Wounds

Wounds

When a character takes damage and they cannot prevent it, they receive a wound. A player can take a wound in their Right Arm, Left Arm, Right Leg, Left Leg, and Torso.

A wounded arm must drop anything it is holding. You may NOT use a still healthy arm to instantly grab an item such as a weapon. Drop it first, then you may attempt to retrieve it from the ground.

A wounded leg will no longer support weight. You may only drag your foot slowly across the ground to move around. If you are forced to put weight on the wounded leg, you must fall over. You should also act like the leg is injured and is causing pain.

You may also choose to drop to your knees. If you do, then your other leg will become wounded. This means you may not stand up after voluntarily dropping to a knee.

If you sustain leg wounds in both legs you MUST drop to your knees.

A torso wound will knock a character unconscious. Once unconscious they will "bleed out" in 10 minutes. Characters with the first aid skill can increase the time it takes to "bleed out" by an additional 10 minutes with appropriate role-playing. If the bleeding isn't stopped in time the character will die. Death requires stronger healing to recover from than a standard torso wound. Should your character remain dead at the end of the event you run the risk of permanent character death. If your torso is further wounded while you are already suffering from a torso wound with an attack called a "killing blow" you stop bleeding out and go straight to being dead.

If a character who has suffered a torso wound is in a location where others are likely to trip over them, it is appropriate and encouraged to move out of the way until it is safe to return.

When an effect causes an "automatic wound", ignore any armor (of any kind) or body the character may have. An appropriate immunity effect can still prevent an automatic wound, however damage requirements will NOT prevent automatic wounds.

Related Rules

Taking Damage

When an opponent's damage dealing attack successfully connects with a legal hit location you need to figure what effect it will have.

The first thing you do when you take damage (or are hit by a spell call) is check to see if you have any immunity effects. So if you are hit for "4 Poison" and you have the spell Poison Immunity up, it will prevent that damage and you will not proceed any further in taking damage. An ability such as a damage requirement would also be checked at this time. A "No Effect" call must be made whenever an attack successfully hits you but does not inflict damage (or does not take effect in the case of spells) so that the attacker knows-that-you-know the attack successfully hit and so that they know they may need to attack with something different.

After you have checked for immunity effects you check to see if you have any limited use prevention effects. These are often called "one time" effects because they generally only work once. One example of such an effect is from the spell spirit shield. Remember to call ''No Effect" if the damage is prevented outright by an effect.

After prevention effects, apply any effects that change the amount of damage taken. Namely the monstrous rule.

At this point damage is going to be dealt in some form. Characters have four possible pools that damage might be applied to before the character takes a wound. Those pools are magic armor, physical armor, natural armor, and body. Damage is always applied to magic armor first, physical armor second, natural armor third, body fourth and finally as a wound last. If the damage has the "Pierce" trait it cannot be applied to any type of armor.

Applying damage to a pool is done on a one-for-one basis. For example if an attack deals 4 damage and have 2 magic armor, 1 physical armor and 3 body, after the damage is dealt you will now have 0 magic armor, 0 physical armor, and 2 body remaining.

Finally if you no longer have any magic armor, physical armor, natural armor or body left damage is applied as a wound to the location hit: Right Leg, Left Leg, Right Arm, Left Arm or Torso.

Keep in mind that a single hit can only ever cause one wound. If you are hit in the arm for 2 damage, you only take an arm wound, not an arm wound AND a torso wound.

If at any time you don't know how much damage you have taken, err on the side of the attacker by taking an immediate torso wound. Or in other words if you are in doubt or confused it's always ok to take more damage and remove yourself from the fight.

Categories: Combat Rules | Key Terminology | Healing