🩸 Damage, armour & recovery
What a hit actually does to you, what your armour and shield take off the top, and how you patch yourself back together — in a fight and after it.
Two damage tracks: Stamina and Body
Every character has two damage pools:
- Stamina — bruises, winding, fatigue, near-misses that drained you. Refills quickly with rest.
- Body — real wounds: cuts, broken bones, deep punctures. Heals slowly and needs care.
When either drops below zero, you stop being useful:
- Stamina < 0 → Stunned. You can't reliably act until you recover.
- Body < 0 → Unconscious. Without help, this becomes serious quickly.
In the app these states show as red chips on the combat panel, so you can see at a glance when a character has dropped out of the fight.
The damage roll
On a successful hit, the attacker rolls a number of d6 equal to the weapon's damage class. Unarmed attacks roll max(1, Strength ÷ 4) dice. Each die is read independently against the table for the weapon's damage type (Impact or Piercing).
Some combat options add dice to the pool — Set weapon, Charge, and Use extra strength each add one or more. The dice are still read individually.
Impact damage table
Blunt force — clubs, maces, fists, falls. Drains Stamina; only the heaviest hits break through to Body.
| Die | Stamina damage | Body damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 3 | 2 | 0 |
| 4 | 3 | 0 |
| 5 | 4 | 0 |
| 6 | 5 | 1 |
Piercing damage table
Cutting and stabbing edges — swords, axes, arrows, spears. Punches through to Body more readily; pain and blood loss still take Stamina.
| Die | Stamina damage | Body damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 3 | 1 | 0 |
| 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 5 | 3 | 1 |
| 6 | 4 | 2 |
Worked example: a longsword (piercing, damage class 3) rolls 3d6 and gets 2, 4, 6. Raw damage: 1 + 2 + 4 = 7 Stamina and 0 + 1 + 2 = 3 Body — before armour.
Resilience: how armour and shields soak it up
Armour has a Resilience rating. A shield has one too. Both are subtracted from the incoming damage after the dice are read — and they're absorbed alternately across Body and Stamina until they run out.
The order is fixed: 1 Body → 1 Stamina → 1 Body → 1 Stamina → … If one pool is already empty, that step is skipped and absorption continues into the other.
Worked example
Raw damage: 7 Stamina, 3 Body. Effective resilience: 4.
- Step 1 (Body): 3 → 2; resilience left = 3
- Step 2 (Stamina): 7 → 6; resilience left = 2
- Step 3 (Body): 2 → 1; resilience left = 1
- Step 4 (Stamina): 6 → 5; resilience left = 0
Net damage applied: 5 Stamina, 1 Body.
Both damage types use the same absorption rule. Heavy armour helps against everything — it just runs out faster against the heavy-hitting dice in the Piercing table.
When does the shield actually help?
A shield's Resilience only joins the armour total when the attacker's hit margin is at most 2 better than the defender's parry score:
shield counts if (hit score − parry score) ≤ 2
A clean, well-controlled hit (small margin) glances off the shield. A devastating one (margin three or more above your parry) goes around it and the shield's Resilience is bypassed entirely. If you didn't parry at all — or your parry failed — the shield doesn't help.
The GM may also call Ignore shield or Ignore armour for special situations (e.g. a back-stab, magical penetration). Both flags exist on the Take-hit panel in the app.
The Recovery roll (mid-fight breathing room)
Spend an action catching your breath instead of attacking: roll 3d6 against Constitution.
- Natural 18: nothing — you wasted the moment.
- Failure: +1 Stamina.
- Success: +max(1, margin) Stamina. A solid roll restores 2–3; an exceptional one more.
Recovery never exceeds your maximum Stamina, and it does not heal Body. For wounds, you need rest and care — see below.
The button is on the combat panel next to Hit, Parry, Dodge and Damage. Use it when your stamina bar slips into the yellow and you'd rather not be Stunned next round.
Healing between fights
These rates are GM-adjudicated guidelines — not automated by the app.
Stamina
- Full rest (sleeping, doing nothing strenuous) — recover all lost Stamina.
- Light activity (walking, minor chores) — recover 50% of lost Stamina.
Body
- With rest and proper care: Constitution ÷ 5 (rounded down) Body per day.
- Without care: half of that (rounded down).
- Piercing wounds: −1 per day from the recovery rate unless treated.
- Broken bones or severe bruising: recovery rate halved.
- At 0 Body a character can't act until they're back up to at least 1.
A character with the Healing skill, or a magical helper, may add +1 Body per day on top of the Constitution-based rate. The GM decides whether such help is available.
See also
- Combat — the round flow, Hit/Parry/Dodge, Stunned and Unconscious.
- Combat moves — Set weapon, Charge, Extra strength and the rest.
- Dice rolls — the 3d6 mechanic and the outcome scale used by Recovery.