Injury
As Injury is a core part of the game, it is discussed in detail here. While a unit may have a certain number of Wounds, when their Wounds drop to 0 they are not necessarily removed from the game. Instead, players makes a d20 roll to determine how Injured the unit is. This may then allow a unit to recover, fight back, and even win against difficult odds; or for them to immediately be Incapacitated and have their warband lose all hope, routing in the process. As you can see, games hang in the balance based on Injuries.
This section will explain what each Injury is, how they work, and all of the situations where Injuries come into play.
Getting Injured
Before explaining how each Injury Type works, it's first important to understand how units become Injured in the first place. This primarily happens in one of three ways:
- Units are attacked in Melee, Ranged, or by Spells and enemies make successful Injury Checks against them
- Units are targeted by Spells and enemies making successful Injury Checks against them
- Units Fall after failing an Agility Check of some kind (such as Climbing Up, Climbing Down, Jumping Across, or Jumping Down) and fail their Injury Roll
As you can see, some Injuries are inflicted by Injury Checks and others by Injury Rolls. Understanding the difference is important.
Injury Checks
Injury Checks may seem a bit unintuitive at first, but quickly become second nature during play. Injury Checks are never actually explicitly rolled. Instead, they are determined by an earlier d20 roll (either a Melee Check or a Ranged Check) that was made as part of an attack (either a Melee Attack or a Ranged Attack), assuming that earlier Check was successful.
To determine the result of an Injury Check, simply take the value of the previous Check, modify it using Injury modifiers, and determine the result based on the following chart:
Injury Check Chart
| Attack d20 Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 1-14 | Dazed |
| 15-17 | Stunned |
| 18-20 | Incapacitated |
Injury Rolls
Sometimes the rules call for an 'Injury Roll', which works differently to calculating Injury Checks. This Roll is called for when resolving Falling, for some Spells, and for some other instances.
To make an Injury Roll, simply roll a d20 and consult the Injury Roll Table below. Note that a 1-11 has no effect. This means that, unlike an Injury Check, there is no guarantee that a target will be Injured at all.
Injury Roll Table
| d20 Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 1-11 | No effect |
| 12-14 | Dazed |
| 15-17 | Stunned |
| 18-20 | Incapacitated |
Falling
As Falling is the most common way for an Injury Roll to be made, it is included here for reference.
When a unit Falls, roll on the Injury Roll Table. For every extra full inch above 2” that the unit Falls from, add a +2 modifier.
Injury Check & Injury Roll Modifiers
Injury modifiers modify the value of the d20 roll made to determine the Injury Check and Injury Rolls. That means, for Injury Checks, it is modifying the Melee, Ranged, or Cast Check roll. This is done for the purposes of the Injury Check only, and does not determine whether the Melee, Ranged, or Cast Check itself succeed (those are instead modified by Melee, Ranged, or Casting modifiers, as you would expect).
For Injury Rolls, this simply modifies that value you rolled as part of that Roll. These modifiers are added to or subtracted from the roll, making the roll more or less deadly.
Injury modifiers that are part of a unit's stat block only apply to Melee Attacks, while modifiers that are part of weapons are only applicable to that weapon's attack type.
For example, if a unit fell 3" from the top of a building, the Modifier would be +2 (as per the Falling rules). If a player rolled a d20 and got 13 as the result, the unit would be Stunned (as 13 + 2 = 15).
Injury Types
Each Injury Type is detailed below. They are ordered from most severe to least severe. Besides Incapacitated (which is generally permanent for that game), a unit will move from a more severe injury to a less severe one over a few turns, eventually no longer being injured. So a Stunned unit would become Dazed on the player's next turn, then Staggered on the player's next turn after that. Finally, a Staggered unit would go back to being uninjured at the end of that turn.
Incapacitated
This unit's model is removed from the board and will have to roll for Scars after this game. This unit now counts towards the Rout Threshold for that unit's warband. If too many of a player's units become Incapacitated, their warband will begin making Rout Checks. If they fail a Rout Check, they lose the game.
Stunned
A Stunned unit cannot do anything.
- If a Stunned unit is attacked in Melee, they are immediately Incapacitated, no Melee, Defence, or Injury Checks required.
- A Stunned unit cannot be targeted by an enemy in Melee, if that enemy has another valid target that is no Stunned or Dazed.
- Stunned units will recover to Dazed in the controlling player’s next Upkeep phase.
Dazed
A Dazed unit cannot do anything except move 1"
- If a Dazed unit is in Melee Combat, it may use its 1" of Move to Disengage from combat. This is done during the Move Phase.
- It may only Disengage if all enemies that could target it in the upcoming Melee Combat have another valid target that is not Stunned or Dazed.
- Enemies attacking Dazed units do so with Advantage.
- If a Dazed warrior fails a Defence Check in Melee they are immediately Incapacitated, no Injury Check required.
- Dazed units will recover to Staggered in the controlling player’s next Upkeep phase.
Staggered
Staggered units can Move or Engage at half speed. Effectively treat the unit as if its Move stat is halved (rounded up) for the turn. It can otherwise act normally, but all Checks made by it are rolled with Disadvantage until the end of the current turn. So if a unit recovered from Dazed to Staggered, they would recover from Staggered at the end of the controlling player's turn, and the unit would no longer have Disadvantage.
Ranged Attacks Against Injured Units
You may have noticed that Melee Attacks made against Injured units are much deadlier. This is not the case for Ranged Attacks made against Injured units. In this case, roll for Injury Checks as normal. If the Injury Check would inflict a less severe Injury than the one the unit already has, nothing happens.
Injury & Ledges
Whenever a unit is Dazed or Stunned within 1" of a ledge that has a drop of at least 2", that unit makes an Agility Check.
If the unit fails, then it Falls, landing at the bottom of the drop. If this places it next to another ledge it could Fall from, make another Agility Check and repeat the process.
Units cannot Fall if there is something that would reasonably prevent it from doing so, such as a railing or a low wall. If there are multiple sides that a unit could Fall from, determine which side it does so at random.
Wounds
All of our previous rules to do with making Injury Checks and Injury Rolls have made the assumption that the unit only has 1 Wound. However, some units (especially heroes) will have more than 1 Wound.
Wounds essentially create a buffer for a unit before they can become Injured. At any point that a unit would become Injured, it actually loses 1 Wound first. If this would bring its Wounds to 0, then it rolls the Injury Check or Injury Roll instead, as normal.
This means a unit with 3 Wounds could lose 2 Wounds without making an Injury Check or Roll. After that, they will need to make Injury Checks or Rolls as normal.