New Rules For Wounds And Combat In WFRP.
To make combat and damage in such, and perhaps invoke greater respect for the effects that is present, when one engages in melee, I have put together some new optional rules.
The "Wound Pool" on the Character Sheet, has to be distributed to the various parts of the body, i.e. head, legs, etc. The effects of combat will become more detailed and will, perhaps, allow greater damage to be done to one or more body parts so that the adventurer could still be alive, at least if medical, or magical, treatment is available.
The distribution of Wounds to the various locations will take place by calculating it in percent.
It will be as follows:
Each player will, of course, have to make five boxes, a humanoid silhouette or whatever, in order to keep the score up.
Shock Damage: A Character who takes a great deal of damage all at once, runs the risk of being knocked out, or (in a very unheroic manner) faint.
If a Character takes half his current Wound score or more in a single blow, he will have to take a Toughness test in order to remain conscious. If the test is not successful he will become unconscious and then the Monster will very probably tear him apart. The test has to be repeated every time a character is hit for half, or more, of his current Woundscore.
Healing Time: With the distribution of Wounds to different locations, it is only natural that the healing time changes accordingly.
For example, if a Wizard or a Cleric casts Cure Light Wounds on a wounded character, he is only healed in one location, and not in all the damaged locations. I feel that this makes things a little more interesting, especially if a character is severely wounded and there is no one who is capable of casting the appropriate spell, giving the required medical treatment or giving a Healing Potion. How will the character be saved? How far is it to the nearest Physician, and will the wounds become infected and thereby requiring an amputation?
As characters sleep, they still receive a Wound, although this is on every location. The same goes for Healing Potions, being an extremely potent magical brew, it will heal a character 2D6 Wounds upon every location and the GameMaster should, therefore, be very careful with his distribution of such potions. A physician also attends one location at a time, but if it is prolonged treatment, the character will still be healed for 7 + T Wounds points. For this to work, the character has to rest completely and any sort of physical efforts could very possibly destroy the body's healing work.
Optional Rule: As an optional rule, the GM can rule that the character also loses attacks whenever Shock damage occurs. As a basic rule, it can be said that the character, who makes a successful T-test, will lose half of his attacks in that round. If the character makes a T-test and succeeds with 20+, he will only lose 1 attack. But if it the other way around and the character only makes a marginal save, he will loose +1 Attack. This can continue indefinitely and the character will be able
to lose Attacks for the following rounds.
We believe that the optional rule illustrates what happens when one receives such a crushing blow. You begin to stagger, the fighting abilities decrease in effectiveness and so on. Also if one has been damaged in one body part for half of its total Wound score, or more, he will also receive penalties
to certain actions. Penalties that any GM will be able to determine in each case.
Quick Reference Table Showing Distributed Wound Values based on Characters Standard Wound Value
| Head | Arms | Body | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|
75% |
100% Each |
150% Each |
110% Each |
Distributed Wound Table
Type
Guide, Generic
Comments
Author's Notes
This is a copy of a supplementary set of rules produced by Madsen and Schwartz in 1992. I adopted its distributed wound system to offset the increase in combat damage resulting from my decision to remove the Toughness mitigation in the standard damage calculation. Taking Toughness out of the damage calculation resolved the issues of 'The Naked Dwarf Syndrome', but did make combat much more deadly. So, distributing the wound pool as suggested gives characters a higher chance of survival, plus the 'Shock Effect' rules tend to both shorten combat and increase survivability as characters will tend to faint or collapse from pain before taking a fatal wound. These rules also tend to favour skilled fighters who have higher weapon skills and thus can afford to focus their attacks, which seems quite realistic.