Hey everyone, here’s an early draft of some rules for status effects. Comments are appreciated!
Hey everyone, here’s an early draft of some rules for status effects. Comments are appreciated!
STATUS EFFECTS
If any of these rules don’t make sense, drop them and leave it to the fiction.
Vectors
Every Status Effect has a Vector – a means of transmission – whether it’s the gaze of a cockatrice, the ingestion of spoiled meat or the sight of an extradimensional monster. In some cases, a status effect will have multiple vectors. These vector act as narrative triggers for the following move:
When you attempt to resist a Status Effect,
roll+Con+Severity for physical vectors.
roll+Wis+Severity for mental vectors.
✴ On a 10+, you resist the effect completely. ✴ On a 7-9, you suffer a partial consequence. ✴ On a 6-, you suffer a full consequence.
Above all, don’t feel compelled to list every possible vector for a Status Effect – you should be able to eyeball it. Good mechanics are rules of thumb, useful fictional shorthand – if they bog down the story, they’re not doing their job.
Severity
The likelihood that a Status Effect will take hold is represented by its Severity, placed in brackets next to a vector. A Status Effect’s severity will typically be Mild (+2 to +3), Moderate (+1 to -1+) or Extreme (-2 to -3), although some Status effects will modify this system or bypass it entirely.
Very often, different vectors for the same Status Effect will vary in severity. Vectors which bypass a roll are tagged with the consequence they produce, whether (Partial) or (Full). Removing the severity modifier entirely is also an option – if it’s bogging the game down, get rid of it.
Consequences
Every Status Effect has Consequences which may express themselves Fully or Partially. Full consequences tell you the worst a Status Effect can do. Partial consequences will be less intense, or they will inflict specific consequences at full intensity. For example, your body may be partially petrified and slowed, or your arm may be fully petrified.
Some Status Effects are so intense that there’s no meaningful difference between a partial effect and a full effect. These are best represented with unrolled poison-style mechanics – the drama here is in avoiding the vector in the first place.
Treatment
Some Status Effects have Treatments which can mitigate or even cure their consequences. In most cases, treatments will be Partial or Complete. Partial treatments alleviate consequences by one step – full consequences become partial, partial consequences are cured. Complete treatments cure consequences completely. Some treatments will only treat certain consequences, and others may come with problems of their own.
