Injuries

Wounds and ailments cause “injury”: a (usually) tempo-
rary loss of Hit Points. Thus, your HP score measures your
ability to sustain injury; see Hit Points (p. 16).
Injury often results from “penetrating damage”: the
damage left after Damage Resistance is subtracted from
the basic damage of an attack. However, disease, overex-
ertion, and the like can cause injury without damage.
If any injury reduces you to 0 or fewer HP, you will soon fall
unconscious. You can even go to negative HP . . . but if you go
too far, you risk death. For the average man, the difference
between full HP and negative HP is one or two sword
blows or bullets. This is realistic . . . and dramatic.
Even in cinematic battles, heroes rarely shrug off
dozens of blows. Instead, they avoid being hit.
Armor helps . . . but fights can be deadly, so think
before you act!
The life of an adventurer is not
all song and glory. You get tired.
You get your clothes dirty. You
might actually get hurt – or even
worse, killed! Fortunately, all
these problems can be cured.
Even death.
Fiendish Friedrick has HT 12 and HP 14. He has the
ill fortune to be trapped in a dead-end corridor by a
horde of orcs. He fights valiantly, but the monsters
keep coming.
The first wound Friedrick receives is a spear thrust
that inflicts 4 HP of injury. This reduces him to 10 HP.
He will have a -4 shock penalty on his next turn.
Then the orc leader swings a halberd. The GM is
using hit locations, and says the orc strikes at
Friedrick’s right arm. Friedrick fails to block and suf-
fers 11 HP of injury. This is over Friedrick’s HP/2, so it
cripples his arm. But injury to a limb can’t exceed the
minimum required to cripple it. For Friedrick, HP/2 is
7. Damage over HP/2 is 8 HP, so he only loses 8 HP.
Now he is at 2 HP . . . and has the One Arm disadvan-
tage!
Since a crippling wound is also a major wound,
Friedrick must make a HT roll to avoid being stunned
and knocked down. If he fails by 5 or more, he could
even pass out! Luckily, he succeeds. He’ll have a -4
shock penalty (the maximum) next turn, but he can
keep on fighting. He picks up his axe left-handed . . .