Health, Dying, and Misc Rules

Expanded Rules

Health & Dying

Hitpoints: As explained in the Attributes section, each character, monster, and Guardian Force in the game has hitpoints, which are a measure of how much damage they can take before they are knocked out. Hit points vary wildly, the average human has 20-30 hitpoints, some powerful monsters and guardian forces can have literaly hundreds. Hit points are an abstract damage system. While specific wounds may be described to give the combat more flavor, they don't have any real game effect unless some other special condition applies. In general, characters or monsters in combat will simply get hit and hurt in a variety of ways until they collapse under the pain, exhaustion, and damage.

Zero Hitpoints and KO: When a character suffers an attack that would reduce his hitpoints to zero or below, his hitpoints are immediately set to zero. The attack that initialy knocks a character out will not kill him, just put him down. There are exceptions to this rule, but in general always knocking someone out first is more true to the mood of Final Fantasy than sudden death situations. While at zero Hitpoints characters may retain some conciousness, but they will be disoriented and unable to perform any meaningful actions beyond speaking weakly and maybe crawling a few feet. Characters that are at zero Hitpoints cannot attack, cast spells, junction or remove junctions, peform any special ability or Limit Break, or anything else that would require concentration and mental or physical strength.

Recovering from KO: A character may be revived from this KO status in a variety of ways. A Phoenix Down item will instantly restore some Hitpoints to any character, and clear their head. The Life spell works in exactly the same way, and the Full Life spell is potent enough to restore a character to full health as if they'd never been damaged. Given the opportunity to rest, and some minor medical attention, characters that have been KO'd will recover on their own. This often takes hours or up to a full day however, so SeeDs are rarely left to recover on their own. Without medical attention or help of any kind, a KO'd character will still not die, unless they suffer further damage. However, without help a full recovery may take days.

Regular Healing and KO: It is possible to use regular healing spells and items on a KO'd character, and these powers and items will have their full effect. However, the character will remain disoriented and unable to act until the stressful situation is over, be it a combat, natural disaster, or whatever else dropped the character to zero Hitpoints. Only rest, Phoenix Downs, or Life magics can snap a character back into fighting trim. It's often very useful to heal a downed party member even if there are no KO recovery items avaliable, however, because the extra hitpoints will prevent them from being killed if they suffer further damage. A character who is KO'd, but has hitpoints greater than zero suffers damage normally, including being unable to be driven below zero Hitpoints from a single hit.

Negative Hitpoints: If a character who is KO'd AND at zero hitpoints is damaged, then permenant damage and death can occur. Anyone at KO status is very fragile, on the brink of serious and crippling injury. Five points of damage after KO will result in permenant scarring . Ten points of damage results in the reduction of a Secondary Attribute by 1, and some minor crippling injury such as a limp or a bad shoulder. Fifteen points cause the loss of 1 point to a Primary Attribute, and a serious crippling injury like the loss of a limb, or an eye. Twenty points of damage after KO kills a character permenantly. Short of the greatest and most forbidden magical powers, nothing brings back the dead. Characters in KO cannot dodge, and have their dodge rating reduced to 0, but they soak damage normally with Toughness and Spirit.

So for instance, if a character with a Toughness of 10 is KO'd, and then is shot for 14 points of damage, the character takes 4 points of damage, and while they are in danger, they aren't scarred yet.

Characters below zero hitpoints that do not recive medical attention will bleed to death, given time. Every five minutes that a character with negative hitpoints isn't bandaged or healed, they lose an additional hitpoint. As soon as this bloodloss pushes the character to -20 hitpoints, the character dies.

Recovering from Negative Hitpoints: A character who has recived damage after KO has suffered severe trauma and stress to their body. Regular healing magic, even spells as powerful as Curaga, won't do more than stabilize the character and prevent further bleeding. Spells on the level of Life, Full Life, and Full Cure will restore the character to zero Hitpoints on the first casting. Afterwards, another Life spell or Phoenix Down will return the character to a positive Hitpoint total. However, the character is still disoriented as if in KO status, and does not benifit from regular healing spells. Regular healing spells require some of the body's own magical energy to heal the wounded, and in the case of a character that has taken negative Hitpoints, all that energy is dedicated simply to keeping the character alive. Only solid bed rest and watchful medical or magical attention will help a character recover after taking negative Hitpoints. There is no quick fix for near-death experiances, and thus every SeeD garden still has a well-stocked infirmiry.

Coup de Grace: In the midst of combat, characters are assumed to be dodging constantly, hence, their dodge rating. Thus, normal attacks must be made against KO'd characters, abet against their greatly reduced Dodge rating. However, if the combat is over, or the fighting has stopped for some reason, such as an unbeatable barrier interposed between the combatants, a KO'd character can be instantly and permenantly dispatched with a single action. This action has no shot cost, as it does not take place during combat.

