🤒Illness

Illnesses are infections and diseases contracted from raw food, open wounds, filth, and other sick people. An Illness barely changes how you fight. It changes how you recover.

Every Illness has two severities: Minor and Major.

Contracting an Illness

Roll a DC 10 🏊 END + 🏕 Survival Test.

Result	Outcome
Success	Nothing happens.
Fail	You contract an Illness as Minor.
🎭 CRITFAIL	You contract an Illness as Major.

Which Illness you contract depends on how you were exposed. You can carry more than one at a time — each is tracked and progresses separately.

Food-Borne

Eating raw meat or eggs. The risk is printed on the item itself — see 🐄 Brahmin Meat. Cooking removes it entirely. No cooked food in the game carries an Illness roll.

d6	Illness
1–2	🤢 Dysentery
3–4	🪱 Gut Worms
5–6	🥵 Wasting Fever

Only these three can be caught from food. You cannot pick up 🫁 Bonecough, 👁 Blind Rot, or an 🩹 Infected Wound from a bad meal.

🚰 Dirty Water does not cause Illness

Dirty Water’s hazard is ☢ RADS, already priced into the item. Water-borne Illness is reserved for standing, fouled, or corpse-tainted water the GM specifically calls out.

Wound

Ending a 🏕 Long Rest carrying a 🤕 Major Injury or 🤕 Incapacitation without choosing Sleep as your Rest Activity — DC 12.

Choosing Sleep, or being under a caregiver’s 🏕 Receive Care, tends the wound whether or not the mending Test succeeds — no roll is made. Every other Rest Activity leaves the wound open, and you roll.

The result is always an 🩹 Infected Wound, on that limb.

Contagion

Sharing a camp with a character carrying 🫁 Bonecough. See that page for the 📊 DCs.

Environmental

Spore-heavy ruins, damp cellars, corpse piles, plague sites. The GM sets the 📊 DC (default 10) and chooses the Illness.

Progression

At the end of each 🏕 Long Rest, roll a DC 10 🏊 END + 🏕 Survival Test for each Illness you are carrying.

Result	Outcome
Success	Severity is reduced by one step. Major → Minor. Minor → cured.
Fail	Severity escalates by one step. Minor → Major. If already Major, gain 1 stack of 😫 Exhaustion.

This is the same shape as mending 🤕 Injuries during Sleep — a success is progress, not just holding on.

The Test is made whether or not you chose Sleep as your Rest Activity. Being sick does not wait for you to be at leisure.

Provide Care: if another character performs the 🏕 Provide Care activity on you during the rest, you make your progression Tests with Advantage. This costs no items.

Effects

Illnesses attack recovery rather than combat. Below is the common shape — each Illness page lists its own exact effects.

Severity	Common Effects
Minor	-1 🏊 Endurance · healing reduced · Disadvantage on 🏊 END + 🏕 Survival Tests
Major	-2 🏊 Endurance, -2 🏃 Agility · no HP recovery from Sleep · 1 😫 Exhaustion on a failed progression Test

Curing an Illness

Method	Effect
💊 Antibiotics	Removes all Illnesses at any severity, instantly. No Test. 3 ⚡ AP.
🧫 Infection Care	Cures a Minor Illness; reduces a Major to Minor. ⚕ Medicine Test + items.
🏕 Long Rest	A successful progression Test reduces severity by one step.
Doctor at a settlement	Cures one Illness at any severity. Costs caps and a Rest Activity.

🧫 Infection Care can be attempted once per Illness per 🏕 Long Rest.

Immunity

Robotic beings cannot contract Illnesses

Robots have nothing for an infection to live in. They cannot contract an Illness from any source, and 💊 Antibiotics and 🧼 Antiseptic both have no effect on them.

A biological character inside power armour is not protected.

🏕 Iron Constitution — a character with this 🏕 Adaptation automatically passes any contraction Test that would inflict a Minor Illness. They can still contract a Major Illness on a 🎭 CRITFAIL.

All Illnesses

Illness	Source	In short
🤢 Dysentery	Food-borne	Food and drink restore no HP
🪱 Gut Worms	Food-borne	Mild, but never clears on its own
🥵 Wasting Fever	Food-borne	Escalates fastest — DC 13 progression
🩹 Infected Wound	Wound	One limb cannot heal
🫁 Bonecough	Contagion	Spreads through the camp
👁 Blind Rot	Environmental	👁 Perception loss; cannot keep watch

See Also

• Status Effects — top-level overview
• 💊 Addictions — the other long-running non-combat condition
• 😫 Exhaustion — what an untreated Illness eventually turns into
• 🧫 Infection Care — the ⚕ Medicine treatment
• 📋 Treatment Table