Are there rules in one of the expansions that deal with starvation before I make up my own? I can't seem to find anything.

Before someone moans about why are you tracking food or water, I would only be interested in such rules for when the PCs crash land on a desolate planet, get dumped into the middle of the Jundland Wastes, etc.

In a situation where food and water are not readily available, you could introduce a Starvation and Dehydration effect. There are, after all, Field Rations in the Corebooks. The character I created always has 5 Field Rations, good for 1 day each, on him. It's kind of 'duh' scenario for him.

Im with you, a session of dealing with being marooned sounds great.

The only guidelines i know of are in the Skills chapter under Survival, although the explorer book probably has some ideas dotted through it too.

what ideas did you have for the slow consequences of not having food or water?

The only guidelines i know of are in the Skills chapter under Survival, although the explorer book probably has some ideas dotted through it too.

what ideas did you have for the slow consequences of not having food or water?

Haven't found anything yet in either of the above sources.

Water can kill you quicker then food. I was tossing around that:

Each day without required amount of water causes 2 Strain and 1 Wound equal to the number of days without. On the 3rd day you suffer 6 Strain and 3 Wounds. Soak doesn't help. Medical aid doesn't help. You would thus quickly go unconscious but wouldn't die for a few days. Tough characters could last a week?

Every day without food causes 1 Strain. Every other day without food causes 1 Wound. Soak doesn't help. Medical aid doesn't help. Not cumulative like water. So, if you had a water source but no food you could survive for quite a while.

Don't know of any rules.

3 days of any kind of exertion in any climate with no water and a human is toast. People on their death beds have gone a week, but they aren't hiking Tatooine.

You can go weeks without food, although after a few days with none and exertion I wouldn't expect anybody to be solving Rubik's cubes quickly....

The only guidelines i know of are in the Skills chapter under Survival, although the explorer book probably has some ideas dotted through it too.

what ideas did you have for the slow consequences of not having food or water?

Haven't found anything yet in either of the above sources.

Water can kill you quicker then food. I was tossing around that:

Each day without required amount of water causes 2 Strain and 1 Wound equal to the number of days without. On the 3rd day you suffer 6 Strain and 3 Wounds. Soak doesn't help. Medical aid doesn't help. You would thus quickly go unconscious but wouldn't die for a few days. Tough characters could last a week?

Every day without food causes 1 Strain. Every other day without food causes 1 Wound. Soak doesn't help. Medical aid doesn't help. Not cumulative like water. So, if you had a water source but no food you could survive for quite a while.

I think you're close here, but rather than being strain and wounds (which could be healed via advantages from skill checks), it should lower the Thresholds. Eventually your threshold will drop to 0 and you pass out.

For humans, I believe it is about 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food before you start to die.

3 days of any kind of exertion in any climate with no water and a human is toast. People on their death beds have gone a week, but they aren't hiking Tatooine.

I left out the minimum requirements. One of the expansion books had gear including a Canteen (1.5 liters) and a Field Ration. That's what got me thinking of this. Using the 1.5 L of a canteen I was going with 1.5 L per day as a minimum, 3 L if you exert yourself or are out of food (food gives you water, lacking it you need to drink more water). These amounts to avoid the negative affects I listed above.

This is all guess work so any input is appreciated. We have many environmental affects listed in RAW I was surprised we didn't have anything for starvation/dehydration since "lost in the barrens" and "starship downed without supplies" are a common scifi adventure plot.

3 days is a good limit without water. People have survived over 60 days without food! but they are not exactly operating at maximum

I like the idea of dropping your threshold too, same as the Triggered Obligation Mechanics, and this should be cumulative.

I would also try to decide if Water or Food where the scarce resource, due to the differing timeframes on them for survivability. then only bother tracking one or the other.:

• you may have a stockpile of crappy space rations on your ship, but the Water Chip broke in the purifier when you crashed on this desert world (10pts for knowing the reference )
• you have been stranded on an uninhabited and hostile Rainforest moon, you know there is an Imp Relay beacon on the top of a very distant dormant volcano, its a long way to walk through dense undergrowth. lucky there are plenty of streams (not to mention you could set your clock by the 4pm thunderstorms!) so water is not an issue, but who knows what can be eaten, you only have enough to last a week in your packs.

The reason I suggested the Survival section was not for hard rules, but for the guidelines given, for example it suggests every extra success provides enough for another person for a day (or week if your checking weekly).

you could also have them not have access to fuel for a fire to keep warm on a tundra world, or during the freezing cold nights in a Desert.

