Wounds vs Damage

By Zorblec, in Only War Rules Questions

I've been preparing for GMing my own campaign pretty soon here and one question I have not been able to get answer is the difference between damage and wounds can someone please explain it better than they did in the book and possible give me some examples?

It is a great mystery to me as well.

I've been preparing for GMing my own campaign pretty soon here and one question I have not been able to get answer is the difference between damage and wounds can someone please explain it better than they did in the book and possible give me some examples?

Yeah, they have a tendency to obscure the rules behind a barrage of flavour text and really unclear terminology. I'm not entirely sure how FFG would feel about me giving you a detailed breakdown of the rules here, but here's a stab at an overview:

Resolving Damage

A successful attack inflicts Damage on the target. How much Damage is inflicted depends on both the properties of the attack and the properties of the target.

Damage Soak

Most attacks have both a Damage value (dice roll + modifiers) and a Penetration (Pen) value.

Most Targets have both a Toughness Bonus (TB) and an Armour Points (AP) value.

  1. Subtract the Pen of the attack from the targets AP.
  2. Add the target's remaining AP (if any) to its TB. Call the value you just arrived at the target's Soak (not the the rules will, mind, but it's nice to have a term for this value).
  3. Resolve the Damage value of the attack.
  4. Subtract the target's Soak from the Damage value of the attack.
  5. Subtract any remaining Damage from the target's Wounds.

Wounds

Most entities have a Wounds value. Wounds are basically Hit Points, which I'm assuming you're both familiar with. However, when a target runs out of Wounds it doesn't keel over instantly as you may expect, instead it starts suffering Critical Damage.

Critical Damage

When a target runs out of Wounds to subtract Damage from, it instead starts adding Critical Damage effects. These stack, so if a target already has 4 points of Critical Damage and receives another 6, it has 10 points of Critical Damage (AKA hilariously gory death).

Note: Embrace the term Soak , it will make your life a lot easier. Also consider thinking in terms of Attack Strength and Damage instead of just Damage, because calling it Damage both before and after reducing by Soak is a great way to facilitate lots of miscommunication and general confusion.

That is a great explanation and the terms Soak and Attack Strength make a whole lot of sense.

A simplified way to explain the distinction would be this, though:

Damage is what an attack does. It damages your body, or your tank, or whatever.

Wounds is how much Damage can be done to you before you start to suffer ill effects. All damage hurts you, but up to your Wounds, it is only "flesh wounds" which hurt, but don't do anything else. For tanks it's even more obvious with the term structural integrity. [1]

Critical Damage is actual "damage" to your body: Things that are, if not permanent, then at least temporarily affecting your ability to do stuff.


[1]: To me, anyway, it's very clear that things with less structural integrity aren't broken but instead highly unstable: Blow on them and they fall apart...