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There's no lore on this page. This page is an explanation of all the underlying mechanics for the setting.
There's no lore on this page. This page is an explanation of all the underlying mechanics for the setting.


=Challenges=
==Advancement==
When a character is presented with something they cannot overcome through trivial effort, that's a challenge. Whether or not a character succeeds on a challenge is determined by one of their three attributes.
===Attributes===
Every time your character survives a wound, they may increase one of their attributes by 1 after the scene ends.


There are two forms of challenge: a static challenge, and an opposed challenge. A static challenge is something like a locked box, or a door. It doesn't itneract with the person trying to overcome it, except in response to the challenger. An opposed challenge is something like a duel. Both the challenger and the challengee are trying to do something: hurt the other person, win a race, what have you.
===Saves===
Every time your character panics, they may increase one of their saves by 1 after the scene ends.


In the case of a static challenge, if the person attempting to overcome it has higher stats than the challenge calls for they overcome it. If they fail, usually nothing happens. In the case of an opposed challenge, whoever has the higher attribute wins and this is generally to the detriment of the loser.
===Skills===
Skills are learned through time and investment. At a cost of 50 pence for a trained skill, 100 pence for an expert skill, and 200 pence for a master skill they may find a tutor and the facilities to teach them a given skill.


=The Three Attributes=
These costs are halved if they find a player character willing to mentor them through the process of learning, but cannot be circumvented entirely.
Prowess, Erudition, and Cleverness. These three attributes and any traits they may have make up the essence of a character on Ayaria.


====Prowess====
=Basics=
Prowess is the measure of a character's acumen with mundane combat. It is also the measure of how physically robust they are, with a higher Prowess meaning the character is stronger and more resistant to injury.
===Rolling===
This is a d100 system. To successfully do a thing you must roll under your attribute’s value. So if your Combat is 53 and you roll anywhere from 1-52, you’ve succeeded. Should you roll doubles (11, 22, 33, so on) then that is a critical. If the critical is higher than your attribute, it’s a critical fail. If it’s lower than your attribute, it’s a critical success. Rolls of 1-5 are always a critical success, rolls of 95-100 are always a critical fail.


====Erudition====
You won’t be asked to roll all the time. If a character would logically succeed at something, they just succeed at it. If there are no stakes to failure, they just succeed at it. Conversely, if an action is impossible then no role is necessary - the attempt just fails.  
Erudition is the measure of a character's learnedness. It is used to represent their magical acumen as well.


====Cleverness====
===Skills===
Cleverness is the measure of a character's skillfulness. Anything that isn't directly related to their raw physical power, their general knowledge, or their ability with magic uses Cleverness. This includes stealth, sleight of hand, lockpicking, perception, survival, etc.
Skills increase the value of your character’s attributes. If you want to hit someone in melee and you have melee as an expert skill, then you increase your combat attribute’s value by 15 because expert skills provide a bonus of +15. While the use case for most skills are immediately obvious, you can use skills in unconventional ways. As long as you can justify how you are incorporating your character’s skill into the action, you may add the bonus to your attribute.


====Less Than Zero====
===Health===
If an attribute is ever reduced to less than zero, that character can no longer take actions that use that attribute.
When you take damage that isn’t ignored by your armor, it reduces your health. When health is reduced to 0, your character takes 1 wound and their health rolls back up to its usual maximum.


===Retraining===
The wound will be determined in one of three ways. Either you will be told the nature of the injury, you’ll agree on what injury makes the most sense in context, or you just roll 1d10 on the wound table.
Through dilligence and hard work, a character can change their own attributes. This is announced by the player during the season, and then at the end of the season the change will reflect in the character's attributes.


This can be used to change one attribute at a time, and only in the form of reducing an attribute by one to increase another by the same amount.
If your character reaches their maximum number of wounds, they are incapacitated. They remain incapacitated until someone goes to check on them, at which point you roll on the death table.


==Traits==
====Wounds====
Everything that could be considered a quirk, learned skill, ability, and so on are all considered a trait.
Thanks to Cukie for writing this wounds system, then letting me edit and use it.


===Identical Traits===
In the course of play, it is inevitable that characters will find themselves hurt. Not all wounds are the same, they are ranked in terms of how debilitating they are and how much effort is required to heal them. Some wounds cannot be healed by conventional means at all, and will require advanced techniques to restore them.
Identical or nearly identical traits stack. If you have two traits that give you a bonus to a specific action, then both bonuses add together. If you have a trait that says you are strong, you are weaker than someone who has two traits that say they are strong.


Literally the same trait, i.e. learning the same trait multiple times, does not work.
*Minor. Small injuries that can be negligible to the user. These can cause pain and discomfort, but are not crippling.
*Moderate. These injuries are harder to ignore, and create a possible distraction for the user. These injuries can be ignored, but if the affected area is used or struck they can be overwhelmed with pain.
*Major. These injuries are difficult to ignore, but still allow for one to be in combat. They are a distraction, but will not necessarily stop one in their tracks. This can quickly become crippling if not tended to.
*Lethal. These injuries cannot be ignored and if not tended to promptly will result in character death. Even if they survive, these wounds are enough to permanently scar and maim the character.