Note: If for some reason a combatant arrives as a character or monster is administering a coup de grace, either by teleporting or some other means, the executioner is essentialy helpless! Anyone performing a coup de grace has by definition given up on dodging about and being wary, in favor of peforming a very precise strike to the heart or brain, or decapatating the downed foe. A target that is not dodging is difficulty 0 to hit, as with KO'd characters.

Natural Healing: All living characters heal naturaly. At the end of a full day of rest, with good sleep, food, and some minimum of medical attention (bandages), a character regains her Constitution in Hitpoints. If the character was active during the day but still got enough food and rest, then she gains half her Constitution in Hitpoints per day, rounded down. Characters that don't get adaquite rest and food, or cannot even access medical supplies such as bandages heal only 1 Hitpoint a day.

Diseases and Poisoins: Poisons and diseases are handled similarly. In the case of spells like Bio, or Pain, the spell inflicts the victim's Constitution in damage, each time there is an opportunity for action. This damage is applied directly, without any resistance by Toughness or Spirit. Magical poisons are insidious because they bypass the natural defenses of a character. Mundane poisons have to be delivered by some physical method, and each poison will have a damage rating, and a duration. This damage is resisted by the character's Constitution, and any damage above and beyond that resistance is meted out evenly over the duration.

Diseases are rarely contracted magicaly, but a varity of conditions can transmit them, including some especialy filthy monsters. Diseases have a duration, a rating, and a list of which attribute or attributes they attack. While the character is sick, his relevant attributes are reduced by the rating of the disease. So for instance, someone who contracted a disease with a rating of 3, that targets Perception, would have blurry vision and fuzzy hearing, possibly a stuffy nose as well, reducing his Perception attribute by 3 points. This continues until some magical or mundane healing removes the disease, or it runs it's course. Regular recovery spells and items do not cure diseases. SeeD members are generaly exceptionaly healthy, both from all their physical activity, and the vast amounts of healing magic they expose themselves to. Because of this, it's exceptionaly rare for a SeeD member to get sick, and disease prevention and cure are not a priority in the SeeD programs.

Rest and Food: In general, the amount of rest a character gets, or the amount of food she eats will not be an issue. It is sufficient to roleplay out the mere symptoms of being hungry or tired, if the character has skipped a meal or done without enough rest. As long as a character is getting at least one meal a day, and three hours or so of sleep a night, they may be miserable but there will be no game effect. If a character is seriosly deprived of food or sleep for days, then the GM will reduce attributes at his discretion. If food or sleep deprivation goes on for long enough, the character will simply drop to KO status, and then below if it continues. However, this rule is included only for completeness, I don't anticipate the situation coming up.

Mana:

Mana is a measure of a character's mental and magical energy level. It is the energy that exists in all living creatures, magnified by human intellegence. Mana is the force that allows the more spectacular Special Techniques to be activated, powers spells, and even Monster Abilities.

Human beings cannot access their own mana without the aid of a Guardian Force, as a general rule. The ONLY humans that can freely cast spells without junctioning a Guardian Force are Sorceresses. Those humans who possess the rudementry sorcery known as Blue Mages can use their mana without the aid of a Guardian force but ONLY for casting Blue Magic abilities. Mana cannot be used otherwise without the GF's aid, or the aid of some advanced technology. For instance, Galbadian and Esther forces both equip their soldiers with special items that allow them to channel Mana through the item, to produce a specific spell effect. This is not the same as being able to cast magic, though the Esther systems are advanced enough that the process seems indistiguishable.

When a character is junctioned to a Guardian Force, they immediately become aware of their Mana reserve. They can manipulate this energy for any technique or spell they have access to. Characters with a Guardian Force junctioned recover their Mana at a rate of their Spirit attribute in points, each hour. Faster recovery is possible with recovery items like Ethers, through the siphoning off of Mana from other parties, or through some GF abilities or Special Techniques.

There is no bad effect to having one's Mana reduced to zero, it merely represents a different kind of exhaustion, and the character simply must wait for his reserves to recover. Characters who are highly skilled in Awareness can sometimes get an idea of how much Mana someone has left, or at least it's relative level.

Luck Points

Each character has a Luck attribute, which affords them fortune and the good-will of the universe, or their ancestors, depending on what you belive. The Luck attribute is useful in a varity of ways. It's most mundane application is as the basis for the Gambling skill, but it can be so much more. Whenever a character would like to avoid some truely random bad event, or wishes to benifit from something equally random, they can roll and add the result to their Luck score. A high enough result can tip the balance in the character's favor.

