Does damage reduce the actual Characteristic score & DM?

[DigitalMage]

I am reading through the Traveller rules and had a question about damage. When damage is applied to a character's Endurance (and subsequently Str & Dex) is the actual characteristic score reduced (and this also the DM)?

I have interpretted it as no, the Endurance characteristic score remains as is, as does the DM, but it is said to have a lower score for purposes of damage calculation. Am I right?

 

[Shiloh]

I'm pretty sure the current effective score (and associated DM) is reduced. This way, you will usually see a degradation in performance of someone who is wounded, but not yet incapacitated, which fits with the verisimilitude of the background.

Of course, the stat is not *permanently* reduced, and can recover through healing to its normal uninjured levels.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

In CT you reduce the characteristic by whatever damage has been applied and that becomes the characteristic's effective value until the character is healed somehow. In MGT that also means the chracteristic DM changes too.

So a Dex 9 (+1) character who takes 5 points of damage to their Dex ends up with a Dex of 9 - 5 = 4 (-1). The -1 applies until the Dex characteristic value is improved through healing somehow and as the charcteristic value improves so does the characteristic DM. This also neatly takes account of the fatiguing effects of injuries.

As usual YMMV IYTU etc etc.

BTW CT also did this with a few special rules which escape my immediate recall.

 

[DigitalMage]

Okay, so a character reduced to 0 Endurance (DM of -3) trying to heal naturally has a 1/6 chance to:

• Worsen by 2 characteristic points
• Worsen by 1 characteristic point
• Stay as is
• Heal 1 characteristic point
• Heal 2 characteristic points
• Heal 3 characteristic points

And for a character with an Endurance of 0 Medical Care must be provided by someone with at least Medic 2 so that the characteristics points healed is at least 1 (2 + End DM + doctor's Medic Skill).

I actually quite like this, though it does mean recalculating DM on the fly - still a chart on the character sheet should help here.

 

[GypsyComet]

I actually quite like this, though it does mean recalculating DM on the fly - still a chart on the character sheet should help here.

Ironically, the first version of the MGT character sheet with the big stat grid was ideal for this, but got replaced in later printings...

 

[phild]

Yeah, we've designed our own Word character sheet which is based very much on the first version - we like that grid, although we've probably shrunk it down a little. And I would have prefered not to have had to strike 16 squares off it last night

 

[Shiloh]

Okay, so a character reduced to 0 Endurance (DM of -3) trying to heal naturally...

[snip]

I actually quite like this, though it does mean recalculating DM on the fly - still a chart on the character sheet should help here.

That is an interesting effect of End being the "forced first stat"... everyone heals at the same rate, and general condition and toughness has no influence on survival...

I'd be inclined to make an exception for End, in the way that many games do for "soak rolls": no penalties from damage... So a tough caharacter will recover faster even if damage has overflowed their END.

 

[whtknght]

This is what makes Traveller so much better than other rpg games. I personally never liked games that allowed you to be 1 point from death and you swing that two handed broadsword as if you just woke up from a good nights sleep

Traveller keeps it real. If you take damage, there are consequences. Your abilities are reduced each time you are hit. It also encourages players to come up with other solutions to a problem than physical combat..

 

[DigitalMage]

What made me question it was that I thought if End DM is reduced to -3, will anyone ever be able to heal. But then statting out the probabilities in my post above made me realise that there is still a 50% chance of regaining 1 point of Endurance (roll of a 4, 5 or 6) and as soon as that point is back, then the End DM becomes only -2 and there is a 4/6 chance of regaining another point.

Combine that with the First Aid rules and it looks like natural healing is very possible, but there is still a slight chance of worsening and effectively bleeding to death.