Dying {X}

As you fall, the pain piercing every part of your body, it begins to subside, your mind drifting in and out of conscious thought, as your life begins to flash in stills and memories before your eyes. You are aware, yet unable to prevent, to cry out for help, to resist. You are dying. You sense the end, ever close, circling like wolves around an exhausted elk, or like vultures or crows and ravens, their cries loud, their excitment obvious. You are dying.

Causes

The dying condition is a natural one that people do experience, some more than others, some less than others and some more traumatically than others. But we all experience it at some point in our lives, and eventually death comes for us all. Dying represents the inevitable, it is a condition you only gain when you are laid low, brought down past your ability to carry on, to resist (so when wounds hit zero mechanically, in a rulebook sense) and generally those whom fall into this state very swiftly end up expiring unless they are saved by medical intervention from an outside source. Some however are hardy enough and capable enough to resist and stave it off over and over, though eventually death does claim every living thing.

Symptoms

It is a literal representation of someone pushed past their limit, their wound threshold, their ability to absorb trauma. The body is failing, they are bleeding out, their organs quitting, whatever flavor it is, they are actively and rapidly ceasing to be in the mortal coil.

Adventures in Valerick Effect: A creature gains an instance of the Dying condition from any number of sources, but for TTRPG purposes the most common will be falling to 0 wounds or less. Once this happens, they are at first just unconscious, and if someone can get them back up before what would be their next turn, they never cross into the dying condition. However within the next turn (or almost immediately in an out of combat scenario) they will gain the Dying {1} condition. In combat from injuries and blood loss, every round after that if a character with this condition is not healed, they must on what would be their turn, make a TN 10+1/rank of Dying Toughness roll. This is NOT a defensive test, it is a flat roll, using only the attribute modifier and nothing else. If they fail, they gain another rank of Dying. If they critically fail they gain 2 more ranks of dying. If a creature hits Dying {4} and fails their next roll, or if they should exceed Dying {4} mathematically because of a roll, they immediately are dead. If they succeed, they gain no further ticks of the Dying condition and if they critically succeed they remove one instance of the Dying condition. If this would bring them out of Dying, they are conscious, but at zero wounds, and suffering Slow (2) until they manage to recover some of their wounds. When a creature comes back from the brink, their Dying conditions become Injured conditions of equal number. These are long term conditions and need to be healed over rests, downtime and with long term medical care checks, as noted under the Injured Condition.

Treatment

Any sort of Wound recovery immediately removes the Dying condition so long as the healing exceeds an amount equal to triple the rank of the condition. So someone who is Dying (3) needs at least 10 points of healing to recover immediately. Alternatively, one can be brought back from the brink and into unconscious territory by a Medical check (that takes 1 minute/rank of dying this is not viable in combat) made against a TN of 10+3/rank of Dying Condition.

Prognosis

The prognosis if left unchecked is likely eventually death.

Prevention

One cannot truly (or at least without it being heretical and evil) prevent death, at least not forever. However common sense, not getting stabbed, and being aware of one's surroundings at all times are good general practices to aid in the endeavor of staying alive.