===Advancing Traits===
When a character's hitpoints are reduced to zero, either the DM will tell you what kind of wound your character sustains, or you roll on the chart below to determine their wound. After their hitpoints have reduced to zero, their hitpoints reset to their normal value and then any remaining damage is also taken away from their total.
Some traits represent a novice level of skill, ranging through that of a master. If one wants to become a master of something, they must first be a novice. Then when they become a master, instead of adding that trait they replace their previous novice trait with it.


===Learning Traits===
Wounds have '''characteristics''' depending on the type of damage that caused the wound.
A trait can be taught by anyone with that trait. However, while there might be multiple ways to gain a trait in theory, the person teaching them only knows how to teach them they way they were taught. For some traits, this means it's effectively impossible to do it mundanely. Someone who was born with nightvision cannot teach someone how to gain nightvision the way they learned it. However, if one is dilligent enough, all traits can be acquired one way or another.


===Nested Traits===
===Healing===
Sometimes a group of traits are represented mechanically by one single nested trait. [[Vampires]] are the prime example, as a vampire could have as many as five individual traits representing their vampiric nature, but for the purposes of limits to character traits only count as one.
Restoring health in the middle of combat is impossible except by magical means. Restoring health outside of combat, and especially treating wounds, is the healer's necessary purview.


=Scaling=
Outside of combat, a healer may attempt to restore a character to good health. They must make an Intellect check, and if they succeed then their target is healed by the amount they succeeded (e.g. if their Intellect is 50 and they rolled a 40, their target heals by 10). If they failed, their target is instead damaged by 1. Critical success restores their hitpoints to maximum, critical failure damages the character by 1d10 instead.
This explains what the abstract numbers that represent a given attribute actually mean. This gives a rough idea of what a character who has a given level in an attribute what they should be capable of, and what challenge level a DM should give them.


===Prowess===
For a character with a wound, the healer must make a check to heal the wound just like with restoring hitpoints. Different kinds of wounds require different amounts of healing. Minor wounds can be healed after 1 successful heal check. Moderate wounds require 2. Major wounds require 3. A character's wound can only be tended once per scene per wound. Lethal wounds become permanent after being healed once, but the ramifications of the lethal wounds last until they can somehow be restored (such as losing an arm).
:XI. The pinnacle of mortal ability, a character who reaches this level of prowess is going to attract the attention of higher powers.
:X. A titan on the battlefield, a warrior who will die immortalized in legend.
:IX. A character who is capable of fending off relatively large groups of fodder on their own, or even two or three highly skilled warriors.
:VIII. A master of the art of war, there are almost none who could take them on in single combat, but small groups of competent warriors will give them trouble.
:VII. An accomplished expert, one who could give almost anyone a run for their money alone.
:VI. An expert. Someone with great skill and natural ability, likely the greatest warrior in their group.
::This is about the level of an average bear.
:V. Highly adept, far greater than most warriors. This is the limit a character can start with.
:IV. No slouch at all, someone who can leverage their natural prowess to great ends.
:III. Either an experienced warrior with little natural talent, or someone with great natural talent who has practically no experience.
:II. A dabbler, someone with some experience with warriorship.
:I. Someone who has had scarce time or interest in athleticism or fighting.
:O. Someone who possibly has never even picked up a blade.


===Erudition===
===Stress===
:XI. To learn is an act of bravery. The wise know this, for one truly can learn too much.
Medaevum incorporates a lot of horror into its setting. Your character will have encounters and experiences that stress them out. Every time your character fails a roll, they gain 1 stress. It may also happen that they just experience something stressful, or you may ask for (or be presented with) an opportunity for your character to really push themselves but in order to do so accumulate some amount of stress.
:X. There is little in the world they do not have at least some passing knowledge of.
::A character can attune five spells at this level.
:IX. On the subjects in which they are expert, there is nothing they do not know.
:VIII. They have learned to put the impossible to practical use.
::A character can attune four spells at this level.
:VII. They have learned of things that others could not imagine.
:VI. Their casual knowledge surpasses what could be called mundane.
::A character can attune three spells at this level.
:V. A true scholar, with a wide breadth of knowledge. This is the limit a character can start with.
:IV. Learned even of other lands, peoples, places, and things.
::A character can attune two spells at this level.
:III. Highly educated on their own culture and history.
::This is the minimum level of anyone considered "well educated."
:II. Well educated on matters local to them and their own interests.
::A character can attune one spell at this level.
:I. Someone who likely does not even know much about their own people or history.
:O. A profoundly uneducated individual.


