What are 'Wounds'?

This might sounds like a daft question but what 'exactly' are Wounds?

The rulebook is incredibly vague on the subject. For example, if my character is attacked by a sword wielding guy and hit in the body for 6 wounds (after toughness and armour) what actually just happened to him? Is he cut? Is he bruised? Is he bleeding? Are his clothes ruined from a slash or blood? Does his armour have a rent in it?

To brush aside the possibility of people saying 'bruised only and no physical damage' what about taking the same hit from an arrow? An arrow obviously can't do bruising damage, either it pierces your skin or it does nothing. So we're left with an arrow causing 6 points of actual damage and actually piercing your skin for half your wounds total. Does it fall out? Does taking it out cause more injury? Do you now have a hole in your platemail?

To confuse things further how come this vague Wounds total seems to go down? If I take one hit from a sword that knocks me down to 4 wounds then I'm suddenly a 'lot' more vulnerable to lesser hits. So what's actually happened to me to make that so? If I'm winded or in pain and therefore slower how come it doesn't afFect anythign else I do?

As a corollary what is 'Healing'?

Take the same guy from above. Just been hit by a sword, down to 4 Wounds. What 'exactly' am I doing with my Int test to put the Wounds total back up? If it's bruise damage then what's making it suddenly better? If it's a cut why don't I need a big bag of bandages? (Note the Heal skill doesn't require any actual stuff and there are no real rules for any extra stuff anyway). It can't be painkillers because those are represented by Healing Draughts.
What does being Heavily Wounded actually mean? Why does my healing have such a lesser effect on somebody with 3 wounds than it does on somebody with 4?

Assuming that a Healing draught is just painkillers, as it isn't magical, then how does it close cuts?

How long does a Heal test take? How can I fail such a test? If a man has a cut am I accidentally bandaging his head instead of his leg? An average human with Heal skill fails the test 2 out of 3 times so it must represent doing something difficult?

I've found that the vagueness of all the baove tends to shepherd players towards non narrative combat and just rolling dice because there's no actual way to work out whats going on. Wounds seems to be treated as an imaginary forcefield that can be powered back up by someone elses intelligence or some drugs/magic.

Anyone have any better ideas on this stuff?

Ever see Last Action Hero? They're basically "flesh wounds"...

Wow, a lot of great questions.

I'm not going to try to answer each one, but I think you are answering your own questions though the enumeration of the detailed notes you seek.

In D&D, hit points are this abstract notion, keep fighting until you reach zero (0). PsychoSama's "flesh wounds" notion is in this vain.

I play WFRP much more gritty. While the rule book is vague, there are a lot of implied answers to your questions.

When I describe damage to my players, I make sure that they understand they just got gored by that beastman, or took that arrow in the sternum. Maybe armor blunted the horn, deflecting it at the right moment and it will only hurt to laugh for a few days. Or the arrow was poorly flighted, or the shaft poorly crafted and if not for the leather jerkin and the healthy bone, that nasty cut might be a nasty hole.

The Heal skill, as I see it, is First Aid. Bandage. Splint. Maybe just a cloth draped over the shoulder to lift the arm. The Heal spell, divine or arcane, is more than just First Aid, but etheric energies closing wounds, mending bones, &tc. A healing draught? Just a protein shake and metabolic boost, Old World style. I don't see it closing wounds, you still need the Heal skill or spell.

WFRP is heavy on dark, dirty, and dangerous flavors. PCs die of wound sepsis all the time in the Old World. Why does a heavily wounded PC take longer to heal? If you were beat up, a cut on arm, a chunk of flesh missing from you thigh (an arrow miss), a missing ear... your body is going to take longer to heal... without laying of hands (divine or arcane).

I think that you should play that up. Don't overthink the rules, looking for explicit explanation of the game mechanic. You'll bog yourself down with questions

. And you could get a really great idea of WFRP damage by reading Josef Tham's detailed treatise on Critical Hits and the damage, check it out at http://www.windsofchaos.com/?p=50.

HTH,
Tim

To preface what I'm about to say so it doesn't come off as too brusque, I agree with a lot of what you say and already resort to such measures. I already have Josefs charts etc but I specifically didn't ask about critical hits - those are are already defined in the actual rules (josefs are just better).

