Stamina Drain

Exhausting actions and harsh environmental effects that chip away at your energy reserves cause Stamina Drain. Once your body surpasses its natural limits, you make a Stamina check (see Chapter 6: Skills). As long as the cause of the Stamina Drain persists, you must repeat the Stamina check at regular intervals, and the DL increases each time. The results of a failure depend on whether the Stamina Drain is tiring or lethal.

Physical exertion which saps your energy imposes tiring Stamina Drain. If you fail a check against tiring Stamina Drain, you move one stage down the Knockout Track. Denying your body something it needs (e.g. air, food, water) imposes lethal Stamina Drain. Failing a check against lethal Stamina Drain blocks one stage of the Knockout Track.

If you gain the unconscious condition by moving down or blocking all five stages of the Knockout Track (regardless of cause) and then you fail a check against lethal Stamina Drain, your body gives up and you die outright.

Any effect in this game that imposes Stamina Drain will list the initial DL, the frequency of Stamina checks, the amount the DL increases each time, and whether the effect is lethal or tiring. For example, the suffocating condition described later in this chapter causes Stamina Drain (DL 15; +1 every round; lethal).

Stamina Drain is cumulative. For example, if your character is both starving and under-dressed in the arctic, you have to make one daily Stamina check and one hourly Stamina check. Failing either Stamina check blocks one stage of the Knockout Track.