I hope there will surly be a "Behind enemy Lines" style campaign or section in a Career book for AoR, thats probably where they could flesh it out some more

I think you're close here, but rather than being strain and wounds (which could be healed via advantages from skill checks), it should lower the Thresholds. Eventually your threshold will drop to 0 and you pass out.

Keep lowering the Thresholds then what? What happens at 0 ST? What happens at 0 WT? Receive a Critical every day?

I also think there should be some sort of debilitating effects before you drop over unconscious or dead (a.i. Setbacks). But, I also don't want it to be overly complicated.

Pass out... i.e. if your alone your screwed! if your in a party its on them to save you.

probably could have it coincide with a major obstacle in their path.

i would hesitate to make the lack of food/water the reason a PC dies, but instead use it to weaken them before a major encounter, such as their destination is guarded, or the ship that comes to "Rescue" them is Slavers, or Bounty Hunters, or ISB's looking for the Force User in the party.

I think you're close here, but rather than being strain and wounds (which could be healed via advantages from skill checks), it should lower the Thresholds. Eventually your threshold will drop to 0 and you pass out.

Keep lowering the Thresholds then what? What happens at 0 ST? What happens at 0 WT? Receive a Critical every day?

I also think there should be some sort of debilitating effects before you drop over unconscious or dead (a.i. Setbacks). But, I also don't want it to be overly complicated.

When your threshold drops to less than 0, you're dying. Since you are no longer functioning on your own, without help from someone else means you won't live. So, yes, start piling on the crits. The character is now unconscious. To recover, you need to find food/water, but that won't restart the clock, just give you more time. In other words, the thresholds will go up if you find food/water, but not bounce all the way back to full. It takes time to recover from dehydration/hunger and doing it wrong can kill you just as lack of food/water can.

3 days of any kind of exertion in any climate with no water and a human is toast. People on their death beds have gone a week, but they aren't hiking Tatooine.

I left out the minimum requirements. One of the expansion books had gear including a Canteen (1.5 liters) and a Field Ration. That's what got me thinking of this. Using the 1.5 L of a canteen I was going with 1.5 L per day as a minimum, 3 L if you exert yourself or are out of food (food gives you water, lacking it you need to drink more water). These amounts to avoid the negative affects I listed above.

This is all guess work so any input is appreciated. We have many environmental affects listed in RAW I was surprised we didn't have anything for starvation/dehydration since "lost in the barrens" and "starship downed without supplies" are a common scifi adventure plot.

Humans need like a gallon of water a day with any real level of exertion and that goes up if we are talking desert world.

Estimates from history were the typical Roman soldier consumed anywhere from 3500 to 6500 calories daily, depending on whether they were marching, fighting, in cantonment, etc.

Now with gee whiz sci fi tech like Star Wars you can assume there is some kind of portable evaporator to draw some moisture from the air as part of a survival kit.

The other option is you have to have them find some amounts through survival checks, which could involve fun narrative type stuff like falling in behind Banthas and using their 'spent resources' as they make them available.....

Take 2:

WATER

Requirement of 1.5 liters per day. 3 liters with exertion or no food. Each day without the requirements drops ST by 2 and WT by 1. Either at 0 means you can't act or are unconscious, as usual. Once one reaches 0 you will die within 24 hours. Meeting the requirement starts increasing the thresholds at the same rate.

Adverse affects to all actions: 1 Setback after 1 day. 2 Setbacks after 2 days. Add 1 downgrade after 3 days. Increase to 2 downgrades after 4 days or more (maximum affect of 2 setback and 2 downgrades).

FOOD

Each day without lowers ST by 1 on odd days and WT by 1 on even days. Either at 0 means you can't act or are unconscious, as usual. Once one reaches 0 you will die within 1 week. Eating food daily starts increasing the thresholds at the same rate.

Adverse affects to all actions: 1 Setback after 1 day. 2 Setbacks after 3 days. Add 1 downgrade after 1 week. Increase to 2 downgrades after 2 weeks.

Do the adverse affects stack if you are out of food AND water or should you just use the worse of the two (water)?

I think adding setbacks is good. They def gotta have H2O quickly, and by they I mean humans.

certain species may be affected differently too, so probably look at the Party, if anyone stands out as vulnerable to lack of water, or lack of food, then increase the effects for them.

setback is a great idea, could impose the ponderous quality on them at some point too, no free manoeuvre.