However that was a long winded way of saying 'I don't know, just make it up'

If I have to make up such an integral part of the rules system what do I need the rulebook for in the first place?

I don't think that's a good enough answer from a modern day RPG imo. Hit points in D&D are basically just a forcefield and when you lose them all you die. I don't want WFRP to just be the same except your forcefield is much weaker.

"What are Wounds?" shouldn't be a difficult question to answer.

Artemis Black wrote:
"What are Wounds?" shouldn't be a difficult question to answer.

Wounds are any injuries your character sustains that are not high enough to cause a mechanical penalty, application of the Heal skill is treatment of such injuries since they add up and will eventually lead to your demise in combat because you are unable to keep up with the healthier fighters. It always seemed fairly straight forward to me.

Sythorn wrote:

Artemis Black wrote:
"What are Wounds?" shouldn't be a difficult question to answer.

Wounds are any injuries your character sustains that are not high enough to cause a mechanical penalty, application of the Heal skill is treatment of such injuries since they add up and will eventually lead to your demise in combat because you are unable to keep up with the healthier fighters. It always seemed fairly straight forward to me.

The mechanics 'are' straight forward. However in an RPG the mechanics need to have real world type applications. Your answer doesn't take that into account so just creates more questions. All of my original questions are inherent in the question 'What are wounds' and your answer doesn't help with any of them.

The problem also sort of existed in v1 with Magic Points and they dumped those entirely fro this system. I was hoping when v2 came out that they'd have made wounds a little less vague, when they didn't I hoped to find some fan rules at some point that helped out. I don't know if nobody else cares about this or it's just unsolvable without seriously messing with the system.

Artemis Black wrote:

However in an RPG the mechanics need to have real world type applications.

I think this is where you fail. There does NOT have to be a "Real world" application. Why the heck would there have to be? It's a fantasy world. Is there a "real world" application of chaos mutation? Why is it sometimes scaly skin and sometimes an extra limb?

That said--have you ever watched a boxing match? How many punches can a boxer take and still fight a competitive bout? How many blows to the shoulder before the arm stops working? How many blows to the chest before the heart skips a beat and the guy is stunned? How many cracked ribs before he can't breathe enough to stay conscious?

It's pretty clear how wounds work to me, shrug.

Artemis Black wrote:
The mechanics 'are' straight forward. However in an RPG the mechanics need to have real world type applications. Your answer doesn't take that into account so just creates more questions. All of my original questions are inherent in the question 'What are wounds' and your answer doesn't help with any of them.

I guess I'm not understanding what you feel would be gained from a detailed explanation/application of Wounds? They exist because the average player, even one who likes deadly Call of Cthulhu-inspired scenarios like myself, seems to prefer when his character doesn't die or become crippled from a single hit.

Like other games that use Hit Points (or whatever you wish to call them), the mechanic is meant to represent the uncanny luck heroes commonly have in fiction that allows them to avoid harm so the story may continue (something that can even be found in dark and gritty films and literature) and are often described as narrow misses or minor injuries. What more needs to be said about Wounds than that? Critical Hits already take care of major injuries that do represent blows that actually connect.

Let me counter your question with another question. Why do you want Wounds to be described in more detail, real world applications added, and (I'm presuming) additional mechanics to be added to represent this? What would this add to the game that already isn't taken care of by the core rules? Correct me if I'm wrong, but going by the nature and tone of your original post, I get the impression you're very much in the "abstract buffers are bad" camp. In which case, would it not be better to reverse directions and house rule Wounds out of the system instead of adding more detail to make sense of them?

There's a basic realism vs. simplicity trade off here that can't be worked around. In the rules as written, taking Wounds damage has no significant effect. These are minor wounds that don't bleed quickly, minor bruising, getting clipped by an arrow but not a solid hit, grazed by musket balls, etc. Likewise, the rules as written assume that minor supplies for healing- rags for bandages, cold water for bathing wounds and reducing swelling, essentially- can be scavenged from anywhere without much effort. Deciding damage to armor, clothing, or other gear is governed by using the optional rules for these things, or by GM fiat- as a GM, I would assume that any article of clothing that is worn in more than one or two fights is too coated in blood and torn up to be presentable in public without raising some odd looks.

