While it is easy to understand how Conditions work when there is only one condition applied to a character, it gets more complicated when a character has multiple Conditions, or a player character with a condition makes a skill roll to attack or influence an NPC who also has a condition. There are two rules to follow which make it easy to understand what happens when a character has multiple Conditions.

• Skill rolls can only have their complexity reduced or increased by a condition once. They do not stack.
• If two or more Conditions both increase and decrease the complexity of a skill roll, the Conditions cancel each other out and do not modify the roll’s complexity, no matter the number of increases or decreases.

For instance, if a player character has a minor negative condition affecting their Ranged skill, all rolls made with that skill have their complexity increased by 1. If the player character gains a moderate negative condition that affects all their Physical Skills, the character now has two different Conditions that affect their Ranged skill. The negative Conditions do not stack, so the character only suffers an increase of 1 complexity when using the Ranged skill. This also applies to positive Conditions in the same way.

If a player character has a minor positive condition giving them a bonus to their Engineering skill, and they get a moderate negative condition that affects Mental Skills, the Conditions cancel each other whenever the player character makes an Engineering skill roll, and there is no change in the complexity. The player character should keep both Conditions noted on their character sheet as the Conditions could be removed at different times. If the player character gained a significant negative condition while the other two Conditions were active, they would still make Engineering skill rolls with no change in complexity.

If a player character with a moderate positive condition that affects Physical Skills uses the Melee skill to attack an enemy affected by a moderate negative condition that also affects Physical skill, the complexity of the attack only decreases by 1. If the same player character attacked an enemy with a moderate positive condition that affected Physical Skills, the increase and decrease to the skill roll’s complexity would cancel each other out, and no Conditions would modify the roll’s complexity.

Tracking Conditions

Player characters can track Conditions on their Character Sheets using the hearts in the “Conditions” box.