Let's say a character takes 5 wounds from a leech attack and has 2 fatigue. Would that character take 5 wounds, lose 2 fatigue, then take 3 additional wounds, or would they only take 1 additional wound since they were out of fatigue? Also, would the attacking creature heal 2 wounds? 3 wounds? or 5 wounds?

Thanks.

"For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound."

So: count up the number of wounds dealt by the attack (in your example, 5). For each such wound, 2 effects occur:

1. The target loses 1 fatigue, or suffers 1 wound if out of fatigue
2. The attacker is healed of 1 wound

Thus, in your example, the target loses his 2 remaining fatigue, then takes 3 additional wounds (making 8 total for the attack), and the attacker is healed of 5 wounds.

He suffers more than 1 extra wound because the extra wound is part of the "for every wound token lost" effect, so it's repeated for each initial wound (5 times, in your example, but in 2 of those cases the target loses fatigue instead).

The attacker is healed for 5 because the healing isn't contingent upon either the fatigue loss or the extra wound inflicted, it's a separate effect that also occurs for every initial wound dealt.

One could hypothetically argue that if you run out of fatigue and suffer an extra wound, then you also need to lose a fatigue or suffer an extra wound for the extra wound, but that would mean that any time you run out of fatigue from a Leech attack that you instantly suffer infinity wounds, so we're reasonably confident that's not what they meant.

Antistone said:

I agree with Antistone's assessment of your example, but this part is certainly not so crystal-clear. (This matters if the target dies from the leech attack - does the attacker get healed from the "overkill" portion, or even healed at all?) If you're curious to hear the reasoning on either side, go to this thread.

(The hypothetical 'infinite wounds' scenario is also mentioned in that thread, but I don't think anyone actually said they thought it really did work that way.)

Thanks a bunch for the feedback.