Status effects: afflictions, burning, poison and more

What a unit can suffer besides lost hit points: afflictions, burning, freezing, poison, stun, paralysis, bleeding, clouds and fear.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake11 min read

Hit points are not the only thing a battle takes from a unit. A blow can leave an injury that lasts for months, a spell can set a unit on fire or freeze it, a snake’s bite can poison it, and a monster’s presence can send a squad running. The manual describes each of these separately. This page gathers them in one place, with the rules the manual gives for how they start, how long they last and how they end.

All figures here are the ones the game’s manual states. We have not re-measured them, so this page reports what Illwinter says the rules are. For the resistances that change several of these effects, see resistances. For the kinds of physical blow, see damage types.

Afflictions

An affliction is a lasting injury or illness. The game marks an afflicted unit with a red heart, and a unit can have several at once.

How a wound becomes an affliction

Whenever a unit is struck, it may suffer an affliction. The chance is the percentage of its normal hit points that the blow took away. The manual’s example is an infantryman with ten hit points: taking 2 hit points of damage gives a 20 percent chance, and two blows of 4 hit points each give a 40 percent chance each time. If one blow does more than the unit’s whole hit points, the first affliction is certain and the excess rolls again; a 15 hit point blow on a ten-point soldier means one affliction and then a 50 percent chance of another, though the manual points out he is dead by then and the extra only matters if he is raised.

Afflictions come in two levels. The chance that one is major is the affliction chance divided by 1.5, and never more than 33 percent. Where the blow landed decides which afflictions are possible, and the game picks at random among those available for that level and body part.

Which afflictions go with which body part

• Anywhere: battle fright (minor) and profuse bleeding (major).
• Head: eye loss and mute (minor); dementia, feeblemindedness and blindness (major).
• Chest: chest wound (minor); diseased and never-healing wound (major).
• Arm: weakened (minor); lost an arm (major).
• Leg: limp (minor); crippled (major).

A lost arm or a lost eye can only come from a blow that landed on that part of the body.

Limp and crippled

A limp takes 4 points off a commander’s map movement. Ordinary units keep their movement, but if their army moves further than one province in a month, each of them has a one in four chance of being crippled.

A cripple costs a commander 75 percent of its map movement. An ordinary unit loses no movement, but whenever its army marches it has a 35 percent chance of dying, or 70 percent if it marches more than one province.

Getting rid of afflictions

Only profuse bleeding passes by itself, during the battle or just after. Every other affliction stays until something removes it. The manual names these remedies:

• The Recuperation ability heals afflictions over time, unless the unit is old.
• Immortal units may shed afflictions when they come back after dying.
• Units whose shape changes without their say-so, such as the jaguar warriors of Mictlan, may heal when they change back, but not reliably.
• The Healer ability cures afflictions in the same province every turn, up to its value; the disease healer ability does the same for diseases.
• Some global enchantments, artifacts and items heal afflictions in the province or dominion where they act. The manual names Gift of Health, the Chalice and the Miraculous Cure-all Elixir, and says a few rituals and magic sites can also cure.
• The corpse stitcher ability heals corporeal undead; ethereal ones are immune.

Beings that are undead, inanimate or spirit-form mostly cannot recover unless they also have Recuperation or Immortality. An affliction that comes from a cursed item, the Eye of Aiming and the Black Heart being the manual’s examples, stays while the item is carried. Every affliction carries a difficulty, and a cure works only if the healing check beats it.

Afflictions are not the same as curses or horror marks. Neither of those can be removed, though staying dead can lessen a horror mark. The manual adds that a unit with regeneration has a reduced chance of permanent afflictions from wounds.

Disease

A diseased unit can pick up further afflictions each turn. The manual also says that units which are unsupplied during a siege can become diseased after two turns of starving, and that diseased units go on gaining afflictions and eventually die.

Burning

Fire is generally armour-piercing, and a unit hit by it may catch fire. The chance of catching fire is the fire damage before protection multiplied by 4 percent. Fire damage that comes as fatigue counts only a third towards that chance.

A burning unit takes damage every round until the fire goes out: it rolls a die with as many sides as the unit’s size and takes half the result, rounded up. A size 8 unit takes one eight-sided die halved. The damage is halved for a unit with 5 or more fire resistance.

Each round the fire goes out with a chance of 25 percent, plus the unit’s fire resistance, plus 5 for each point of cold scale in the province, plus 100 percent if it is raining. The chance never falls below 1 percent. A province with heat scales counts them as negative cold. A unit with 10 or more fire resistance, a unit with a chill aura, and any unit with mistform or that is ethereal cannot catch fire at all.

Freezing

Cold damage can freeze its target. A frozen unit gains 2d6 extra fatigue every turn until it thaws. Its chance of thawing in a round starts at 25 percent, gains the unit’s cold resistance and 5 for each point of heat scale in the province, and has a floor of 1 percent. A cold province works against thawing in the same way. Ethereal units, units with a heat aura and units with cold resistance of 10 or more cannot freeze.

Poison

Poison works differently from fire and cold. The damage is worked out like any attack’s, and then it is paid in instalments: each round the unit takes 10 percent of the poison still in it.

