Basically, wounds are status effects that reduce your maximum HP and inflict a status effect. Wounds last until they are cured, and can be cured either surgically or by resting for a set period of time. Wounds are serious, and many inflict bleeding for a set period of time as well, which is likely to kill a character if untreated. There is no resistance to wounds, if the condition comes up you receive the wound in question without the attacker having to overcome a special defence, unless the condition itself included a special defence, of course.
Causes of wounds:
1. Massive damage in excess of 20 plus the character's constitution score.
So 25-30, usually.
2. Reaching 0 HP.
There's a bigger gap between "0 HP" and "dead" than there is in other games, usually 30-40 points.
3. Dying.
4. Attacks and effects that inflict them directly.
He means they can be a standard effect.
Curing wounds:
1. Wounds can have their max HP penalty reduced by various sources.
2. When a wound no longer inflicts a max HP penalty, it is removed.
3. Wounds have a resting increment that removes their max HP penalty, which is helpful if no other option is available.
4. Wounds may also be treated surgically, which decreases increments one rank.
Days to hours, hours to minutes.
5. Characters with regeneration naturally have the increments reduced one rank. Stacks with surgery.
6. It is rare for magic to cure wounds, but some such spells do exist.
7. Resurrecting a character does not cure wounds inflicted pre-mortem. If a wound has fatal consequences, it will kill the character again.
Wound tables:
Each damage type has its own wound table. Wounds are produced by a roll on this table, with dice determined by the source and a modifier equal to the damage of the attack. The exception is when they are inflicted directly, where the result is pre-determined.
The 101+ result is always incurable, and is intended to be the end of that character. Technically, you could keep going with some of these, but you really shouldn't.
Wound dice:
Massive damage: 0+Half Damage.
So if this is how it's inflicted, I guess that means it's always at least tier 2.
Reaching 0 HP: 1d20+Half Damage.
This makes perfect sense to me, getting knocked out should be the worst.
Death: 20+Damage.
Disregard previous statement, this is the worst, but it's only relevant if you can resurrect.
You can also stack the dice, and the modifier for the damage the attack dealt. If a wound kills you immediately from positive HP, that's 1d20+20+2Damage.
Bludgeon rest increments are months and if surgically treated they are days. That's the case for all kinetic injuries. Bludgeoning wounds tend to be particularly debilitating, but don't inflict the bleeding status effect. Yes, obviously, blunt injuries do draw blood, but as blunt weapons in-game still deal health damage, we'll assume what bleeding they cause is in that.
1-20. Concussion, -1 max HP, treat perception, charisma and faith as 1/2.
21-40. Broken limb, -2 max HP, random limb is broken. (Use a d4 to choose.)
41-60. Deflated lung, -3 max HP, defence against fatigue 0.
61-80. Maimed limb, -4 max HP, random limb is disabled completely.
81-100. Major concussion, -5 max HP, perception, charisma and faith are treated as 0.
101+. Severed spine, -10 max HP, character is paralysed from the waist down. Incurable.
Since the edit no longer clarifies, a broken arm is usable, but has no attribute modifiers on anything you do with it. IE, you can throw a punch with that hand but your strength bonus is 0. A broken leg massively reduces your mobility, disabling your dodge bonus and your ability to sprint. A maimed limb, however, is completely unusable. You can't throw a punch with that hand, and you won't be getting around very fast when one leg has been cut to the bone, losing half your movement speed and taking a -10 reflex penalty as well as losing your dodge and ability to sprint.
I believe the difference between "broken" and "maimed" is the difference between a simple and compound fracture. Or perhaps a torn muscle. I don't know, they're vague on purpose. As for that last one, you could technically keep going in a wheelchair, but your party's more likely to take you out back and shoot you.
Puncture and pierce increments are months. If surgically treated, rest increments are days. Same as bludgeon and slash. Puncture wounds and generally inflict bleeding for a set period of time, which is slow but has a sufficiently long duration as to be a near-guaranteed fatality if untreated. They do lag behind a bit in immediate stopping power, however, and are a terrible choice if you don't want to kill a target.
1-20. Minor deep wound, -1 max HP, bleeding 1/round for 10 minutes.
