Systems

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.