated building or a cave. (A sufficiently heated building negates the risk of cold exposure entirely.)
• A source of heat, such as a campfire or similar.
• Sufficient food to keep energy levels up (at least 3 meals a day, preferably cooked).

For each of these that are not present, the length of time the character can remain exposed is halved cumulatively.

Once the grace period is passed, lots of nasty things start to happen. First of all, the character loses 5 points each hour of all characteristics except Toughness.

Additionally, the character must pass a Toughness test every hour or lose D6 Hit points, +1 point for every full 10 points of the margin of failure. This Toughness test is modified by –10 for every one of the above four survival elements that is missing, and by an additional –20 if the character is wet and has not been able to dry himself before his clothes have frozen.

Every time one of these Toughness tests is a matched failure, the character has developed frostbite.

When a character develops frostbite, D3 locations are affected, determined either by the GM or a D100 roll:

Frostbitten limbs become virtually unuseable, while characters with facial frostbite will be unable to speak, and will spill as much as they swallow when drinking (this in itself is dangerous – wetness on clothes will rapidly freeze).

Additionally, any location that develops frostbite for a second or subsequent time will have advanced to gangrene.

Any previously wounded locations that contract frostbite have a 25% chance each hour of becoming infected.

Once gangrene sets in, the character is in deep trouble. In addition to any damage suffered for the cold, the character must take an additional Toughness test or suffer another D6 damage, testing each hour until medical attention is received.

A matched failure on this test will render the gangrenous limb beyond help – all or part of it must be amputated within one hour or the gangrene will spread to the nearest body location (the torso, except on the weirdest mutants or aliens). Subsequent matched failures will spread gangrene to another location, rolled randomly or at the GM’s discretion.

If a character gets gangrene on more than one location, roll damage for each location separately.

The main treatment for cold-related injuries is to bathe the patient in warm water, until circulation returns and frostbite recedes. There is a 25% chance that severe frostbite and a 75% chance that gangrene will leave permanent scarring and disfiguring tissue damage.

Hit points will recover through rest and recuperation.

These rules are designed to represent the effects of a bitterly cold environment, probably with snow or permafrost on the ground, and occasional blizzards (either new snow or old snow whipped up by the wind).

If things get any worse than that (Valhalla, for example, or other icy deathworlds), with permanent blizzards, constant twilight arctic temperatures and below, the GM should simply increase the frequency of Toughness tests.

Being trapped in the wilderness during summer can also be lethal, but it takes longer for the final stages of freezing to kick in. In environments like European-style grasslands or forests, or in the industrial wastelands of an underhive, characters can freeze to death, but the grace period is equal to Toughness multiplied by two.

In any wilderness region, dehydration is a bigger killer than starvation. Whereas a character can survive for a week or more without food, a character short on water will die within days, particularly in a hot climate.

As a rough guide, adult humans, Squat, beastmen and most mutants require at least three pints of water or other liquids in a comfortable environment. Ratlings require around five pints, while ogryns require at least ten.

Characters failing to fulfil this requirement have a grace period before serious debilitation sets in.

The grace period is equal to half of the character’s Toughness in hours. This gives most characters around a day before they start feeling the effects of thirst (other than a dry throat and chapped lips, which set in hours ago).

At the end of this period, and every six hours thereafter, the character must take a Toughness test. If this is failed, the character loses D10 Hit points and subtracts D10 points from his Strength, Initiative, Willpower and Leadership characteristics (roll each characteristic separately).

At the GM’s discretion, the character may begin to hallucinate as his condition deteriorates. Insanity points should normally be avoided, however – the psychological effects of dehydration are rarely long-lasting.

Important: While suffering from dehydration, sleep brings no respite, and Injury points are not healed by rest and recuperation. This even applies to Injury points lost from other sources – the body’s regenerative abilities are seriously debilitated by the lack of nourishment.

If the character is in a hot environment, with no shade, the grace period is halved, and Toughness tests are taken every three hours thereafter. Warm weather clothing may at least partially negate this effect, at the GM’s discretion.

Once a dehydrated character manages to find water, Toughness tests only occur every twelve hours for another day, before stopping altogether.

After this point, Toughness tests are still taken every twelve hours, although failure does not result in damage or characteristic reduction – instead, a success deducts D10 from the character’s injury total and adds D10 points to his Strength, Initiative, Willpower and Leadership (each rolled separately).

Recovery of Hit points can only heal damage inflicted by the dehydration, not by starvation or injuries, and Toughness tests halt when there are no characteristics to be restored.

A character submerged in water, or trapped in some other airless environment, is faced with the disorientating and panic-inducing situation of being able to breathe, but still not getting the oxygen needed to survive. As such, immediately upon entering the water/vacuum etc., the character must take a Nerve test. Failure means that the character is panicking, while success means that the character remains calm throughout the drowning experience.

