One of our players and I had a disagreement about how the injury / madness card are gained. This is the passage we were discussing:

"When an investigator is reduced to 0 Stamina, he may choose to gain an Injury card. If he does this, he does not lose any items or Clue tokens for being knocked unconscious, and his Stamina is restored to its maximum value instead of to 1. However, the investigator must still move to either St. Mary’s Hospital or Lost in Time and Space, as appropriate. In addition, he must draw one Injury card."

My interpretation was that one injury card total would be drawn to prevent the loss of items and clues. My friend's interpretation was that the player must draw one injury card, perform the stated actions, then take an additional injury card. He also interpretted this to mean that an investigator would take only one injury / madness card when knocked unconscious and choosing to lose his items and clues.

Which interpretation is correct?

Your interpretation is correct. When you take an Injury or Madness card, you are preventing the other penalties for going insane or unconscious, and restoring your stat to full instead of to 1. When you go unconscious or insane, you may choose not to receive an injury or madness at all, instead submitting to the base game's discard penalties.

Also note that you can receive Injury or Madness cards other ways, say through encounters. Receiving these cards this way does not mean you have gone insane or unconscious, nor does it mean you can refill your sanity or stamina to maximum just by receiving them.

must say the way its worded does sound like you have to draw 2, but i should think tibs is right

I would definitely prefer a ruling that says you only take one card, but the way the rules are worded makes it sound like you must take 1 injury/madness card for having a stat reduced to 0, but can optionally take another if you choose to not go unconscious (i.e. you keep your items/clue tokens and resume with full stamina/sanity).

Anyone from FFG care to comment?

Personally, I don't think it's ambiguous at all. When knocked unconscious you may choose to gain an injury card. One. If you choose to do that you follow steps and in addition to those steps you draw an injury card (obviously, because you chose to gain one). Nowhere does it say you should take a card if you're knocked unconscious and don't choose to take a card. That's a change to a basic core rule that I think they would have noted very clearly if was intentional.

Not to mention, if you were to take two when you first go unconscious, that means there is a chance you could get devoured from drawing duplicates, and that you're immediately eligible for retirement. Plus, with Rita, do you draw 4 and pick two (as you are drawing one twice), or draw 3 and pick two (as you are gaining two at a time)?

One compulsory card and one optional card can't be the correct interpretation, if only by these scenarios.

Maybe Innsmouth would pull such harshness, but Dunwich expansion isn't THAT cruel to make you draw 2. Broken hand and amnesia are bad enough by themselves.

guys im sorry about this, at first i thought this was for an expansion rule, as its not in my printed rulebook, or the one online, is there a faq that updated this or am i missing something ? apologies

I think the designer's intent is fairly obvious- you draw only one, though I agree that the wording of the rule strongly implies that you have to draw two. I wouldn't even say it's particularly ambiguous- by a strict reading of the rule, you draw two. However, the wording would be so senselessly complex if it did mean to imply that, it's fairly obvious that the rule was just worded badly.

just to bump this for my question again(sorry) but are there a differnt updated set of rules that i have missed or is this a rule for expansions such as dunwich? which i getting next week by the way as my first expansion

darknight said:

Each expansion will provide its own "expansion of rules" for the new cards/boards used. If you want to make sure, here's the Dunwich rulebook for you to read over:

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Arkham_Horror/DH_rules_english.pdf

aha, thank you