Holding Your Breath

Adventurers often need to hold
their breath – whether to dive or to
survive poison gas, strangulation, vac-
uum, etc. Your HT determines the
length of time you can hold your
breath, as follows:
No Exertion (e.g., sitting quietly or
meditating): HT¥10 seconds.
Mild Exertion (e.g., operating a
vehicle, treading water, or walking):
HT¥4 seconds.
Heavy Exertion (e.g., climbing,
combat, or running): HT seconds.
These times assume you have one
second to take a deep breath (requires
a Concentrate maneuver in combat).
Multiply all times by 1.5 if you hyper-
ventilate first – or by 2.5 if you hyper-
ventilate with pure oxygen. A success-
ful roll against Breath Control skill
(p. 182) multiplies these times by a
further factor of 1.5. However, if you
are surprised and don’t have a chance
to take a deep breath – e.g., when a gas
grenade goes off in combat – halve
these times instead.
Regardless of circumstances, each
level of the Breath-Holding advantage
(p. 41) doubles the time you can hold
your breath.
At the end of this time, you start to
lose 1 FP per second. At 0 FP, you
must make a Will roll every second or
fall unconscious, and are likely to die
unless
you
are
rescued.
See
Suffocation (p. 436) for details.