Hit Points

Hit Points (variant: hitpoints, HP) are a Pool derived from Hardiness which are essential to characters in Tarnished Tale. Your pool of hitpoints, specifically the relation between your Current HP and your Max HP, is the gameplay-mechanical representation of your current liveliness and available capacity to take additional physical punishment (thus HP's basis in Hardiness).

The rules below describe Standard Hit Points. Your setting developer or facilitator may have implemented a variant hitpoint rule to change them.

Maximum HP

Maximum HP is the Base Value of the Hit Points pool. On character creation, unless otherwise modified through traits, it is equal to your Hardiness score (not the Hardiness Check).

Maximum HP is static and does not change except through magic effects acting on the character or through Landmark Advancement.

Current HP

Current HP is simply the running total of a player's hit points pool. As a general rule, it never exceeds the maximum HP (but see the note below). In general, the exact value of current HP is unimportant, until it reaches 2 or lower. As a general rule, players do not "spend" HP, as much as certain effects (recovering HP and taking damage) will raise or lower the current HP total.

A note on the roleplaying implications of hit points: It should be up to the player unless the plot is being driven how badly injured their character is as long as they remain above 2 HP. That said, players are encouraged to play their characters as though they have been injured, commensurate with how proportionally low their HP is getting.

Effects of Low HP

Between 2 and 0 hitpoints, a character has become Unconscious. They will remain in that state according to the rules for Unconsciousness, or until they have recovered HP to a score of 3 or higher.

At 0 hit points (or below), a character is Dying. Their HP score immediately rises to 0 (if it was negative) and stays at that state according the rules for Dying until they have either died or been stabilized.

Exceeding Maximum HP

It is not normally possible for your HP to exceed the Maximum HP value. However, some settings which implement magic may create effects that temporarily raise your current HP above the maximum value. When this happens, the extra points above your maximum HP can be considered "temporary hit points". When resting for the day, you will lose these temporary hitpoints, unless otherwise stated in the necessary magical effect.

Recovery

The Hit Points Pool recovers once per day while resting, necessarily when resting for the day. This works in the following way:

0. If resting for a full week, make no checks; immediately restore 1d4 HP.

1. If resting for the day, restore 1 HP if you can succeed on an Hardiness check.

2. In either case, after applying step 0 and step 1 (whichever applies), treat your Current HP as your Hardiness for an Hardiness Check (that is, multiply your current HP by 5 and check against it). If you succeed, immediately restore 1d6 HP

3. If (2) is a Hard or Extreme success or you rolled 01, immediately recover as many as half your maximum hitpoints, rounded down. A combination of luck and tenacity has allowed you to make a superhuman recovery.

Some skills and magic may also increase your current HP, such as First Aid, Medicine, or various healing magic.

Some traits and other effects may "double" this recover, which is also referred to as "natural healing". In the case of the Hit Points pool, doubling the recovery means to add an extra die to each HP recovery roll (2d4, 2d6). Doubled recovery has no impact on Hard/Extreme/Critical recovery, which will always be no more than half of your maximum hitpoints. These doublings stack in the same way.

Imagine an example situation where the player has a heritage trait that doubles HP recovery. They are also experiencing High Quality Rest, which is doubling their recovery rate for all pools. Since they are doing a recovery that is doubled twice, then on the HP recovery rolls themselves they should use 3 of the relevant dice.

This doubling effect is *not* the same as having boon or bane on the Hardiness check or Current HP check that governs the healing process. Those checks still occur as normal unless an effect specifically calls it out.