One example might be a character faced with a panel of buttons, one of which turns off a Self Destruct sequence, the rest of which cause the explosion to happen instantly. Obviously, the character's chances of picking the correct button are extremely poor. A high enough luck roll would garuntee that the correct button is pressed. In cases like this, the GM decides the difficulty of the roll, and may or may not choose to reveal it.

Another aspect of Luck is that the GM may choose who suffers some random calamity or gains some random benifit on the basis of who's Luck attribute is the lowest or highest. A high Luck score is a general protection against the ills of adventuring.

The Luck attribute itself represents a small pool of "Luck Points" which can be spent for extra success in any endeavor. Spending a Luck point grants an extra positive die on any roll. Multiple Luck points can be spent on the same roll without penalty. Luck points can also be added directly to the Dodge or Magic Evade score, if the character is actively dodging. Spending Luck points in this way, or any other, reduces the character's Luck score by one per Luck point spent, temporarily. Spent Luck points return at the end of a game session, or after some signifigant period of downtime, at the GM's discretion. Once the Luck score is reduced to zero, no further Luck points can be spent until it recovers, and any rolls based purely on Luck are very dangerous, because a negative die result will mean a critical failure.

Finally, Luck Points are used to activate Limit Breaks. More on Limit Breaks follows below.

Limit Breaks: Limit Breaks are the expression of the ultimate power of the character using them, and consiquently they are a rare effort, rather than a commonly used technique. Something of a character's personality will often come out in a Limit Break, though they are mainly dependant on the character's Skills and path in life.

Humans without some sort of magical augmentation cannot perform Limit Breaks, even if those Breaks don't require Mana. For SeeD forces, junctioning a Guardian Force, any GF, suffices. Other organizations very rarely have members that manifest Limit Breaks, because the non-GF augmentation required is both expensive and rare. The only exception to this rule, as with most magical rules, is the Sorceress. Sorceresses can use their limit breaks freely, as they have full access to their Mana and all magical abilites, regardless of any augmentation. Even Blue Mages, who have access to their mana for the purposes of using Blue Magic, cannot summon enough power to use the most powerful Blue Magic that defines their Limit Breaks, without a Guardian Force or similar augmentation.

Spending a single Luck point will allow a character to use one Limit Break, no more. Luck Points spent in this manner reduce the Luck score as normal. For more information on the specifics of limit breaks, see the page that details the Breaks of the various classes. (Coming soon)

Critical Hits, Aiming, and Misc Combat Rules:

Critical Hits: Whenever a character gets a Critical Success on an attack, be it ranged, melee, or magical, they have achived a Critical Hit. An attack that hits criticaly does half-again the base damage, rounded up. So for instance, to continue the example from the Combat section, Ehlric has a base damage of 12 for his Staff, from his Strength and the Weapon Type. On a critical hit, he does 18 damage, plus any bonus for exceeding the target's dodge. The bonus is not multiplied.

Aiming: Characters using ranged attacks may spend extra time aiming, in order to get a better shot. Though some aiming is implied in a regular combat action, the normal rules assume that the gunman is taking quick, opportunistic shots. For every shot that a gunman spends carefully aiming, he gains +1 to his Guns or Weapon Focus (ranged only) Action Value. The maximum bonus that aiming can grant is +5.

Called Shots: Sometimes a character will want to target a specific area on a foe, or shoot a weapon out of someone's hand, etc. Shots like these are much more difficult, and as such, they carry an Action Value penalty. The penalty is -2 for a broad location like a limb, or 'upper torso', -4 for more defined areas like the head, a weapon, or a hand. The maximum called shot penalty is -6, for shooting an eye (human sized), a tiny button, or something similarly small.

Cover: When you're being shot at, it's an excellent idea to get behind something that is solid and bulletproof, or at least more bullet-proof than people are. 100% cover protects totally, if you're behind a concrete wall and enemy gunmen can't see any part of you, then they won't be able to hurt you either, but you won't be able to shoot back. The chart below refers to the minimum amount of cover your body is protected by during the combat round.

Cover	Dodge Bonus	Description of Cover
90%+	+5	Peeking out from behind a wall, just enough to shoot.
50%-89%	+3	Cover up to the waist. Full cover that's permiable to bullets (Bushes, etc). Hiding behind a piller no wider than one's own body.
25%-49%	+1	Pile of rubble. Thin pillar. Small bush, or thick fog. Anything wooden that's not at least 4 feet thick.
Less than 25% cover provides no bonus.

Autofire: Automatic weapons are siginfigantly more dangerous than their single-shot counterparts. When a character fires such a weapon on automatic, he choses how many three-round bursts he will fire. Each burst, or fraction therof, increases the damage of the weapon by 1, up to the maximum amount of ammo in the weapon's clip. For instance, an assault rifle that normally has a damage rating of 16, if firing 1 burst does 17 damage, if firing 4 bursts does 20 damage. A typical automatic weapon can hold 30 rounds in each clip.

