Resilience - Dehydration/Starvation

Most species cannot survive for long without water and food. While most adventures abstract these fundamental biological needs, others might focus on survival, having the characters stranded on an island, a ship or any other remote location without easy access to supplies. The Expanded Player's Guide already have Dehydration rules on page 31. The suggested rules that follow are an alternate way to handle Dehydration, as well as Starvation, going deeper in the concept.
The effects of starvation or dehydration are harsh, but they can be mitigated through Resilience checks. But even a character will high Resilience will only be able to delay their end for a few days. In order to make things interesting without making them too burdensome and tedious to track, this author recommends using the following rules to represent a character’s thirst and hunger.
After each day without water or each week without food, a character will have to make a Resilience check. If they fail, their dehydration or starvation goes up one stage (see the table below). Aside from the penalty to a character’s Strain Threshold, the other penalties are cumulative between dehydration and starvation. Therefore, a character at stage 2 of dehydration and at stage 1 of starvation would upgrade the difficulty of all checks 3 times (twice from dehydration and once from starvation).
Eventually, the character will fail a third check. At this point, the dehydration or starvation has run its course and the character perishes as their organs cease to function.
The presented rules assume a human character. If the character is of a different species, they might require a different intake. In this case, the GM would have to adjust the frequency at which these checks are made, with each step representing about one third of the period the species can survive without hydration and nutrition.
Once a character has eaten or drank a reasonable amount of food or water, they no longer suffer from these penalties. Note that if a character has going without water for 2 days, drinking a significant portion of water will only reduce the penalties from a single day. To recover completely, the character needs to continue drinking water. The same holds true for food and starvation.
EXAMPLE OF A DEHYDRATION/STARVATION CHECK
Kiev is a civilian trapped in a city in time of civil war. The city's gates have fallen, and rebels are fighting the military in the streets as Kiev tries to survive in a ruined house. Water is contaminated and there is no more power. During the day, he goes out trying to find resources like food, water, medicine, weapons, and medicine. During the night, he barricades himself in his basement, trying to get some sleep.
So far, he's been eating canned food and dry travel rations, but water has run out. After a day without water, the GM calls for a Hard (ddd) Dehydration check. Since he has a safe place to rest, he adds b to his check. Kiev is a hardened soldier and can handle it, generating ssh. Since he succeeded, his Dehydration stage stays the same. The GM spends the h to add b to his next Dehydration check.
The next day, Kiev once against is unable to get something to drink. The GM calls for a Dehydration check. Since this is day 2, the check starts at Daunting (ffff), adding b from the last check's h. The roll generates ffh. Since he failed, his dehydration stage increases by 1. His Strain Threshold is reduced by half. He also upgrades the difficulty of all checks once. The GM spends the h to have him suffer 2 strain. Finally, he won't be healing wounds overnight anymore.
On the third day, Kiev desperately tries to find water but comes home with nothing to drink. The GM calls for a Formidable (ddddd) Resilience check. The roll ends up generating ffffhh. Failing the check, his Strain Threshold drops to 0 and all checks will now be upgraded twice. The GM also spends the hh to have people raid Kiev's home.
They ended up beating him up and stealing his food. Kiev finally wakes up the next day as his body had a hard time recovering. He now stands at 0 strain and suffering from a single point of strain will knock him out again. Too weak to go out to scavenge, he decides to drink the highly contaminated water from the well. He will probably get sick but at least he will drink. Kiev drinks enough water to count as a day's ration. His dehydration stage decreases by 1. His Strain Threshold goes back up to half of his normal value and the checks will only be upgraded once. This also decreases the difficulty on the next Dehydration check back to Daunting (d).
Kiev desperately needs to find clean water before the effects on the contaminated water effect him.