===Cleverness===
Stress is always reset to their minimum after they return to a safe place and take a prolonged break from any stressful activity. You may choose to keep your character’s stress high if you feel it wouldn’t make sense for your character to calm down.
:XI. More deft than God and twice as clever.
:X. What they cannot do, cannot be done. At least not by them alone.
:IX. Their broad skills and ease at which they are able to perform almost everything is the envy of the world.
:VIII. Only those with the greatest natural ability or with magical aid could hope to reach the level of someone at this degree.
:VII. Their skill surpasses near everyone, reaching beyond the level of mundane skill.
::This is around where, for an average person, magic would be necessary to imitate this level.
:VI. Likely the most skillful person of any group they're in.
:V. Someone whose life involves a great deal of lived experience. This is the limit a character can start with.
:IV. Their skill is well developed, though nowhere near the level of a true master.
:III. Someone who is reasonably adept at their chosen specialty.
:II. A character with a wealth of practical knowledge and experience.
::A casual grifter is around here.
:I. A character who could not be called adept at much.
:O. Someone with no broadly applicable skills.


=Combat=
In the course of an event, the characters may voluntarily choose to rest before carrying on if their stress is too high. In this circumstance, you would make a roll with the character’s worst save. If they fail the save they gain 1 stress, 2 if they critically fail. If they succeed, they reduce their stress by the amount they succeeded by (so a roll of 20 if their worst save is 30 would reduce their stress by 10). On a critical success, all stress is wiped.
These rules govern combat between players. When at an event, whatever the DM for the event says goes. When players are in conflict outside of that context, or without a DM available, these are the rules for that. Events should also play out close to this ideal.


===Initiative and Turn Order===
If they are engaging in some leisure activity, like drinking, prayer, or drug use, they gain advantage on the save.
Initiative is determined by which side strikes first. When the first blow is struck, everyone on the attacker's side then takes their turn. When the attacker's side is done, the defenders all take an action.


===Actions===
====Panic====
Every player gets one action on their turn. They can also move around within their given zone either before or after taking that action. An action can be something like retrieving an item, attacking, casting a spell, or using an item. If something is readily accessible on their person, like on a bandolier or in a scabbard, taking out the item and using it constitutes one action. If something is stowed away, like in a rucksack, taking it out of the container counts as one action and they will need to use a subsequent action to actually interact with it.
Every now and then, all that stress that’s been building suddenly bursts. This can happen when an ally dies, when they encounter something particularly horrific, or whenever you as the player feel it’s appropriate for your character to panic.


===Movement and Zones===
Panic is rolled with a d20. If you roll higher than your character’s stress, nothing happens. If you roll at or below your character’s stress, consult the Panic table for what happens.
Zones are determined by barriers in the environment that make intuitive sense. If a fight inside an inn has spilled out into the street, moving from inside the inn to the outside counts as moving from one zone to another. Such movement is considered one action.


===Joining Combat and Ganking===
=Combat=
A gank is when an outside party not part of the initial battle joins the conflict. This is only permitted in the narrow circumstance that the group was nearby, and it would be reasonably possible for them to be made aware of the conflict and join in before its conclusion.
===Turn Order===
All characters that are part of the same team act simultaneously. They act in whatever order makes sense to them, as coordinated or uncoordinated as they like. Then the other side does the same, taking their turn.


If an outside group wants to join the combat, their first option is to wait until the conflict is over and show up after the fact. From that point, they can investigate what happened, tend to the survivors, and make a plan for what to do next.
===Range===
Characters are divided into relative zones, based on range.
*An adjacent character is within the reach of a melee weapon.
*A close character takes one movement to reach.
*A far character takes two movements to reach.
*A character at extreme range takes three movements to reach.


Alternatively, if the original combat's pace substantially slows down then outsiders can find an opportunity to join in that case. For example, if one side retreats and barricades themselves in somewhere, and the attackers do not try to assault the barricade immediately.
===Actions===
 
All characters have one action and one movement per turn. The movement may be used to move closer or further away. The action may be used to attack, use an ability, activate equipment, and so on. Something like drinking a potion or unsheathing a sword has a meaningful effect on combat, but does not count as an action for these purposes.
===Determining A Hit===
When two characters are engaged in melee, determine whose Prowess is higher. Also add together all of their relevent traits and modifiers from equipment. Whoever's Prowess is higher wins the melee and injures their opponent, unless their opponent's armor is higher than the difference between their modified Prowess, in which case they strike the opponent but do not injure them.
 
This can result in an attacker who vastly underestimated their opponent being injured, even though they were the one to initiate the attack.
 
====Health, Damage====
When a character has been injured in combat, their Prowess is reduced by the amount they lost the opposed challenge. So if their opponent beat their Prowess by 4 and it was not reduced by armor, the loser reduces their Prowess by 4.
 
When a character's Prowess has been reduced to -1, they're incapacitated and can no longer take actions or defend themselves.
 
====Healing====
Healing does not take place during combat, barring few exceptions. In order for a character to be healed, one must have medical supplies, tools, and a healer. To determine whether the wound can be healed, add together the healer's Erudition and Cleverness, then add together all relevent traits. If it's higher than the amount the character's Prowess is negative, the wound can be healed.
 