If that's not satisfactory, there are a few options. You can impose penalties for loosing a percentage of your Wounds score- essentially the notion of health levels or a condition monitor, similarly to what Shadowrun used to use (maybe still does?). You can ignore Wounds and treat everything as a critical hit- you'll likely need a critical table that encompasses some more minor effects if you don't won't armless, legless, headless PC's making up most of your party. You can track each injury individually, and require separate medical treatment for each injury, which Harnmaster does, and require your player characters to keep an inventory of rags for bandages on hand in order to make Heal roles succeed. It's essentially a matter of how much record keeping you want to do.

Personaly I see wounds as minor cuts, nicks, scrapes, bruises, and so forth. Things that you get in a modern world that you take notice of when you first get it but otherwiise ignore or nned to clean up and bandage.

Start suffering alot of these and you simply cant ignore them anymore, and they make you a bit more vulnerable, thius leading to critical hits.

As for the heal check to fix them I see it that a heal check always results in successful bandaging/treating of the minor injuries, though a successful roll gives the healing aspect (a kind of placebo effect).
However more like, if you have ever left a decent scrape or cut untreated, it niggles at you everytime you do something it bothers you, if you treat it with a bandaid, bandage or similare, it stops it from being agrivated as much making it easier to ignore.

So more concicesly I see wounds as the ability to ignore damage as well as the minor injuries that realy doesnt effect any activities the character would otherwise do.

On Mechanics and the real world:
Well mechanics dont need a world aspect (game/real world in this respect)..
Take the careers system in warhammer, a character can can say they are any career they like however their training is in a certain skillset that is most like the career the character has.

A character could have the soldier career, but actually be a merchant. Sure he wouldnt be that good a merchant because he doesnt have the skillset to make the most of it but it doesnt stop him. So in actuality the career system is purely a mechanical representation to classify a character, and means nothing in the real game world.

Characteristics are in a similare boat... people typically learn skills that are enhanced by good characteristics, but for the most part are determined by what you have learnt within that skill. They are a simplified mechanical representation of a vague conglomeration of skills the character would otherwise have. Outside of the mechanics the realy mean little.

The best example of this is intelligence in increased to become more perceptive, yet it also increases your ability with languages, knowledges, and even some trade skills. this is totaly unrealistic

spasemunki wrote:There's a basic realism vs. simplicity trade off here that can't be worked around. In the rules as written, taking Wounds damage has no significant effect. These are minor wounds that don't bleed quickly, minor bruising, getting clipped by an arrow but not a solid hit, grazed by musket balls, etc.

IE: Flesh Wounds

Hmm, something seems to have gone wrong here. Maybe I didn't get across what i was asking well enough or something.

Firstly, I regret the chopice of words when I said 'real world', I didn't actually mean 'real world' as in our real world, I simply meant that 'a' real world application i.e. that they needed to represent something that happened in the world being played in.

Secondly I find it odd that while everyone seems to think there's no problem, everyone also has both a different answer to the subject header question 'and' associated house rules to recommend. Also not a single person answered the actual questions contained in my first post, which I don't think were unreasonable questions to answer. The closest someone came to answering it was to say 'Make it up'.

Do the questions in the OP not come up every single combat for other people? They might not be 'asked' by the players but the questions are always there. When a PC takes wounds there's absolutely no rules or even guidelines to help with what has happend to them. No way of knowing based on mechanics whether or not they are bleeding, whether or not they are cut, whether their clothes are ruined (Which if you're playing by RAW is pretty important because ofteh screwed up prices/economy).
Then afterwards there seems no way of knowing what the Healer needs to heal, or in fact what they are doing at all or even how long it takes.

Essentially all the answers so far seem to boil down to 'yeah it's an imaginary forcefield, it's stupid, try to ignore it'. Which is fair enough but acting like that's a good answer or that I'm somehow weird for not liking that answer is a bit odd.

