Sustenance Ruling

Sustenance is an optional rule for more survival based campaigns within VETERA. If this rule is active, each form may have 1 of 3 unique types of required sustenance. The general ruling for sustenance is that organic creatures such as Proteans, Selenids or Humans should have Hunger, while robotic life such as Myrons or Argeus should possess Battery. Uniquely, plant based lifeforms AND energy based lifeforms would share the Photosynthesis sustenance type.

Sustenance is counted once every day for simplicity, or whenever a Long Rest is taken. It is generally a good idea to figure out a time of day that sustenance should be "ticked." VETERA's default time to tick sustenance is at 0:00, since that is exactly when a new day begins. Now, onto the 3 types of sustenance!

Hunger

Hunger is by far the most common type of sustenance among characters. Hunger rulings are simple, every time hunger is "ticked," characters will be required to consume 1 day worth of food, such as a Ration, which is designed explicitly for 1 day of survival. Additionally, characters will need to consume at least 1 gallon of water per "tick" as well. Failure to do either will incur 1 level of Exhaustion each, for a maximum of 2 points of exhaustion.

Battery

Battery is the second most common type of sustenance among characters. The rulings for Batteries are slightly more complicated, but are still purely simple. Batteries work alongside the Depletion Enervation Rules, in which, depending on the battery model, a character may have 10 maximum charges. Each "tick," the battery should lose a single charge. Depending on remaining charges, the character may or may not have the debuffs applied from the Depletion rules. Charges may be stored with something like a Charge Pack, obtained from Charging Ports, or obtained in some other method chosen by the GM. Charging a battery requires an hour of inactivity per charge. So charging from 7 charges to a cap of 10 would take 3 hours of inactivity at a Charging Port.

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the rarest type of sustenance among characters, not even being used by any base game forms. The Photosynthesis rules work similarly to the battery rulings, in which characters have 10 reserves, working in tandem with Wilting rules. Characters with this sustenance type must garner energy from sources of pure energy, thus, will not work with electrical items like how Battery does. Sources can include: 1 hour of exposure to a star per reserve, consumption of an item with the Starlight modifier, 1 hour of exposure to Phænogen, or other methods at the GM's discretion. Reserves will be lost every "tick," just like Battery.