Each character has two crucial attributes which determine his or her status. These are Armor Rating and hit points. Armor Rating tells you how much structural damage your clothing will negate. For example, a heavy suit of armor would provide many armor points, whereas normal clothing would only provide 2 or 3. Except for "Piercing" attacks, whenever you take a hit, if the damage is less than or equal to your armor rating, you may say "Reduced," and take damage of "One Pummel." This has no affect on attacks that deal no damage, such as an attack that does "Mystic Smite," however it will remove any normal status effect associated with a damaging attack. If the damage is more than your armor rating, take the damage and effects as called. Hit points represent your character's toughness and hardiness. They tell you how much damage your character can take before he/she dies or goes unconscious. While your armor will usually protect you from some attacks, some attacks can directly affect your hit points (such as Piercing attacks or Discord effects). There are five stages of Unconsciousness/Death: Unconscious, Dying, Dead, Recloning, and Permanently Dead. You are "Unconscious," once your hit point count reaches 0. You are "Dying," once your hit point count reaches –1. If you are at 0 hit points or higher, and take a hit for damage other than Pummel damage, you are set to –1, even if you would normally be reduced to less by the hit. If you are at 0 hit points or higher, and take a hit for Pummel damage, you are set to 0. Pummel damage can never reduce your hit points once they reach zero or lower, however, once at –1, any other form of damage will reduce to further negative numbers as normal. This continues until you reach a negative amount equal to your hit point total, at which point you are considered "Dead." If you are dead at debriefing or choose to go to Reclone earlier, you enter your "Reclone Count" as described below. Once you run out of attempts at Recloning, you are Permanently Dead, and cannot be revived by any means. Once Unconscious, you will remain so until one of the following occurs:
Example: James’ Ork Fighter, Klog, is 10th level, has 33 hit points, and has an armor rating of eight. Over the course of the day, he takes 20 hits from zombies that swing for 4 points of damage. These hits are all reduced to "One Pummel" each. Then he gets into a fight with a 9th level Discord caster, who uses the power Wound to do "18 Mystic Discord." If this had been hits from the zombies, doing less than his armor rating of eight, he would have only been taking pummel damage and would have been reduced to zero, or unconsciousness. Fortunately, a single hit can’t drop you below –1, and Klog stays at that total. The Discord Caster smacks him once for good measure, dealing "Two basic" and dropping Klog to –3, he is still considered dying. As the healer is rushing toward him, the healer sets off a trap that does "40 basic," and Klog is in the radius. (We won’t worry about the healer, Klog is in enough trouble as it is) This brings Klog to –43 points, which is less than the negative of his hit point total (–33). Because of this, Klog is now dead. With the healer and the Discord caster blown sky high, no one is left to heal Klog, but hoping someone comes by who can heal him, James waits until debriefing. No one comes into the hideout, however, and at Debriefing, Klog goes to Reclone. Klog has already died 7 times, but James bought back one death with C-tags. So Klog now has 3 black cards in the deck. The odds in his favor, James draws the card. Ace of Spades, black card. Klog is permanently dead and cannot be revived. Most people in the world of Pathways have a special implant in them that will trigger a "cloning" process at the closest cloning facility to where the character died. This signal is on a special frequency and contains all of your characters’ memories, so it travels much slower than a normal radio signal. In-play, it travels as fast as it takes you out-of-play to reach the designated cloning point. After the signal reaches the cloning facility, the cloning process can begin. Any character with the correct skills can start the cloning process. This process takes 15 minutes to complete, and when it is completed your character will be re-formed back at the cloning facility with their full memories intact. However, this technology has limitations. The implant is always strong enough to survive three full cloning processes, but after that there is a chance the device will fail. After that a character will have to "pull cards". The full suit of hearts will be present in a deck, plus one black card for every time the character has died beyond the first three. The character draws a card, and if a red card is drawn, the cloning is completed as normal. If a black card is drawn, the signal failed to reach the cloning facility and the character is dead forever. A character attempting to be cloned must put on a neon yellow armband to denote that they are "out of play". Note that some chapters may have a different color to denote "out of play", the chapter’s website will have this information posted (along with other valuable information). This armband must remain plainly visible so other players don't mistakenly try to interact with your character. They must walk to the cloning facility (or designated cloning point) and wait for a character to begin the cloning process. Also, note that characters who have been cloned start with no possessions on their person (including clothes - although the player must still wear clothing out of play, remember that this is a multi-age game...). Generally, a character is assumed to be given some clothing to wear in-play, but must rely on friends or allies to bring any equipment back to them if they want to use it. |