The world is a dangerous place. Various situations can end up physically hurting a character. There are two types of physical damage that a character can receive; non-lethal and lethal damage.
Non-lethal damage
Non-lethal damage is generally caused by blunt trauma and can be avoided completely or partially by soaking. Fists and baseball bats are examples of things that typically deal non-lethal damage.
Recording non-lethal damage
Non-lethal damage is typically recorded on the character sheet as a single diagonal line in a health square. On the character sheet, fill in NL-damage as diagonal lines in the health boxes. Start top left, then record towards the right.
Non-lethal damage, despite the name, can be lethal. When a character has non-lethal damage in all her health slots, additional non-lethal damage start to fill in as lethal damage. To convert non-lethal damage to lethal on the sheet, just add another line to make an X.
Soaking non-lethal damage
Damage can be soaked with an endurance check (see attribute checks). The result of the check determines how much non-lethal damage is soaked.
Lethal damage
Lethal damage are generally caused by things which pierce, slash or cut a character. Such damage can not be soaked. Knives and guns are examples of things that may cause lethal damage.
Recording lethal damage
On the character sheet, lethal damage is typically recorded as an X in a health square.
When recording lethal damage, always overwrite any non-lethal damage before you start filling in empty health slots. When the final health slot is filled with lethal damage, the character is dying.
Damage from unarmed & melee attacks
When a character hits another with an unarmed or melee attack, she gets to deal damage. The base formulas are:
Armed: Weapon damage + strength + attack bonus (/ 2 if distance to target is less than maximum reach)
Unarmed: Strength check (see attribute checks) + attack bonus (/ 2 if distance to target is less than maximum reach)
Weapon damage and type
Wielding a weapon will generally add damage to a characters attack and may also change the type of damage from non-lethal to lethal (or perhaps vice versa). See Weapons.
Attack bonus damage
For every point an attack roll is higher than the difficulty to hit the target or the opposing targets dodge/deflect roll, the subsequent damage roll gets a +1 up to a maximum of strength rank. This extra damage is added to any strength and melee weapon damage bonus.
Reach
Reach controls two things – the distance from which an attack can be made, but also the total damage done. Damage done by attack hitting an opponent at maximum reach is normal. Damage done at closer than maximum reach is generally halved. The reason is roughly this, if someone gets very close to someone swinging a sword, they are not going to be hit with the full might of the blade. Instead, they will be hit with less force by something closer to the hands / hilt. For fights in tight spaces, weapons with long reach are not going to be as effective. Characters with long reach should try and keep their opponents from getting too close.
Smaller characters can use this to their advantage, f.ex fighting at maximum reach in a cramped space where a larger character is at a disadvantage.
Note that there are specials interfering with this rule, allowing characters to deal full damage at closer than full-reach distances.
Example : Melee Weapon Damage
Tonya (20) attacks Nancy (20) at max reach with a small club (non-lethal) and hits. Tonya has a strength of 2. The weapon itself deals 1 bonus damage and Tonya also gets a +1 attack bonus as she rolled an attack of 5 whereas Nancy’s dodge was only a 4. Had Nancy’s dodge been 3, Tonya would have got an additional +1 to a total attack bonus of +2 (her max). The final roll to resolve damage is : 2 (strength) + 1 (club) +1 (attack bonus) + 1d5 – 1d5. Tonya gets lucky with the dice for a final result of 6!
Nancy attempts to soak the 6 damage. Her endurance is 3 and she adds +1d5/-1d5. She ends up soaking 4 of the damage, but take 2 non-lethal damage.
Damage from ranged attacks
How damage is handled from ranged attacks depends on the source of the damage
Damage from slingshots, bows and throwing weapons
Slingshots, bows and throwing weapons like spears behave like melee weapons with range, receiving the attack bonus maxing out at strength as usual.
Damage from firearms
Damage from firearms generally behave like lethal type melee weapon damage, but there is no upper limit to the damage potentially gained from attack bonus.
Optional rule: when rolling dice to determine damage from firearms, reroll any sixes and add to the previous result. This attempts to recreate the erratic nature of gun wounds, increasing the chance that being shot causes either little or severe damage.
Damage from falling
Falling down deals non-lethal damage and lots of it. As a general rule, every two metres of falling adds 1d6 damage.
| Height (m) | Damage | Reflex save |
| 2 | 1d6 | Yes |
| 4 | 2d6 | Yes |
| 6 | 3d6 | No |
| 8 | 4d6 | No |
| 10 | 5d6 | No |
| 12 | 6d6 | No |
| 14 | 7d6 | No |
| 16 | 8d6 | No |
| 18 | 9d6 | No |
| 20 | 10d6 | No |