Vitality and wound points together measure how hard a character is to hurt and kill. The damage from each successful attack and each fight accumulates, dropping a character’s vitality point or wound point total until he runs out of points.
Dying
When a character’s current wound points drop to or below 0, the character is dying. A dying character immediately falls unconscious and can take no actions. The character is not dead, but she is close to it.
A dying character loses 1 wound point every hour. This continues until the character dies or becomes stable naturally or with help.
Recovering without Help
Each hour, a dying character makes a Fortitude saving throw (DC 20). If the save fails, the character loses 1 wound point and must make another save on his or her turn the next hour.
If the save succeeds, the character becomes stable. A stable character stops losing wound points every hour, but remains unconscious.
If no one tends to the stable character, he or she remains unconscious for 1 hour, at which point she makes a Fortitude save (DC 20). If the save succeeds, the stable character regains consciousness. The character’s current wound points total rises to 1. If the save fails, the character remains unconscious and the character must make another save after an hour.
Recovering with Help
A dying character can be made stable by the use of the Treat Injury skill (DC 12). One hour after a tended, dying character becomes stable, she makes a Fortitude save (DC 20) to regain consciousness. If successful, the character becomes conscious and her current wound points total rises to 1. If the character remains unconscious, she makes the same Fortitude save every hour until she becomes conscious.
Dead
When a character’s current wound points drop to lower than minus her Constitution, she is dead.
Healing
After taking damage, a character can recover vitality and wound points through natural healing (over the course of days), through medical technology (somewhat faster) or through magical healing. In any case, a character can’t regain hit points past her full normal total.
Natural Healing
A character recovers 4 vitality points and 2 wound points per evening of rest (8 hours of sleep).
Assisted Healing
A character who provides long-term care doubles the rate at which a wounded character recovers lost vitality and wound points.