21-40. Perforated lung, -2 max HP, -10 vs fatigue, bleeding 2/round for 10 minutes.
41-60. Shattered limb, -3 max HP, random limb is disabled completely, bleeding 3/round for 10 minutes.
61-80. Severed limb, -4 max HP, random limb is ripped off, bleeding 4/round for 10 minutes.
81-100. Major deep wound, -5 max HP. Bleeding at 5/round for 10 minutes.
101+. Destroyed heart, -10 max HP, one-time 10d6 bleed and 10/round with infinite duration. Incurable.
Firstly, reattaching limbs is possible but it's the game's most difficult surgery. Secondly, bleeding is designed so that it is almost impossible to survive the entire duration, so you have to actually stop the bleeding or you will die. As for that last one, he was pretty thorough with how he wrote that, wasn't he? But then, if your heart is destroyed, that's pretty much the definition of an unsurvivable injury.
Rest increments are months, days if surgically treated. Bleeding from slashing wounds is faster, but much shorter lived, so you're more likely to survive without treatment but usually it'll just kill you faster. Slashing wounds are overall usually the worst you can receive, but they do the worst against armour and special abilities of any damage type.
1-20. Cut tendons, -1 max HP, random limb is broken, 1d6/round bleed for 1 minute.
21-40. Severed muscle, -2 max HP, random limb is disabled completely, 2d6/round bleed for 1 minute.
41-60. Severed limb, -3 max HP, random limb is cut off, 3d6/round bleed for 1 minute.
61-80. Greater open wound, -4 max HP, 4d6/round bleed for 1 minute.
81-100. Disembowelment, -5 max HP, additional -5 max HP per day until surgery, 5d6/round bleed for 1 minute.
101+. Decapitation.
I don't think we need an explanation on what decapitation does, which is good because he didn't provide one. And it's pretty good you can reattach limbs given that one of these takes a limb off, and at an amount of damage that isn't too hard to reach.
Rest increments are months, with first aid days. Yes, first aid, the surgery skill isn't useful when somebody's flesh has been burned off, so it's all about immediate treatment and preventing infection. Fire and corrosive damage leave the most severe and long-lasting wounds in the game.
1-20. Burned limb, -2 max HP, random limb is broken.
21-40. Burned face, -4 max HP, sight reduced to half range, smell disabled.
41-60. Scorched limb, -6 max HP, random limb is maimed.
61-80. Scorched face, -8 max HP, sight, smell and hearing disabled.
81-100. Incinerated limb, -10 max HP, random limb burned off. Limb cannot be reattached.
101+. Hell, -20 max HP, speech and all senses disabled, neck-down paralysis, all limbs severed and unable to reattached, inflicts madness "And I Must Scream". Incurable.
An even more appropriate reference would have been to "One" by Metallica. "Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself, body my holding cell. Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in hell.". (Apparently he directly based it on One, and I guess also Johnny Got His Gun, since that's what One was based on.) But yeah, seriously, that condition is very well named. If somebody is afflicted with it, you'd have to be a complete monster not to spare them a bullet.
Rest increments are hours, minutes with first aid. Cold reduces max HP more than any other damage type and inflicts AP damage (AP, aura points, are a magic resource) but given that it doesn't last as long small cold wounds are fairly inconsequential, making it an excellent less-lethal damage type if you'd really rather not kill somebody.
1-20. Frostbite, -5 max HP, inflicts fatigue if not cured in one hour, 1/round AP damage for 1 minute, drains HP if depleted.
21-40. Severe frostbite, -10 max HP, inflicts a stack of fatigue each hour for two hours, 2/round AP damage for 1 minute.
41-60. Extreme frostbite, -15 max HP, inflicts a stack of fatigue each hour for three hours, 3/round AP for 1 minute.
61-80. Life-threatening frostbite, -20 max HP inflicts a stack of fatigue each hour for four hours, 4/round AP for 1 minute.
81-100. Partially frozen, -25 max HP and AP inflicts a stack of fatigue each hour for five hours, 5/round AP for 1 minute.
101+. Frozen, -100 max HP, paralysis, inflicts 10/round AP damage for 1 minute, drains HP once depleted.
