Fatigue

How units tire in battle, from attacking and from casting, what a tired unit loses, when it falls unconscious, and how a communion shares the cost of a spell.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake6 min read

Fatigue is a running total that every unit carries during a battle. It goes up when the unit attacks or casts a spell, and it drags on the unit’s fighting as it rises. Two limits matter: at 100 a unit collapses, and at 200 further strain starts to cost hit points. This page covers what adds fatigue, what a given amount of it costs, and what the manual says about getting rid of it.

All the figures here are the ones the manual states. We have not re-measured them, so this page reports what Illwinter says the rules are. Where the manual is silent we say so at the end.

What a tired unit loses

Fatigue has penalties that apply continuously, so a unit gets steadily worse as the total climbs rather than all at once.

• Defence. Every full 10 points of fatigue lowers the unit’s defence skill by 1. Partial tens do not count: a unit at 19 has lost 1, and one at 20 has lost 2.
• Attack. Every full 20 points lowers its attack skill by 1, counted the same way.
• Critical strikes. The manual’s attribute list adds that a fatigued unit is more susceptible to critical strikes. It does not say more. The wiki’s term for a hit that gets past part of the target’s armour is the armor-defeating hit; we have not confirmed that this is the effect the manual means, so read the link as a pointer only.

The two penalties differ in size. A fighter at 60 fatigue has lost 6 from defence and 3 from attack, so tiredness weakens a unit’s defence twice as fast as its offence. For how attack and defence are compared in a blow, see Combat; for the stats themselves, see Unit attributes.

Where fatigue comes from

Attacking

A unit that attacks gains fatigue equal to its current encumbrance, each time it attacks. The manual is explicit that moving does not add fatigue on its own: only the act of attacking does. The manual also says that the more encumbered a unit is, the more fatigued it becomes during combat.

So the cost of a blow is set by the attacker, not by the weapon or the target. A lightly loaded skirmisher pays little for each swing; a heavily loaded fighter pays a lot, and the penalties above arrive sooner.

Casting spells

Casting a spell in battle costs fatigue in two separate parts.

The first part is the spell’s own listed fatigue cost. A caster who has exactly the required skill in the spell’s magic path pays all of it. For every level of skill above the minimum, the cost shrinks: the caster pays one part in one plus the number of extra levels. One extra level halves it, two extra levels leave a third, three leave a quarter, and so on. This is why a higher-skill mage can keep casting long after a weaker one has tired out.

The second part comes from encumbrance. Every spell cast adds the caster’s own base encumbrance, plus twice the encumbrance of each piece of armour worn. Extra skill does not reduce this part. The manual’s reason is that magical gestures are harder in heavy armour.

The manual words this differently from the attack rule, which speaks of the unit’s current encumbrance once. It does not say whether that current value already includes armour, so we do not claim that the two rules weigh armour differently or the same.

The manual calls fatigue the limit on most casters in battle. It adds that spells which lower fatigue, naming Reinvigoration and Relief, can be very useful for the same reason.

Unconsciousness

A unit that reaches 100 fatigue falls unconscious. It cannot attack or defend while it is down. The manual says that each turn spent unconscious returns 5 fatigue, and the unit wakes as soon as its total is below 100 again. A unit at exactly 100 is still out; at 99 it is up.

The manual does not say what recovery a conscious unit gets, so we make no claim about it.

Exhaustion damage

Fatigue does not stop at 100. A unit that is already at 200 and takes more fatigue takes that extra as hit points damage instead, which the manual calls exhaustion damage. The manual states the rule once for the attribute list and once in the combat chapter, and in both places gives no further detail: it does not list what can push a unit that far.

Sharing the cost in a communion

A communion lets the slaves carry part of the spell’s fatigue. The rule is the manual’s own and is applied to each spell the master casts.

1. Take the cost of the spell, with the skill levels the communion supplies already counted when working it out.
2. Divide it by the number of participants. The participants are the master casting the spell plus every friendly slave on the battlefield.
3. Adjust each slave’s share by how its skill compares with the master’s. An equal skill changes nothing. A higher skill halves the share. A skill below the master’s doubles it, and a skill below half the master’s multiplies it by four.

So skilled slaves carry a communion more cheaply, and a crowd of weak ones pays heavily. If every master dies or flees, the manual says the surviving slaves suffer a backlash: they are stunned for about a round and each takes 3d50 fatigue damage.

What this means in play

These points follow directly from the rules above; they are not extra rules.

• Fatigue from attacking depends only on how often a unit attacks and how encumbered it is, so a unit that never attacks gains nothing from this source.
• Defence falls twice as fast as attack, so a unit that is starting to tire suffers more as a defender than as an attacker.
• A mage with extra levels in the right path casts more spells before it falls: the first extra level saves half the spell’s cost, and each further level saves less than the one before.
• For a caster, the encumbrance part of the cost is not reduced by skill, so heavy armour wastes part of what high skill would otherwise save.
• In a communion, slaves whose skill is below half the master’s are the costliest to include, at four times the divided share.

What this page does not cover

The manual does not say how much fatigue a ranged attack costs, whether the weapon changes the cost of an attack, or what other events add fatigue. It does not give a conscious unit’s recovery, say how a unit reaches 200, or cover fatigue outside battle. It also does not say how the penalties combine with other attack and defence modifiers. We leave these out until a source states them. See also Damage types.