Health

Frequently Asked Questions

Adversaries

• When Towns are Durable (have extra Health) due to Habsburg Monarchy (Livestock Colony) Level 4+: If Invaders blight a land during Ravage, does their Towns' extra Health wear off immediately?
  Yes, it drops to normal at the same time as the Blight is added / the Dahan are damaged. If any such Towns have already taken 2+ Damage, they will be destroyed immediately, before Dahan counterattack.
  Tags: Damage, Health, Durable, Ravage, 2 more...
• Against The Tsardom of Russia Level 2: a damaged Explorer with a Health bonus ends the turn in a way where it won't heal (e.g., in Shroud of Silent Mists' lands). It should be destroyed when the health bonus wears off – is it saved?
  No. Effects wearing off in Time Passes isn't an action, so "A Sense for Impending Disaster" doesn't save the Explorer.

  (This is a provisional answer – if further cases like this suggest that "Effects expire" needs to be an action, it could conceivably change, but that seems the less likely case.)
  Tags: Actions, Action Modifiers, Rulings Under Examination, Heal, 10 more...

Aspects

• If an Action bases its effects around Invaders with a specific amount of Health (e.g., 3 Health worth of Invaders), what does it mean for that Action to affect +1 piece (e.g., for the Intensify Aspect)?
  Also affect one additional piece that meets the original requirement. In the "3 Health worth of Invaders" example, this means affecting any one extra Invader with 3 Health or less.

  Health bonuses and penalties change which pieces can be affected, but Damage does not.
  Tags: Health, Action Modifiers, Dream of the Untouched Land, Radiant and Hallowed Grove (Towering Roots of the Jungle), 2 more...

Definitions

• When you "Remove 3 Health worth of Invaders," can you Remove 3 damaged Towns?
  No, the Health of an Invader doesn't change when it takes Damage. Damaged Towns still count for 2 Health each.

  A few effects (e.g., Kingdom of England Level 5, or some Event/Fear cards) modify Health, which does affect how many Invaders you can Remove. But Damage does not reduce Health. (Health is simply the total amount of Damage it takes to destroy something.)
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Damage, Health, Seek Safety, Belief Takes Root, 16 more...
• If an effect tells you to, eg, "remove 2 Invaders" (Twisted Flowers Murmur Ultimatums), can you just remove 2 Cities?
  Yes. "An Invader" may refer to an Explorer, Town, or City. (p. 30)

  Some Fear Cards remove Invaders based on Health rather than quantity. Those consider all modifiers to current Health (from, e.g., England Level 5, or an Event/Fear card) - but not Damage, as Damage does not reduce Health. (Health is simply how much Damage it takes to destroy something.)
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Invaders, Remove, Health, Isolation (Fear card), 1 more...
• When counting how many Invaders are in a land, are you counting pieces? Or do Towns count as 2 and Cities as 3?
  You're counting pieces.

  "Invader" in the Glossary is defined as "A City, Town, or Explorer", so a land with three Towns and a City has four Invaders in it.

  (A few effects instead key off of "N Health worth of Invaders", and in those cases Towns and Cities generally count for 2 and 3, respectively.)

  Similarly if checking if Dahan "outnumber" Invaders, you are counting physical pieces.
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Invaders, Health, Town, City, 11 more...
• When an effect reduces the Health of a piece (or it loses a bonus to Health), and it has already taken damage equal to its new health, is it destroyed immediately?
  Yes. (Branch & Claw rulebook p. 16)

  Invaders and Dahan have Health and take Damage. As soon as they have taken as much Damage as their Health, they are destroyed, whether that comes from taking more Damage or having their Health reduced.

  Unlike in some other games, doing Damage normally doesn't reduce the Health of the Invaders; there are two separate totals.
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Health, Damage, Farmers Seek the Dahan for Aid, Years of Little Rain, 7 more...

Effect Rules

• When an action removes N Health worth of Invaders scaling with a condition (e.g., the number of Dahan for Inspire the Release of Stolen Lands), do the Invaders have to be removed in batches of N Health?
  No. Total up the Health limit on the removal and then remove a set of pieces that's at or under that limit.