A character can safely hold his breath for a grace period equal to his Toughness in seconds (the GM may wish to round this time to the nearest 10 seconds, to make it match with rounds of combat). Panicking characters halve this grace period. Those who panicked with a matched failure have no grace period whatsoever, and immediately start drowning.

Every ten seconds (one round) after this grace period, the character must take a Toughness test or suffer damage.

Each failed Toughness test causes D6 points of damage, +1 point of damage for every full 10 points by which the test was failed.

If a 6 is rolled on damage, the character’s Chest location takes a level of location injury, up to a maximum of Light. A character will not gain a Heavy or Crippling chest injury from drowning.

If a character’s Injury Total passes his Unconsciousness Level, he loses consciousness as normal and continues to drown (see Drowning While Unconscious, below).

A character being dragged along a fast-flowing river or suchlike will probably be able to snatch the occasional gasp of air as he goes. The grace period is doubled, and all Toughness tests for drowning have a +20 modifier to represent these gasps.

However, the GM may rule that debris and rocks in the water will also cause damage.

If a character is unexpectedly put into a situation where they could drown (e.g. a dam bursting, or being shoved over a parapet into a moat), he does not get the grace period of holding his breath at all, and goes straight onto Drowning tests, with the usual modifiers.

When there is at least a second of warning, the GM may allow a character to take an Initiative test before submersion. A successful test means that the character has managed to take a lungful of air before being submerged, and the drowning is resolved normally.

An unconscious character has no grace period and will begin drowning immediately, with a –30 penalty to Toughness. If there is no one to rescue him, an unconscious character will die very quickly.

There is, however, a chance that the character’s automatic reflexes will kick in and wake him up. So long as the character is above his Consciousness Level (e.g. was drugged, or knocked unconscious by location injury, rather than low Hit points), any successful Toughness tests will shock the character out of unconsciousness.

Most of the time, these don’t help when drowning, since they only purify air (in this case, water) being inhaled into the lungs. Look on the bright side though – you’ll have drowned in clean water.

Re-breathers, and other pieces of equipment with a self-contained oxygen supply, allow a character to breathe underwater. Likewise, gills or gill implants will also assist. See the rules for individual pieces of equipment for more details.

If a character who has begun drowning somehow gets out of the water (or is pulled out), he must spend D6 rounds recovering, during which time he counts as being stunned. Half of the damage lost while drowning is recovered automatically at the end of this time, but the rest must be healed by recuperation. If the character’s chest took a level of location injury, this is not recovered and must be regained by rest and recuperation.

When a character is electrocuted (either by a psychic attack, an unusual weapon or sticking his fingers in a socket), the GM should first determine which locations are affected.

The first location is where the shock originated – lightning will strike the highest location (usually the head), grasping a live cable will be that arm, stepping on an electric plate will be that leg, and so on. From there, the current will trace a path through the victim’s body until it grounds. Usually, this will involve going out through one or other (or both) of the character’s legs, but if a character is holding two ends of a broken wire, they are in effect completing the circuit, sending the current in through one arm, across the chest and out through the other arm. The GM should use common sense to determine the path of an electrical current.

Ranged or close combat attacks that cause electrical damage determine their initial location in the same manner as a conventional attack.

Electrical weapons already have a predetermined Damage characteristic, and this is used on each affected location. For other electrical shocks, the GM should pick a damage score for it. For guidance, a typical Imperial current would be around 2D6. Lightning strikes would be around 3D10.

The GM should be aware when determining the strength of an electrical shock that anything higher than 3D10, hitting a head location and exiting through the feet, would leave most human characters with little chance of survival. Of course, that might be the GM’s intention…

The damage is applied to each location along the route of the current, bypassing armour and force fields (although see below for the effects of force fields).

The character is also stunned for one round, plus one round for every level of location injury caused throughout the body by the shock.

Sometimes, a character is locked into a continuous electrical current (falling onto an electrified surface, clutching two ends of a cable, plugged directly into the mains etc.). In this case, damage is inflicted every round until the character and the electrical current are separated.

The character must take a Strength test to unlock his muscles and take any kind of action (usually letting go of the cable) while being electrocuted. Other characters may attempt to knock him or the electrical source away with an insulated object, which also requires a Strength test.

Anyone simply diving in and pulling the character away from the source may still take the Strength test, but will suffer an electrical shock, conducted through the initial victim.

If a character is soaking wet, or is standing in water or a similarly conductive substance, all electrical damage is doubled.

Extremely strong electrical currents can sometimes cause the victim to spontaneously ignite. If a shock causes three or more levels of location injury to a hit location, that location has a 50% chance of bursting into flames.

See the rules for fire damage (below) for further details. Regardless of the strength of the current, fire damage caused by electrocution always count as a medium fire (D6 damage).

