Tinkering with: Conditional Injury (Threshold Injury), part II

This a follow-up to my previous take in Conditional Injury. This article should be explicative on it's own, but for the reasons and rationale for this system, you may want to check part I.

As usual, I like to acknowledge the input from other GURPS players and from the author of the original Conditional Injury article, Douglas Cole.

Injuries

Any damage that penetrates your armor, and many other forms of danger, inflicts injury. After calculating the quantity of injury you suffered, compare it to your Injury Thresholds to know your Wound Level, that is, how badly you're affected. Your Injury Thresholds are based on fractions of your HP score, and each one has associated effects, ranging from simple Shock penalties to instant death. 

Your current Wound Level may worsen in two ways: first, you receive enough injury to cause a higher Wound Level, and second, you fail an Accumulation check. 

Accumulation

An accumulation check is an HT roll (sometimes with penalties) that you make whenever you have a Wound Level and suffer a new, lesser or equal Wound Level. If you fail, you are "upgraded" to the next worse Wound Level.  

Example: Inigo is currently on the Serious Wound level. If he receives enough injury to cause a Gruesome Wound, he's then bumped to that level. Likewise, if he suffers a lower than Serious Wound, or a new Serious Wound, but fails the Accumulation Check, he's then bumped to Major Wound. 

General Injury: Injury Thresholds

Your Injury Thresholds are calculated as below and result in the following effects. These are easily looked up on the Wound Table (here shown for a HP 10 character):

• Scratch Wound (Sc): injury over 1/10 your HP. 
• This causes -1 Shock. 
• Any Scratch or worse wound to the eyes cripples them.  If this happens, the wound is upgraded to a Major Wound.
• Minor Wound (Mi): injury over 1/4 HP. 
• -2 Shock. 
• Minor Wounds call for a Accumulation Check at HT. 
• Serious Wound (Se): injury over 1/3 HP. 
• -3 Shock. 
• Serious Wounds call for a Accumulation Check at HT-1. 
• Any Serious or worse wound to an extremity cripples it. If this happens, the wound is upgraded to a Major Wound.
• Major Wound (Ma): injury over 1/2 HP. 
• -4 Shock. 
• Major Wounds call for a Accumulation Check at HT-2. 
• Major Wounds require an immediate HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• Any Major or worse wound to a limb cripples it.
• Reeling Wound (Re): injury over 1/1.6 HP. 
• -4 Shock. 
• Reeling Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-3.
• Reeling Wounds require an immediate HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores. 
• Gruesome Wound (Gr): injury equal to your HP
• -4 Shock. 
• Gruesome Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-4.
• Gruesome Wounds require an immediate HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• At the start of your next turn, unless you Do Nothing, make an unpenalized HT roll, failure means you fall unconscious. 
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores.  
• Deadly 1 Wound (D1): injury equal 2xHP
• -4 Shock. 
• Deadly 1 Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-5.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a unpenalized HT roll, failure means you die.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• At the start of your next turn, and every turn thereafter, unless you Do Nothing, make an HT-1 roll, failure means you fall unconscious. 
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores.  
• Deadly 2 Wound (D2): injury equal 3xHP
• -4 Shock. 
• Deadly 2 Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-5.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a unpenalized HT roll, failure means you die.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• At the start of your next turn, and every turn thereafter, unless you Do Nothing, make an HT-2 roll, failure means you fall unconscious. 
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores. 
• Deadly 3 Wound (D3): injury equal 4xHP 
• -4 Shock. 
• Deadly 3 Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-6.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a unpenalized HT roll, failure means you die.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• At the start of your next turn, and every turn thereafter, unless you Do Nothing, make an HT-3 roll, failure means you fall unconscious. 
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores. 
• Deadly 4 Wound (D4): injury equal 5xHP 
• -4 Shock. 
• Deadly 4 Wounds call for an Accumulation Check at HT-6.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a unpenalized HT roll, failure means you die.
• Immediately after suffering such a wound, make a HT roll for Knockdown and Stun.
• At the start of your next turn, and every turn thereafter, unless you Do Nothing, make an HT-4 roll, failure means you fall unconscious. 
• Halve your current Move and current Dodge scores. 
• Fatal Wound (Fa): injury equal 6xHP
• You are instantly killed. No roll is allowed.
• Total Destruction (To): injury equal 11xHP 
• You are instantly killed, no roll is allowed, and suffer total body destruction.

Thus, death in only possible from Deadly 1 Wounds or worse. Likewise, with successful HT rolls, characters may sustain many more small injuries and still remain functional.

This spreadsheet calculates Wound Thresholds for you. For easier tracking, note down your Injury Thresholds and the associated Accumulation Check penalties on your character sheet - such is a sheet is available here.

Shock

The effects of shock are as per B419.

Major Wounds

As explained above.