Survival skill for finding food and water is great, but the skill for withstanding deprivation of food and water (when Survival fails to provide) would be Resilience.

perhaps a resilience roll every 6hrs without water, or every day without food. failure imposes ST reduction.

each test gets steadily harder, P, PP, PPP, PPPP, PPPPP, RPPPP, RRPPP, RRRPP, RRRRP, RRRRR...

i think it would need play testing, to get the right feel. its also one of those times the Party is given 2 ways to go, but both end up in the same place IYKWIM

Survival skill for finding food and water is great, but the skill for withstanding deprivation of food and water (when Survival fails to provide) would be Resilience.

Just when I had something I was starting to like you remind me that there should be some sort of skill check involved.

Makes sense to make a Resilience check daily when suffering from starvation or dehydration. The threshold decreases and adverse affects could probably be dealt out simply with the daily roll? Difficulty of the roll should be increasing as the days go by leading eventually to upgrades to the difficulty. These will eventually lead to a Despair which causes the sufferer to collapse.

Back to the drawing board.

Seperate roll for Starvation and Dehydration or combine into one?

Richard we posted at the same time.

lol, yep!

Richard we posted at the same time.

Survival skill for finding food and water is great, but the skill for withstanding deprivation of food and water (when Survival fails to provide) would be Resilience.

Seperate roll for Starvation and Dehydration or combine into one?

I'd do one, they'll die of thirst long before they starve or really suffer any malnutrition effects.

Humans would die of dehydration before starvation, but that's not necessarily true for everyone. A lungless Gand may asphyxiate without food well before dehydration sets in.

also it would be possible to have plentiful supply of water, but no food... on Hoth, in a survival bunker, with a plentiful supply of heat, therefore can melt snow/ice for water... but no food!

Water: 1P per day without. After 5P, each day starts upgrading the difficulty. If also without Food, +1P. Resilience check daily.

Food: 1P+1P per week without. After 5P, each week starts upgrading the difficulty. Resilience check daily.

Success = No WT or ST drop.

Failure = -1 WT and -1 ST each Failure? Can't be alleviated with medical. Increase 1 each with a day of Food/Water.

Threats = 1 Setback to all actions except Resilience per 2? These are cumulative and only removed 1 at a time with a day of Food/Water. Cap at 4 Setbacks.

Advantages = ??

Triumph = Regain 1 each WT and ST?

Despair = Suffer an additional 1 WT and 1 ST drop regardless of success?

At 0 ST unconscious as usual. At 0 WT collapse and can't act as usual. Daily Resilience check then is to avoid death? Or, death at -2 WT? Should death instead be caused by Despairs while 0 WT which will be coming once you start upgrading the difficulty and thus only after several days (water) or weeks?

This would need some testing to see how quickly or how long a typical person would survive. If you drop too quickly or not quickly enough compared to reality for lack of food and/or water, adjust the WT/ST loss for failures.

STILL OVERLY COMPLICATED FOR ME. What I want is Resilience checks involved, debilitating effects leading to eventual unconscious and death if nothing is ever done to find food/water.

OK, here's how I would do it:

First of all, I'd have my players forage for food and water. This would be the Survival skill, with the difficulty depending on their general surroundings (Easy for a jungle, Formidable for desert). Throw in a couple of setback dice for them being unprepared (it's a "shipwreck" situation, after all) which can be reduced or removed with the Forager talent.

Say you have one PC or group searching for water while another searches for food. Each group rolls Survival. Every success means enough food/water for one character for one day.

Next it's time to roll Resilience. Anyone eating and drinking a full day's worth of rations don't have to roll. Everyone else makes an Average; Resilience check (got food or water) or Hard: Resilience (got neither food nor water). If people share their rations evenly reduce the difficulties by one but add a setback die (or two, if they found supplies for less than half the group). Advantage or Triumphs (or Threat and Despair) rolled on the Survival check above can add bonuses or penalties.

Failing the Resilience check with Threat upgrades the difficulty of all checks during the subsequent day by one. Failing with Advantage adds a setback die. Success means you're fine, but Threat inflicts strain.

I'd be a little careful about inflicting Wounds directly from failed Resilience checks. That's too easy to fix with a stimpack or a Medicine check. Better to adjust the various difficulties and then have the PCs make checks like Athletics, Survival, and so on during the subsequent days and interpret Threat and Despair as more conventional injuries from falling and other accidents.