Status Effects are conditions that modify how a character behaves, fights, or interacts with the world. They include short-term tactical debuffs in combat, long-running survival effects, injuries to specific limbs, and chemical addictions.
🤕 Injuries
🤕 Injuries are special Status Effects given to a limb when its 💔 Cripple Threshold reaches 0. They escalate in severity: 🤕 Minor Injury → 🤕 Major Injury → 🤕 Incapacitation.
Injuries can produce Injury Related Debuffs that persist beyond the injury itself: Crippled, 🤯 Head Trauma, 🌀 Reeling, 🥀 Weakened Arm, 🥀 Weakened Leg, Weakened Mind, Weakened Organs.
Stances
Your physical positioning. Your character always has exactly one stance: 🧍 Standing, 💺 Crouched, or Prone. Stances affect Size, movement cost, Cover, and stealth.
Buffs
Beneficial conditions, granted by food, drink, chems, perks and equipment: 💚 Regen
Debuffs
Temporary or persistent detrimental conditions. Grouped by role:
Damage Over Time: 🩸 Bleed, 🔥 Burn, 🐍 Poison, 🌩 Shock, ❄ Frozen, ☢ Radiation
Control Effects: 🤼 Grappled, 💢 Taunted, 🕊️ Pacified, 🤪 Madness, 👻 Fear, 🤼 Submission
Tactical Debuffs: ⏬ Pressure, ⏬ Suppressed, ⏬ Pinned Down, 🌊 Shockwave, ⏬ Exposed, ⏬ Staggered, ✨ Stunned, 😲 Surprised
Passive: 😫 Exhaustion, 🏋️ Overencumbered, Priority Target, ☢ Atom Aura
Addictions
Chemical dependencies acquired from repeated use of chems or alcohol. Cured by visiting a doctor or using 💊 Addictol.
- 😵💫 Alcohol Addiction
- 😵💫 Buffout Addiction
- 😵💫 Jet Addiction
- 😵💫 Med-X Addiction
- 😵💫 Mentats Addiction
- 😵💫 Psycho Addiction
🤒 Illnesses
Infections and diseases contracted from raw food, open wounds, filth, and other sick people. Unlike Debuffs, Illnesses attack recovery rather than combat. They move between Minor and Major on a 🏕 Long Rest progression Test — a success reduces severity, a failure escalates it — and are cured by 💊 Antibiotics, 🧫 Infection Care, or a doctor.
Which Illness you contract depends on how you were exposed:
Food-borne: 🤢 Dysentery, 🪱 Gut Worms, 🥵 Wasting Fever
Wound: 🩹 Infected Wound
Contagion: 🫁 Bonecough
Environmental: 👁 Blind Rot
Concealment
Effects that remove you from an enemy’s senses. They share a stat line and differ entirely in how they are beaten.
- 👤 Invisible — optical cloaking (🥋 Chinese Stealth Suit, Stealth Boys). Strongest at a distance; you can still be heard up close, and you can attack without losing it.
- Psychic Invisibility — works on the mind rather than on light, so it covers hearing too and does not weaken at any range. Biological observers only — machines are unaffected — and it is lost the moment you attack or take damage.
Other
- 💀 Dying — at 0 HP, rolling to survive each turn
- 🔙 Knockback — forced movement
- Knockdown — forced Prone
- 🍺 Drunk — alcohol effects (mixed positive and negative)
🤲 Voluntary Failure
A creature may choose to voluntarily fail any Test made to resist a debuff or status effect. See 🤲 Voluntary Failure for the full rule.
Effect Notation: X Suffix
Many debuffs and the weapon effects that apply them use an X suffix to indicate potency: Bleed X, Burn X, Poison X, Knockback X, etc.
- For stacking debuffs (Bleed, Burn, Poison, Shock, Frozen, Radiation, Pressure, Exhaustion, etc.), X is the number of stacks applied.
- For one-shot effects (Knockback, Knockdown), X is the magnitude — e.g., Knockback 2 means up to 2 tiles of forced movement on fail.