Knockdown and Stun

As per B420. Additionally, any wound - even a Scratch - to the head or vitals calls for a Knockdown and Stun check.

Bleeding

Use the rules in B420, but substitute the written HT penalties by the Accumulation Check HT penalty for your current Wound Level. Also, remember "Death by a Thousand Cuts" below.

Crippling Injury

As per B420.

Mortal Wound

From a Deadly 1 Wound and forward, if you fail your HT roll to avoid death by 1 or 2, proceed as in B423.

Death by a thousand cuts

Whenever injury from sources other than external trauma (e.g. burning HP to fuel Magic, losing HP due to failed Extra Effort rolls), results in a Scratch Wound or not even that, treat it as a Minor Wound instead. Thus, through accumulation, even high HP characters can be whittled down.

Example: Inigo has 10 HP. His Scratch, Minor and Serious Wound thresholds are 2, 3 and 4, respectively. Should he burn 1 HP to fuel a spell, he'll suffer a Minor Wound. Later, when he burns 5 HP in the same way, he suffers a Serious Wound.

Recovery

Recovering from unconsciousness

If you fall unconscious, you regain your senses as follows:

• If you have a Reeling Wound or lower, awaken automatically in 15 minutes. 
• If you have a Gruesome Wound, make an HT roll to awaken every hour. If you succeed, unless you suffer a new injury you do not have to roll every second to stay conscious. 
• If you have a Deadly 1 Wound or worse, you get a single HT roll to awaken after 12 hours. See B423, under "At -1xHP or below" for more.

Natural recovery

To find out how long it takes for a wound to heal, look up on the Natural Healing Table on Pyr #3-120 - Conditional Injury, replacing the "Severity" column with the Injury Thresholds in this article as follows:

• Scratch Wound: Severity -6
• Minor Wound: Severity -4
• Serious Wound: Severity -3
• Major Wound: Severity -2
• Reeling Wound: Severity -1
• Gruesome Wound: Severity 0
• Deadly 1 to 4 Wounds: Severity 1 to 4  
• Fatal Wound: Severity 5

Speeding up Natural Recovery - First Aid (treating shock), Medical Care and other forms of healing

Time-based recovery

Use the rules for Time-Based Recovery from Pyr #3-120 - Conditional Injury. This way, any "HP" restored simply reduces the time it takes for a wound to heal. Use the same rolls as defined on B424-245 for Treating Shock and Medical Care.

Note on Bandaging: Bandaging is now useful only for stopping bleeding and nothing more. 

Optional Rule: apply the Accumulation Check HT penalties to First Aid rolls used in Bandaging, Treating Shock and Physician rolls for Medical Care. This way, harsher wounds will benefit more from technology - on low TLs, they might not be treatable at all. 

Threshold method

Note: for all of these, the Optional Rule above becomes mandatory.

• Bandaging: Bandaging is now useful only for stopping bleeding and nothing more. 
• Treating Shock: Success reduces the Wound by one level, Critical Success by two; Failure does nothing, and Critical Failure worsens the wound by one level. Anything less than a Scratch Wound is completely cured.
• Medical Care: rolls as per B424, but read the Accumulation Check HT Penalty for the wound as the number of successes required to improve that wound by one level, minimum one success. A Critical Success counts as two successes; Failure does nothing, and a Critical Failure erases one success.
• Magical Healing: if the source of healing is such that it requires energy expenditure, and such energy is adjusted for SM (as in "1+SM"), treat it each point healed as in Medical Care, with each point counting as one success in improving a wound. If the source of healing has no energy involved, or energy is not adjusted to SM, treat it as Medical Care but multiply the number of points required to count as one success by SM+1.

Example: Inigo currently has a Major Wound (Accumulation HT-2). 

• At TL3, his Physician rolls Physician minus 2 at the end of a week and succeeds - the wound remains a Major one, however, since it needs two successes to be improved.
• At TL8, his Physician rolls daily, and gets two successes in a row. He's now at the Serious Wound level - one more day of care and a success, and he'll be at the Minor Wound level.
• Had he seeked magical assistance and rolled a 6 using a 1d+2 healing potion, he would be fully healed instantly. 
• A SM3 character with a Major Wound,. using the same potion, would require 8 successes to be healed from Major to Serious, and then 4 successes from Serious to Minor. 

Surgery

Stabilizing a Mortal Wound, Repairing Lasting Crippling Injuries and Repairing Permanent Crippling Injuries work as on B424.

Resuscitation

As per B425.

Fatigue

Lost Fatigue Points

Fatigue works as in B426. Once you reach -1xFP and incur in any additional FP costs, they are treated as injury and thus wounds instead. Remember to apply Death by a Thousand Cuts from above.

Cooling the dice

In the nex article we'll take a look at how the system works in play or at how it interact with Advantages/Disadvantages. Until then, feedback is welcome.

Cheers!