Need help explaining the wounds system of Lot5r

[Viper700]

Okay, so a couple days ago a member of my group showed me the legend of the 5 rings 4e book(i think its the core book). I've gone through the book numerous times and looks really fun, the only problem is I cannot understand the wounds system as hard as I try. I get that a character is healthy at Earth ring rankx5 so a Samurai who has 2 ranks in that ring would be healthy at 10. My questions are as follows:

1) How much damage before they become nicked, crippled, etc?

2) is their any particular formula for how badly a samurai is wounded per hit?

Please try to explain this the best you can, I could just be over thinking it but it's driving me nuts. Thank you in advance.

[LibraryOgre]

Let's start with damage. Let us say you have 5k3. You roll 5 dice, and keep the best three. Any die that explodes (i.e. rolls a 10) counts as a single die, so if you roll 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, and your 10 rolls a 10 again, then a 6, you're looking at 26 (10+10+6) + 9 + 8 damage from that strike, or 43 damage.

Now, how much damage you can take is based on your Earth Ring, which works out to be the lower of your Stamina and Willpower. Default is, IIRC, Earth Ring * 5 at every level, meaning if you have an Earth ring of 3, until 15 points, you're effectively unhurt, then the next level is from 16-30, then 31-45, usw.

The game can get VERY deadly VERY quickly.

[Terraoblivion]

It's not quite that generous. At least not in 4e. There is it Earthx5 for Healthy, then Earthx2 for subsequent health levels. At least as the default assumption. It's stated in the sidebar on page 86.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not quite that generous. At least not in 4e. There is it Earthx5 for Healthy, then Earthx2 for subsequent health levels. At least as the default assumption. It's stated in the sidebar on page 86.

Danke. I was at work, but wanted to give him something.

So with your 2 Earth Ring, you've got 10 points until you're no longer Healthy, then 4 points for every level after that.

[Blacky the Blackball]

It's not quite that generous. At least not in 4e. There is it Earthx5 for Healthy, then Earthx2 for subsequent health levels. At least as the default assumption. It's stated in the sidebar on page 86.

That's still fairly generous.

In 1e it's Earthx2 all the way!

[Felhammer]

Earthx5 for the first level, Earthx2 for the rest.

I saw my poor Sparrow Samurai shot down by an archer a few weeks back after being pelted with just two shots! I had a Scorpion Samurai almost die in a similar way (this time it was an Archer in a tree). My Samurai climbed the tree and tried to cut the Archer down but, sadly, he wiffed on his attack and the archer lined up a shot and knocked the Samurai down to Out (at which point, my Samurai fell out of the tree, landing with his full weight on his leg and earning him a crippled leg and, thus, forced retirement). :smallfrown:

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah.... they seem to be of the opinion that Tsuruchi are snipers with rapid-fire .50 caliber sniper rifles...

[NoldorForce]

Yeah.... they seem to be of the opinion that Tsuruchi are snipers with rapid-fire .50 caliber sniper rifles...Don't forget the Utaku!* Man, archers can be vicious in the right hands.

*I played one of them in a short campaign...had some spiffy luck on the damage rolls, some enough to one-shot about anybody who hadn't boosted their Earth Rings. Having a horse to kite me around and clobber stuff in the way didn't hurt.

@ OP: As a side note, by default the total damage required to kill someone is equal to 19x their Earth Ring (which fills all wound levels), plus 1 (anything past wound levels means insta-death). If you're playing on one of the "tougher characters" scales, that multiplier increases by 7 for each additional factor of the Earth Ring to higher wound levels. Thus for 3x, the multiplier would be 26x, whereas it'd be 40x for 5x.

[ninja_penguin]

Yeah, wound penalties get you killed pretty fast. I'm playing in one campaign right now and there was a Topaz Championship gempukku as the opening adventure. Toward the end there was an attack of shadowlands creatures, and the two guys who ran off to be all heroic died really really fast.

I'm glad I'm playing an Ide; avoiding combat like crazy is pragmatic and also then expected from my character.