If a character is not healed promptly, then their wounds will fester and grow worse. Their Prowess will continue to reduce by 1 per day they are not healed. When a character's Prowess reaches a negative score of either -2 or double their Prowess (whichever is higher), they die.
 
In contrast, if a character was injured but their Prowess did not reduce to below zero, they will gradually recover their Prowess at a rate of one point per day.
 
===Ranged Combat===
If someone is struck at range, their Prowess is not added to their defence. However, their armor's rating is doubled to determine how powerful the blow is, ''after'' the missile's penetration is factored in.
 
For example: someone wearing armor with a rating of 5, made out of bronze. Someone strikes them from afar with a steel crossbow bolt. Because steel is able to pierce bronze, the armor's effectiveness is reduced by 4. So the armor's value has been reduced to 1, and against the ranged attack, doubled to 2. So the ranged attacker then uses their Prowess against that value to determine whether or not the blow injured their armored adversary.
 
===Stealth and Flanking===
If a character is not aware of or cannot see the person that is attacking them, they cannot defend themselves from the blow. In other words, their Prowess is not added to their defence. When a character is struck like this, add the attacker's Cleverness as well as their Prowess together to determine the efficacy of the blow.
 
===Multiple Attacks===
If a character has an ability that triggers on being attacked, unless the ability specifies otherwise it only works once per enemy turn. So if they are struck by multiple opponents, subsequent ones will have to be countered by either a different ability or not at all. The character being attacked multiple times chooses one opponent to use their Prowess against, while other attacks against them on that turn use only their armor as a defense.
 
=Armies=
Occasionally, large forces come into conflict with each other. These rules govern those confrontations.
 
===Sizes===
A '''legion''' have anywhere between five to twenty thousand souls, made up of some combination of cohorts.
 
'''Cohorts''' have one to two columns, for a total of one to two thousand souls.
 
'''Columns''' consist of five to twenty sections, for a total of five hundred to two thousand souls.
 
A '''section''' is composed of five to twenty patrols, for a total of fifty to two hundred people including their support staff.
 
'''Patrols''' are composed of a group of individuals, five to twenty soldiers strong.
 
'''Individuals''' are composed of anywhere from 1-10 soldiers, the smallest unit and not really considered an army.
 
Once there are enough of a smaller category to make up two of the larger category, the given army becomes that larger category. So an army made up of nineteen individuals that gets their twentieth member then becomes an army made up of two patrols, and so on.
 
A given unit can be anywhere from half-strength to twice-strnegth. When a unit is at half-strength, that means it has around half the amount of soldiers it would usually be expected to fight with. A twice-strength unit has twice the amount of soldiers it would usually be expected to have.
 
Half-strength units halve their effectiveness after all modifiers are added. Twice-strength units increase their effectiveness by half again.
 
===Army Traits===
A given unit will have traits, like a character, that represent what the bulk of the unit is. For example, a unit with experiencing fighting underground or that's primarily composed of a single lineage will have one or more traits reflecting that.
 
==Logistics==
Every soldier in the army needs to be paid, fed, and their equipment maintained. The higher quality the soldier, the more expensive this is.
 
*First-rate soldiers cost 30 pence per season. They provide a bonus of 3 per unit.
*Second-rate soldiers cost 20 pence per season. They provide a bonus of 2 per unit.
*Third-rate soldiers cost 10 pence per season. They provide a bonus of 1 per unit.
 
These costs are averaged across a unit, so no matter if a third rate patrol has nine or eleven soldiers, it costs 100 pence per season to maintain.
 
==Using Armies==
An army, once assembled, is typically used to fight against other armies. When an army is put to a task, an officer must be assigned to the unit with the task. Officers are then in control of that unit. Orders from that point on are interpreted through the officer's lens, if they are followed through at all in the event of a mutinous officer.
 
When armies collide, add the officer's Cleverness to the bonus provided by the quality and number of units. This is the army's effectiveness. An officer with a Cleverness of 2 leading an army consists of two third-rate units would have a total effectiveness of 4.
 
Compare the attacking army's effectiveness to the defending army's. If it's higher, then the defending army will have to either retreat or lose an amount of units equal to the difference.
 
===Attacking Armies of Different Sizes===
If an army is more than two size categories larger than the other, i.e. a group of individuals fighting a cohort, then the larger army automatically wins unless the smaller force has fortifications.
 
If an army is only one size category larger, i.e. a group of individual fighting a patrol, then it isn't an automatic loss. Instead, the larger army doubles its effectiveness after all other bonuses are totaled up.
 
====Retreat====
Remember that an army, when confronted by another army, is always able to retreat. They leave everything behind that they can't carry with them and disperse. This is only not the case in exceptional circumstances where the defending army cannot flee for whatever reason, like being trapped against a cliff.
 
