Revision as of 03:34, 18 October 2009

Cinematic Wound System

In an attempt to create a more cinematic form of damaging someone, I have worked out a wound based health system that
ignores “Health Levels” and tracks instead how many wounds you have at what level of severity. This could probably be applied
to several systems with modifications but it is shown here for Exalted.

As per normal combat (or whatever houserules you have going) you get to step 8 of on attack. Here your successes, instead of
damaging health levels on the target are compared to the target’s Wound Tiers.

Five Tiers of Wounding

The wound levels are differentiated by the penalty they give the wounded.

Minor Wounds [M] are -0 penalties, surface scratches and minor bruises.
Light Wounds [L] are -1 penalties, deeper wounds that restrict movement and require binding.
Serious Wounds [S] are -2 penalties, bleeding cuts and splitting bruises.
Critical Wounds [C] are -4 penalties, horrible cuts and contusions.
Dying wounds [D] knock you out of a fight, if lethal target must receive medical care soon or die.
Dying wounds still count as a -6 wound penalty to those it does not knock out

Wounds are represented on character sheet as type of wound (bashing or lethal) and level of wound.
Serious Bashing wound is represented as: /S
Dying Lethal Wound is represented as: XD
Critical Aggravated wound is represented as: *C

Wounding a target requires them taking damage, the tier of wound taken depends on comparing the number
of successes on the damage roll to the target's Wound Value (WV) if successes are below WV than target
receives a Minor Wound. If the take equal or greater than wound value they receive a Light Wound.
Doubling the WV leads to a serious wound, tripling leads to a Critical Wound, and having 4 times the
WV in damage successes gives a Dying Wound.

Wound Value (WV) is equal to your Stamina + number of Ox-Bodies, this feature of stamina replaces
natural soak, anything that adds natural soak is divided by two and added to Wound Value.

Mortals

Mortals cannot heal as quickly and when having a lethal wound of at a serious or worse nature they have
a risk of bleeding out, every wound of serious nature that is not tended after Stamina minutes becomes
a critical wound. Every critical wound that is untreated for stamina minutes becomes a dying wound.
A Dying Wound left untreated for Stamina minutes leads to a true death without a coup de grace.

Extras Extras have it even worse as in addition to normal mortal limits and low scores in traits, they upgrade
all wounds, so minor are lights, lights are serious, etc. This is because they lack the heroic nature
to ignore wounds. If a Extra takes a dying wound they actually die, the coup de grace administered in
blow itself.