Health and Recovery

In C22 systems, a character is represented by their deck.  This means their livelihood is also represented more by their deck than by their Health. Because of this, healing is difficult and limited in C22 systems. If a character’s Health ever reaches 0, they go unconscious. If they take damage while unconscious, they die.  Characters will have limited options to recover Health or prevent damage.  This section will walk through those three different methods: Recovery, Soaking, and Resting. 

Recovery

Every character will have a limited number of Recovery Skills they can use between rests.  These Skills allow a character to recover from some of the stresses of battle.  Recovery Skills require Recovery points to use. At first level a character can use two recovery actions before resting.  This amount will increase as the characters level up.

Recovery Skills are noted by a (R) by the name of their Specific Skills.  The Skills still have common types (attack, movement, etc), but spend recovery in addition to their other costs.  Not all Skills require the same number of recovery points, but this information can be found below and in Appendix S.  Recovery points are recovered at a rate of 1 per hour rested.

Below is a list of the standard Recovery Skills that are default to all C22 systems. The following information on the specific Recovery Skills is also included in Default Skills, under each Specific Skill.

Adrenaline Rush (Reaction)

A Recovery Skill that grants temporary Health to the character.  This Health lasts only 2 rounds.

Comfort (Main)

A Recovery Skill that allows a character to heal another character and remove up to 1 minor negative status from the character.

First Aid (Non-Combat)

A Recovery Skill that allows a character to permanently heal themselves or another character outside of combat.

Rally (Main)

A Recovery Skill that allows a character to permanently heal all nearby allies for a small amount.

Recuperate (Main)

A Recovery Skill that allows a character to permanently heal themselves for a medium amount.

Shake it Off (Reaction)

A Recovery Skill that allows a character to lessen or ignore status effects.

Soaking

Soaking is a unique ability available to Players and special NPCs, which allows a character to absorb damage taken in exchange for cards in their personal character deck. When a character would take damage, they have the option to soak the damage.  They do this by removing cards from the top of their deck.  For every card removed, the character ignores 1 damage. Removed cards are placed in the removed pile and can only be recovered via special means like resting.

 If the Red Joker is drawn when soaking damage, two points of damage are ignored but the Joker is not removed from the deck. The Player can continue to draw cards for the soak.  If the Black Joker is drawn, one damage becomes unpreventable. In the case either Joker is drawn, the deck is not shuffled until the entire soak is complete or the Players runs out of cards and needs to reshuffle.

If the character cannot remove cards from their deck, they cannot soak damage. In nearly all cases, this will lead to the character’s death. If a character’s deck only has two cards remaining in it, they cannot soak and instead die.

Resting

Resting is when a character chooses to avoid performing stressful activities for an extended period of time.  The easiest way to measure this is by action type.  If the character uses an action other than a social action within that period then they are not resting.

If a character rests for at least 1 hour, they regain recovery points.  If a character rests for at least 7 hours, a long rest, they recover 10 random cards from their removed pile and put them back in their deck.  For every two hours they rest over 7 hours, they recover another 5 random cards.  If this rest is interrupted by anything, the recovery counter will restart.  By default, resting does not regain Health, but some skills allow a character to recover Health when resting. Once a character has completed a 7 hour or longer rest, they cannot gain the benefits of another for at least another 12 hours.

Death

If a character’s Health drops to 0 or below, they die.  If they can prevent this damage by soaking, they must soak the damage.  If the character has 2 or fewer cards in their deck, i.e, just the Jokers, they cannot soak and are killed instead.