===Seasons===
An army can take actions twice per season. The first half of the season has one action and its outcome, then the second half has its action and its outcome. The exception is during the winter, when all armies cannot take any actions.
 
===Fortifications===
There are two kinds of fortifications: field fortifications, and fortified settlements. Field fortifications take an army's action to setup, and stop existin once the army leaves the area. Fortified settlements are much more permanent.
 
Field fortifications double a defender's effectiveness when an enemy army attacks into them. Fortified settlements remove the bonus the attacking army has for being a larger force, including winning outright if its force is sufficiently large.


In the event of a prolonged siege, an army's cumulative effectiveness decreases by one for each season it's forced to endure without supplies. If supplies are able to be smuggled inside the defenses, then the effectiveness of the army returns to its pre-siege level.
===Armor===
Characters ignore all damage less than their armor’s Armor Value (AV). However, if they ever take Damage greater than or equal to their AV in one hit, their armor’s AV is permanently reduced by 1 and they suffer any remaining damage. Weapons with anti-armor ignore armor and reduce its AV by 1 whenever they hit. Some armor may have Damage Reduction (DR) which always reduces incoming Damage by the amount stated (even if the armor is destroyed, or if the weapon has anti-armor) per die of the weapon in question. Damage reduction occurs first (before any armor).


===Veterancy===
Repairing armor can be simply done by paying 20 pence in any city per AV being repaired, back to the armor’s normal maximum. A character with Craft as a skill can do so at half cost.
For every year that an army has been out in the field without being disbanded or absorbed into a larger unit, it gains veterancy. Veterancy is a flat bonus equal to the number of years the unit has been around.


=Travel=
===Cover===
The default setting on the server is Nostrum, and Nostrum is small (and safe) enough that one can travel between the major settlements on the continent with only a little fear of violence. This is not the case with the rest of the world. Travelers, especially wealthy ones, are extremely vulnerable to predation, accident, catastrophe, and malice.
The environment can provide protection called cover. It can be destroyed, just like armor, whenever it is dealt damage greater than or equal to its AV. Unlike armor, when Cover is pierced it is immediately destroyed. Cover typically only protects against ranged attacks, but in some situations may help block a melee attack. If you shoot while in cover, you are considered out of cover until your next turn.


===Destinations===
Ranged attacks pierce in the order of Cover > Shields > Armor > Character.
Anywhere in the world can be chosen as a destination, even places that one isn't sure how to get to. Of course, traveling somewhere that one doesn't know for sure to exist or how to reach there is a lot harder and less guaranteed than traveling to somewhere relatively nearby and safe.
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!EXAMPLE !! AV
|-
| Shields, wooden furniture, a hostage, etc. || 5
|-
| Trees, thin walls, particularly sturdy furniture, etc. || 10
|-
| Brick walls, metal barriers, etc. || 20 | DR 5
|}


===Routes===
=Wounds Table=
After deciding to leave but before embarking, prospective travelers will be presented with one or more routes available at that time. Routes change with the season, as circumstances in the world shift. One port that has been closed due to a local war might reopen after the passage of a season, and one path rendered uncrossable by winter might thaw in the spring.
These are more descriptions of the nature of the wound. The burden of how debilitating the wounds are falls onto the DM and player to take into account.


A route determines everything about the potential travel. Typically, the tradeoff between routes is how expensive they are, how many occurences there will be, and how dangerous it is.
As a guideline, suppose your character broke their hand and they were trying to lift something heavy. A minor wound would impose a -5, moderate -10, major -15, and lethal -20. This is a rough guideline, and the actual effects may be more or less damaging depending on the fiat of the DM and what feels appropriate to the players.


====Occurences====
Should a character sustain a permanent wound (missing a limb, for example) this would be tracked on their character sheet.
An occurence is when something happens in the course of the travel. Some occurences are unavoidable: if one is planning on traveling through the Narrows, passing Narrowese customs is always going to be an occurence. The number of occurences represent the length of the journey. The shorter the journey, the less random occurences. The longer the journey, the more there are.


Occurences are either boons or banes. A boon is something positive happening, like encountering an unlikely ally or finding something interesting on the road. A bane is something negative, like a challenge that resources must be spent to overcome.
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!d10 !! Severity !! Slashing !! Blunt !! Piercing !! Fire/Ice/Necrotic !! Electric
|-
|1-2 || Lethal || Amputated limbs or digits. || Extreme fractures. || Pierced something vital, like an organ. || Even the bone is irreparably damaged. || Spasming, twitching, burning.
|-
|3-4 || Major || Tendons severed or deep muscle injury. || Broken bones. || Severe bleeding or a broken bone. || The flesh is destroyed down to the bone. || Fantastic lichtenburg scars.
|-
|5-6 || Moderate || Rapid bleeding. || Severe bruising. || If it can, it passes clean through. || Damage reaching down into the muscle. || Nerve damage, making it hard to act.
|-
| 7-10 || Minor || Slow bleeding. || Light bruising. || The projectile lodges inside. || Blisters. || Zap!
|}


