Mages face a dangerous world. Beyond the common violence of the mortal streets, their internecine politics, reality-bending madness, and occasional bouts of pure brutality, it’s easy to get hurt and damn near as easy to die. In a world apparently defined by monsters, a mage must keep zir head, be clever, and avoid bloodshed as often as possible. But because that’s often not possible, we have the Health Trait, which reflects the space between perfectly healthy and going Into The Light.
As noted under the Health Trait entry in Character Traits, this Trait reflects your character’s condition. As injuries wear it down, you pencil certain marks along the Health Chart to track its current state. Slash marks (/) designate Bashing damage, Xs designate Lethal damage, and asterisks (*) designate Aggravated damage. Each type reflects a different type of harm. As your Trait goes down, your dice pools go down as well. Magick and medicine, fortunately, can repair such injuries. Even so, mages are fragile when compared to the rest of the Night-Folk. Things a werewolf could laugh off can easily kill a mage.
Health Chart
Health Levels Dice Pool Penalty* Movement Penalty Bruised ±0 Minor pain and swelling; ze’s banged up but otherwise fine. Hurt -1 Cuts, bruises, aches, perhaps bleeding but no major impairment. Injured -1 Minor, painful injuries limit the character to half zir normal movement. Wounded -2 Notable injuries handicap zir; the character can’t run but may still walk. Mauled -2 Significant internal and external damage; character can hobble around (3 yards/turn) but not move normally. Crippled -5 Catastrophic injuries; character can only crawl (1 yard/turn). Incapacitated N/A Character is unconscious from pain and trauma; no movement possible. Dead N/A Another soul greets the Great Mystery.
Again as noted under Health (and, for clarity, as reiterated in the entry for Combat), different attacks and hazards cause different sorts of injuries. Detailed below, the three types of damage reflect both the initial trauma and the time and effort required to heal it.
A consequence of painful but survivable trauma, Bashing damage represents the effects of blunt impact, short falls, psychic attacks, fistfight injuries, knockout gas, minor illness, most types of drugs, and other pains that the average person might walk away from. Story-wise, Bashing damage comes across as bloody noses, bruises, aching joints, blurry vision, and so forth. It’s possible to die from bashing damage, but it’s not likely.
Most characters can at least try to soak Bashing damage — that is, absorb it with the Stamina Trait. The Combat section covers the rules for soaking damage; for now, just remember that a person with a high Stamina can take a lot of bashing-level punishment.
Still, there are limits. When Bashing damage takes a character to the Incapacitated level on the Health chart, that character’s in trouble. Although ze can still try to soak incoming Bashing damage with zir Stamina, the next level of Bashing damage — typically marked with a slash — gets noted at the top of the Health chart with an X. As the character takes even more Bashing damage, those Xs go further down the chart. If zir chart gets filled with Xs from top to bottom, then the next level of any kind of damage kills zir. So yes — although it’s not easy, you can punch and kick a character to death.
Characters heal more quickly from Bashing damage than they do from other types. For details, see Healing Damage and the Healing Damage chart nearby.
Folks can walk away from a punch in the face; a knife in the gut, though, is another story. Lethal damage depicts the harm dealt out by guns, blades, long falls, sharp impacts, electrical burns, puncture wounds, deadly poisons, fatal diseases, and other harbingers of mortality. With potential exceptions for the Cinematic Damage option, the average character cannot soak Lethal damage. This type is likely to be the death of zir.
Again, note each level of Lethal damage with an X on the Health chart. Every level reflects a greater degree of harm. Such injuries take longer to heal as well, and the character’s condition may deteriorate unless ze receives medical care — a successful Intelligence + Medicine roll — in order to stabilize that trauma.
At all levels below Hurt, untreated Lethal wounds grow 1 level worse each day. A character at Wounded, for example, drops to Mauled the next day, Crippled the day after that, and Incapacitated the day after that until zir injuries are stabilized. If and when Lethal damage drops a character below Incapacitated, ze should start picking out a harp or a pitchfork — ze’s done.
When treated with anything less than Life Sphere magick, Lethal damage takes a while to heal. The Healing Damage chart below reveals just how much longer it takes to snap back from lethal harm than it does to recover from Bashing damage. At the Storyteller’s discretion, lethal injuries that bring a character to Mauled, Crippled, or Incapacitated may leave lasting scars even after the Health chart has recovered those lost health levels.
