Overview

Characters in SoHL can suffer from two types of harm: injuries (physical wounds from combat or accidents) and afflictions (ongoing conditions like diseases, poisons, and curses). Both have their own lifecycle and can significantly affect a character’s capabilities.

See also: Trauma, Afflictions, Combat Basics

Injuries

An injury represents a specific wound — a sword cut, a broken bone, a burn. Injuries are tied to specific body locations on the character’s anatomy model.

An injury is one kind of Trauma — the item that records every sort of harm a character carries, from wounds and bleeding to fatigue, fear, and shock. See that page for the wound’s properties and for the treatment, bleeding, and healing actions described below.

How Injuries Happen

Injuries result from combat (when an attack successfully strikes) or from other sources of physical harm. The system determines:

• Where the injury occurs (which body location)
• How severe the injury is (injury level)
• What effects the injury has (penalties, bleeding, etc.)

Injury Effects

Injuries impose penalties on the character:

• Skill penalties — injuries reduce effective mastery levels
• Shock — severe injuries can cause shock, potentially incapacitating the character
• Bleeding — some injuries cause ongoing blood loss

See also

• Trauma — the wound item itself: its properties, its severity, and every check it offers.
• Affliction — the disease or poison item, with its onset, course, and treatment.
• Being — the health bar, the body-part grid, and the shock, contagion, and treatment actions on the character.
• Combat Basics — where most wounds come from, and the injury card that records them.
• Trauma and Afflictions (rules) — the mechanics all of this implements.
• User Guide — back to the index.

Healing

Injuries heal over time. The healing process depends on:

• Whether the injury has been treated by a physician
• The character’s natural healing ability (related to attributes)
• Available medical supplies and conditions

Afflictions

An affliction is an ongoing condition — a disease, poison, curse, or other persistent effect. Afflictions have a lifecycle that progresses through stages.

Affliction Lifecycle

An affliction progresses through these stages:

1. Transmission — how the affliction spreads (contact, airborne, etc.)
2. Contraction — whether the character actually catches it (resistance test)
3. Course — the affliction’s progression over time
4. Diagnosis — identifying what the affliction is
5. Treatment — applying remedies to cure or mitigate it
6. Healing — recovery from the affliction’s effects

Each stage involves skill tests (typically Physician or related skills).

Contracting a Disease

When a character is exposed to a disease, use the Contagion Check action on the being (right-click the token or use the character’s action menu). Only diseases can be contracted this way — poisons and curses are applied by other means.

The action opens a dialog offering:

• A dropdown of every disease found in your world and in the installed Item compendium packs. Picking one copies that disease onto the character if it is contracted.
• A “Custom disease” option, where you supply a name and a Contagion Index (CI) from 1 to 5. Choosing this creates a brand-new disease if it is contracted.

The Contagion Roll

Contraction is decided by a single d100 contagion roll against a target of:

Contagion Index × Endurance

The character rolls to resist. Failing the roll means the disease is contracted. Two consequences follow from the formula:

• Higher Endurance protects. A hardier character has a higher target and is more likely to resist.
• The lower the CI, the more contagious the disease. A low CI produces a low target that is easy to roll over (fail), so low-CI diseases spread readily; high-CI diseases are shrugged off more often.

If the roll fails, the disease is added to the character sheet as an affliction — either copied from the chosen source disease, or created fresh from the custom name and CI you entered — and then follows the normal affliction lifecycle (course, diagnosis, treatment, healing).

Types of Afflictions

Afflictions include:

• Diseases — infections and illnesses with incubation and progression
• Poisons — toxins with immediate or delayed effects
• Curses — supernatural afflictions requiring mystical removal

Managing Conditions on the Sheet

Injuries and afflictions appear on the character’s sheet:

• Injuries are visible in the Combat tab and on the body location display
• Afflictions appear as items on the character

Right-click an injury or affliction for options to edit, treat, or remove it.