The baseline is four banes, and one boon. When an occurence is due to happen, the DM either chooses one from the list, rolls, or has the players roll for what specific occurence takes place. The more dangerous routes will have more banes, the less dangerous routes will have less.
=Death Table=
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!d10 !! Result
|-
|1-2 || They're dead.
|-
|3-4 || They’re comatose. Extreme intervention will be necesary to restore them to consciousness.
|-
|5-9 || They are, or were, unconscious and dying. They will already be dead if they were not tended to within 1d4+1 rounds from the time they were incapacitated.
|-
| 10 || They’re unconscious and will wake up in 1d10 rounds. Their maximum health is permanently reduced by 1d4.
|}


At DM discretion, the players who are choosing a route can submit occurences to the DM that they would like a chance of encountering on the route. The players must submit them in pairs of boons and banes, though.
=Panic Table=
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!d20 !! Result
|-
|20 || '''Adrenaline Rush.''' They gain advantage on all rolls until the scene ends and reduce their stress by 1d10.
|-
|19 || '''Deep Breath.''' Things might look bad right now, but we’re all going to make it. They reduce their stress by 1d4.
|-
|18 || '''Despair.''' The character is overwhelmed by fear and the impulse that death would be better than this. Make a Fear save at advantage, but if that fails, they turn their weapon on themselves and automatically take 1 wound.
|-
|17 || '''Spiraling.''' All future panic checks are made at disadvantage. This lasts until they attempt rest.
|-
|16 || '''Rage.''' They make all damage rolls with advantage until the end of the scene. All allies increase their stress by 1.
|-
|15 || '''Catatonic.''' They are unable to take actions or move under their own power. They may still be coaxed into doing so by allies, but automatically fail all actions taken. This lasts until they attempt rest, at which point their stress reduces by an additional 1d10.
|-
|14 || '''Visions.''' The character hallucinates some profound and terrifying insight. Increase minimum stress by 2.
|-
|13 || '''Death Wish.''' Whenever they encounter a known enemy or stranger, they must make a Sanity save or else immediately begin attacking them. This lasts until they attempt rest.
|-
|12 || '''Haunted.''' Ever since that day, the character has felt a presence. They can see it at night and in the corner of their eyes. It wants something.
|-
|11 || '''Suspicious.''' Whenever they encounter someone new, they must make a Fear save or gain 1 stress.
|-
|10 || '''Doomed.''' All critical successes are treated as critical failures until the end of the scene.
|-
|9 || '''Deflated.''' Whenever a close ally fails a save, gain 1 stress.
|-
|8 || '''Loss of Confidence.''' Choose an ability. Your character loses any bonus gained from that skill until the end of the scene.
|-
|7 || '''Nightmares.''' Gain a new trait: your character relives this moment in their dreams for the rest of their life. They have permanent disadvantage on rest checks.
|-
|6 || '''Frightened.''' Whenever you encounter what frightened you, make a Fear save or gain 1d4 stress.
|-
|5 || '''Frantic.''' Gain 1 stress. All close allies gain 2 stress.
|-
|4 || '''Nervous.''' Gain 1 stress.
|-
|3 || '''Overwhelmed.''' Disadvantage on all rolls for the next minute.
|-
|2 || '''Routed.''' You must make a Fear save to act normally, otherwise you flee until you reach a safe place. An ally with either Military Training or Generalship may attempt a Combat action to rally all routed allies. If they succeed, this condition ends.
|-
|1 || '''Compounding Problems.''' Roll twice on this table. Increase minimum stress by 1.
|}

Latest revision as of 10:44, 9 September 2025

There's no lore on this page. This page is an explanation of all the underlying mechanics for the setting.

Advancement

Attributes

Every time your character survives a wound, they may increase one of their attributes by 1 after the scene ends.

Saves

Every time your character panics, they may increase one of their saves by 1 after the scene ends.

Skills

Skills are learned through time and investment. At a cost of 50 pence for a trained skill, 100 pence for an expert skill, and 200 pence for a master skill they may find a tutor and the facilities to teach them a given skill.

These costs are halved if they find a player character willing to mentor them through the process of learning, but cannot be circumvented entirely.

Basics

Rolling

This is a d100 system. To successfully do a thing you must roll under your attribute’s value. So if your Combat is 53 and you roll anywhere from 1-52, you’ve succeeded. Should you roll doubles (11, 22, 33, so on) then that is a critical. If the critical is higher than your attribute, it’s a critical fail. If it’s lower than your attribute, it’s a critical success. Rolls of 1-5 are always a critical success, rolls of 95-100 are always a critical fail.

You won’t be asked to roll all the time. If a character would logically succeed at something, they just succeed at it. If there are no stakes to failure, they just succeed at it. Conversely, if an action is impossible then no role is necessary - the attempt just fails.

