Hazard
Hazards are dangers which batter, maim, infect, poison, or slaughter creatures. This includes cunningly devised traps as well as freak accidents.
Hazards require creatures to make skill checks to avoid their harmful effects. The skill check must meet or exceed the DL assigned to the hazard. The more inescapable the hazard, the higher the DL.
| Tim's character Drinnin is navigating an ancient temple loaded with treasures and traps and the floor collapses beneath him, revealing a pit lined with razor-sharp spikes. The GM tells Tim to make a Dodge check against a DL of 15. Tim rolls a 12. The GM tells Tim that Drinnin falls 20 feet into the pit and asks for a Gymnastics check. Tim rolls a 22, so he takes no damage from the fall itself, but the spikes are waiting at the bottom. The GM asks for a Guard check against a DL of 30. Tim rolls a 19. The GM explains that Drinnin grabs a handhold in the rock before he can be thoroughly impaled on the spikes. He escapes with 11 damage, a bleeding leg, and must climb out of the pit. |
Some Hazards aren't inherently or solely harmful, but make certain actions more difficult or impair characters without hurting them. Hazards like these might incur a slide down the Knockout track. A trap that throws sleeping powder into the room or noxious gases issuing forth from a fissure in the ground provide good examples of this. If the DL for avoiding the hazard is not met, the character moves to the appropriate stage on the Knockout Track (Stage One for a Level One Hazard, Stage Two for Level Two, etc). Some hazards can hurt characters and move them down the Knockout track.