I believe Wounds are as abstract in warhammer as HP's are in that other game, and the unnatural way damage and healing is treated is one of the main reasons why I dont run d20 games. Luckily warhammer offers other aspects that I enjoy. But back to wounds; an average human with 10(+) wounds that gets "scratched" enough to drop him to 0, still not receiving any penalties, has to rest for 4 weeks (1 month) before he is at full strength again. How you can first explain wounds like a buffer before real damage occurs and then at the same time claim that getting wounded and having to rest 4 weeks before regaining your buffer is incomprehensible to me. Its logical that if you need 4 weeks of rest to heal these scrathes they should affect you more during the first week than during the last week. Therefore I think there should at least be a penalty for being heavily wounded, perhaps making all physical checks challenging? There should be a penalty included when you are wounded severily enough for it to take a week to heal naturally.

d20 actually has rules to make HP less abstract, star wars revised divided HP between wounds and vitality, vitality being what you increased every level and when dropped youn regained them by the hour instead of every day like wounds. A similar system would perhaps work ok with warhammer, light wounds perhaps healed by the hour and heavily every day?

When a PC takes wounds there's absolutely no rules or even guidelines to help with what has happend to them. No way of knowing based on mechanics whether or not they are bleeding, whether or not they are cut, whether their clothes are ruined (Which if you're playing by RAW is pretty important because ofteh screwed up prices/economy).

Part of that is doubtless because it's up to the GM to describe what's happened. It's impossible to give enough examples of a wound to cover all eventualities, and while some examples would possibly be nice, it's part of the job of the GM to communicate this sort of thing to players- part of the responsibility and also part of the fun.

As people have said, a "wound" is an arbitrary measure of some degree of hurt done to a character. Individually they're fairly easy to shrug off, but once you accumulate several of them it will start to slow you down. A small cut, for instance, which will clot and fix itself within a few days (assuming it doesn't get infected), is nothing much to worry about, but if you get cut in a similar manner twenty times in quick succession you're going to pass out from blood loss. Obviously there is some level of unrealism here, but then anyone who expects a RPG to be 100% realistic in every respect is going to be disappointed.

For example, if my character is attacked by a sword wielding guy and hit in the body for 6 wounds... what actually just happened to him? Is he cut? Is he bruised? Is he bleeding? Are his clothes ruined from a slash or blood? Does his armour have a rent in it?

Assuming it wasn't a critical hit (which is there to take account of debilitating injuries) then it can be whatever you decide. Obviously the extent of the damage is also going to be affected by where he's been hit, what sort of weapon it was, etc.. You might also want to vary it depending on how many wounds the guy has left. If it's at the start of a fight, you might want to make such a strike a painful, but mild, injury, whereas if he's only got a couple left at the end it might be more dramatic to have him winded or get a bad slice in his arm, or whatever.

To brush aside the possibility of people saying 'bruised only and no physical damage' what about taking the same hit from an arrow? An arrow obviously can't do bruising damage, either it pierces your skin or it does nothing. So we're left with an arrow causing 6 points of actual damage and actually piercing your skin for half your wounds total. Does it fall out? Does taking it out cause more injury? Do you now have a hole in your platemail?

As regards armour, particularly something like plate armour, probably the best explanation is that the arrow hit an area that was not covered by the plate, so the armour itself is relatively undamaged (otherwise things are going to get expensive). But again, you can modify that based on the type of weapon- a gunpowder weapon, or a hammer, might actually damage plate (although not to the point that it will affect the rest of the combat). The rules don't cover cumulative damage from things like arrows for obvious reasons, but that sort of thing is, again, at the discretion of the GM. A controlled removal by a character who knows what they're doing (and has the time to do it properly) maybe with appropriate skillchecks, wouldn't result in further harm. Yanking the thing out in the midst of combat probably should cause more damage, as it's crassly stupid.

Obviously six wounds is a lot of damage to take from a single arrow, but it's not a debilitating injury, so it's a wound that's painful and will obviously require medical attention as soon as possible, but it's not bad enough to incapacitate you, so maybe you've been shot through the fleshy part of your leg (missing the artery) or similar.

To confuse things further how come this vague Wounds total seems to go down? If I take one hit from a sword that knocks me down to 4 wounds then I'm suddenly a 'lot' more vulnerable to lesser hits. So what's actually happened to me to make that so? If I'm winded or in pain and therefore slower how come it doesn't afFect anythign else I do?

There are a number of ways you could deal with this. The way I would do it is to keep reminding the players how badly they are already hurt. They can continue fighting, because of adrenaline, or whatever, but they're more vulnerable to lesser wounds because of the damage they've already taken.

