Wounds/Injury in Verus (Hub & Spokes)

Okay, so if I were to run a game using only the Hub and Spokes for the first few sessions, is there a simple way (in the rules-as-written) to handle injuries and wounds from a combat-based Versus test? Or is all that stuff only detailed in the Fight, Weapons, and Injury sections of the Rim, in which case the consequences of success or failure in Versus combat would be primarily fictional, rather than mechanical?

For example, the princess tries to clobber the dagger-brandishing vizier with a candelabra. It’s a Versus test, the vizier wins. Do I do anything to calculate the princess’ damage, wounds, etc., or do I just narrate how the she is stabbed and cornered by the vizier and continue playing from there?

I’m totally fine with either of these possibilities - I just wanted to double-check my reading of the book.

(Now that I think about it, I guess this question would also apply to combat-based Versus tests in any BW game, even if the sub-systems were in play.)

Check Bloody Versus on 426. Yes, it’s technically the Rim, but it really should be earlier. It’s a slightly expanded versus that gives rules for wounds. But yes, then you’ll also need the weapons and injury sections

There’s two ways to do it while still staying primarily Hub and Spokes. The first is to do it with a Bloody Versus as Wayfarer mentioned. The other is to do a straight Versus test and then calculate damage based on Margin of Success and the specific weapon attributes (so a MoS of 3 with a sword would let them increase the damage from Incidental to Mark). If you do that, I suggest giving advantage dice for better armor, weapon reach, and all the other stuff that you get as bonuses for Bloody Versus, just condensed down to a single roll.

The main difference between using a straight Versus test with some weapon mechanics and Bloody Versus is that with the latter you can have situations where both parties hit or both parties successfully defend. With a straight Versus test you’re guaranteed to have only one person take the blow.

So, by a strict Hub and Spokes reading, there’s no way to do damaging conflict with mechanical consequences. If you allow for the Weapon Mechanics and Anatomy of Injury chapters from the Rim (which, honestly, aren’t terribly complicated) then you can do a conflict without needing to reference anything from Fight (be it full-fledged Fight or simply Bloody Versus).

There’s a third way which is to make damage part of the stakes. For example part of the vizirs stake could be to inflict a mark result on the princess (assuming of cause he want’s to do that, instead of just capturing her safely)

Thanks to everyone for your responses, this is all very helpful. In particular, the above quote pretty much sums up what I was looking for.

I wouldn’t calculate damage in a versus test. What’s your intent? You want to kill that guy by stabbing him in the face? If you succeed, you get what you want.

I’ll add that in minor combat between a PC and an NPC I’m often inclined to use a simple test and weight the outcomes based on the story. Success means killing the NPC, escaping, whatever the PC wants. Failure might mean the same, but with a wound. This is especially important in high heroics games. It’s not fun to have your powerful heroes laid low by mooks, but you can get this:

“Your dashing swordsman faces a dozen of the viscount’s guards blocking the way!”
“I cut them down!”
“Roll Sword, Ob 3 (yes, it can be that low!) to hack your way through them. If you fail, you’re delayed long enough for the viscount to make his escape.” There may not even be a wound there. The swordsman is too heroic to suffer any consequences from mooks. He just might be slowed by having to slash that many obstructive mooks.

Or, “Roll Sword, Ob 3, to get through without a B4 wound…” Now the hero catches up to the viscount either way, but he might be wounded in the process and have to face his foe, a master swordsman himself, at a disadvantage. In previous threads, we’ve argued about whether you assign arbitrary wounds as a type (you take a Light/Midi/whatever) or PTGS coordinate. There’s no real consensus.

Totally. But my concern was more with how to deal with the consequences of failing that roll - but as Wayfarer and others have pointed out, there are all kinds of ways to handle it (both mechanically and fictionally). :slight_smile:

Disadvantage is part of the Hub. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a failure consequence being something like “if you fail, you manage to hack your way through the guards, but take a nasty bleeding gash on your forehead. Future combats are +1Ob until you can get it cleaned up.”

Good point!

Using just the Hub and Spokes fighting is not about hurting the other guy, it’s about getting what you want from them by violence. The first step is to find out what they are fighting over. Once you’ve used a fighting skill and rolled the dice then Let It Ride applies. The other character can’t fight back again unless they change the playing field somehow (for example by drawing a sword after losing a fist fight).

Let It Ride is the injury. You can describe it as a such but it has to be a fairly forgiving as it only really effects the way the involved characters interact.