Weakness is a permanent loss of Strength. A creature that fails to resist has points taken off its Strength for the rest of the game, and the unit panel records the running total as "Stolen Strength (n)". Nothing in the game gives them back.

Weakness arrives as an attack that carries no damage of its own. Two things decide the outcome and only two:

• Magic Resistance negates it completely. The source rolls its Penetration plus DRN against the victim's Magic Resistance plus DRN, and the attacker wins ties. A victim that is a commander subtracts half its own level in the attack's path, rounded down. A passed check leaves the victim untouched; there is no partial effect.
• Armour is irrelevant. Weakness is one of the effects the engine treats as having no physical magnitude, so Protection is bypassed entirely and the Protection roll never matters.

The only other filters come from the individual source: the creature attacks mentioned in the Source table below spare inanimate targets, and the spells and clouds do not.

However many times a creature is weakened, the total stolen can never exceed 5. The engine's own description of the condition says so: "This unit has permanently reduced strength. The amount of strength stolen cannot exceed 5." So a creature caught in a Leeching Cloud for a whole battle stops losing Strength after the fifth point gets through, and a second Weakness cast on a target already down 3 takes only 2 more.

Strength bonuses from items and from a bless are kept in the same place as the theft, so they offset it point by point. Strength itself never drops below 0.

Weakness is not an affliction, and none of the things that clear afflictions touch it. Recuperation does not roll for it, a Healer cannot heal it, the end of the battle does not clear it, and no spell restores it. A weakened unit stays weakened for as long as it lives.

Source	Requires	Points	Penetration
Weakness	1, Alteration 2	3	11 (Death)
Enfeeble	2, Alteration 5	2	11 (Death)
Leeching Cloud	Leeching Darkness, 3, Thaumaturgy 5	1 per application	7 at cloud level 1 and 2, 11 at level 3 and above
Steal Strength	the Shade and the Shade Lord	2	11
Weakness Tentacle	the Mind Slime Horror and the Belly Maw Horror	2	11
Weakness	the Thing Of Many Eyes	2	11

Weakness is the single-target spell and Enfeeble the mass version: 6 squares for a 3 caster, and 2 more squares per further level of Death. Leeching Darkness is the cheapest way to weaken a crowd, because a cloud keeps rolling against everyone standing in it round after round, but it is also the slowest, at one point per application and an easier check to pass while the cloud is thin.

The creature attacks all deliver their Weakness as a follow-up strike after the blow lands, so a blow that misses steals nothing.

The Weakened affliction is a different thing that happens to look similar. It is a wound to the arm, it costs a flat -4 Strength rather than a counted total, it shows on the panel as "Weakened: -4", and it can be healed: Recuperation clears it with a 50% chance each month, and Healers cure it like any other affliction.

A creature can carry both at once, and their penalties add.