The environment is a weapon

Reference rule — not active yet

What you can lift and carry, by strength.

Strength determines how much weight you can lift and how much any additional encumbrance slows you down. Everything is measured against your light load — twice your Strength score in kilograms — and carrying more than that costs you a modifier and some of your movement.

Light load

twice your Strength characteristic score, in kilograms

The bands are multiples of one number, so you only ever have to remember your light load. Double it for medium, triple it for heavy, and six times it is the maximum you can get off the ground at all. Push or drag rather than carry and you move five times your heavy load, at half speed — which is how a crew moves a crate nobody can lift.

Reference rule — not active yet

High and low gravity, and what each does to you.

The load ladder assumes you are operating at a standard 1.0 gravity. When operating under a different gravitational pull — or within an artificial gravity set to a non-standard value — simply divide your load weight by the gravitational pull to determine the new load weight value under those conditions.

Load weight under other gravity

the standard load weight ÷ the gravitational pull

Every band moves at once, because they are all multiples of the light load. On a heavy world your light load shrinks and the same pack that was comfortable becomes a medium or heavy load with the penalties that go with it; on a light world it grows and you can carry things you could not lift at home. The pack did not change. The world did.

Reference rule — not active yet

Corrosives, and what they do to armour and flesh.

Corrosive acids deal 1D6 damage per round of exposure, except in the case of total immersion — such as into a vat of acid — which deals 10D6 damage per round. An attack with acid, such as from a hurled vial or an animal’s acidic spittle, counts as a round of exposure.

Exposure

1D6 damage per round

Total immersion

10D6 damage per round

The gap between the two damage figures is the whole rule. Splashed, you take a die a round and you have time to deal with it; immersed, you take ten dice a round, which will kill most characters before the second round arrives. And the fumes catch people who never touched the acid at all — standing close enough to push somebody in is close enough to be checking your own Endurance twice.

Reference rule — not active yet

Infection, onset and recovery.

Diseases reduce your characteristics, usually Endurance. You make an Endurance check with the disease’s listed DM to resist it — and if you fail, you take the listed damage and must check again after the disease’s interval. The cycle continues until you pass one.

Read the DM and the interval together, because they are what make one of these an inconvenience and another a death sentence. Regina Flu is +1 to resist and hits again in days for 1D6−2, so you will usually shake it off having lost very little. A biological weapon is −6 to resist and comes back every few hours for 1D6+8 — you will fail most of those checks, and each failure is nine to fourteen points off characteristics that only go up to single figures.

Note also which way the interval cuts. A long interval is not mercy — pneumonia checks again in weeks, which means a character who fails the first check is carrying it for a very long time before they get another chance to be rid of it. A short interval kills faster and also ends faster.

Reference rule — not active yet

Heat and cold, and how long you last.

Unusually hot or cold worlds can cause damage unless you are suitably protected. The temperatures below are in Celsius, and each one names both the damage and how often you take it — which is the number that matters, because the difference between a die an hour and a die a round is a factor of six hundred.

The table is symmetrical about the melting point of water and the jump you care about is the one between the hourly rows and the per-round ones. At −50° or +100° you have hours, which is enough time to reach shelter, fix a suit or be found. At −100° or +200° you are taking a die every six seconds, and the same trip is a matter of surviving the walk to the airlock.

Reference rule — not active yet

Burning, and putting it out.

Characters touching a fire source might find their clothes, hair or equipment on fire. You are allowed a Difficult (-2) Dexterity check to avoid this fate — and if your clothes or hair do catch, you take 2D6 damage immediately and keep checking every round until the fire goes out.

A Difficult check every round for 2D6 is a punishing clock — an average character will burn for several rounds and take twenty points doing it. That is what makes the automatic outs worth planning for. Venting the atmosphere is on that list, which is worth remembering aboard a ship: the fire goes out at once, and then you are in vacuum, which is its own set of rules.

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Damage by distance, and by gravity.

A character who falls on a 1-gravity world suffers 1D6 damage per two meters fallen. High- or low-gravity worlds will increase or decrease that: look up the size code for the world and the gravity level associated with it, and multiply the falling damage by the gravity number.

Falling damage

(1D6 per two meters fallen) × the world’s gravity number

Two metres a die is steep. A four-metre drop from a catwalk is 2D6, which is a real injury; ten metres is 5D6, which is around seventeen points and will put most characters on the floor unconscious; twenty metres is 10D6 and is very likely fatal. There is no check to avoid any of it — falling in these rules is a consequence rather than a contest.

Reference rule — not active yet

Toxins, their onset and their damage.

Poisons operate in the same way as diseases, but generally work much faster and often have a wider range of effects. Most poisons do not have an interval but apply their damage immediately.

The procedure is the disease procedure with the clock removed: an Endurance check at the poison’s DM, and the damage lands at once if you fail. What the sample poisons show is how much wider the effects can be — one of these three does no damage at all and simply puts you down, and another takes points off Intelligence rather than off anything physical.

