Question about ST: magic costs and hits

[ajardoor]

Okay, I am confused about how hits and magic costs affects ST.

So if you take injury, does that reduce the ST attribute? Like, if you roll ST while hurt, is your chance of success reduced?

Same deal with ST fatigue from casting spells.

I understand the difference between wounds and fatigue, but I don't get how the other aspects of ST interact with them, if at all.

Thanks in advance.

[hcobb]

See ITL page 118: "A figure that takes 5 or more hits in one turn has its DX adjusted -2 for its next action (spell, attack, etc.).
A figure that takes 8 or more hits in one turn immediately falls down.
...
Any figure whose ST is reduced to 3 or less has an extra -3 DX for the rest of the combat."

Hits don't reduce your rolls for weapon damage, but hits and fatigue do reduce your sustained effort. For example:

ITL page 71: "However, exhaustion will reduce their ST by 4 each hour. Since tunneling speed is based on a figure’s ST at the moment (affected by any wounds or
exhaustion) this means that the diggers will slow down each hour until they drop."

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Legacy Beta In the Labyrinth, page 66 "Encumbrance"

Strictly, weight carried/moved should be based on the ST a figure has at that moment. For play purposes, you should usually base it on the figure’s basic strength, and let it go.

This has never made much sense to me. But it's still there. Every GM I've played with ignores this bit.

[larsdangly]

I use the weight based ENC rules but pay attention to them only when someone is clearly carrying more weight than their armor/shield penalties would come to. I don't recalculate for injured or tired figures; you just take flat penalty, as for armor

[hcobb]

Page 66: "But a GM would be quite justified in refusing to let a badly wounded character stagger home with a load he could barely have carried before he was hurt!"

I.e. hits not fatigue.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

This has never made much sense to me. But it's still there. Every GM I've played with ignores this bit.

I think you're right that would not make sense, and I also think that Steve did not mean by "should be based on the ST a figure has at that moment" that he meant that the way it would be correctly "based" would be to directly subtract it and apply the formula for a fresh/healthy person.

i.e. I think realistically, there would be some effects of injury and fatigue on performance carrying stuff, but it certainly would not be the same as reducing base ST directly by that amount, because a lot of carrying capacity is structural (using the body/skeleton/etc which does not shrink with damage/fatigue), and human muscle power does not drop off linearly with fatigue/injury towards the point of collapse.

[hcobb]

How many Conceal spells can your wizard cast on the party loot handcart?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

So if you take injury, does that reduce the ST attribute? Like, if you roll ST while hurt, is your chance of success reduced?

No, neither injury nor fatigue do that.

Originally Posted by ajardoor

Same deal with ST fatigue from casting spells.

I understand the difference between wounds and fatigue, but I don't get how the other aspects of ST interact with them, if at all.

Injury (except for the combat effects hcobb just mentioned) does not reduce ST for hardly any other purpose besides reducing how much more injury and fatigue you can take before you become unconscious or die.

Fatigue does have the effect on mining speed, but other than that, also does not reduce your ST except for how much injury and spellcasting you can do.

There may be an occasional exception, such as the "Pushing" rules for multi-hex figures on page 104, which refers to the ST "at the moment", which I do take to mean taking damage and fatigue into account.