Force fields may absorb at least some of a lightning bolt (or other arcing electricity). Make a single damage roll for the current, but do not apply it to the victim. Then roll for the force field’s Armour value. If the field blocks all the damage, the electricity flows over the surface of the field and earths harmlessly into the ground, without causing any damage to the character. If some of the damage gets through the field, the character takes full damage.

In either event, if the field was hit by 10 or more points of damage, then it is overloaded and rendered useless until repaired.

Bionic parts are capable of withstanding a certain level current before being overloaded. When a location containing one or more bionic parts takes damage from electricity, check the chart below to see if the part is affected.

If the location takes more damage than the part’s Sustainable Current score, the bionic part is overloaded and rendered useless until repaired. If it takes double the Sustainable Current, the part is reduced to a mass of melted plastic and metal.

Shock weapons are designed to localise damage in a victim, and therefore do not cause electrical damage.

A character that falls less than 5 yards can take an Initiative test to avoid taking damage. If the test is failed, the character takes a hit to a randomly determined leg (unless the result is a matched failure, in which case the character lands prone and the hit location table is used), causing D6 damage.

Any falls of more than 5 yards automatically causes 1 hit for every five yards (or part) fallen, each hit causing D6 damage for every full 5 yards.

If the landing could be described as soft (tree branches, snow, water, thick undergrowth and so on), instead of rolling D6s for the damage, roll D3s.

Example: Hearing an approaching rescue team, Merkett staggers out of his cave and promptly walks over a precipice in his dazed, frostbitten state. He falls 20 yards into a snowdrift. Normally, this would cause 4 hits, each causing 4D6 points of damage, but the soft landing causes merely 4D3 points of damage per hit.

Characters can be set on fire by explosions, flame weapons, pyromancy psychic attacks and more. Some Daemon weapons can set victims alight as well, and these are described in the Chaos Bestiary.

An incendiary attack generally causes a certain amount of damage immediately, from burns and shock, and there is usually a percentage chance of the flames setting one or more locations on the character alight.

At the end of every round, there is a 25% chance that the location stops burning (roll before recovery). If it does not, then the location suffers a certain amount of damage, with the usual deductions for armour (but not force fields).

Depending on the intensity of the fire, this damage will vary. A few guideline examples are given below:

Larger fires may cause more damage, but it may be simpler for a GM to just kill a character caught in such an inferno outright.

If a character is armoured so that the flames cannot get through to the flesh beneath, assume that the character suffers half normal damage from being roasted alive. Injuries from roasting won’t normally cause scarring, unless armour is heated to such an extent that it physically burns the skin (or even melts onto it).

A burning character must take a Nerve test at the start of every round. If the test is failed, he panics and flails uselessly at the flames, which spread to another random location. If an already burning location is rolled, the flames do not spread.

If the character passes the Nerve test, he may do nothing except put the fire out. Each action spent putting the fire out has a 25% chance of succeeding. Specify the location the character is trying to smother before rolling any dice for the success of the action. Other characters within 1 yard may also spend actions to help the burning characters. They too have a 25% chance of putting each fire out, but if any of them suffer a matched failure on the roll, the fire spreads to a random location on the helper’s body.

Once a character loses consciousness, he is totally reliant on other characters to put the fire out for him, or else he will burn to death.

The usual rules for medical treatment and recuperation are used. However, burns are highly likely to cause permanent scarring. Any location taking two or more levels of injury from fire will be permanently scarred if the character fails a Toughness test (roll separately for each location).

Understandably, many military units issue flamer or plasma weapon troops with flame retardant suits. These protect all locations, acting as Armour Value D10 against all fire, plasma or melta attacks. Suits are deliberately oversized so that characters can wear armour beneath them, providing it has an Armour Value of 6 or below.

Because flame retardant suits are so bulky, they do encumber characters wearing them, in the same way as normal armour.

Radiation is utterly lethal in high doses, and even small doses can be deadly if ingested. Ingested radiation is described in the Poisons section.

Most radiation types rarely cause immediate damage. The exceptions that PCs are likely to encounter are gamma radiation and prolonged bursts of X-rays. Most radiological weapons (rad grenades, for example) release gamma radiation, for example.

Any location affected by such radiation will suffer D10 damage, modified by armour and force fields. In most cases, the entire character is affected by the radiation, and every location is hit.

Rad-suits add 2D6 points of armour over each location protected, but only against radiation. Roll for each location and encounter with radiation separately.

The standard D10 damage is suitable for the peripheries of a nuclear explosion or accident, or rad grenades. Weaker or stronger radioactive hazards may cause a different level of damage, at the GM’s discretion. Note that, at the normal level, a single burst of radiation is capable of killing an unprotected character.

