Health and Damage

Health

Every character has a health chart (shown below) which tracks the minor, moderate, severe, critical and fatal wounds the character has received.

Minor

Moderate

Severe

Critical

Fatal

Wound Categories

The different wound categories that can be sustained are shown below. Each category can have effects at two different times:

When Sustained: Apply all of the When Sustained effects immediately when a wound of the relevant category is sustained. This means that you can suffer When Sustained effects repeatedly, every time you suffer a wound, and the effects will stack.
In Category: In Category effects are applied based upon the single most severe injury that a character has sustained. A character will thus only ever have one In Category effect active at a time.

Minor Wound

Minor wounds represent superficial injuries such as bumps, scrapes and shallow cuts. A character will recover from minor wounds fairly quickly even with only amateurish medical assistance.

When Sustained:

You lose 1 AP.

In Category:

No effect.

Moderate Wound

Moderate wounds represent the first category of injury that may cause serious long-lasting harm. A moderately wounded character needs to make sure they receive medical assistance but are unlikely to die from the injury unless they ignore it.

When Sustained:

You lose 2 APs.

In Category:

You take a penalty of 1 to your skill rating in all skills.

Severe Wound

Severe wounds represent more serious internal injuries. A character who has received one may die within hours without medical intervention.

When Sustained:

No effect.

In Category:

You take a penalty of 5 to your skill rating in all skills.
Your action point maximum is reduced by 1 AP.

Critical Wound

Critical wounds represent the more serious form of potentially survivable injuries. Without extensive and professional medical intervention the character will die within minutes. Even with proper medical care, there may be long term consequences from the injury.

When Sustained:

You gain the condition Bleeding

In Category:

You take a penalty of 15 to your skill rating in all skills.
Your action point maximum is reduced by 5 APs.

Fatal Wound

A fatal wound is a wound that is set to cost a character their life. A character who receives one can take no further actions and will die within seconds.

When Sustained:

You gain the condition Dying

In Category:

You take a penalty of 25 to your skill rating in all skills.
Your action point maximum is reduced by 11 APs.

Damage

When a character takes damage, the number of wounds inflicted is calculated as follows

Apply damage reduction: Reduce the damage total by any damage reduction the character has against that particular damage type to create the revised damage total.
Check damage total: If the revised total damage is now zero or less, the character is not wounded by the attack.
Calculate wounds: If the revised total damage is one or more, the character receives one wound plus one additional wound each time the revised damage total exceeds their wound threshold. For example, suppose a character has a wound threshold of 2 and receives 7 points of damage, they will receive 4 wounds.
Apply wounds: Wounds can be applied in different orders depending on the damage type and appropriate armour. See below to determine in which order to mark the wounds on the character's health chart.

Wounds

Each wound a character receives causes a character to mark off a wound on their health chart. The order that the wounds are taken in is determined by the damage pattern of the damage type.

Horizontal Damage Pattern

Situations that deal damage in a horizontal pattern cause considerable minor damage on a surface level but not easily penetrate deeply to cause lethal wounds. Characters who have taken damage in this pattern are likely to look like they've been through the wars but are unlikely to suffer long-lasting consequences.

Minor	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Moderate	16	17
Severe
Critical
Fatal

Vertical Damage Pattern

Vertical damage patterns are caused by deep penetrating injuries, they are unlikely to cause much superficial damage and consequently may look less serious than they really are. These types of injuries quickly cause serious and even fatal wounds. In the short term, it can be easy to keep fighting while having sustained serious wounds of this nature but the long-term outlook is far less pleasant with infection and death a serious possibility.

Minor	1
Moderate	2
Severe	3
Critical	4
Fatal	5

Zig-Zag Damage Pattern

Zig-Zag damage patterns represents an intermediate type of damage between the horizontal and vertical damage patterns. They do not cause serious consequences quite as quickly as vertical injuries but are more debilitating in the short term, making it harder to keep fighting while sustaining them.

Minor	1	2	4	7
Moderate	3	5	8
Severe	6	9
Critical	10
Fatal

Inverted Zig-Zag Damage Pattern

Inverted Zig-Zag patterns represent forms of damage that do limited external damage but cause substantial internal injuries. They are caused by high velocity penetrating injuries (such as gunshot wounds).

Minor	1
Moderate	2	3
Severe	4	5	6
Critical
Fatal

Downgrading Damage Types

Some conditions (such as wearing armour) might cause you to "downgrade" a damage type. This is done to make the damage less lethal and is done in the following order:

Vertical -> ZigZag -> Horizontal

Inverted ZigZag -> ZigZag -> Horizontal

Damage Types

Ballistic

Pattern: Inverted ZigZag

Ballistic damage is caused by high velocity projectiles such as bullets.

Bludgeoning

Pattern: ZigZag

Bludgeoning damage is damage caused by blunt weapons or objects.

Slashing

Pattern: ZigZag

Slashing damage is caused by sharp-edged weapons that cut the target.

Piercing

Pattern: Vertical

Piercing damage is caused by pointy-weapons that impale, stab or thrust deeply into the target.

Cold

Pattern: ZigZag

Cold damage is caused by exposure to extremely cold temperatures.

Electricity

Pattern: ZigZag

Electricity damage is caused by electrocution, e.g. by a lightning strike.

Phased Energy

Pattern: Inverted ZigZag

Phased Energy damage is caused by high energy phaser beams.

Plasma

Pattern: ZigZag

Plasma damage is caused by contact with high temperature plasma.

Fire

Pattern: ZigZag

Fire damage is caused by being burnt by a fire.