Starvation

Characters can live the better part of a month without food, but you won't last a week without water. Starvation and dehydration are just as life-threatening as armed combat. You can survive a full day without any food or water and not accrue penalties. Anything past that amount of time and your life begins to ebb away. You must make Stamina checks at regular intervals so long as you go without sustenance. If you fail a check, you move one step down the Knockout Track. The only way to remove these Knockout penalties is to locate food or water and rest for a full night. Spells, items, and skill checks which remove Knockout penalties cannot help a creature dying of hunger and thirst.

If you're dehydrated, you must make a DL 20 Stamina check or move one step down the Knockout Track. You must make subsequent checks every 12 hours without water, and the DL increases by 1 each time. If you fail a check, you move an additional step down the Knockout Track as all sorts of bodily processes begin breaking down. Once you fail a fifth check and reach stage 5, you fall comatose. If no one comes to your aid and you fail a subsequent check, you succumb to dehydration and die, leaving behind a withered husk.

If you're starving, you must make a DL 10 Stamina check or move one step down the Knockout Track. You must make subsequent checks every day without sufficient caloric intake, and the DL increases by 1 each time. If you fail a check, you move an additional step down the Knockout Track and begin to waste away, staring from sunken eyes and scratching the tight skin stretched over your protruding bones. Once you fail a fifth check and reach stage 5, you fall comatose. If no one comes to your aid and you fail a subsequent check, you die of starvation.

Diseases make starvation and dehydration much more difficult to survive. For example, if you're infected with a Level 3 disease (which puts you at stage 3 on the Knockout Track), you only need to fail two Stamina checks to fall comatose. A third failure means death. If you're infected with a Level 5 disease (which makes you comatose on its own), a single failed Stamina check means death.