Skills

Skills increase the value of your character’s attributes. If you want to hit someone in melee and you have melee as an expert skill, then you increase your combat attribute’s value by 15 because expert skills provide a bonus of +15. While the use case for most skills are immediately obvious, you can use skills in unconventional ways. As long as you can justify how you are incorporating your character’s skill into the action, you may add the bonus to your attribute.

Health

When you take damage that isn’t ignored by your armor, it reduces your health. When health is reduced to 0, your character takes 1 wound and their health rolls back up to its usual maximum.

The wound will be determined in one of three ways. Either you will be told the nature of the injury, you’ll agree on what injury makes the most sense in context, or you just roll 1d10 on the wound table.

If your character reaches their maximum number of wounds, they are incapacitated. They remain incapacitated until someone goes to check on them, at which point you roll on the death table.

Wounds

Thanks to Cukie for writing this wounds system, then letting me edit and use it.

In the course of play, it is inevitable that characters will find themselves hurt. Not all wounds are the same, they are ranked in terms of how debilitating they are and how much effort is required to heal them. Some wounds cannot be healed by conventional means at all, and will require advanced techniques to restore them.

  • Minor. Small injuries that can be negligible to the user. These can cause pain and discomfort, but are not crippling.
  • Moderate. These injuries are harder to ignore, and create a possible distraction for the user. These injuries can be ignored, but if the affected area is used or struck they can be overwhelmed with pain.
  • Major. These injuries are difficult to ignore, but still allow for one to be in combat. They are a distraction, but will not necessarily stop one in their tracks. This can quickly become crippling if not tended to.
  • Lethal. These injuries cannot be ignored and if not tended to promptly will result in character death. Even if they survive, these wounds are enough to permanently scar and maim the character.

When a character's hitpoints are reduced to zero, either the DM will tell you what kind of wound your character sustains, or you roll on the chart below to determine their wound. After their hitpoints have reduced to zero, their hitpoints reset to their normal value and then any remaining damage is also taken away from their total.

Wounds have characteristics depending on the type of damage that caused the wound.

Healing

Restoring health in the middle of combat is impossible except by magical means. Restoring health outside of combat, and especially treating wounds, is the healer's necessary purview.

Outside of combat, a healer may attempt to restore a character to good health. They must make an Intellect check, and if they succeed then their target is healed by the amount they succeeded (e.g. if their Intellect is 50 and they rolled a 40, their target heals by 10). If they failed, their target is instead damaged by 1. Critical success restores their hitpoints to maximum, critical failure damages the character by 1d10 instead.

For a character with a wound, the healer must make a check to heal the wound just like with restoring hitpoints. Different kinds of wounds require different amounts of healing. Minor wounds can be healed after 1 successful heal check. Moderate wounds require 2. Major wounds require 3. A character's wound can only be tended once per scene per wound. Lethal wounds become permanent after being healed once, but the ramifications of the lethal wounds last until they can somehow be restored (such as losing an arm).

Stress

Medaevum incorporates a lot of horror into its setting. Your character will have encounters and experiences that stress them out. Every time your character fails a roll, they gain 1 stress. It may also happen that they just experience something stressful, or you may ask for (or be presented with) an opportunity for your character to really push themselves but in order to do so accumulate some amount of stress.

Stress is always reset to their minimum after they return to a safe place and take a prolonged break from any stressful activity. You may choose to keep your character’s stress high if you feel it wouldn’t make sense for your character to calm down.

In the course of an event, the characters may voluntarily choose to rest before carrying on if their stress is too high. In this circumstance, you would make a roll with the character’s worst save. If they fail the save they gain 1 stress, 2 if they critically fail. If they succeed, they reduce their stress by the amount they succeeded by (so a roll of 20 if their worst save is 30 would reduce their stress by 10). On a critical success, all stress is wiped.

If they are engaging in some leisure activity, like drinking, prayer, or drug use, they gain advantage on the save.

Panic

Every now and then, all that stress that’s been building suddenly bursts. This can happen when an ally dies, when they encounter something particularly horrific, or whenever you as the player feel it’s appropriate for your character to panic.

Panic is rolled with a d20. If you roll higher than your character’s stress, nothing happens. If you roll at or below your character’s stress, consult the Panic table for what happens.

Combat

Turn Order

All characters that are part of the same team act simultaneously. They act in whatever order makes sense to them, as coordinated or uncoordinated as they like. Then the other side does the same, taking their turn.

Range

Characters are divided into relative zones, based on range.

  • An adjacent character is within the reach of a melee weapon.
  • A close character takes one movement to reach.
  • A far character takes two movements to reach.
  • A character at extreme range takes three movements to reach.

Actions

All characters have one action and one movement per turn. The movement may be used to move closer or further away. The action may be used to attack, use an ability, activate equipment, and so on. Something like drinking a potion or unsheathing a sword has a meaningful effect on combat, but does not count as an action for these purposes.

