System Protection & Alternatives

System does more than just guides ones' growth through the Character Classes, Skills and Levelling. It also directly protects people, recognizing that humans are fundamentally not among the most resistant of entities out there and they need some urgent buff-up.   The result of that is the System Protection. A system that provides what's de facto the in-universe equivalent of a healthbar.

It's unknown how exactly the System Protection works in practice. It is generally assumed by most scholars to be a form of reality warping using humans connected to the System as conduits for its operations. As a result, it's hard to appropriately examine, and is best treated as simply a fact of life.   In the simplest words possible, the System Protection downscales injuries to a lower level. Each System-enabled entity has a certain number of System Protection Points (often referred to as health points or hitpoints), decided by their Endurance attribute and their species/race. Those points acta as a de facto damage sponges, going down with every injury while downscaling its scale.   There are three levels of System Protection, depending on how many points of it you have left. They are coded by colours of the system protection bar.   The bar stays green between 51 and 100% of the remaining system protection points. While at that stage, the system protection will repel all but the most temporary of damages. You can expect bruises, scratches and so on. You can get poisoned or contract a non-lethal and non-permanent disease. Lethal poisoning and on-going lethal diseases will continue to eat through your system protection, causing no debilitating symptoms for as long as the bar stays green.   The bar becomes yellow between 11 and 50% of the hitpoints. At that stage, debilitating and permanent damages are possible. You can get your bones broken, your internal organs damaged, your eyes gouged out, contract potentially lethal diseases, be lethally poisoned etc. The injuries/symptoms will be lesser than they would be without system protection, yes. And you still cannot die.   The bar goes red between 1 and 10% of the health points. At this stage, the system protection practically stops working, You can be killed. You most likely will be killed.   However, it has to be stated that sufficiently powerful attacks will ignore system protection entirely. By general rule, for as long as the attack would have eaten through your system protection at one go, it will be an instant kill and the system protection simply won't activate.   There are ways of reinforcing the system protection. This is the most common thing among the mages, as their typically lower Endurance stat makes them vulnerable to attacks. More tank-oriented characters are often also capable of casting self-strengthening buffs that increase their Endurance, and through that, their system protection strength.

The servitors have an access to a similar mechanism to the System Protection, called the Damage Reduction, many considering the System Protection to be its System-governed equivalent. Especially as it operates similarly.   Damage Reduction is a percentage-based reduction in damage received by a living servitor. It's significantly easier to research than the System Protection, as one can confirm its intensity by comparing the damage inflicted to a living and dead servitor of the same type.   By general rule, the melee-oriented servitors have stronger damage reduction than the casters, especially the heavier ones. The higher the servitor's grade, the stronger the Damage Reduction, with Grade Five melee fighters approaching a 70% Damage Reduction Rate, meaning that any attempt to pierce their skin with a spear will result in a much more shallow injury than it should considering the material and strength of thrust involved, with only about 1/3 of the expected damage.   Damage Reduction, as implied above, disappears the moment a servitor is slain.

Spirits lack System Protection, despite being born from the System. Instead they possess something called the Existence Strength by the scholars, and by numerous other names throughout many of the cultures out there.   Existence Strength is an equivalent of System Protection that doesn't resist or downscales injuries. Instead, it allows the spirits to regenerate all all the injuries they receive for as long as it has enough existence strength left. Once it hits zero, the spirits ceased to be, either dissolving into nothingness or dying on the spot if they are physically existing entities.   It is not uncommon for this name to be mostly unknown to the population at large, and the spirits instead being treated as having hitpoints/health points just like System-enabled entities in general.   There are only technical differences between the two, in fact. Especially as the spirits tend to cease regenerating minor injuries and non-lethal poisoning when they are starting to run low on existence strength (similarly to system protection thresholds, although its more of a conscious decision on their end.

Invulnerability is one more System Protection equivalent, this time belonging to the outsiders. Invulnerability is a System translation of their properties, one that renders them effectively invulnerable to all but the strongest of attacks.   The higher the invulnerability level, the more force has to be exerted to cause any damage to them whatsoever. This is, in a way, a stronger version of the Damage Reduction. In exchange, they do not have System Protection, meaning that strong enough impact WILL kill them, potentially instantly.   There is a thing that has to be mentioned - invulnerability can be somewhat circumnavigate. It's a bit of an unpredictable thing. Certain attacks of weaker strength might go through, simply because of certain 'thematic' compatibility. An example might be a vaguely spider-like outsider receiving unexpected heavy damage from acetic acid, which is an otherwise minor poison - but one that's known to be lethal to spiders.   In general, though, engaging an outsider with anything but the strongest available combatants is considered to be a creative form of suicide.