A character that has lost Health Points (HP) isn’t seriously hurt; they may have suffered scratches, scrapes, cuts, and bruises, but nothing that would hinder them. However, once a character’s Health Points are reduced to 0, they are defeated, and begin dying. In addition, characters may suffer from serious injuries after being reduced to 0 HP, or because of critical hits.

Critical Hits and Injuries

A critical hit occurs whenever a character suffers five or more damage in one hit (after reductions from Damage Resistance). A critical hit imposes an injury on the character, which confers a penalty depending on the location hit.

• Arm: You drop any object held in that hand, and the arm is broken or otherwise unable to move. You cannot perform any Actions using that arm—by itself or alongside your other arm.
• Leg: You immediately fall prone as your leg gives out under your Weight. You can no longer take the Sprint action, and the Move action is now a major action for you.
• Torso: You begin bleeding heavily. At the end of each of your subsequent turns, you suffer 2 DC  physical damage, ignoring all your Damage Resistances.
• Head: You are momentarily dazed and lose your normal Actions in your next turn (though you may spend AP for extra Actions as normal). Further, you cannot see clearly, and increase the difficulty of all tests which rely on vision by +2.

These effects last until the injury has received Medical Attention (see Healing).

Dying

When your character is reduced to 0 HP, they suffer an injury to the location struck, and then fall prone and start dying. If they suffer a critical hit (above) and are reduced to 0 HP, they suffer two injuries—one for the critical hit, and one for being reduced to 0 HP.

While they are dying, they are unconscious, cannot recover HP from the First Aid action, and cannot take any Actions. Furthermore, at the start of each of your turns while they’re dying, you must attempt an END + Survival test, with a difficulty equal to the number of injuries they have, and a Complication Range of 19-20. If you pass this test, they remain alive, but are still dying. If you fail, they die.

If they suffer any damage while dying, they immediately gain one additional injury, in addition to any injury caused by another critical hit.