How does a wound become permanent?

Omens of War.

I hate to have these one line responses but that's where you can find permanent wounds.

Yea, the Liber Carnagia..is very vague. I need some clarification. It's the 2nd time that I've had to just hand the book around the table and say, "What do you guys think?"

It's just not clear.

Does it include the severity of the card? Do you have to get "more than" the number or just equal to it.

Can someone point me to the correct sentence in the text? It's ruined the momentum in two sessions now scratching our heads on this.

jh

I don't have the set yet (should arrive today actually), but from what I understand, its not in the book. It is part of the severe wound cards. The critical wounds that get worse if your total severity is over a certain number. RecklessDice showcases them (not on purpose) in the Witches Song adventure. I hope that helps.

Also, I found this article that might help.

Yea, now that I have had tme out of game to look, I can see that not all severe wounds can become permanent criticals. The article helps

jh

Yep, exactly right. Only some wounds are permanent, and those were included in the supplement Omens of War only (so far). The majority may linger for a while, but are not permanent.

I'll throw my two cents in here to help clarify since we had a few experiences with a few different types of severe wounds in our last two games.

When calculating the Total Wound Severity , you include the severity of all Critical Wounds you are suffering from, including ones you may have just received.

The Threshold on a Sever Wound is exactly that, a Threshold , which means that you have to Exceed the value for the effect to trigger.

Many of the Sever Wounds are permanant (and say so on the card). Others are not permanant (this is indicated by the card not having a 'this is permanant' effect).

As an example, our Dwarf, Thorin, drew the Mangled Arm card, he had enough criticals to trigger the threshold and the wound became permanant. Later on, he suffered a manged eye, which he still suffers from, but it is not a permanant effect. He can cure this critical like normal.

Gitzman

To trigger the severe effect of severe injuries:

Liber Carnagia p. 13

When the total severity of all critical wounds, including Severe Injuries, equals or exceeds the severity threshold of a given Severe Injury, then its severe effect is triggered.

The effect is only permanent if it says so on the card or if it's an effect that can't naturally heal (like "You Die").

How silly that this is the only rule where the "threshold" only needs to be met instead of exceeded. In all other instances throughout the rules you have to exceed a threshold to trigger an effect. Isnt that the whole point of using a threshold?

Gitzman

Gitzman said:

I think that should be fixed in Errata

Romus said:

Yeah they should change it to something else... call it the target number or whatever. OR just make a change where the total severity must be over the threshold. Until then it's a matter of +1 total severity, but in terms of balance I think they are balanced to work well with the number as being the target number. It's not going to screw much with balance though and I'm sure players prefer it as a threshold

i am kinda puzzled by the rationale behind the mechanic : a wound becomes permanent when you get others wounds elsewhere ?

i'd say wounds become permanent if they are not healed properly ?

I think of the mechanic as more of a measuring stick to determine "has this PC taken enough of a beating, in the absence of effective medical intervention, to justify a really serious injury?" If he's suffered enough critical wounds to meet that threshold, it's probably safe to say that he's maimed up pretty bad.

Also, the way you interpret a wound should be determined by the circumstances. If Heinz gets a "Severed Hand" card and he's already met the critical severity threshold, you can easily describe it as "So the goblin's sword flashed out and suddenly there's Heinz' hammer, lying in the grass. Thing is, his hand was still wrapped around the haft."

On the other hand, if Heinz doesn't already have enough critical severity to guarantee a lost body part, but meets that threshold later, don't think of it like: "Heinz' hand was still attached, but before we could get him to a physician he twisted his ankle, and then suddenly his hand fell off!"

Instead, it's more like "The goblin had chopped most of the way through Heinz' hand, and it looked bad enough that we weren't sure if it'd ever heal up or not. By the time we got Heinz back to town (we had to improvise a litter, because he twisted his ankle pretty badly in our retreat) his hand had gone this nasty grey-green, and so he had to have it amputated."

Hurlanc said:

The rules shouldn't be understood that literally. It's just an abstract way og handling it. In the real world you it can be harder to recover from something if you also get hit by another disease or virus. It's just an abstract way of handling what the final outcome it.

It's not like you get that final blow to your head and then your finger falls off. You may get a blow to the head, but as you tried to parry he hits and cuts off your finger.

Don't read too much into the rules, trying to make RPG rules to represent reality in a realistic way is silly and you'll just run into even more issues. Instead you can just find your own explanations and a GM can easily weave explanations into the description of combat.

Agreed. You need to think of combat more abstract. An action isn't necessarily a single thrust/swing. It can involve multiple strikes, positioning, and some minor dodging and avoidance, etc.

So, it could be that in the course of the action, that already injured part of the body was also hit. Or, the stress/effort of unsuccessfully attempting to avoid the hit actually did more damage to it, etc.