To use an example, let's say Klaus (12 wounds) gets hit in successive rounds for six and five wounds, leaving him on one. He keeps on fighting despite the arrow sticking out of his leg, and the bad bruising to his abdomen from the sword strike, and on the following round he gets punched in the face, losing his one remaining wound. Obviously the punch is the least serious of the three injuries, but it's enough to make him stagger, and then his leg gives out under him and he finds himself on the floor. He tries to rise, but the pain in his stomach and leg is too great and suddenly he's screwed. Obviously it's slightly artificial, but it shouldn't be too difficult to get it to work with a bit of imagination.

Another approach would be to say that his wounds are distracting him and thus making him more vulnerable. This isn't reflected in the rest of his stats, because that would make everything too complicated, but as he starts to struggle he exposes more critical parts of his body to further attacks. Perhaps rather than blocking that strike for 2 wounds with his arm, where it wouldn't bother him, he's instead taken it to the stomach, or on the jaw.

Take the same guy from above. Just been hit by a sword, down to 4 Wounds. What 'exactly' am I doing with my Int test to put the Wounds total back up? If it's bruise damage then what's making it suddenly better? If it's a cut why don't I need a big bag of bandages? (Note the Heal skill doesn't require any actual stuff and there are no real rules for any extra stuff anyway). It can't be painkillers because those are represented by Healing Draughts.

It's up to the player to describe what they're doing with their healing in this case. With some wounds- light bruising, being winded- small cuts, it might be as little as taking a few seconds out to breathe, recover themselves, and then they can ignore it. For more serious wounds, perhaps they need to apply a poultice, or bandages. What if they don't have bandages? That's their problem- get them to rip their clothes, and pay the resultant financial penalty. I'd take "healing draught" as a catch-all term for various lotions and potions one of which will have a relevant application to the wound at hand. As a quick fix and applied in, say, a combat (like a healing potion) then it would be a painkiller to allow the character to ignore the wound for long enough to carry on the fight without it bothering him. And then I'd just assume they fix it in more detail the next time they pitch camp, or rest, or whatever.

How long does a Heal test take? How can I fail such a test? If a man has a cut am I accidentally bandaging his head instead of his leg? An average human with Heal skill fails the test 2 out of 3 times so it must represent doing something difficult?

Failing the test would presumably mean you've cocked it up in such a way that your attempt hasn't actually worked, or perhaps that you were interrupted, or found you didn't have the right materials to hand, or whatever. That'll depend on context. Perhaps you don't tie the bandage tightly enough; perhaps you use the wrong knot and it's digging in and causing discomfort, meaning you need to do it again; perhaps you grab the wrong ointment and end up rubbing the wrong stuff on.

I've found that the vagueness of all the baove tends to shepherd players towards non narrative combat and just rolling dice because there's no actual way to work out whats going on.

I think this is partly a personal thing. Clearly you like quite a lot of detail in your encounters and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's simply not going to be feasible for the game itself to go into the sort of detail you seem to want. In order to convey (and understand!) wounds and their treatment in a very detailed and realistic manner you need a medical degree, and to include it all in the rulebook would take up a lot of space with information most people simply aren't going to use.

In this case I'd argue that the onus is on you and the players to come up with your own stuff, which I know isn't a very satisfactory response, but I don't think it's an unfair one either. If you want super-detailed combat and know exactly what every blow does to every part of every person's body, and then have those injuries treated realistically during or after the battle, then that's the sort of information that the game can't provide, so it's up to you to use your imagination and either houserule it or come up with the stuff on the fly.

Ath

A good response for the OP I would think is, Wounds mean whatever you want it to mean.
This can apply to anything within your game.

Do you want arrows to do more damage when removed? Do you want arrows stuck into the target? Do you want the arrow to fall out? Do you want the platemail to have a hole in it when it takes damage from the arrow? Do you want...?

As for just using bruising, use the online Thesaurus, and look up words like nick, scrape or cut and use a number of different terms to express the minor injuries.

Ultimatly it is vague and everyone will have a somewhat different view on the matter because of the "How I want it" factor, so if you are after a quantified answers to the OP question/s you likely wont get them because of that. We can realy only offer the way we do it and hope it inspires you in finding a way you want to do it yourself.

