Review

This is a 4-page (3 pages with 1 introduction page) rules supplement that enhances the rules on injuries. Mechanically, it uses the rules for injuries (aka 50% health) to force a player to roll to see if they gain a injury. These can be major or minor in nature and there are several additional tables that give the specifics, ranging from traumatic injuries to catastrophic injuries. There are also rules to modify the rules around becoming incapacitated. The final page deals with prosthetics and a couple of spells that work with the new rules.

I was originally excited to get this enhancement to the rules. The flavor of grievous injuries in a grim dark world seemed like a natural fit for what I wanted out of this game. Implementing the injury rules though is not all its cracked up to be. I found them to slow down combat and even though I like this setting, the rules get in the way. The changes to the incapacitated rules are worth looking at if you want to make your game slightly more lethal without adding significant mechanical overhead. These rules just change the fate rolls associated with incapacitated and dying more lethal in nature. The prosthetics rules are a mixed bag. The simplicity of something like a peg leg is great, but having to deal with prosthetic mishaps is not something many players will find fun.

At the end of the day, I found some items in the supplement useful. I have taken advantage of the more deadly (Incapacitated / Dying) fate rolls. The Injury rules would be more useful as a crit system or something similar but as is, I don’t feel the overhead is worth implementing them.

Should you buy?

If you are ok with additional combat overhead, this product will have more value. I just didn’t find enough value in the product to justify its cost. ($1.49 at the time of this review.)

This is supplemental material on wounds that your character can take. I really like the tone of those in my games, and they are heavily inspired by WFRPG.

Unfortunately Battle Scars is too scarce, and I was expecting more tables and effects. This doesn't do justice to what I had in mind to such an important facet of fantasy horror, and wished there was a lot more content. For the listed price of 1.49$ it's not a rip-off though, but still feels as a half finished bake.

Unhinged Mind was a good expansion to the game both mechanis and flavor-wise. This, not so much.

Battle Scars offers a system where you might get permanently injured when your character becomes injured (ie. get damage equal to half your Health) or incapacitated. There's also mundane and mechanical prosthetics, and two spells. One Life spell to restore your limbs, and one Forbidden spell to graft bodyparts to your body.

I found the injury system rather uncreative but I might try it for incapacitation in my next game. I would have preferred some sort of critical hit system over rolling 3d6 or 4d6 on a table nearly every time you get injured/incapacitated. Getting e.g. a permanent -1 penalty to your stat isn't that exciting or fun.

This might be the weakest Poisoned Pages so far.