Hawk Tales uses Hit Points just like we are used to from D&D and similar systems, but adds a bit more to it. A characters health can be categorized into four states, healthy, bloodied, injured or dead.
Healthy
As long as your character has half its Hit Points or more, it is healthy and no need to worry,
Bloodied
When you have lost more than half your Hit Points, you become Bloodied and the negative consequences are staring to show. You can no longer benefit from a Short Rest, and only get limited use out of a Long Rest. But you can still fully function and suffer no other effects, so being Bloodied is only really a problem for long term play when resting and recovery plays a role.
Injured
When your character gets into trouble, the inevitable will happen, you will run out of Hit Point, and then your Character is considered Injured. This can quickly become very dangerous; your level of Injuries increases by one every round until you are stabilized. You also loose Concentration on Spells the ability to spend Exertion, and your movement rate is halved. To stabilize and stop slipping closer to death, you need to make a Death Save and your Injury Level is the DC you need to meet. Death Saves have a number of modifiers to them, like your size, armor, Taint, magic, divine aid or someone is there to assist you, so they are easy to pass if you don’t have too many injuries but the odds can deteriorate fast. You make your Death Save, and you are stable, a failed save means you lose Presence and gain Taint. This will affect your character going forward, and if you run out of Presence your character is now on the journey to the afterlife.
This is how Death Saves works for creatures with a Soul, creatures with other forms of Essences this functions differently in various ways. All the pregens except two have the Essence of Soul, the other two are spirit-based creatures. The same rules apply for NPC’s and monsters so be a bit careful, for example those Dark Souls and Residuun based creatures can and will surprise and challenge you and your party.
Death
I’m not going to cover that here in depth, but Hawk Tales have rules for a character’s afterlife as well, and this is when the metaphysical stats really comes into play. If you have a high Com and Low Taint, and have a soul, you are a priced commodity indeed. Only dying in the right circumstances, or careful preparation, can save what is left of you from being devoured by those whose whole existence revolves around harvesting souls of the unlucky.
There are currently 22 different types of damage (and Drains) in the rules. Most of the inflict Hit Point Damage just like regular D&D, but others drain Abilites, Life (ages you), or affects your metaphysical abilities like Comeliness, Presence and Taint. Vorpal Damage is nasty and inflict Injuries right away, effectively brining your Hit Points to 0 in the process.
During the game I will warn you of potential or direct danger, depending on your Characters knowledge and how well you succeed on your Insight Checks.
Armor functions differently in Hawk Tales, normal armor doesn’t make you harder to hit, it will absorb damage instead, but not all damage. All armor comes with a Hardness, Minimum, Beastings and some also provide a Death Save Bonus. Some armor, like magical or certain forms of natural armor can provide an AC bonus as well, but that is not the norm.
For example, Studded Leather has Hardness 10, Minimum 2, Beatings 6 and Death Save Bonus of +2. This means that what something hits you your Studded Leather can deduct 10 from the damage, but you will still take 2 points of damage. Beatings provides a way to convert Crits to normal hits and let the armor take the hit instead by deducting a Beating. When you run out of beatings your armor needs to be repaired, or its Minimum will be double. Crits are far more common using Hawk Tale rules, so Beatings provides a very useful aid to stay alive longer.
Shields
Shield, unlike armor, makes you harder to hit by providing an AC bonus, and also more beatings so can be doubly useful.
