Your character’s health and well-being are represented by Hit Points and Stress. Hit Points (sometimes called HP) are an abstract reflection of your physical fortitude and ability to take hits from both blade and magic. Each class starts with a set number of Hit Points.

You can describe your character’s Hit Points and Stress any way you wish, but they generally represent your character’s ability to get knocked down and keep coming back. You’ll mark your character’s Hit Points and Stress when these situations arise—and the fewer marks you have, the better.

Hit Points represent the physical injuries and discomforts your character experiences during their adventures. Your available Hit Points are determined by your class. When you take damage—usually when an adversary succeeds on an attack roll against your Evasion—you mark between 1 and 3 HP, representing the harm your character suffers.

The number of HP you mark is determined by your damage thresholds. The threshold bar in the “Damage & Health” section of your character sheet show the three thresholds of damage you can take: Minor, Major, and Severe.

A character’s level is added to their armor’s damage thresholds to determine their final damage thresholds. For example, a level 1 guardian wearing chainmail armor (with thresholds of 7/15) would start with the following thresholds. (See the “Using Armor” section later in chapter 2 for more details.)

Marking Hit Points

When the GM tells you to take damage, compare the damage total to your thresholds and mark a number of Hit Points determined by the threshold:

• Severe damage is equal to or above your Severe threshold; you mark 3 HP.
• Major damage is equal to or above your Major threshold but below Severe; you mark 2 HP.
• Minor damage is anything below your Major threshold; you mark 1 HP.

If you ever reduce incoming damage to 0 or less (typically by using a subclass or domain card), you don’t mark any HP. When you mark your last Hit Point, you must make a death move (see the “Death” section).

Clearing Hit Points

Any time you make a downtime move (see the “Downtime” section), you have the opportunity to clear some of your marked Hit Points.

Additionally, as your character levels up, you can choose to permanently increase their number of Hit Points, making them more resilient against incoming attacks.