Characters exposed to radiation (whether it causes damage or not, and even if it is incapable of causing immediate damage) may suffer from illnesses like cancer or cataracts later in life. They may become sterile, or offspring will suffer deformities or mutation. The exact long-term effects of radiation, if any, are left to the GM’s discretion – they may not even manifest during the timescale of the campaign, and thus are rendered irrelevant, as far as gameplay goes.

Survived the reactor meltdown or nuclear attack? Don’t relax. It’s not over yet…

A character taking damage from radiation must take a Toughness test, with a –10 penalty for each location that took six or more points of damage. If this test is failed, the character develops radiation sickness, which kicks in D10 hours after initial exposure.

To determine the severity of the radiation sickness, roll a D100, apply the following modifiers, and check the final total on the table below:

Example 1: Merkett’s company was hit by rad-shells from enemy artillery, and several soldiers develop radiation sickness. The first, Private Miller, has a Toughness of 50 and is being tended to by a combat medic with a Sagacity of 64. This gives him a positive modifier of 57 (25 for ½ Miller’s Toughness + 32 for ½ the medic’s Sagacity). However, he suffered 24 points of damage from the radiation burst, reducing the total modifier to +33. The GM rolls on the Radiation Sickness Table and gets 63, for a final score of 96. Miller is going to be missing a few teeth and develop a few bald patches, but after a few weeks in bed he’ll be fine.

The character may recuperate from radiation damage in the usual fashion. However, the number of restored Injury Points is halved as long as the character suffers from radiation sickness (his immune system and regenerative abilities are damaged by the radiation).

At the GM’s discretion, any reduced characteristics may be regained gradually over the last few days of illness. This prevents a character being at death’s door at –40 on one day, and leaping out of bed the next morning as if nothing had ever happened to him.

Any location receiving two or more levels of injury from radiation will be permanently scarred if the character fails a Toughness test (roll separately for each location).

Space:

Pirates commonly throw captives out of an airlock, and hull ruptures in space battles and boarding actions can suck personnel out into the void. Most of the time, these unlucky souls are dead before anything can be done, but occasionally, once in every blue moon, someone survives exposure to the hard vacuum of space.

Pretty simply, unless you’re capable of surviving in space (Daemons, Tyranids, not to mention Space Marines, to a limited degree), your chances of survival are virtually nil.

There are two ways of resolving damage to characters exposed to hard vacuum, the easy way, or the painful way.

During the first round (10 seconds), every location takes a level of damage and begins to bleed for D3 damage. This is in addition to other bleeding caused by location injury.

In each subsequent round, every location takes an extra level of damage, and bleeding increases by D3 from each location. Again, this is in addition to other bleeding caused by location injury.

And so on, until dead or rescued (usually the former).

This is one of those occasions that Fate points were made for. At the GM’s discretion, a Fate point may be spent to have the character roll under a descending bulkhead, grasp onto the airlock door until it closes again, rapidly put on a handily nearby spacesuit, or some other unlikely rationalisation. A character exposed to decompression, lack of oxygen, solar radiation and the cold of the void should be at death’s door, barely conscious (if that) and in need of urgent medical attention.

And remember, this is after spending a Fate point.

Alternatively, the GM might just tell you to roll up a new character and not stand too near the outer hull in future.

Starvation takes a lot longer than dehydration, but will eventually end with the same net result – a scattering of bleached bones.

Normally, characters will eat three meals a day in order to remain healthy. This can be stretched out to just one meal a day, but after more than four meals have been missed (i.e. four days on two meals, or two days on one), all characteristic tests are at –10, as physical weakness sets in and mental balance breaks down. This situation can continue indefinitely, although the character will eventually deteriorate, at a rate determined by the GM. This should take the form of reduced characteristics, and possibly Insanity points in more advanced cases.

A character unable to eat even this minimum amount of one meal a day has a grace period of a number of days equal to one tenth of his Toughness. After this period is up, starvation begins.

Once a day, the character must take a Toughness test. A failure results in the character adding D10 points to his Injury Total.

At the GM’s discretion, characteristic test penalties may be increased every few days, as the character’s physical and mental state deteriorates. The character may also begin to hallucinate.

Important: While suffering from starvation, sleep brings no respite, and Hit points are not healed by rest and recuperation. This even applies to Hit points lost from other sources – the body’s regenerative abilities are seriously debilitated by the lack of food.

As soon as a character gets the opportunity to eat, he must do so. However, if more than one meal’s worth of food is available, the character must pass a Willpower test or he will attempt to binge himself (a potentially lethal thing to do after a period of starvation).

Any character that overeats will suffer D10 points of damage, unless someone prevents him from eating – this may require the threat of force, physical restraint or even sedation.

Characters need to be weaned back to full health, starting with one meal a day and gradually building up to three, at a rate determined by the GM (taking into account the duration and severity of the starvation).

Reduced characteristics will return to their original level within hours of food being eaten, rest and recuperation will start having an effect again.

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