Fatigue DiceRule

24.11.2021

Fatigue is a system that describes a character's weariness or exhaustion.

A character's fatigue can be found on your character sheet. By default, it is 0.

Gaining Fatigue

A variety of effects can provoke fatigue; a grueling hike, enduring cold, too-intense combat, or lack of sleep can all do so. Some effects explicitly mention the accumulation of fatigue; in other cases, the DM decides when it is appropriate to be fatigued.

Usually, a character must make a Constitution check against a DC that grows incrementally higher the longer an exhausting activity goes on.

Calculating Fatigue

When a character gains a fatigue die, they roll a die equivalent to their Hit Die size. The result is added to your fatigue total.

HP maximum decrease. While fatigued, your HP maximum decreases by your fatigue total.

Heal Inhibition. While you have fatigue points, all nonmagical healing goes into reducing your fatigue rather than increasing your current HP. If your current HP equals your current HP maximum, magical healing also goes into reducing your fatigue. Note that in this case, you heal at half rate: one point goes into reducing fatigue, one into increasing your current HP.

Total Exhaustion. If your fatigue is equal to or greater than your current HP maximum, you are completely exhausted. You have disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks.

Loosing Fatigue

Normally, such as when you have combat-caused fatigue, a simple short rest can remove some or all of your fatigue. However, certain excrutiating conditions - such as extremely cold or hot temperatures, or a lack of food or water - must be negated before you can remove fatigue through nonmagical means. The DM decides when this is the case, and what must be done to start recuperating. For example, you might not be able to reduce fatigue during a winter hike, and have to hope you reach the village before freezing to death.