Artemis Black wrote:When a PC takes wounds there's absolutely no rules or even guidelines to help with what has happend to them. No way of knowing based on mechanics whether or not they are bleeding, whether or not they are cut, whether their clothes are ruined (Which if you're playing by RAW is pretty important because ofteh screwed up prices/economy).

The rules as written are clear: there is no game effect to characters or equipment for any injury that is short of a critical hit. In the rules as written, there is absolutely no effect to anything that doesn't cause a crit. The narrative description of what a Wounding-but-not-critical injury constitutes is up to the GM. Weapon or armor damage, bleeding wounds, damage to equipment and clothing- any additional side-effects of wounds that you wish to introduce is at the discretion of the GM.

Consider it another way: there are rules for swimming, but no rules in the book for the effect of swimming on your equipment. There is no "rust table" for swords and armor, no "save vs. mildew" for the boots you left out in the rain. An adventure may indicate that you have to make an Ag test to avoid falling into a mud hole, but doesn't contain rules for determining what of your gear gets covered in mud, and how badly. In all of these cases, the absence of explicit rules essentially says: you can ignore side effects without unduly unbalancing the game. You can treat this as as major or as minor an inconvenience as you like, depending on your play style and how vindictive you're feeling.

Or consider an attack vs. an inanimate object. Chests and doors have Wounds as well. What does an attack on a treasure chest that causes Wounds but no crit do? In game effects, nothing. The chest still functions as a chest without significant changes until it reaches W = 0. In narrative terms, the GM is free to describe whatever seems plausible- the paint chips, cracks appear, small chips of material fly off, dings and dents show up, etc.- but in mechanical terms nothing changes until you reach a critical point, at which point the chest gives up the ghost.

What it seems like you're looking for here are rules giving mechanical importance to narrative effects: the GM says that the arrow nicked me and I have a cut on my arm- does that mean my WS drops until I get that cut sutured shut? The answer is that the rules as written consider these sorts of things to be beyond the scope of the rules. If you want to make your players sew shut every rip in their tunic and individually cauterize each wound they receive, that's fine if you want an ultra-realistic style of play. The rules as written don't assume that level of detail, which puts you squarely in the realm of house rules or common sense.

Getting shot in the chest with an arrow means you got cut, which means your shirt got cut, unless you're a topless barbarian. Whether or not that cut matters depends on your play style. If you are content to use some abstraction and are bored by making Trade (Seamstress) rolls, you can assume that anyone with a modicum of spare time can patch a hole in their shirt, and hand-wave away this sort of thing. If you prefer a more simulationist style of play, you can require that the player carry needle and thread and make his Trade rolls, and track the amount of rag material that PCs are carrying for patches and bandages.

The issue for me is that there should be......

Basically, if a character in my game jumps off a high wall and rolls Damage 1, then as far as I'm concerned that is not 'Nothing', thats 1 damage and the player needs to be told what just happened to his character and what the consequences are.

Likewise, coming out of a fight with multiple wounds should mean the character needs some sort of medical attention, if only a dirty handkerchief. It seems to me the basic thing that differentiates roleplay from roll play.

I changed the damage system in my game anyway, by removing the Toughness adjustment from the damage formula. So, generallly speaking characters in my game take more damage from a hit than pescribed by the rules, which makes combat a bit more damgerous. But it also enabled me to reintroduce Toughness in what I consider to be a more appropriate context. In my game Toughness now determines whether the character is able to ignore the pain and trauma of his wounds and keep fighting or whether he collapses. This actually increases their survivability in combat in that they tend to collapse before they die, but also increases the risk of capture and/or execution by hostile parties. I personally prefer this to the force field approach some other GM's advocate, but as always it comes down to gaming style and player preferences.

As for armour and equipment, I added some basic rules for damage and wear and tear on those too. So, in my game armour will go rusty, and does get damaged in combat. the main reason for this was to add to the cost of ownership, in that the stuff needs constant repair and maintenance, and to dissuade players from wearing it unnecessarily e.g. the plate mail down the pub syndrome.

It seems Didz is the only person to even come close to understand what I was asking. I don't even get where half the answers are coming from to be honest.

Just to clarify my stance. I 'do' make things up. Please stop telling me to make it up

It's a bit pointless, it's roleplaying game I'm obviously capable of making things up.

