Part 6: Adventuring ☰
When a PC's Health reaches 0, they do not immediately die, but instead go unconscious and begin the process of Enduring. During this time, on each of their turns, they must make either a Fortitude or Willpower save and can do nothing else. This save has a DR of 20 or the amount of final damage that brought them below 0, whichever is greater. They continue making these saves on each of their turns until 1 of 3 conditions are met: they are stabilized, they are healed for any amount, or they fail twice.
If a character begins the process of Enduring outside of combat, or combat ends while the character is still Enduring, the character must make this save once every real-life minute, though this can be adjusted as the GM sees fit.
The first time a character is hit by anything while they are Enduring, they gain a single failure, the DR for their Enduring save increases to double its original value or the new amount of final damage dealt (whichever is greater), they lose one of their successes, and the character must immediately succeed on the save at the new DR. If they are hit after they have failed the save once, they instead gain a second failure. Lastly, if a single attack would deal enough damage to a character to bring them to negative half of their maximum Health, then that character dies outright.
When a character is stabilized, they remain unconscious at 0 Health until they receive any amount of healing, or 1 in-game hour passes, at which point they regain 1 Health. They do not need to keep making saves during this time. While a creature is Enduring, another character can attempt to stabilize them by taking 6.5 seconds to make a Medicine Kit check with a DR equal to the current DR of the saves they are making; doing this expends the medicine kit regardless of success or failure. On a success, the character is stabilized, and on a failure, the save DR increases by 5. A character that gets 3 successes on their saves is stabilized. If at any point during the process of Enduring a character is healed by any amount, they are restored to consciousness with the amount of Health that they were healed for.
Failing the required save twice can mean either one of two things, depending on the exact situation and the GM’s discretion: the first is that the character goes completely unconscious and remains that way for the next 8 hours, at which point they regain 1 Health; the second possibility is that the character dies.