Trying not to die!

Conan: Adventures In an Age Undreamed Of
1

Question on using armour and shields to avoid getting splattered. In the rules it states that you can basically break the armour or shield in order to prevent a wound. Is the intention to prevent all the wounds from a single hit or literally just 1 of the incoming wounds?

I ask as I took 14 points of damage and that creates 3 wounds by my count (unless I am wrong about that?). That will smoke me. I have an intact shield though to sacrifice to try and stay alive.

-Erik

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Yes. You are wrong.

You can only take up to 2 wounds in one hit, as there are only three conditions that cause a wound, and only two of them might apply at the same time:

  1. Receive 5 or more points of stress damage in one hit (no matter if it is just 5 after armor reduction or 50 points, the condition is “5 or more”).
  2. Your stress track falls to 0 (that could happen any time with any amount of damage. If you are at 2 Vigor and receive 2 damage this will trigger as well as if you are at full Vigor of 15 and receive 18 damage.)
  3. Your stress track is already at 0 and you receive 1 or more points of damage. (A single point of damage while your stress track is at 0 will cause a Wound.)

Two of those conditions could happen at the same time: 1 and 2 or 1 and 3.
If two apply, then you receive 2 Wounds, else only 1 Wound.

If the attack came from a weapon with the Intense quality, and if you receive at least 1 Wound from this attack, the Intense Quality adds another Wound. That means: if you receive 1 Wound by the attack, with Intense that makes it 2 Wounds. If you receive 2 Wounds by the attack, with Intense that makes it 3 Wounds.
Do not forget that after an Exploit action, the Unforgiving X quality transforms iinto Vicious X plus Intense for one attack, so there is a “hidden Intense” included.

There is a Melee talent that allows you to add 1 Wound to the damage for 2 Momentum. If a PC or an NPC has that Talent, there could be the case of receiving an additional wound.

So with this Talent, with an Intense weapon, hitting for a lot of damage that causes 5 or more damage in one hit and drops the Vigor track to 0, a character could cause 4 Wounds max. And that is a fringe case.
It would be enough to incapacitate, though not outright kill, even a Nemesis NPC or a PC.

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Just a single wound. You calculate the total number of Wounds you would receive, then sacrifice your shield to reduce the total by 1 wound. You will still suffer the remaining wounds - unless you only received 1 Wound in the first place.
Note: for this, apply the Intense quality and any Talents or Doom spends first, to reach the total number of wounds.

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