I do 'not' want 100% realism, or anything close. I have no idea why that is being repeatedly presented as the only other option. Isn't there a vast area between 'no rules whatsoever' and '100% realistic rules'? Numerous answers seem to bring up that I'm somehow some kind of realism nutter and want rules for how many times my players need to go the bathroom or something when that's not even remotely the case.

My point is that when I take 'Wounds', a primary characteristic in the game and the primary method of resolving combat, I'd like to know what actually happens. I don't believe that even close to striving for 100% realism. In fact I'd say it's a pretty damn basic thing to be asking.
It is in no way similar to asking for rust tables, it is not even asking for detailed minutiae on every cut and bruise. It's asking if I even 'have' a cut or bruise.

Considering how many other threads have people going on abuot how grim and gritty and non d&d WFRP is I'm a little surprised that this vague 'intelligence powered, personal forcefield' doesn't bother anyone else to be honest. I know WFRp has always been a rules-lite kinda game but this is rules-none.

I've only half-read this thread, so forgive me if I'm repeating others...

Let's not think of Wounds as significant injuries, but as part of the process of being involved in a fight. They represent a general wearing down of a combatant under physical pressure. Their loss is not just the small cuts and bruises, they are also the loss of breath, the aching in the hands and limbs, a sudden awkward stance that pulls a muscle, a stitch.

As these effects accumulate, Wounds (which are just abstract measures of a character's ability to avoid serious injury) decrease. The character is less able to withstand forceful blows he might have resisted previously. He starts to make mistakes, the pressure and minor injuries making him more open to serious injury.

There comes a point where successful hits cause serious injuries. Think of it as having to carry heavy boxes - the first box is not so much a problem, but the second feels a bit heavier, and the third heavier still, because muscles, bones and tendons are under pressure. If you're forced to carry another one, chances are you'll drop it and maybe injure yourself seriously because you're already weakened.

Cheers

Sparrow

'Wounds are not significant injuries but represent a general wearing down of a combatant under physical pressure'

Thats effectively the force-field affect. e.g. the character suffers no real damage until their forcefield fails.

Thats fine if your game is an abstract roll play game where the players are happy to to ignore the occassional concept that makes no real sense. e.g. Your character gets hit over the head with a 2lb metal mace head but you still have 2 wounds left so it didn't hurt.

However, problems start to arise if as in my game damage involves a bit more than rolling the dice and making a few marks on a character sheet. I have to describe the combat in my game and narrate it to my players by email, so when they get hit I have to describe the thump of metal on flesh and the spurts of blood. I can't really get away with maces, sword blades and arrowheads bouncing harmlessly off characters bodies, until their forcefields run out, I need to describe the gradually abuse and trauma the characters are sufferring from being hit and be able to carry forward those affects into the aftermath of the fight.

The problem is that even in the rules the way wounds are used is inconsistent with the force-field concept. The explanation of a characters skin gradually becoming more sensitive to damage as they are repeatedly hit could make some sense in a period of prolonged combat, but it makes a little less sense when applied as it is to one off roleplay oriented events such as fall damage.

A character who repeatedly jumps from a high wall incurring minor damage on each occassion, can just get up and keep doing that until they finally run out of wounds points at which point jumping off the same wall they have already jumped off umpteen times suddenly kills them.

Thats pretty silly, in my opinion, I'd prefer to have that character sprain his ankle after the first attempt and hobble around for a few hours being made fun of by the other characters. However, I do agree thats it not hard to manage most of this by simple GM creativity, such as the sprained ankle. What requires more thought and houserules is the long term management of non-lethal combat damage effects on both the fighter and his equipment.

Artemis Black wrote:
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My point is that when I take 'Wounds', a primary characteristic in the game and the primary method of resolving combat, I'd like to know what actually happens. I don't believe that even close to striving for 100% realism. In fact I'd say it's a pretty damn basic thing to be asking.
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Presumably this is from a characters point of view and you are

The problem here is there is no one way to represent the wounds, so all anyone can do is give their opinion on how they treat the effect. There are likely thousands of different ways to treat the effect of wounds from a character perspective.

It would be like asking what is the effect of toughness bonus reducing damage as a game world aspect. Since wounds are much the same effect.