Reference rule — not active yet

Dose, immediate damage, and what it takes permanently.

Radiation exposure is measured in rads, and it is the one hazard that never goes away. Physical symptoms can be treated and may heal; the radiation does not. Your rads must be tracked, and further exposure adds to what you are already carrying around until a deadly level is reached.

The Effective Endurance column is the part that makes this hazard different from everything else on this page. Your Radiation Level lowers your Endurance characteristic score outright, and it does so the moment you cross into a new level — accumulate enough rads to move up and the new score goes into effect immediately. Move back down, such as through anti-radiation drugs, and you heal the difference between the former level and the current one over time, as if it were physical damage.

And that column is the trap the ladder is built around, because Endurance is what you resist radiation with. Severe is Endurance−10, which is more than most characters have. If your effective Endurance falls below zero you go unconscious and cannot recover until your Radiation Level drops enough to allow healing to take place — so the dose has to come off before anything else can.

Read the two source columns as two different kinds of trouble. An irradiated area gives you nothing on arrival and a dose every hour, so time in the area is the whole risk — a low-level area is 1D6 an hour and you could work in it for a shift before reaching the second Radiation Level, while a severe one is 12D6 an hour, averages 42 rads an hour and takes something like a day of standing in it to reach Severe. Active exposure hits you the instant it happens, and the Instant column is a single dose rather than a rate: the worst of them, 4D6x10, averages 140 rads and cannot exceed 240, so one hit leaves you at Mild, Low or Moderate and no worse. Severe from nothing at all is the Extended column — the same severe source measured by the hour, at 3D6x100, which averages 1,050 and so reaches Severe in about an hour. That is the difference the two columns are drawing: a dose you take once, against a rate you keep taking.

Reference rule — not active yet

Going without food.

In normal climates a character needs about a pound of food per day to avoid starvation. You can go without it for 3 days, in growing discomfort — and after that time you must make a Routine (+2) Endurance check each day, at DM-1 for each previous check, or take 1D6 damage.

Days before the checks begin

3 days

The cumulative penalty is what turns hunger from a nuisance into an ending. The first check is at +2 and most characters pass it; the fifth is at +2 −4, and the tenth is well past the point where any Endurance DM saves you. Because the damage cannot be healed until you eat, each failure also drags your Endurance DM down, which makes the next check worse for a second reason.

Reference rule — not active yet

Going without water.

In normal climates a character needs at least a gallon of fluids per day; in very hot climates, two or three times as much water to avoid dehydration. You can go without water for a number of hours equal to 20 plus twice your Endurance score — and after that, a Routine (+2) Endurance check each hour, at DM-1 for each previous check, or 1D6 damage.

Hours before the checks begin

20 + twice your Endurance score

This is the same procedure as starvation with the check falling every hour instead of every day, so it runs twenty-four times faster, and it is the clock that kills first. The grace period is the only part that rewards a tough character — Endurance 12 buys 44 hours where Endurance 4 buys 28 — and once the hourly checks start, the cumulative penalty takes them down in a day either way. Thirst is a problem measured in hours; hunger is a problem measured in weeks.

Reference rule — not active yet

Going without air.

In an area without sufficient oxygen — on board a starship without life support, say — you begin to suffocate, suffering 1D6 damage each minute. If you are utterly without air, such as being smothered, strangled or dumped out of an airlock, you suffer 1D6 damage each round instead.

A round is six seconds and a minute is ten rounds, so the second row is ten times faster than the first — and there is no check in either. Thin air gives you the several minutes it takes to reach a locker and get a mask on. No air at all gives you three or four rounds before an average character is unconscious, which is a decision made before the airlock opens rather than after.

Reference rule — not active yet

Exposure to no atmosphere at all.

Beings exposed to the airless cold of space are not immediately doomed. Contrary to popular belief you do not freeze or explode, and your blood does not boil in your veins — space is very cold, but heat does not transfer away from a body that quickly. The real danger comes from suffocation and ionizing radiation.

Vacuum is three rules at once and only one of them is printed here. The suffocation rate is the no-air row — 1D6 a round — the radiation is a high-level irradiated area, and the bends is what this section adds on top. All three run simultaneously from the moment you are exposed, and the check is Very Difficult, so a character who is out there for any length of time is stunned, irradiated and running out of characteristics together.

Reference rule — not active yet

Storms, and what they do to travel and to people.

Driving wind, rain, snowstorms and so forth give a −1 DM to ranged attacks from poor visibility and a −1 DM to ranged attacks from environmental interference. Sensors can be used to avoid the visibility penalty. Extremely high winds and torrential rain can inflict a negative Dice Modifier of −1 to −4 to all skill checks.

The two shooting penalties stack — bad weather is −2 to a ranged attack before anyone takes cover — and only half of that is answerable with equipment. Sensors buy back the visibility point and do nothing about the interference one. The third row is the larger rule and the vaguer one: at the top of its range, severe weather is −4 on everything you attempt, which is worse than most hazards on this page and does not care what you are attempting.