“Agg damage” represents the most horrific injuries a person can sustain: fire, acid, virulent toxins, vampire fangs, radiation, explosions, and similar physical atrocities. On a metaphysical level, such damage tears apart the Pattern that binds a living thing together... and so, it follows that Life 3 and Entropy 4 Effects inflict Aggravated damage by unweaving that Pattern. Thankfully, Life 3 can also reweave a damaged Pattern; such treatment demands vulgar magick and a point of Quintessence per health level healed, but it’s an improvement over dying.
Like Lethal damage, Aggravated damage cannot be soaked by most physical beings. Certain types of protection — armor plating, substances that have been hardened with Matter and Prime magick, or incredibly dense materials like lead vaults or steel bulkheads — can resist Aggravated damage, but normal flesh cannot. Only time and magick can heal such harm; medical care provides long-term treatment but can’t patch it up with short-term First Aid. (See the Patch ‘Em Up option sidebar.)
In all other regards, treat Aggravated damage as Lethal damage. Marked with an asterisk, it deteriorates like Lethal damage, takes a long time to heal, and must be stabilized if the injured character plans to survive major injury.
Healing Damage
Health Level Recovery Time* Bashing Damage
Bruised to Wounded 1 hour Mauled 3 hours Crippled 6 hours Incapacitated 12 hours Lethal and Aggravated Damage
Bruised 1 day Hurt 3 days Injured 1 week Wounded 1 month Mauled 2 months Crippled 3 months Incapacitated 5 months *Recovery times cumulative; see Recovery Time.
In a mage’s world, you can suffer torment without sustaining a scratch. Such psychic trauma comes from mental attacks, torture, abominable tomes, and emotional shocks that cause psychosomatic pain. If normal injury represents assaults upon the flesh, then psychic trauma reflects assaults upon the consciousness or soul. Although it’s uncommon in the mortal world, the Awakened face it with awful regularity.
In game terms, psychic trauma is Bashing damage inflicted by the Mind Sphere. In this case, Willpower, not Stamina, offers a soak roll. Given the powerful will of most Awakened folks, psychic attacks tend to be extended and resisted rolls (see Torture) rather than immediate strikes like the ones that inflict physical harm. An unAwakened person, however, can suffer intense pain from psychic attacks; such assaults might knock out a character whose tormentor isn’t even in sight. The Nephandi, Bata’a, and New World Order specialize in such attacks, and the Akashayana can use Do to apply pressure to a person’s mind as well as to zir limbs.
At the Storyteller’s discretion, certain heavy-duty shocks might inflict a few dice of psychic trauma when characters face Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Although shock probably won’t kill a character, the usual Bashing damage rules apply to such situations, so it may be possible for a weak-willed person to die of horror or heartbreak. Alternately, an Incapacitated character might wind up mentally ill, tortured by Flaws that reflect zir wounded mind. (See Mental Flaws and Derangements in Merits and Flaws.) Such things are rare, of course, but worth noting in the crazy world of magick.
Optional Rule: Things Man Was Not Meant to Know
Mages are a tough-headed lot. It’s their trade, after all, to unlock doors that few folk even recognize. Still, certain mysteries are best left undiscovered. As an optional rule, the Storyteller may declare that a character has seen or understood too much.
Faced with situations or enigmas too horrible or strange to contemplate, a Storyteller can call for a Willpower roll on the part of the characters involved. Again, mages are used to such things, so while a normal mortal might have to roll against Difficulty 8 or 9 when ze confronts cosmic abominations, a mage would roll against Difficulty 6 or 7, maybe less. Some mysteries or acts remain so catastrophic to one’s sanity that even the mage needs at least 1 success at Difficulty 8 or 9, while the mortal must score 3 successes or more against that higher Difficulty. Such situations should be quite rare. If they didn’t exist, however, then Marauders and Nephandi would be far less frightening... and far less numerous.
A failed Willpower roll in such confrontations might force a character to pass out, freeze in horrified fascination, or flee. Afterward, that character suffers nightmares, shakes, or creeping obsessions. If the Willpower roll was simply failed, the effects will soon fade. If a mage’s player botches that roll, however, those effects might later lead to a Mental Flaw, a horrific Seeking, or perhaps even Quiet once the mage has had time to fully process the implications of zir experience. (For Seekings, see Telling the Story; for Quiet, see The Book of Magick; and for Flaws, again, see Merits and Flaws.) A mortal, meanwhile, would certainly remain haunted by that experience and might go wildly or silently mad. (See Sanity Sinks on the Marauders page.)
