The Four Pools
Generally speaking, you’ll take damage in one of 3 ways: as a result of a failed roll (like falling onto spikes after whiffing a jump), as a result of some action you take (such as wading into lava or drinking poison), or as a result of an enemy Attacking you (getting stabbed by a kobold spear). When you take damage, that will be indicated as a value and a type (“You take 9 Elemental damage as the cloud of acid mist envelops you”). There are 4 Pools of Hit Points: Physical, Elemental, Emotional, and Mental. When you take damage, for whatever reason, the damage you take will be allocated into one of those Pools. When a Pool’s value meets or exceeds your maximum HP, you start incurring negative effects, and you’ll need to take care of that pretty quickly or risk losing your character.
Physical: Stab wounds, concussive strikes, the kisses of iron and tempered wod. Anything that would leave you bleeding is probably Physical damage.
Elemental: Frostbite, burns, acid, magic. That which damages the flesh with forces beyond wood or steel is Elemental damage.
Emotional: The heartwrenching pull of grief, perhaps, or the irresistible paranoia of fear. If you would be left sobbing, you’ve probably suffered Emotional damage.
Mental: The gibbering pull of the incomprehensible, the dismantling of your assumptions about reality. If you are sputtering or shaking your head at something inconceivably true, chances are you’ve taken Mental damage.
Physical and Mental HP are broadly classified as “Meat HP”: your body is suffering and deteriorating as you get hit with this sort of damage. Emotional and Mental HP are broadly classified as “Mind HP”: they don’t affect your physical body, but they sure do put your psyche through the ringer. You’ll see Physical and Elemental called the Meat Pools, and Mental and Emotional be called the Mind Pools.
Suffering from Damage
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Below, you’ll see a lot of X/X notation. That means Meat/Mind: that which precedes the slash is the notation or terminology for the Meat Pools, and what comes after is for the Mind Pools.
Bloodied/Rattled
If one HP Pool is above your max, the only Actions you can take are to Move or Shout. This condition ends upon that Pool going below your max.
Haggard
If one Meat Pool and one Mind Pool are both above your maximum, you cannot take Actions (as if you were Unconscious/Inconsolable), but you do not have to make a roll.
Unconscious/Inconsolable
If both Meat pools or both Mind pools exceed your max HP, you can no longer take Actions. When you enter this state, all allies that can see you take 1d4 Emotional damage. It’s traumatizing to see a compatriot fall! On your next turn, make a straight CON/CHA roll with a +2 for every CLOSE ally who uses an Action to succeed on an INT Medicine/CHA Amiability roll. This roll is HARD if you have 3 Pools exceeding your max.
Dead/Deranged
If you fail that roll, or if all 4 Pools ever exceed your max at once, you are removed from play. Either dead as a doornail or utterly insane, it’s time to either roll up a new one or ask your party members very nicely to take your corpse/madness-wracked form to some strange corner of the earth and weather trial by trial to restore you to normal.
Traumatized/Scarred
If you succeed on that roll, you’re alive, sane and stable, but you’re Haggard until only one Pool is above your max. However, your body/psyche does not forget so easily. You permanently carry some scar/trauma from the experience, either determined by the DM or rolled from a table in Chapter X.
To summarize: If you have 1 Pool above your max, you are either Bloodied or Rattled. If you have 2 Pools above your max, you are either Haggard, Unconscious, or Inconsolable, depending on what Pools they are. If you have 3 Pools above your max, you are Unconscious or Inconsolable, and your roll is HARD. If all 4 Pools are above your max, or if you failed on your roll, kiss your character goodbye! If you succeeded on your roll, you gain a scar/trauma, and you’re Haggard until only 1 Pool exceeds your max.
Respite and Regaining HP
You can reset your HP with a safe opportunity to lick your wounds, take a nap, eat a good lunch, and prepare for whatever shit the world will throw at you next. There are two types of respite like this: Rallies and Rests.
Rally. A short break to catch your breath and regain composure. Anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours long, a Rally allows you to reset one of your HP pools to 0. In addition, you might regain some use of your Class abilities.
Rest. A full reset. Either a return to civilization or a multi-day (d4 nights, in fact) campout in a secluded area, there’s not a lot a Rest won’t refresh. When you Rest, refresh all your HP pools to 0. In addition, the vast majority of your Class abilities will reset as well.
If an attempt at respite is interrupted, you gain no benefit from it. You’ll have a hard time catching a Rest in a dungeon for that very reason. However, if you find that you can’t spare the time to find respite, all is not lost. There are other ways to undo HP damage. Take potions of healing, chew on calming herbs, be magically healed by a spellcaster, bask in a holy fountain, any number of things might help you weather HP damage as might come up in an adventure.
I like this system because I can do a lot more with HP. One of the things I wanted to do with PJS is to give as many different tools as possible to make as many different scenarios and types of play possible as I could, and Mental and Emotional damage makes it a lot easier to do that. Now you can have a senate debate, or the gradual loss of sanity, or a yo momma battle in the streets, all be actual Scenes and have serious weight to them. ESPECIALLY if Max HP is particularly low, and resource management is an issue. Do we go into the room with the orcs and risk Physical damage, the corridor with the fire trap to take Elemental damage, or the dark and cobwebby vault that’ll make us take Emotional damage?