Lifting: The stronger you are, the more you can lift. This is obvious, surely, but the chart below gives you an idea of just what your character can lift. Kilogram amounts are based on a close conversion of the pounds, and were rounded several kilograms either way.

Strength	Lbs	kg
5	130	60
7	200	90
10	300	135
15	450	200
20	650	300
25	900	410
30	1,200	550
40	1,700	770
50	2,500	1130

Damage Chart: Finally, this section ends with a list of the damage for various types of weapons, and other things that can harm people. This chart is not exhaustive, it's merely a referance to give you an idea of how much damage things do. Anything not found on this chart can be added by player request, or simply decided upon by the GM in-game.

Weapon or Damage Source	Damage Value	Note
Barehanded Punch or Kick	Str +1
Metal Glove, Knife, Dagger, Club	Str +2
Staff, Shortsword, Mace, Whip	Str +3
Sword, Flail, Morningstar, Spear	Str +4
Greatsword, Gunblade, Maul	Str +5
Throwing Star or Knife	Per+2
Thrown Dagger, Hammer	Per+3
Arrow or Crossbow Bolt, Thrown Spear	Per+4
Small Handgun	Per+3
Large Handgun	Per+4
Rifle, Shotgun	Per+5
Assault Rifle, Combat Shotgun	Per+6	*
Energy Weapon: Pistol	Int+4	ף
Energy Weapon: Rifle	Int+6	ף
Grenade	20 / 10	**
Rocket Launcher	30 / 15	**
Tank Shell	50 / 35	**
Hit by a Car	17
Hit by a Bus	23
Falling	5	�
On Fire	15	��
Drowning / Choaking	5	�
Having a Support Beam fall on you	20
Having a Stone ceiling fall on you	30
Mild Poison	12
Strong Poison	20
Extremely Toxic Poison	40+
Vehicle Crash	18 - 25
* These weapons are capable of autofire.
** First damage listed is for the center of the explosion, second damage is the fringe effects.
� Damage is per story of drop.
�� Damage occurs each round for as long as the condition persists. Fire Damage is Peircing.
� Damage doubles each round that the condition persists. Choaking damage is crushing.
ף These weapons do magical damage, and are resisted by spirit. Most energy weapons attack with a specific element or Meta-Element.

Item Effects

Item		Effect

Potion		Heals 30 hitpoints, or does 30 HP of damage to the Undead.
High Potion		Heals 80 hitpoints, or does 80 hitpoints of damage to the undead.
X-Potion		Heals all hitpoints, or does 500 hitpoints of damage to the undead.
Mega-Potion		Heals 100 HP to up to 5 people. Does 300 Damage to the undead.

Ether		Restores 50 mana.
Elixer		Restores all Hitpoints and Mana. Deals 500 damage to the undead.
Megalixer		Restores all Hitpoints and Mana to up to 5 people. Deals 500 damage to the undead.

Phoenix Down		Revives a character from KO status and restores the character's Constitution in hitpoints.
Mega Phoenix		Revives up to 5 characters from KO status and restores each character's constitution x3 in hitpoints.
Phoenix Pinion		Imbues a character with the Auto-Life status.

Antidote		Cures the Poison status.
Eye Drops		Cures the Blind status.
Echo Screen		Cures the Silence status.
Tranquilizer		Heals the Berserk Status. Puts the target in Slow status if used on a target that isn't Berskerked, for 15 shots.
Hyper		Cures the Sleep status. Puts the target in Berserk status if used on a waking target, for 15 shots.
Soft		Cures the Petrified status.
Holy Water		Cures the Zombie and Curse statuses.
Remedy		Cures all negative status effects, except for KO, and including Stop.

Hearthstone		Must be placed in a fire overnight, or warmed near sleeping characters. Restores all Mana and Hitpoints during an overnight sleep, and removes all negative status effects, including KO.
GF House		This mystic crystal contains a spiritual habitat for a GF. Overnight rest in one will fully restore the GF's hitpoints, and revive it from KO. A GF must be un-junctioned to use a GF house.
GF Pill		This magical pill releases magical energies that heal 50 hitpoints to a junctioned GF.
GF Mist		This magical inhalent will revive a junctioned GF from KO.

Magic Stone Peice		Part of a broken magic stone, it provides up to 10 mana, but only to defray the cost of casting a spell.
Magic Stone		A whole magic stone provides 25 mana to defray the cost of casting a spell.
Wizard Stone		This highly charged stone provides 50 mana to defray the cost of spell casting.
Energy Crystal		The most potent magic stone, an energy crystal is pure concentrated mana that somehow became physical. They are very rare, and have many uses, not the least of which is reducing the cost of a spell by 100 mana.

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