Starvation and Dehydration

With very few exceptions, ponies and all other species need food and water to survive. Notable exceptions to this rule include Alicorns and Ghouls, the former being able to substitute radiation for food, and the latter requiring at least 5 rads worth of radiation per day to survive (or else they begin to starve as described below).

We’ll tackle the issue of starvation first: In order to stave off starvation, a pony must eat at least one full meal every day. Eating less than that will make them begin to starve. As a character begins to starve, the effects of starvation worsen from day to day. For every day they’ve starved, a character takes a -1 temporary attribute penalty (with associated skill penalties and other effects) to one randomly selected attribute other than luck. Roll a D6 and use the table below. The same attribute cannot be reduced two days in a row (re-roll), but attributes can be reduced to zero in this way (which will incapacitate or kill a character, depending on the attribute).

Table XXXII: Starvation

Characters must eat at least 1 nourishing meal a day to avoid starvation. Every consecutive day they do not do so they suffer another -1 to skills and attributes.

If a character eats a meal that does not match their diet, it isn’t considered nourishing to them. Non-nourishing foods will not prevent starvation but allow a character to temporarily ignore the penalties they’re suffering from due to starvation for the next eight hours; in this way, the penalties incurred by starvation and the eventual resulting organ failure can be ignored by a character until the point it kills them.

After 3 consecutive weeks of less than 1 meal a day, the starving character will die (if they haven’t already). Characters who have starved for more than a week cannot reliably keep down foods that provide 2 or more meals worth of nourishment (excepting only Oatmeal and Slop), and must make END MFD ½ to keep such foods down.

Eating more than 3 nourishing meals a day grants ponies a +15 bonus to endurance rolls for the rest of that day, though only if the meals are eaten at least four hours apart from each other.

Dehydration is a much more present danger in the wasteland; if food is scarce, then water is even more so. Characters begin to become dehydrated after not consuming at least 4 hydrating items every 24 hour period. Characters that have gone at least four consecutive 6-hour periods without drinking or eating anything that provides hydration begin to suffer penalties to attributes, skills and accuracy as shown in the table below. For each 6 hour period missed, the character moves one step lower on the table. Dehydration’s effects are cumulative: all of the penalties from the stages above are still incurred, in addition to the current stage of dehydration’s penalty. These penalties worsen every 6 hours afterward, culminating in death after a full 72 hours (3 days) has passed.

Table XXXIII: Dehydration

If a character has been dehydrated for more than 12 hours (they haven’t had anything to drink in 36 hours), they can reverse and/or stave off dehydration’s effects by overhydrating. To overhydrate, a character must consume at least 2d4+2 hydrating items per day instead of the normal minimum of four for at least one full day for every day they were dehydrated, rounded up to the nearest whole day.

While recovering, the previously dehydrated character suffers penalties equal to half of the maximum stage number they had proceeded to on the table above, i.e. a character that was at stage 6 and is in the process of recovering will still suffer from the effects of stages 1-3 until they’ve fully recovered.

If a recovering character becomes dehydrated once more, they begin at the highest numbered stage they’re suffering from the effects of currently and proceed chronologically.

If a character reaches stage 6, they require medical care or at least knowledgeable supervision (medicine or survival MFD 1, or ¾ for a character to self-regulate) in order to be successfully rehabilitated; if someone simply were to give them water without limiting their intake, their natural impulse would drink too fast, cracking their throat and dying in a most ironic fashion. The wounds dealt by either of the organ damage stages may kill a pony, and can only be removed by the natural healing effects of drink. Healing potions automatically reduce these by 1 for every healing potion imbibed, but cannot remove them with healing magic.

Characters that are within 6 hours of death by dehydration require medical aid in the form of healing magic in addition to some other hydrating item. Note that healing potions do provide characters with hydration – a single healing potion is just enough to bring a character at this stage back from the brink and start them on the road to recovery.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 861