Consequences are new aspects you write on your character sheet when your character takes a hit, representing the real harm and injury your character suffers.

When you take a consequence to absorb a hit, write an aspect in an empty consequence slot that describes what harm befalls your character. Use the severity of the consequence as a guide: If you were bitten by star spawn, a mild consequence might be Nasty Bite, but a moderate consequence could be Bite That Won’t Stop Bleeding, and a severe consequence might be Crippled Leg.

While stress turns a hit into a near miss, taking a consequence means you got hit hard. Why would you take a consequence? Because sometimes stress isn’t enough. Remember, you have to absorb all the shifts of the hit to stay in the fight. You only have so many stress boxes. The good news is that consequences can take pretty big hits.

Each character starts with three consequence slots—mild, moderate, and severe. Taking a minor consequence absorbs two shifts, a moderate one absorbs four shifts, and a severe one absorbs six shifts.

So, if you take a big five-shift hit, you can absorb the whole thing with a single stress box and a moderate consequence. That’s a lot more efficient than spending five of your stress boxes.

The downside to consequences is that they are aspects—and aspects are always true (page XX). So if you’ve got Gut Shot, your character’s gut is shot! That will mean you can’t do things a gut-shot person can’t do (like run fast). If things get particularly complicated due to this, you might even face a compel on your consequence, too. And, just like the aspects you make when you create an advantage, the character that created the consequence—that is, whoever shot you—gets one free invoke on that consequence. Ouch!

Charles is still battling the ghoul. It claws at him, this time rolling a [0][0][+][+], adding its Fair (+2) Fight, and invokes its Hungry for Flesh aspect for an additional +2, adding up to a devastating Fantastic (+6) blow. Charles’s [-][-][0][0], added to his Good (+3) Athletics, gives him a merely Average (+1) defense; that’s five shifts he needs to absorb. He chooses to take a moderate consequence. His player and the GM decide that the ghoul gave Charles a Gaping Chest Wound. This consequence absorbs four of the shifts, leaving one, which Charles absorbs with his last remaining stress box.