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 hands you a Death Mark.

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].

A creature can be subject to several different causes of Stamina Drain at once, possibly with different intervals (for instance, one effect repeats every day, another every hour).