So, as it happens one of my players suffered the first MW of the campaign last night (8 games in). Also, his sister was kidnapped by a demonic hellspawn in the process. So, yeah, bad night for him… Anyway, because he has the Will to Live, I was reading up on the MW recovery process and I’m a little baffled on one detail: How do you make an Ob 6 Health check for recovery when you have no dice?
Also, I missed the part in the rules where if you have 0 dice in any stat you are incapacitated. My Dwarven player is gonna be pissed. He has a MW of 13, but if he takes only a Severe wound he’s out of the fight because his Speed is only 3 (he’s a Dwarf!). I don’t know, seems kind of nerfy…
He needs to get his Speed up, then! Luckily, Fight is good for that. A B3 stat isn’t uncommon, and a Severe wound will put most characters out of the fight. I don’t have my books at hand, but I believe you test at the full Health dice (you ignore wound penalties for the purpose of recovery). I may be wrong, however.
The Mortal Wound stat isn’t the only thing that matters when taking damage. Congratulations, he’s hard to kill: that doesn’t mean he’s hard to take out of a fight.
Your guy got a MW? He needs a surgeon or medic to stop the bleeding first [failure is death];excess successes add dice to his recovery roll. If he passes, after a couple months he moves down to a Traumatic and so-on down the wound scale. Takes a long time to recover from one.
If he failed his roll and died, and paid for Will-to-live, you get to give him a nasty trait based on his wound., and permanent stat penalties too. Get an arrow in the guts, you might get ‘sensitive stomach’ and a die off Forte, get mashed in the face by a troll, you might give him a penalty to Perception and ‘hideous to look upon’. Will to live is pretty tough stuff.
MW of 13 means it still takes a B11 to give him a severe wound and take him out - that’s a MW for most starting characters. And even if his speed was 4, taking a severe would probably all but take him out. His reflexes would go down to 1, he’d likely fail a steel test and then hesitate - possibly for multiple exchanges since he only gets 1 action per exchange.
So what I’m saying is that his efforts are not wasted at all. A severe will basically make anybody useless in combat, but by increasing his MW he also increases his other wound tolerances so it’s much harder to give him a severe wound.
FYI, I do not believe that failing the treatment roll results in death. Remember, Will to Live means that you live no matter what. Instead, I treat the failed Treatment roll just like a failed Linked Test: the Health test to recover is at +1 Ob. Or you could do margin of failure, given that the Health test gives bonus dice equal to the margin of success.
I don’t have my books on me, but there are specific things that happen when you fail the treatment roll. I think it is the one that results in the “Mortally Wounded in the X” trait. I’ll double check when I get home.
Also, Leo, do remember as well that a severe wound is a mortal wound, just not an immediate one. Untreated, a severe wounds rapidly bleeds into a traumatic, which then hits MW in no time. Its really just a matter if degrees. And with a Severe wound of B11, there is really little to complain about. Besides, spend a persona to shrug off some penalty, and he’s back up with a few dice long enough to get hisself some medical attention.our until he gets his next light wound at least.
If he takes only a Severe wound? Man, he is in the floor, bleeding and probably screaming in pain. (Be gritty when describe it, or let the player do it.) We are talking about he may have several broken bones or internal bleeding or whatever and if he does not receive medical attention soon (before the end of the second scene after being injured) could lose a limb or something worst. (He could die.) And even if he receive medical treatment, it will take to him between one to three months to fully recover. (And it’s possible than he may never recover completely.)
Thanks, guys. Does anyone know where in the book it says that Health checks aren’t affected by lost dice for the purposes of recovery? I read through the Anatomy of an Injury section last night and didn’t see it. Then again, I’ve been known to miss things from time to time.
Point well-taken on the Severe Wound. My poor players… I really beat them to a pulp last night, and there are only two of them.
As for Severe wounds - once your players get a good bit more experienced - around 30 sessions or so - you start finding that Severe wounds aren’t so…severe…any more. “Oh, -3D from my 7D stat? No biggie. I’ll just pass an Ob 4 Health test to shrug off 1D of that, and then spend Artha.”
No, at some point you start realizing that it doesn’t hurt till it’s Traumatic.
Haha, well they certainly haven’t figured that out yet. Our game is pretty gritty right now, but luckily – or unluckily – the players are not afraid to stand and fight when it counts. Makes it very nerve-wracking for them.