Armor

Characters ignore all damage less than their armor’s Armor Value (AV). However, if they ever take Damage greater than or equal to their AV in one hit, their armor’s AV is permanently reduced by 1 and they suffer any remaining damage. Weapons with anti-armor ignore armor and reduce its AV by 1 whenever they hit. Some armor may have Damage Reduction (DR) which always reduces incoming Damage by the amount stated (even if the armor is destroyed, or if the weapon has anti-armor) per die of the weapon in question. Damage reduction occurs first (before any armor).

Repairing armor can be simply done by paying 20 pence in any city per AV being repaired, back to the armor’s normal maximum. A character with Craft as a skill can do so at half cost.

Cover

The environment can provide protection called cover. It can be destroyed, just like armor, whenever it is dealt damage greater than or equal to its AV. Unlike armor, when Cover is pierced it is immediately destroyed. Cover typically only protects against ranged attacks, but in some situations may help block a melee attack. If you shoot while in cover, you are considered out of cover until your next turn.

Ranged attacks pierce in the order of Cover > Shields > Armor > Character.

EXAMPLE AV
Shields, wooden furniture, a hostage, etc. 5
Trees, thin walls, particularly sturdy furniture, etc. 10
Brick walls, metal barriers, etc. DR 5

Wounds Table

These are more descriptions of the nature of the wound. The burden of how debilitating the wounds are falls onto the DM and player to take into account.

As a guideline, suppose your character broke their hand and they were trying to lift something heavy. A minor wound would impose a -5, moderate -10, major -15, and lethal -20. This is a rough guideline, and the actual effects may be more or less damaging depending on the fiat of the DM and what feels appropriate to the players.

Should a character sustain a permanent wound (missing a limb, for example) this would be tracked on their character sheet.

d10 Severity Slashing Blunt Piercing Fire/Ice/Necrotic Electric
1-2 Lethal Amputated limbs or digits. Extreme fractures. Pierced something vital, like an organ. Even the bone is irreparably damaged. Spasming, twitching, burning.
3-4 Major Tendons severed or deep muscle injury. Broken bones. Severe bleeding or a broken bone. The flesh is destroyed down to the bone. Fantastic lichtenburg scars.
5-6 Moderate Rapid bleeding. Severe bruising. If it can, it passes clean through. Damage reaching down into the muscle. Nerve damage, making it hard to act.
7-10 Minor Slow bleeding. Light bruising. The projectile lodges inside. Blisters. Zap!

Death Table

d10 Result
1-2 They're dead.
3-4 They’re comatose. Extreme intervention will be necesary to restore them to consciousness.
5-9 They are, or were, unconscious and dying. They will already be dead if they were not tended to within 1d4+1 rounds from the time they were incapacitated.
10 They’re unconscious and will wake up in 1d10 rounds. Their maximum health is permanently reduced by 1d4.

Panic Table

d20 Result
20 Adrenaline Rush. They gain advantage on all rolls until the scene ends and reduce their stress by 1d10.
19 Deep Breath. Things might look bad right now, but we’re all going to make it. They reduce their stress by 1d4.
18 Despair. The character is overwhelmed by fear and the impulse that death would be better than this. Make a Fear save at advantage, but if that fails, they turn their weapon on themselves and automatically take 1 wound.
17 Spiraling. All future panic checks are made at disadvantage. This lasts until they attempt rest.
16 Rage. They make all damage rolls with advantage until the end of the scene. All allies increase their stress by 1.
15 Catatonic. They are unable to take actions or move under their own power. They may still be coaxed into doing so by allies, but automatically fail all actions taken. This lasts until they attempt rest, at which point their stress reduces by an additional 1d10.
14 Visions. The character hallucinates some profound and terrifying insight. Increase minimum stress by 2.
13 Death Wish. Whenever they encounter a known enemy or stranger, they must make a Sanity save or else immediately begin attacking them. This lasts until they attempt rest.
12 Haunted. Ever since that day, the character has felt a presence. They can see it at night and in the corner of their eyes. It wants something.
11 Suspicious. Whenever they encounter someone new, they must make a Fear save or gain 1 stress.
10 Doomed. All critical successes are treated as critical failures until the end of the scene.
9 Deflated. Whenever a close ally fails a save, gain 1 stress.
8 Loss of Confidence. Choose an ability. Your character loses any bonus gained from that skill until the end of the scene.
7 Nightmares. Gain a new trait: your character relives this moment in their dreams for the rest of their life. They have permanent disadvantage on rest checks.
6 Frightened. Whenever you encounter what frightened you, make a Fear save or gain 1d4 stress.
5 Frantic. Gain 1 stress. All close allies gain 2 stress.
4 Nervous. Gain 1 stress.
3 Overwhelmed. Disadvantage on all rolls for the next minute.
2 Routed. You must make a Fear save to act normally, otherwise you flee until you reach a safe place. An ally with either Military Training or Generalship may attempt a Combat action to rally all routed allies. If they succeed, this condition ends.
1 Compounding Problems. Roll twice on this table. Increase minimum stress by 1.
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