Attributes

Health

Your character's health represents his or her ability to withstand damage through a combination of physical fortitude, willpower, and ability to "roll with the punches." It is a rolling total that gets reduced every time you take damage and increased every time you receive a Heal effect. If it drops to zero, your character falls unconscious and begins dying (see Death for more details).

Note that your character's health can never go lower than zero or higher than his or her maximum health total. Your maximum health total is determined primarily by your level and class(es). Every character begins with 10 health and gains an additional amount of health every level. The amount varies by class. For example, wizards gain 4 health per level and warriors gain 6, so a 10th-level warrior/4th-level wizard has 86 health (10 base, plus 60 for 10 levels of warrior, plus 16 for four levels of wizard). Note that the Fortitude skill can increase your maximum health total further.

Thresholds

Certain characters, particularly those of monstrous races, are more susceptible to certain kinds of damage. This is represented by thresholds. A threshold is composed of three parts: An amount of damage (generally three or five times the character's level), a damage type, and an effect. If the character ever receives damage of the indicated type that is equal to or greater than the indicated amount, he or she also suffers the threshold effect.

For example, undead are vulnerable to blessed damage. An undead character who receives blessed damage equal to or greater than three times his or her level also receives a fear effect. Likewise, an undead character who receives blessed damage equal to or greater than five times his or her level receives a slay effect. Thus, a level 15 undead has the thresholds "45 Blessed - Fear" and "75 Blessed - Slay."

Note that only single damage taglines can trigger threshold effects. For example, if the same undead in the example above takes two separate attacks that inflict 40 blessed damage, neither of the character's thresholds are triggered even though the combined damage would trigger them both. Note also that threshold effects can be countered just like any other effect. Even if a threshold effect is countered, however, the damage is not. Thus, if the example undead receives 50 blessed damage, he or she can counter the fear effect, but takes the damage regardless.