Chapter 10 — Trauma & Recovery
Wanderstar does not track hit points. Instead, harm is measured in trauma — discrete marks on two tracks that represent the physical and psychological toll of violence, danger, and the things characters witness and endure. Most trauma comes from combat (Chapter 11), but the environment inflicts it too — vacuum, radiation, a hard fall, and the rest live in Chapter 13, and mark these same tracks.
Index§
- Damage and armor
- The two tracks
- What the nodes mean
- Recovery
- Overflow between tracks
- Death
- Trauma from careers
Damage and armor§
When a character is hit, the attacker rolls the weapon's damage and compares it to the target's armor value.
| Damage Roll vs. Armor | Trauma Inflicted |
|---|---|
| Damage < armor | No trauma |
| Damage ≥ armor | 1 trauma |
| Damage ≥ 2× armor | 2 trauma |
Base armor is 3, representing a person's natural resilience. Equipment adds bonuses on top of that: a character wearing no protective gear has armor 3; a character in light armor might have armor 5 or 6; heavy armor pushes higher. Armor is a flat value, not a roll. Weapons with higher damage dice threaten more trauma; better armor raises the threshold required to inflict it.
The two tracks§
Each character has two trauma tracks, each with two nodes:
Physical: [ Wounded ] → [ Maimed ]
Mental: [ Shaken ] → [ Broken ]
Trauma is marked from left to right on either track. When an attack or event inflicts 1 trauma, the player marks one node on either track — their choice. When it inflicts 2 trauma, the player marks two nodes total, split however they like between the two tracks.
The choice of which track to mark is meaningful. A character can absorb a great deal of physical hardship before they're Maimed, or distribute harm across both tracks and become both Wounded and Shaken — impaired but not incapacitated.
What the nodes mean§
Wounded: A significant physical injury. The character is hurting; the GM may impose narrative complications from this — slower movement, difficulty with physically demanding tasks, drawing attention from onlookers. Not a mechanical penalty unless the GM applies one to a specific action.
Maimed: A severe, lasting physical injury. Requires a full session dedicated to seeking a solution — surgery, a skilled medic, a recovery period in a safe location. Until resolved, the Maimed node cannot be cleared.
Shaken: The character has been rattled — by violence, by horror, by something that got under their skin. Similar to Wounded in its narrative weight: present, complicating, but not incapacitating.
Broken: A severe psychological break. Requires a full session dedicated to recovery — therapy, rest, confronting whatever caused the break. Until resolved, the Broken node cannot be cleared.
Recovery§
| Node | How to Clear |
|---|---|
| Wounded | Extended rest or downtime in safe conditions — or first aid in the field (see below) |
| Shaken | Extended rest or downtime in safe conditions — or first aid in the field (see below) |
| Maimed | A full session dedicated to treatment and recovery |
| Broken | A full session dedicated to mental recovery |
"Extended rest" means meaningful downtime — not a night's sleep mid-mission, but a genuine period of recovery between sessions or during a stretch of safe, uneventful time. The GM determines whether circumstances allow it.
First aid§
The lighter wounds don't always have to wait for rest. A character who is Trained or better in Survival and has the proper equipment — a first-aid kit (Chapter 24) or comparable supplies — can treat another character in the field. Administering first aid is a Significant Action (Chapter 11); make a Survival test (8+). On a success, clear one marked Wounded or Shaken node from the character treated. On a failure, the attempt is spent and the skill may be marked for advancement as normal.
First aid reaches only the lighter wounds. It can never clear Maimed or Broken — those severe, lasting injuries still demand a full recovery session. You also cannot effectively patch yourself up: first aid is something one person does for another.
A character can benefit from first aid only once between injuries. Whether the attempt succeeds or fails, that character cannot be treated by first aid again until they take fresh trauma — there is no patching the same wound twice. The lighter nodes still clear on their own with extended rest regardless, so a failed attempt costs the moment, not the recovery.
"A full session dedicated to seeking a solution" means the players commit a session to the problem: finding a surgeon, locating a trauma-capable facility, sitting with a therapist, working through whatever broke them. It cannot be dealt with in passing.
Overflow between tracks§
The player normally chooses which track to mark. But when the track they would choose is already full, the trauma is not wasted and does not vanish — it overflows onto the other track, provided that track still has an open node.
Worked example: a character whose Physical track is already full (Wounded and Maimed both marked) takes 1 more physical trauma. They cannot mark a physical node, so the trauma overflows and marks a node on the Mental track instead (Shaken). The same applies in reverse. A 2-trauma hit against a full track marks whatever open nodes remain, in either track, until either the trauma is spent or the character runs out of nodes.
This means full tracks still soak harm by pushing it elsewhere — right up until there is nowhere left for it to go.
Death§
If a character must mark a trauma node but every node on both tracks is already full, they die. Death only occurs when there is genuinely no open node left anywhere to absorb the incoming trauma (after applying the overflow rule above).
A character with all four nodes filled — Wounded, Maimed, Shaken, and Broken — is at the edge. One more trauma, from any source, kills them. This creates a natural pressure: characters who push past their limits without seeking recovery are genuinely at risk.
This is the rule in play. During character creation it is deliberately softened, so that a Wanderer is rarely lost before the campaign even begins — see Trauma from careers below.
Trauma from careers§
Some career results inflict trauma during character creation — a failed entry test, a Hard Exit or Disaster term roll, or certain D66 events. This represents the toll of a life already lived — injuries sustained in service, psychological damage from years in dangerous work. Most of it heals before the campaign begins: at the end of character creation the Wounded and Shaken nodes clear, and only Maimed or Broken — the severe, lasting wounds — carry into play, where they follow the same recovery rules as trauma taken at the table.
You assign creation trauma exactly as you would in play: for each point, you choose which open node to mark, on either track, and the overflow rule applies only when your chosen track is already full. Because the first nodes clear once creation ends, placement is really about overflow: keep your points in Wounded and Shaken and you start play clean, while any point forced onto Maimed or Broken — which only happens once the matching first node is full — is a scar you carry into the campaign and must dedicate a session to clearing. A character who takes only one or two points of creation trauma therefore enters play unmarked; it takes a third point on a track, or a Disaster, to leave a lasting wound.
Death in creation is rare, and reserved for catastrophe. The in-play rule — one more point with no open node kills — is relaxed here, where a whole life is compressed into a handful of rolls. Once all four nodes are full you are at your absolute limit, but you are not dead: a further point of trauma from an ordinary source — a failed entry test, a career or Life Event mishap — is simply absorbed. You cannot get any worse; you can only press your luck or walk away. The one thing that can still kill you here is a career ending in violence. If an overflowing point — one with nowhere left to go — comes from a Hard Exit or a Disaster term roll (Chapter 17), the Wanderer dies during creation and never reaches play. Mark them deceased and stop; their story ended before the campaign began. In practice this almost never happens — it takes a brutal career exit landing on someone already broken to the edge — but the possibility is what gives a long, battered string of terms its real weight.
Note too that a Wanderer already at all four nodes who has served at least one career may not apply to a new one (Chapter 17): they can only press on in the career they are currently in, or stop. So once you are at the edge, the only thing that can still kill you is a violent exit from the career you are already running — there is no shopping a fresh one to dodge the risk.