Part 1: The Basics ☰
Health is an extremely important aspect of Iron & Aether, and despite its name, is not necessarily indicative of a character’s physical ability to take blows; a knife to the heart is just as deadly at 100 Health as it is at 10. Rather, Health is a single term that refers a multitude of closely-related factors that represent, more than anything, a character’s willingness and ability, physically and mentally, to carry on. These factors include, but are not necessarily limited to: their physical durability, the condition of their armor, their luck, their discipline, and their physical exhaustion.
This last factor, a character’s fatigue level, is especially important, as Health is the only measure of exhaustion in I&A. Because of this, whenever characters undergo especially exhaustive activities, such as running for a long time or keeping themselves afloat in turbulent waters, this will reduce Health in exactly the same way as taking damage from an attack would.
Your Health is determined by your class and CON score; refer to your class description for more information.
When characters lose certain amounts of Health, they begin to suffer cumulative penalties, which are lost when they regain the necessary amount of Health. These penalties are described here:
Injured. When a character loses 70% of their Health (i.e. falls below 30%), all skill checks are made with disadvantage.
Bloodied. When a character falls below 20% Health, their Speed is halved.
Death's Door. If a character gets down to less than 10% of their Health, they make all saves and attacks with disadvantage.
There are multiple ways to replenish Health:
When a character's Health is reduced to 0 or less but is greater than negative half of their Maximum Health, they have a choice to make: they can either perform one last heroic action with advantage (provided they can perform that action in <3 seconds) and then immediately be reduced to negative half of their Maximum Health, or they can begin the process of Enduring. If their Health is instead reduced to less than negative half of their Maximum, they will either 1. Go unconscious for 8 hours and then wake up with 1 Health, or 2. They will die outright. Which of these options happens depends on their circumstances, the nature of their injuries, and the GM's discretion.