Major Injuries
If a subject is reduced to zero hit points by lethal damage during the same scene in which they suffered a Traumatic Hit, they run the risk of suffering a Major Injury. The damage that brings them down doesn’t need to have come from the Traumatic Hit; they remain vulnerable until the end of the scene.
On reaching zero hit points they must make a Physical save. If they pass, they are still Mortally Wounded but may be stabilized and recover normally. If they fail the save, they suffer a Major Injury. The victim rolls 1d12 and compares it to the table below. Some special effects or situations may modify the roll, but a roll less than 1 still counts as 1, and one more than 12 still counts as 12.
A victim with a Major Injury may still be stabilized by ordinary medical help to prevent them from bleeding out, but dealing with the actual injury will generally require serious work by a properly-equipped street doc.
| d12 | Major Injury |
|---|---|
| 1 | Instant Death: Wrong place, wrong time. You’re not coming back from this. |
| 2 | Internal Damage: You’re dead in an hour if you don’t get to a street doc’s clinic. You’re in a coma until you install a Prosthetic Cyber implant. Any Body or Nerves location cyber you have is critically damaged. |
| 3 | Brain Damage: You’re in a coma until you install a Prosthetic Cyber implant. Any Head or Nerves location cyber you have is critically damaged. |
| 4 | Eye Damage: You’re blind until you get a pair of cybereyes. If you already have cybereyes, they and any implants in them are critically damaged. |
| 5 | Gut Wound: If you don’t get to a street doc’s clinic in an hour, you suffer a -1 penalty to your Con modifier until you get a Prosthetic Cyber implant. |
| 6 | Right Leg Ruined*: You can crawl at best once stabilized. |
| 7 | Left Leg Ruined*: As above, but for your left leg. |
| 8 | Right Arm Ruined*: You’ve only got one functional hand. |
| 9 | Left Arm Ruined*: As above, but for your left arm. |
| 10 | System Damage: Your most System Strain-expensive implant has been critically damaged. If several tie, the GM picks one. |
| 11-12 | Just a Flesh Wound: It’s not that bad of a hit after all. |
*: Any Limb cyber exclusively and entirely located in the ruined limb, such as a Cyberarm system, is also damaged by the injury. Limb systems split over multiple limbs are not disabled.
Prosthetic Cyber
Some Major Injuries force the installation of Prosthetic Cyber systems as listed in section 3.6.7.6. If a limb is destroyed, an appropriate Cyberarm or Cyberleg is needed, while brain damage, internal damage, and gut wounds require Prosthetic Cyber.
Wealthy characters can instead have custom-grown clone organs and limbs used to replace damaged tissue, but such measures require extensive medical contacts with top-end facilities and at least $100,000 in costs.
Characters in magically-active campaigns who are unable to safely use cyberware, such as PCs with the magical Edges, may use makeshift enchantments in place of cyberlimbs, cybereyes, or Prosthetic Cyber. These enchantments do not damage their maximum Effort scores, but they add 2 System Strain each and grant no benefits beyond minimal functionality. They have the same cost as the cyber.
Cyberware Damage
Many major injuries damage cyberware located in the body part that was crippled by the blow. Such damaged cyberware is useless until it has been repaired by someone with at least Fix-0 and Heal-0 skills. If the cyberware is necessary to preserve the user’s life somehow, it functions just enough to avoid death, but not well enough to do any good.
Repairing damaged cyberware takes one day per damaged system and costs 20% of the systems’ original cost in maintenance parts. A cyberdoc kit at a minimum is necessary to perform the repairs. Paired cyber implants such as cybereyes or synthears are treated as a single system and repaired as a single system.