Wounds & Healing

Wounds & Healing

"Survival Ain't Pretty—But It Beats the Alternative"

Getting shot, stabbed, bitten, or blown up is an occupational hazard in the Weird West. Understanding how wounds work—how to survive them, how to heal them, and when to start praying—can mean the difference between walking away and ending up in a pine box on Boot Hill.

This section covers everything from bullet wounds to bleeding out, from battlefield medicine to supernatural recovery.

From Damage to Wounds

When an attack hits you, the attacker rolls damage dice based on their weapon. The total damage determines how many wounds you take, based on your Size.

The Formula: For every full multiple of your Size you take in damage, you suffer one wound.

Example: Most humans have Size 6. If you take 13 points of damage, that's 2 wounds (13 ÷ 6 = 2.16, round down to 2). If you take 18 points of damage, that's 3 wounds.

Size 0 Creatures: Anything with Size 0 (rats, insects, tiny critters) dies from a single point of damage. They're fragile, but they usually attack in swarms.

The Five Wound Levels

Not all wounds are created equal. Each location on your body can take up to 5 wounds, and the severity increases with each level:

What "Maimed" Means

Limbs (arms/legs): The limb is severed, crushed beyond use, or otherwise permanently out of commission. It's gone or might as well be.

Head or Guts: You're dead. Maimed wounds to vital areas mean you're pushing daisies, kicking buckets, and buying the farm. Time to roll up a new character—or see if you come back as one of the Harrowed (see that section later).

Tracking Wounds by Location

Your body is divided into six hit locations, and you track wounds separately for each:

• Head (Noggin)
• Guts (includes upper guts, lower guts, and gizzards from the hit location table)
• Right Arm
• Left Arm
• Right Leg
• Left Leg

How wounds stack: Wounds only add together in the same location. If you take a light wound to your right arm, then later take a heavy wound to the same arm, you now have a serious wound in that arm (1 + 2 = 3).

Different locations don't combine: A light wound to your head and a heavy wound to your leg are tracked separately. They don't add up to a serious wound.

You can't die from limb wounds alone: Wounds to arms and legs can make you pass out from Wind loss (see below) or bleed out, but they can't directly kill you. Only wounds to the head or guts can put you down permanently.

Wound Modifiers: The Price of Pain

Injuries make everything harder. Blood in your eyes ruins your aim. Broken fingers make triggers hard to pull. Shattered ankles make running a nightmare.

Your worst wound determines your penalty: Look at all your wounds across all locations. Whichever is the highest level applies its modifier to all your rolls.

What the penalty applies to: Wound modifiers affect all Trait and Aptitude rolls. The only exceptions are damage rolls (wound modifiers don't reduce damage you deal) and the Strength portion of hand-to-hand damage (wound modifiers do apply here).

Example: You have a light wound to your left arm and a serious wound to your right leg. Your worst wound is serious, so you take –3 to all rolls until you heal. Location doesn't matter—it's cumulative trauma affecting your whole performance.

Stun: The Shock of Injury

Getting hurt hurts. Sometimes the pain and shock are so overwhelming that you can't do anything but scream, clutch your wound, or collapse.

Whenever you take damage, you must make a stun check to see if the trauma knocks you out of action temporarily.

Making a Stun Check

Step 1: Roll your Vigor Trait.

Step 2: Check the TN based on the wound level you just took:

Step 3: Apply your wound modifier to the roll (based on your worst existing wound).

If you succeed: You shake off the pain and can act normally.

If you fail: You're stunned. You can't take actions except limping a few yards and crying like a baby. You must make recovery checks to snap out of it.

If you go bust: You're knocked unconscious for 1d6 hours (or until someone makes a Fair (5) medicine roll to wake you up).

When to make stun checks: Every time you take a wound—unless you're already stunned.

Recovery Checks

If you're stunned, you can attempt to recover on any of your actions. This takes an entire action.

Roll Vigor against a TN equal to your current highest wound level. Apply wound modifiers. If you succeed, you snap out of it and can act normally on your next action.

Wind: Stamina and Shock

Wind represents your stamina, energy, and ability to keep fighting despite exhaustion and trauma. It's calculated from your Vigor + Spirit die types (a character with d8 Vigor and d10 Spirit has 18 Wind).

Losing Wind

You lose Wind in several ways:

From Wounds: Every time you take a wound, you also lose 1d6 Wind per wound level. This roll can explode (Aces).

From Attacks That Don't Wound: If an attack doesn't do enough damage to cause a wound (damage less than your Size), you still lose at least 1d6 Wind.

From Exertion: Running for extended periods, holding your breath, environmental effects, etc.

Example: You take 2 wounds from a gunshot. Roll 2d6 for Wind loss. You get a 4 and a 6 (Ace!). Roll the 6 again and get a 3. You lose 4 + 9 = 13 Wind. Ouch.

Getting Winded

When your Wind drops to 0 or below, you're winded. This doesn't necessarily mean you pass out, but you're in bad shape—gasping for breath, collapsing from exhaustion, or curled up trying to stop the bleeding.