  This only applies if the Invaders are all being removed as part of a single action (e.g., in Inspire a Release of Stolen Lands or Wavering Resolve). If "each player" is removing Invaders (e.g., Seek Safety, Belief Takes Root, Depart the Dangerous Land), then that's one action per player – the totals can't be combined.
  Tags: Health, Inspire the Release of Stolen Lands, Wavering Resolve, Seek Safety, 2 more...
• If an Invader or Dahan is in a land where it has a Health bonus, takes Damage equal to its normal Health, and then gets moved into a land where it has no Health bonus, where is it actually destroyed? (E.g., for *Vengeance of the Dead*)
  The Invader/Dahan is destroyed in the destination land.

  There's no “in between” state where it loses its Health bonus for being out of the first land, but hasn’t yet arrived in the second land; it’s either in the first land and has a Health bonus or in the second land and doesn’t have a Health bonus.

  Moving a damaged piece into a land where it has a Health penalty works similarly.
  Tags: Health, Damage, Triggered Actions, Durable, 16 more...

Event Cards

• When War Touches the Island’s Shores does Damage in a land where Rising Heat of Stone and Sand has exactly 2 Presence, can you take advantage of the Health penalty from Blistering Heat to Destroy Invaders?
  Yes. There is no point at which Rising Heat's Presence has already been destroyed by the Blight, but Invaders haven't yet been checked for taking enough Damage to destroy them.

  This also applies to Far-Off Wars Touch the Island against Durable Invaders.
  Tags: Blight, Timing, Health, Durable, 5 more...
• For the "Wavering Resolve" Event, if you have N Power Cards that add Fear, do you have to choose to Remove a set of Invaders that have exactly N Health between them?
  In most cases, yes. Keep picking more Invaders to remove until it's impossible to pick another without going over N Health. This will usually just be picking the ones you actually want off the island and then using miscellaneous Explorers to get all the way to N.

  In the rare case that it's impossible to exactly hit N Health with the pieces you want to remove, just get as close as you can with the remaining pieces. For example, if the Spirits have 4 relevant Power Cards and the island has 3 Explorers and 2 Cities, then the players can choose to remove just the 3 Explorers (3 total Health) – while this isn't exactly 4 Health worth of Invaders, it's impossible to get closer by choosing another Invader. On the other hand, the players couldn't remove just 1 City (also 3 total Health) – there's a way to get closer to 4 Health by also removing one of the Explorers.
  Tags: Health, Remove, Wavering Resolve

General Play

• What's the timing of ongoing effects expiring?
  All "this turn" effects wear off at the same time. For now, assume all normal Time Passes activity (discard, lose elements, clear damage, ongoing effects expire) is simultaneous. Cards like "Gift of Constancy" (which modify discarding Powers) or "Unquenchable Flames" work because they explicitly specify a timing.

  Rules for non-standard things that happen during Time Passes (like Shroud of Silent Mist's "Slow and Silent Death") can be done before or after effects wearing off unless otherwise specified.

  If it ever becomes clear that there really ought to be some sort of internal ordering to Time Passes, we'll call out that ordering in whatever expansion / FAQ it becomes relevant.
  Tags: Time Passes, Timing, Defend, Action Modifiers, 38 more...
• When a piece or the land has both a bonus and a malus to Health, can players benefit from the standard "min. 1" limit on the malus by applying all of the penalties before the bonuses?
  No, the restriction that Health can't go below 1 applies to the final Health at the end of the computation, not on any intermediate state where only some of the Health modifiers have been applied. Apply all of the bonuses and maluses at once to get the final Health value, and then apply the "min 1." limit at the end.

  This mostly comes up when there are multiple maluses at once or when a single malus is -2 or more. For example, if the land is under the effect of "All Things Weaken" (-1 Health), "Depleted Soil" (-1 Health in lands with Towns/Cities), and "Anchor the Land's Resilience" (+8 Health in Sacred Sites of Vital Strength of the Earth's Resilience Aspect), the final total is 2−1−1+8=8 Health for the land, even though applying the penalties "first" made the Health 0 in the middle of the computation.
  Tags: Health, Durable, All Things Weaken, The Land's Bounty Exhausted, 19 more...

Invader Actions

• Does a damaged Invader or damage Dahan deal less damage than normal?
  No.

  The damage a piece deals doesn't depend on how much damage it has taken - it's 1 per Explorer, 2 per Town, 3 per City, and 2 per Dahan, unless explicitly modified. (Rulebook, p. 9)
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Damage, Invaders, Health, Ravage, 0 more...

Power Cards

• Do Defend effects stack normally with Weave Together the Fabric of Place?
  Yes, if you join a land with Defend 3 and another land with Defend 4, the combined land has Defend 7.

