Experimental Addition: Debilities

Injuries may have longer-lasting, and minor, consequences outside the cut and thrust of combat, but in the
immediate term the pain or physical impairment can momentarily hamper your actions until you manage to
shake it off. To reflect this – and to provide a little more lasting colour to the existing Wounds system –
suffering a serious Wound (9+ on the Wounds table) or takes 20+ hp from a single attack or effect also gives a
character a temporary debility as determined by the DM.

While under a debility condition, an opponent of the DM’s choice, as appropriate to the situation, gets an
opening if you take an action that meets its applicable trigger. Debilities last until you choose to end them by
meeting their discharge requirement.

 An opening allows an opponent to react before your action completes to gain an advantage against
you, to act to preserve themselves, or to act directly against you or an ally reasonably caught up in your
action. This does not use their regular action, reaction or paragon action. As a rule of thumb, an
opening allows a manoeuvre, a move of half speed, a single attack, a low-level spell, or the like.

If you remain under this condition at the end of your turn, the DM may choose one of the following during the
subsequent round (until the end of your next turn): an enemy hit (attack or spell) does +5 damage to you; an
ability check or save DC you face is +3; your speed is reduced by 10’. If you are under multiple conditions the
effects may apply to separate checks or effects, or stack on a single one.

You may discharge this condition without resting, ending it, if you choose to, at an appropriate point in your
own turn or another’s, by meeting the applicable discharge criterion.

Triggers:

 use a directly damaging weapon or spell against a target within 10’ or less.
 use a directly damaging weapon or spell without moving at least 10’.
 use a directly damaging weapon or spell against a target further than 10’ from you.
 use a directly damaging weapon or spell if you’ve moved more than 10’.
 take any regular action without an ally within 5’.
 take any regular action with an enemy within 5’.
 use a directly damaging weapon or spell against the same opponent two rounds in a row.
 use a non-damaging feat, ability or spell.

(“Directly damaging” refers to using an attack or effect with an immediate damage value attached to it.
Dropping a chandelier on a target by slicing through the rope is not directly damaging (as the action targets the
rope, not the person), nor is blasting a hole in the side of the ship to drown them, or employing a spell that
creates a zone affecting anyone within it for the duration.)
Discharges:

 take damage to your own weapon, magic item, armour or shield, or destroy a piece of your mundane
non-combat equipment or single magic consumable or a collection of mundane consumables of a given
type.
 distract or obstruct an ally; they have disadvantage on their next main action, or an opponent gains an
advantage against them they wouldn’t have otherwise had when acting against that ally.
 stumble, disallowing movement when movement would be of clear worth (if pursuing/fleeing an
enemy, they gain advantageous position and an opening).
 find yourself blindsided; either give up your own reaction at a significant moment, or make an ally lose
theirs.
 sow confusion; misdirect an ally’s action to a random target, or an enemy’s action at yourself instead of
its intended target.
 be momentarily beyond help; gain no benefit from an ally’s buff ability or spell, or healing, for its
duration when such a benefit would be of significant value to you at the time.
 fail a physical ability check (or something that could involve one) inside or outside combat where there
are significant consequences or complications.
 fail a mental or social ability check (or something that could involve one) inside or outside combat
where there are significant consequences or complications.

(“At a significant moment”, “when it would be of clear benefit/worth” or “with significant consequences”
should be determined at the time. As a rule of thumb, they refer to times when the action in question matters;
giving up your reaction when the last bloodied goblin limps out of your reach isn’t significant as the party’s
going to run him through anyway – failing to counterspell an enemy fireball when you could (even if you might
actually prefer to keep the slot anyway) is absolutely significant.)

Once discharged, a debility ends. Otherwise, when the character completes their next rest, all debilities still on
them end too.