Effects of being winded:

• You draw no Action Cards
• You can perform no actions (at Marshal's discretion, you might whisper or crawl a few yards at the end of the round)
• You're effectively out of the fight until you recover Wind

Negative Wind and Death: If you continue losing Wind below 0, you could die. Every time your negative Wind equals your starting Wind, you take another wound to the guts.

Example: You start with 12 Wind. You're winded and down to –8 Wind. You're still conscious but in bad shape. If you drop to –12 Wind, you take a wound to the guts. At –24 Wind, you take another guts wound. This can kill you quickly.

Recovering Wind

Natural Recovery: You recover 1 Wind per minute naturally with rest.

Medical Aid: Anyone can make a Foolproof (3) medicine roll (even untrained, at –4) to bandage scrapes and restore all Wind. This takes about 5 minutes. You can even do this for yourself in a pinch.

Fate Chips: You can spend Fate Chips to immediately recover Wind (see the Fate Chips section).

Bleeding

Serious injuries cause bleeding, and if left untreated, bleeding kills.

Bleeding continues until the wound is treated (at least bandaged) or until you die. Combined with negative Wind causing guts wounds, bleeding out is a very real danger for seriously injured characters.

Healing

There are three ways to heal wounds in the Weird West: immediate medical care, natural healing over time, and supernatural/arcane healing.

Immediate Medical Care (The Golden Hour)

You have one hour after an injury to attempt medical treatment. This is the "golden hour" when a skilled doctor can make a real difference.

Who Can Heal What:

• Medicine: General: Can heal light and heavy wounds
• Medicine: Surgery: Required for serious, critical, and maimed wounds

How it works:

1. Make a medicine roll for each wounded location separately
2. The TN is based on the wound level (same as the Stun table: Light = 5, Heavy = 7, Serious = 9, Critical = 11, Maimed = 13)
3. Success reduces that location's wounds by one level
4. Failure means no improvement (and for maimed limbs, failure means it's permanent—see below)

Example: You have a serious wound to your right arm and a heavy wound to your left leg. The doctor makes two rolls: one at TN 9 for the arm, one at TN 7 for the leg. If both succeed, your arm drops to a heavy wound and your leg drops to a light wound.

After the Golden Hour: Once an hour has passed, conventional medicine can't do much. Swollen tissue, infections, and natural healing processes make surgical intervention dangerous or impossible. At that point, you rely on natural healing or arcane methods.

Natural Healing

Time heals all wounds—if you live long enough.

The Process: Every 5 days, make a Vigor roll for each wounded location. The TN is based on the wound level (Light = 5, Heavy = 7, etc.). Success improves that wound by one level.

Roll separately for each location: A character with wounds to an arm and guts makes two rolls. They might improve both, one, or neither.

Example: You have a serious wound to your guts (TN 9). Five days later, you roll Vigor and get a 12. Your wound improves to heavy. Five days after that, you roll against TN 7. If you succeed, it drops to light. Another 5 days later, if you succeed against TN 5, you're fully healed.

At minimum, it takes 15-20 days to fully heal from serious wounds naturally, and that's if you succeed on every roll.

Arcane Healing

Blessed, shamans, and some hucksters can heal wounds through supernatural means. These methods work long after the golden hour and can heal wounds much faster than natural recovery.

The specific mechanics depend on the type of supernatural healing (miracles, rituals, hexes), but all share one critical rule:

Brawlin' Damage (Nonlethal)

Not every fight ends in death. Sometimes you just want to knock someone out or teach them a lesson without killing them.

Nonlethal attacks include:

• Bare fists (fightin': brawlin')
• Light clubs (chair legs, bottles)
• Heavy clubs used carefully (pistol butts, axe handles—attacker's choice)

How it works:

1. Roll damage normally (no bonus dice for gizzards or noggin)
2. Target makes a Vigor roll
3. If damage total exceeds the Vigor roll, the target loses the difference in Wind only
4. No wounds are caused (unless using heavy clubs lethally)

Example: You punch someone with your bare fist (Strength + 0). You roll 14 damage. They roll Vigor and get an 8. They lose 6 Wind but take no wounds. If their Wind drops to 0, they're knocked out, but they'll wake up later with a headache and bruises.

Death

Eventually, even the toughest hombre's luck runs out. When your wounds reach maimed in the head or guts, you're dead. When negative Wind loss causes too many guts wounds, you're dead. When you bleed out, you're dead.

But in the Weird West, death isn't always the end.

Don't tear up that character sheet when your hero buys the farm. Death might just be the beginning of a different kind of tale. If your character dies, the Marshal will let you know if there's more to your story.

For now, just know this: some folks in the Weird West come back from the grave. They're called the Harrowed, and they walk a thin line between the living and the dead. You'll learn more about them in the next section.

Take your wounds seriously. Treat them fast. And if you die... well, maybe you'll get lucky.