  Similarly, if one land was Isolated before the join, then the joint land will be isolated afterwards, or if Dahan got a Health bonus in one land, they would now get it in the joint land.
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Isolate, Defend, Health, Weave Together the Fabric of Place, 0 more...
• How does Rumbling Earthquakes' ability to ignore Health bonuses interact with already-Damaged Invaders?
  Rumbling Earthquakes ignores Health bonuses only on pieces it damages. [Nature Incarnate, p. 21] (So, e.g., destroying a Durable town with 2 Damage still requires allocating 1 Damage to it.)

  Note that Health penalties are not ignored.
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Health, Damage, Rumbling Earthquakes

Spirits and Innate Powers

• When exactly do you have to pay for Finder's rule Responsibilities to the Dead when you move something?
  There are two cases where Finder of Paths Unseen must pay:

  • When they move a piece in a way that decreases the Health of a damaged Invader/Dahan so it has now taken lethal Damage (one of many ways Finder's action can destroy the Dahan/Invaders with its own action);
  • When they move an Invader/Dahan in a way that directly triggers their destruction by another action (Finder directly triggering their destruction by moving them).

  The first case can happen by causing a Health penalty (e.g., Pushing a damaged Town/City into a Sacred Site of Rising Heat of Stone and Sand) or removing a Health bonus (e.g., Pushing damaged Dahan out of a land with "Infinite Vitality" or Gathering a Blight into a land with a damaged Durable Town against Habsburg Monarchy Livestock Colony Level 4).

  The second case most commonly occurs in conjunction with Powers like "Melt Earth Into Quicksand" and "Call to Guard," and when teaming up with Ocean's Hungry Grasp to Push Invaders into the Ocean (but not when moving Heart of the Wildfire's Presence, since moving the Invaders/Dahan isn't what triggers "Blazing Presence").

  If something prevents the destruction, then Finder does not need to pay. If one triggered action triggers another triggered action that causes destruction (like moving pieces into another Spirit's "Bargain of Coursing Paths," which then moves those pieces into another Spirit's "Melt Earth Into Quicksand"), this does not count as "directly triggering" the destruction.
  (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Triggered Actions, Durable, Health, Responsibilities to the Dead (Finder of Paths Unseen), 8 more...
• When Invaders have increased health, does Ocean's Hungry Grasp get a bonus when exchanging them for Energy?
  No. As the Special Rule says, ignore modifiers to Invader Health when trading Invaders for Energy.

  This applies to all modifiers, whether permanent (e.g., England Level 5) or temporary (e.g., the Event card Tight-Knit Communities).
  (Discussion elsewhere) (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Health, Kingdom of England, Tight-Knit Communities, Drowning (Ocean's Hungry Grasp), 2 more...
• If an effect changes the Health of all pieces that meet a particular condition, does that affect pieces in The Endless Dark?
  Yes, so long as it checks the traits of the piece itself (e.g., what type it is, how much Strife it has) rather than the traits of the land it’s in (e.g., if Blight is present, if at least 3+ Invaders are present).
  Tags: Health, Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine, The Endless Dark (Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine), Kingdom of England, 9 more...
• Can Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares destroy already-damaged pieces by moving them into/out of lands that affect their Health? (Eg: moving a Dahan that has taken 2+ Damage out of a land where it's getting a Health bonus from Promises of Protection.)
  Yes. The Power itself isn't performing any damage or destroy effects, which is what To Dream a Thousand Deaths modifies; it's just changing where a piece is. From that, the game's core rules cause the piece to be destroyed.

  The destruction does still happen within the scope of the action (Power), so triggered actions like Vengeance of the Dead will trigger after the action (Power) is complete.
  Tags: Damage, Health, To Dream a Thousand Deaths (Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares), Infinite Vitality, 3 more...
• When are the bonuses and penalties computed for Downpour's 'Rain and Mud Suppress Conflict' innate power?
  When they're relevant. This power sets up ongoing effects tied to Downpour's Presence, not in a specific land, so if the configuration of Downpour's Presence on the island changes, so does the suppression of damage.

  Practically speaking, check Defend whenever Invaders deal damage (Ravage, usually), Dahan damage reduction when they counterattack as part of Ravage, and Invader/Dahan health reduction whenever they take Damage (or for already-Damaged pieces, when their Health is reduced).
  Tags: Health, Damage, Rain and Mud Suppress Conflict (Downpour Drenches the World)