Didz wrote: ...
A character who repeatedly jumps from a high wall incurring minor damage on each occassion, can just get up and keep doing that until they finally run out of wounds points at which point jumping off the same wall they have already jumped off umpteen times suddenly kills them.
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It would be much in the same vein as a friend punching you in the arm time and time again, the first few you can basically ignore but as more blows land, you begin to notice the effect more and more. Sure the alalogy is on a smaller scale but the effect can be much the same.
Though you have chosen to represent it the way you want, which is they way to go IMO.

simply put a wound is a generic way of saying you are physically injured in a minor way.

a wound from fire is different from a wound from an arrow is different from a wound from falling is different from a wound from poison.

it is up to you as a GM to determine what exactly happened to the character because the rulebook does not know.

is a 2pt wound from an arrow a piercing of the chainmail and flesh with bleeding? It is if you want it to be. It is not if you do not want it to be.

Wounds to me represent fatigue and muscle sprains along with awkward positioning, a guy in combat who takes 1 wound has basically just got a little bit tired, he'll be fine the next day.

The same guy takes a total of 10 damage then any or all of the following have happened depending on how the games going:
He's parried a blow thats seriously sprained his arm muscles
He's fumbled and fell to the ground, open for a more damaging blow
A slash/stab has opened up a cut and the character is losing blood.

Loswaith wrote:It would be like asking what is the effect of toughness bonus reducing damage as a game world aspect. Since wounds are much the same effect.

Thats exactly why I removed toughness from the damage calculation. I actually makes no sense except in a wargame context where it is intended to model the extent to which wounded men remain in the ranks rather than using the scratch they just sufferred as an excuse to abscond. It was one of the aspects of the WFB rules which got carried across into WFRP without being given enough thought.

Didz wrote:'Wounds are not significant injuries but represent a general wearing down of a combatant under physical pressure'

Thats effectively the force-field affect. e.g. the character suffers no real damage until their forcefield fails.

Thats fine if your game is an abstract roll play game where the players are happy to to ignore the occassional concept that makes no real sense. e.g. Your character gets hit over the head with a 2lb metal mace head but you still have 2 wounds left so it didn't hurt.

Oh, it hurts and even disorientates, but it doesn't necessarily do signficant harm. We've all smacked our head on a shelf at some time or other. It hurts like hell, you might even feel a bit dizzy or nauseous with the pain, but you suffer no permanent injury. However, had I whacked my bonce in the middle of a fight, the effectively harmless pain or disziness leaves me more vulnerable to a another successful attack.

However, problems start to arise if as in my game damage involves a bit more than rolling the dice and making a few marks on a character sheet. I have to describe the combat in my game and narrate it to my players by email, so when they get hit I have to describe the thump of metal on flesh and the spurts of blood.

Or you could talk about pain or dizziness or disorientation, demonstrating that the fight is going badly. Blood doesn't have to come into it until critical hits.

The problem is that even in the rules the way wounds are used is inconsistent with the force-field concept. The explanation of a characters skin gradually becoming more sensitive to damage as they are repeatedly hit could make some sense in a period of prolonged combat, but it makes a little less sense when applied as it is to one off roleplay oriented events such as fall damage.

A character who repeatedly jumps from a high wall incurring minor damage on each occassion, can just get up and keep doing that until they finally run out of wounds points at which point jumping off the same wall they have already jumped off umpteen times suddenly kills them.

Thats pretty silly, in my opinion,

Actually, it's not that unreasonable. Minor falls can hurt, weaken the body and leave one vulnerable to more serious injury. I come back to the example of carrying boxes or even circuit training. If you keep pushing the body, the more likely it is to suffer injury from simple things.

I'd prefer to have that character sprain his ankle after the first attempt and hobble around for a few hours being made fun of by the other characters. However, I do agree thats it not hard to manage most of this by simple GM creativity, such as the sprained ankle.

This is pretty much what I've suggested Wounds represent. You've lost a few Wounds and sprained your ankle. When the Orc whacks you, you're less able to, say, brace yourself against the blow or twist to less the force of the impact - you're more vulnerable, the Damage goes past your forcefield and it injures you seriously.

What requires more thought and houserules is the long term management of non-lethal combat damage effects on both the fighter and his equipment.

I've never seen this sort of thing become an issue in any game I've ever played. Other gamers probably have, but I consider myself the more fortunate.

Cheers

Sparrow