The brutality of combat can lead to various negative status effects on players - whether that be Stunned, Disoriented, or even Burning. Most of these status effects do not persist long after combat ends, but some devastating effects linger long after combat: Grievous Wounds.
Certain creatures (and players of appropriate classes, or with appropriate traits) can inflict long-term damage on their foes. While there are numerous types of Grievous Wounds, all of them inflict the basic status effect of Grievously Wounded. This effect reduces all healing received (including over any type of rest or sleep) by half.
Grievous Wound Types
In addition to the healing reduction noted above, each type of Grievous Wound has other, more debilitating effects:
Bleeding: This type of wound is a serious laceration to your body. While affected by this wound, any time you receive bludgeoning, force, piercing or slashing damage, you take an additional 1d6 damage of that same type. This type of wound can stack (meaning additional damage taken on each of these damage types). The Rogue Assassin subclass, characters with the Bloodletter trait, and other highly lethal creatures are able to impose these types of wounds on their enemies.
Cold: Inflicted primarily by critical injuries from strong Elemental magic, this type of wound reduces the Momentum available to you each turn by 1. In addition, you do not regenerate Vitality Dice over full rests, causing your body to recover more slowly if the wound is not healed.
Fracture: Breaking or fracturing a bone, this wound type imposes serious Reflex and Dexterity check penalties. In addition, each of these wounds reduces your movement speed by 5. Since this wound type can stack, multiple fractures can leave you nearly incapacitated. These types of wounds can be inflicted by the Rogue Ruffian, by those with the Bonecrusher trait, or from massive bludgeoning damage (such as from an Elementalist's Boulder spell).
Horror: A fear that sinks into the depths of your psyche, this wound type imposes severe penalties on Wit, along with Intelligence and Wisdom checks. Your dreams are full of nightmares, reducing your regained health even further over full rests. When attempting to heal a wound of this type, three failed healing checks results in a permanent mental trauma - a type of madness that affects you for the rest of your days.
Spectral: Devastating attacks by creatures of the Spectral Plane, or those who wield their magics, can inflict this wound type. While affected, your Resolve and Willpower checks have significant maluses. Like the Horror wound type, failing the healing check on this wound three times will cause a permanent effect: your physical form fades into a wraith of the Spectral Plane.
Toxic: Dreadful poisons or venomous creatures can inflict this wound type, which also can have multiple stacks (similar to Bleeding and Fracture). This wound is a slow killer, imposing a harsh penalty on Constitution checks (including for the healing check against Grievous Wounds) and damaging you each hour. With the inherent healing reduction from the Grievously Wounded status effect, this wound (if left unhealed) can easily lead to a slow and grueling death for an adventurer.
Healing Grievous Wounds
Unlike normal status effects which persist for a short time, or have various magical remedies or salves to cure, Grievous Wounds are especially difficult to overcome. Each Grievous Wound requires a Healing Check at the conclusion of each full rest. This is a Constitution check against a DC of 15 (some monster-inflicted Grievous Wounds may have a different, likely higher, DC). Two successful healing checks are required in order to heal a Grievous Wound. Each Grievous Wound (and each stack, for those which can have multiple stacks) is healed individually. This means that at a minimum such a wound would take multiple days to overcome (and often longer, depending on the Constitution of the wounded creature).
Certain magical spells and concoctions can be used to speed up this process, allowing for example an additional Healing Check during the day, but only the highest-level magics can be used to fully remove such a wound. For most adventurers these wounds must be tended to over many days, and without proper care and caution can lead to an untimely demise.
See how you fare against grievous injury in our first free playtest available here!
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