A poisoned unit also fights worse. Its attack and defence skill are reduced by 25 percent for every dose equal to its full hit points, up to a maximum of 50 percent, and the penalty falls as the poison runs out. The manual’s example is a unit with 10 hit points that takes 15 points of poison. It takes 2, 2, 2, then 1 point in each of seven more rounds, and it starts at a 37.5 percent penalty to attack and defence that shrinks as the poison does.

Poison resistance lowers the total that goes in at the start. Once the poison has taken hold it has no effect on how long the damage lasts.

Shock and stun

Shock damage can stun its target. The chance is 5 percent plus half the percentage of its hit points that the blow took. A stunned unit cannot take any action for one round. Some creatures have stun as an ability, and the manual describes it the same way: no action for about one round.

Paralysis

Paralysis damage depends partly on the victim’s size. The number of rounds it lasts is the paralysis damage minus the victim’s size, halved.

A second paralysing hit on a unit that is already stopped gets its own duration from the same formula. The unit then takes damage equal to half of the shorter duration, capped at 5, and stays paralysed for whichever duration is longer. The two durations are not added.

Bleeding

While a unit bleeds, every round of combat costs it a twentieth of its hit points and adds 10 fatigue. The bleeding stops in a given round with a chance of 10 percent plus the unit’s regeneration, and that chance is halved under water. This is the one affliction that clears up by itself.

Fatigue damage

Some attacks raise a unit’s fatigue and leave its hit points alone. At 100 fatigue the unit passes out, and 200 is the ceiling. Past that ceiling, fatigue turns into hit point damage at one point per 50 fatigue; a smaller dose has a percentage chance of one point equal to double the dose. See fatigue for what fatigue does to a unit before then.

Rust

Acid damage can rust equipment. The chance is the acid damage before protection times 4 percent, and only units with iron weapons or iron armour can be affected. Rusty armour can be damaged when it takes a hit; the chance is 2 percent of the damage inflicted, counted before armour but after shield. A rusty weapon has a 25 percent chance of being damaged each time it hits, and a damaged weapon loses 2 damage, or 1 for a blunt weapon.

False damage

Illusions and most Glamour spells cause false damage, which feels real to the victim and can kill, but fades away at 2 points a round if all the enemy glamour mages die. It never causes afflictions apart from death. Regeneration, life drain and healing do not heal it, and it does not trigger effects such as Damage Reversal.

Battlefield clouds

Some creatures, spells and weapons leave clouds on the battlefield. A cloud fades by about one level every round unless something replenishes it. Damage from a cloud ignores armour. Clouds run from level 1 to 7, and a creature that spreads a cloud, such as a hydra or a ghost, spreads level 1; two such clouds can pile up to level 2 at most. Heat and frost clouds cancel each other and cannot share a square.

The manual lists what each kind does by level:

• Frost and heat clouds: 2 fatigue at level 1, 3 at level 2, then 4 fatigue and 1 damage at level 3, 5 and 2 at level 4, and 6 or more and 3 or more from level 5. Damage is capped at 1 unless the unit is frozen.
• Poison cloud: 1 poison at level 1, 2 at level 2, 3 or more from level 3.
• Disease cloud: disease at levels 1 and 2 with an easy magic resistance roll, and at level 3 and up with a normal one.
• Sulphur cloud: fire fatigue and poison together, from 1 and 1 at level 1 to 4 and 3 at level 7, with the poison capped at 1 point of damage.
• Rust cloud: armour rusts, at every level.
• Death cloud: 1 damage at level 1, 2 at level 2 and 3 or more from level 3, each resisted by magic resistance.
• Shimmering light cloud: false damage, 1 point at levels 1 and 2 and more at 3 and above, resisted by magic resistance (easily at level 1).
• Leeching cloud: weakness, which costs 1 strength permanently, and from level 2 a point of damage; the damage is capped at 1.
• Sleep cloud: sleep, easy to resist at level 1 and a normal check from level 2.

Petrification

A medusa’s attacker is turned to stone if it fails a magic resistance roll. The petrification wears off after about 3 to 6 rounds. When it does, a second magic resistance roll decides whether the unit returns to normal or dies. See resistances for the roll.

Fear

A creature with Fear unsettles enemies around it. Everyone in its area has morale lowered for a while, and each affected squad rolls a morale check against the creature’s Fear, routing if it fails. The ordinary target number is 10, and the area at Fear +0 is 6 squares.

The number after a Fear in a unit’s entry is not its strength but the extra reach: Fear +4 means the effect reaches 4 squares further. The strength of the check rises by 1 for every full 5 of Fear, so Fear +10 reaches 10 extra squares and calls for a morale check against 12.

The manual also lists Awe, which works differently: an enemy must pass a morale check against 10 plus the Awe value to attack the creature that round. A sun-awe creature loses it underground and in the dark.

What this page does not cover

• How resistances change the cloud effects above. The manual does not say.
• The exact effects of battle fright, dementia, feeblemindedness, mute, chest wounds and the other afflictions. The passages this page uses name them but do not describe them.
• The odds of a given affliction among those available for a body part, beyond “random among those available”.
• How afflictions interact with the Affliction Resistance bonus some units and paths have.