When you take damage in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, you lose hit points… or in Warhammer 40,000 parlance, you lose wounds. When a character reaches 0 wounds, they are out of action and cannot fight until the fight is over. After the fight, all characters are fully healed.
This system is incredibly generous, especially considering that there are no short or long rest periods, no need to monitor your health between fights, and no spells or abilities with cooldowns. Most of the time, you enter combat at full strength, with the exception of one factor: injuries. Let’s look at how you can get injured in Rogue Trader, the difference between fresh and old injuries, how injuries turn into damage, and how to heal both.
What are injuries in Rogue Trader?
Since all lost wounds are automatically restored at the end of combat, it may seem that the damage taken does not matter. However, if you lose a certain percentage of your maximum number of wounds in a single turn of combat, you will be injured at the end of combat. The loss of temporary wounds does not count towards determining whether a character is injured. If a character has 0 wounds remaining, they will still be injured, regardless of how many wounds they lost during the turn.
The number of wounds you need to lose per turn to get injured depends on the difficulty level:
| Complexity | % Wounds per round before injury |
|---|---|
| Plot | 70% |
| Normal | 60% |
| Daredevil | 50% |
| Tall | 40% |
| Unfair | 30% |
In addition to being injured from losing a significant number of wounds per turn in combat, you can also automatically be injured by traps outside of combat. The injuries themselves are not very dangerous, although they do reduce the affected character’s Resolve by 1 (the number of injuries does not seem to matter – any injuries reduce the character’s Resolve). In this way, injuries reflect long-term combat fatigue.
Injuries also only accumulate after the battle ends. Once a character gets injured, it’s a fresh injury, but over time it becomes an old injury. Injuries themselves are almost harmless, but if enough of them accumulate, they turn into damage – and that’s much more serious.
The difference between fresh and old injuries
As soon as a character gets injured, it is considered fresh. But after a few rounds (one round is 6 seconds, if there is no combat), a fresh injury becomes old. What is the difference? Fresh injuries are much easier to heal.
How many rounds it takes for a fresh injury to become old depends on the severity:
| Complexity | Rounds before the old injury |
|---|---|
| Plot | 5 (30 seconds) |
| Normal | 4 (24 seconds) |
| Daredevil | 3 (18 seconds) |
| Tall | 2 (12 seconds) |
| Unfair | 1 (6 seconds) |
As stated earlier, the main difference between fresh and old injuries is how to get rid of them. Fresh injuries can be healed by almost any means, even using the Psyker’s Empowerment ability or other similar direct healing abilities. Using medics also removes both fresh and old injuries. However, in the case of old injuries, one medic will only remove one old injury. These injuries are removed collectively, only after enough medics have been used to clear all the old injuries at once.
For example, if you have three old injuries, you need to use a medkit three times to get rid of them – you’ll go from three old injuries to zero. So if you’ve used a medkit to treat old injuries, but nothing seems to have changed… then you need to use more medkits to remove all the old injuries at once.
As a general rule, check your characters’ icons immediately after a fight to see if they have any injury icons. If you spot them while they’re fresh, you can potentially save some Medkits by healing them quickly. In any case, it’s better to spot injuries while they’re fresh and get rid of them before they get old than to risk getting hurt.
Damage – Effects and Treatment
Once a character receives enough old injuries, their entire set is replaced by a single injury. Also, if a character’s wounds drop to 0 in combat, they automatically receive an injury. Injuries are much more serious than traumas – they directly weaken the victim in different ways depending on the specific injury.
How many injuries it takes to end up with damage also depends on the complexity:
| Complexity | Number of injuries before injury |
|---|---|
| Plot | 5 |
| Normal | 4 |
| Daredevil | 3 |
| Tall | 2 |
| Unfair | 2 |
Here are some of the damages you may encounter:
| Injury | Effects |
|---|---|
| Broken ribs | Strength and Toughness reduced by -20. Action Points reduced by -1. |
| The crippled arm | Weapon and ballistics skill reduced by -20. |
| A crippled leg | Dexterity reduced by -20. Movement points reduced by 50%. |
| Head injury | Intelligence, Perception, Willpower and Sociability are reduced by -15. |
As you can see, damage is very unpleasant and undermines combat capability. Trying to continue exploration with damage is highly undesirable, and often reckless. Unfortunately, getting rid of damage is much more difficult than getting rid of injuries, and it cannot be done on the ground.
Only by returning to your Ship or to a “safe” location can the affected person recover. In the case of the Ship, simply returning to the bridge will heal any injuries and damage.