A Question about Advancement from 0 to 1 Health

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
1

I’m Dming BW for the first time for six of my friends. While playing through “The Duchy Verdorben” a question about advancement arose. Is it possible to get back up from a Health exponent of 0?
During the adventure a character inhaled a toxic fume which caused a health test, the margin of error determined how much health he will permanently lose.

Now i don’t know how common it is to permanently lose attribute points, but it explicitly said these points can only be regained through advancement. Furthermore the test that determined how much he loses was a challenging test, would it then be possible to drop to 0 health but through advancement gain a point back right away? How many marked tests would be required to go from 0 to 1?

For now the character fell into a comatose state, I will discuss the options with the player depending on your answers.

Edit: changed stat points to attribute points

2

Hmmm. Can you test an attribute of 0 at all? You cannot with a skill, and a stat of 0 would mean permanent incapacitation.

I’d recommend inflicting a wound penalty instead of a permanent loss, or a trait if you want something a bit more long-term (“short of breath”).

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3

Hmmm. Can you test an attribute of 0 at all? You cannot with a skill, and a stat of 0 would mean permanent incapacitation.

That’s what I fought, what I was wondering is, what happens with the already marked tests. I guess they would still apply to the now lowered attribute.

I only used the permanent loss because it was described that way in the adventure, I might do it differently now.

4

When a stat changes, you lose all recorded tests for it.

The rule for exponent 0 is on p. 37, btw: no tests possible at all, you cannot even spend artha on it. (That’s for stats, skills or attributes only, to be clear: resources are a different thing.)

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5

Ah ok, thank you very much! That’s what I missed.
The characters fate is sealed then.

6

I don’t know, getting permanently knocked out of a game from a single test when you didn’t face that danger with open eyes is not something that should ever happen in BW. That does not feel right to me.

Also, Health is not your hit points or something like that. It just measures your guy’s ability to pass health tests. Usually it only comes up when you need to recover from injuries or resist some types of stress. It’s not a stat either, so reducing it to 0 would not necessarily mean incapacitation. Or would it? It just means you fail every health test that comes up.

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7

I like the idea that you simply can’t make Health tests any more. Your body has given itself to degradation.

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8

Pretty sure that Health 0 means your dead. Doesn’t the ‘Diseased’ trait kill you if you hit Health zero?

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