Fatigue:Not all injuries in DARK HERESY are lethal. Exhaustion, combat trauma, or swapping licks with bare fists can all leave a character battered but more or less intact. Fatigue represents the amount of non-lethal injury a character can take over the course of game play. Characters suffer Fatigue from certain types of attacks, Grappling, some Critical Effects, and other actions that push them beyond safe limits. Fatigue is measured in levels. Any time a character gains or loses a level of Fatigue, he compares his new Fatigue level to his characteristic bonuses. Any characteristic with a bonus lower than the character’s current Fatigue level becomes “fatigued.” Fatigued characteristics affect the character is different ways depending on if the game is currently in narrative time or structured time:
- Structured Time: A fatigued characteristic counts as half its normal value (rounded up) when the character wishes to perform an action that includes a test that calls on that characteristic, or any other uses of that characteristic.
- Narrative Time: Any time the character performs a task that includes a test of a fatigued characteristic, that task takes twice the normal time to attempt.
Fatigue threshold:A character’s Fatigue threshold is equal to his Toughness bonus and Willpower bonus added together. If a character’s levels of Fatigue ever exceeds this threshold, the character passes out and is Unconscious for 10–TB minutes; at the end of that time, he awakens with his levels of Fatigue reverted to a number equal to his Toughness bonus. If a character’s Fatigue ever exceeds double the amount of his Fatigue threshold, the character dies.
Removing fatigue:Fatigue goes away with time. Each hour of normal rest (but not time spent Unconscious) without any combat, use of psychic powers, or other strenuous activity, removes one level of Fatigue. Six consecutive hours of rest removes all Fatigue.