"Life-threatening frostibite" is kinda poorly named, technically any wound can kill you, and the sheer amount of max HP you lose from cold damage wounds makes a fatality pretty easy, but that is the one where it is almost definitely going to kill you if it isn't treated.
Electric wounds are extremely short-lived, with one round increments. However, direct medical treatment is incapable of providing any treatment that would reduce it further and it is quite capable of being fatal due to the sheer amount they reduce max HP.
1-20. Disrupted I, -10 max HP, -2 to all actions, dazed.
31-40. Disrupted II, -20 max HP, -4 to all actions, slowed.
51-60. Disrupted III, -30 max HP, -6 to all actions, stunned.
71-80. Disrupted IV, -40 max HP, -8 to all actions, waist-down paralysis.
91-100. Disrupted V, -50 max HP, -10 to all actions, neck-down paralysis.
101+. Electrocution, instant death. Cured upon fatality, resurrection possible.
So the 101+ here isn't the end of a character as certainly as it is for other damage types, but you know, given how hard resurrection is in this setting it's probably still the lost of that character. So maybe don't get struck by lightning.
Rest increments are months, days with surgical treatment. It also escalates very quickly from "barely a wound" to "raining blood". This is not helped by the fact that explosion magic does the most damage of any kind of magic, and mundane explosives don't exactly tickle either.
1-10. Bruised, -1 max HP, dazed 1/round bleeding for 10 rounds.
21-30. Beaten, -2 max HP, slows, 2/round bleeding for 10 rounds. Roll a d6 and on a roll of 1, do nothing. On 2-3, break a limb. On 4-5 maim a limb. On 6, blow off a limb.
41-50. Battered, -3 max HP, lethargic, 3/round bleeding for 10 rounds. Roll a d6 twice and follow the same rules as beaten.
61-70. Brutalised, -4 max HP, semi-conscious, 4/round bleeding for 10 rounds, roll a d6 three times and follow the above.
81-90. Shattered, -5 max HP, unconscious, 5/round bleeding for 10 rounds, roll a d6 five times follow the above.
101+. Obliterated, -20 max HP, unconscious, 10/round bleeding for 10 rounds, roll a d6 eight times. Same rules as above.
I am concerned that this randomised limb-shredding may not work well in practice, and I am nearly dead certain concussive damage is going to get nerfed pretty hard before the system is released. Not even getting into the fact that explosion magic itself needs to be nerfed, or we're going to have a thousand Megumin expies. Seriously, I made a build I nicknamed Atom Bomb Baby that's able to deliver an AoE attack that one-shots bosses and everything else even vaguely nearby. That nerf is coming.
Dark wounds Dark is another damage type medicine is largely helpless against, though its increments are only 1 day. So is magic, actually, you can heal the damage as it comes and you can increase resistance, but once a dark wound has been dealt it stays for a while. This is bad enough, but in the lore (if not in gameplay) dark damage can also give you cancer with repeated exposure. So that's a lovely little bonus, you know?
1-20. Minor curse, -2 max HP, -5 fortitude, rest requires a DC 10 auto-hypnosis check.
21-40. Lesser curse, -4 max HP, -10 fortitude and will, sickened, rest DC 20.
41-60. Moderate curse, -6 max HP, -15 special defence, sickened and confused, rest DC 30.
61-80. Greater curse, -8 max HP, -20 special defence, dodge disabled, sickened and weakened, confused, rest DC 40.
81-100. Major curse, -10 max HP, -25 special defence, dodge and active defence disabled, sickened and weakened, confused and afraid, rest DC 50.
101+. Dark Mutation, -20 max HP, -50 special defence, dodge, active defence and deflection disabled, sickened and weakened, confused and terrified, rest DC 100. If the subject survives, they gain the "Abyss Gazer" madness and "Dark Mutation" disease.
Dark damage is a right nasty prick. A sickened target takes fatigue every day, as does a target that doesn't rest, and rest is required to remove fatigue, meaning that without a very high auto-hypnosis skill the curse is absolutely fatal, but when it's over you gain two abilities you can never remove that are a major tradeoff. Abyss Gazer makes you afraid of the dark and wake up terrified every morning but deal maximised dark damage, dark mutation gives you dark damage resistance but extended sun exposure curses you.