(It’s worth noting that mages and their hardy companions remain immune to lycanthropic Delirium. Although a werewolf should scare the hell out of any intelligent mage, the greater effects of panic and delusion described in Werewolf: the Apocalypse don’t count as Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.)
Again, this sort of thing shouldn’t happen often. Given the influence of the Void, the Fallen, and the Mad, however, the threat of potential dementia can add sharpness to an Awakened Path.
As the Healing Damage chart shows, different types of damage heal differently. Those recovery times assume that an injured character has rest and basic medical attention; under especially good conditions — like state-of-the-art facilities, skilled medical therapy, and uninterrupted healing space — the listed healing times can be 1 or even (under the best circumstances) 2 categories better than the ones given on that chart.
Even so, medical treatment (that is, help from a character with Medicine 2 or better) is essential for Bashing injuries of Wounded or worse, and for Lethal or Aggravated injuries of Injured or worse. Without such treatment, an injured character suffers more-or-less permanent impairment until someone with Life 3 or better has an opportunity to fix that damage with magick. Infections, deep-tissue trauma, torn ligaments, and other such problems require either Life magick or medical assistance. Time alone cannot heal severe injuries completely.
The more injured you are, the longer it takes to recover from those injuries. Game-wise, the Recovery Times listed on the Healing Damage chart add up. If, for example, Jennifer Rollins takes 3 levels of Lethal damage from a pit bull, she needs 11 days to recover from those bites and scratches. (1 day + 3 days + 1 week = 11 days.)
If she took 2 additional levels of Bashing damage escaping the situation, then she’d need 4 hours to recover from the Bashing damage, plus 11 days to heal from the dog’s assault.
Optional Rule: Patch ‘Em Up
In high-intensity combat tales, your group might need to be patched up and sent back into action long before their injuries have truly healed. Under this optional rule, a character with Medicine 3 or higher, plus the appropriate medical gear, can heal a certain degree of Lethal damage long enough for zir patients to get back in the fight.
Rolling zir Wits + Medicine against Difficulty 8, the medic can patch up 1 level of Lethal damage per success. Once the adventure ends, however, the injured character will need at least 2 months to recover from xyr injuries — double that for each time xe gets patched up within a single story. (2 months the first time, 4 months the second, 8 months the third, etc.) A patched-up character still operates at a minimum penalty of -1 to all rolls except Arete and soak — xe’s hurting bad. Characters with Staminas of 1 or 2 cannot be patched up this way, and a character who reaches Crippled or Incapacitated cannot be patched up at all. Patch-up attempts can be made once for every dot of Stamina that the injured character has; a Stamina 3 mage, for instance, can be patched up a maximum of 3 times before xyr injuries overwhelm the healer’s skill.
A botched patch-up roll actually drops the patient’s condition by 1 level. Also, each time a character gets patched up this way, the Storyteller may have the player make a Stamina roll at Difficulty 8, with failure incurring a lasting Flaw as a result of xyr trauma. (See Merits and Flaws for potential Flaws.) The character will, in any case, suffer long-term effects from such hasty measures unless Life magick gets used to fix the problem later.
As in real life, the Patch ‘Em Up option presents a quick fix with long-term consequences; still, it offers hope for desperate cabals who face deadly challenges yet lack access to Life 3 magick or healing items while also reflecting the utility of battlefield medicine when a long recuperation is not an option.
Life Sphere magick, of course, can fix such things like... well, like magic. The Technocracy has advanced medical treatments that can regenerate damaged tissues in hours or even minutes, and Life-specialized witches and sacred healers can lay on hands to get an injured person from death’s door to full health in no time. Such feats are, of course, vulgar magick. Even in the most technological paradigm, people cannot immediately heal gunshot wounds.
As mentioned earlier, certain injuries are harder to heal than others. Even with Life 3 magick, a healer must spend 1 Quintessence point per health level in order to repair Aggravated damage. The injured person’s Pattern must be restored, and that task demands energies above and beyond anything that the average doctor or mage can muster.
Story-wise, injuries batter your character, often marking zir with lasting scars. Magick can work wonders, true, but the pain of knife wounds, burns, and slashes from an enraged horror isn’t simply forgotten once the Health Trait heals. Torn flesh, broken bones, twisted ligaments, and scarred organs hurt long after their initial injuries pass into memory. As a result, unlike the snarling creatures they so often face, the Awakened folk skirt the edges of a fight, all too aware of just how fragile they can be.
For additional details about healing magick, see the Medicine Work entry in the Practice section of Focus and the Arts.