A character who is carrying wounds suffers an ongoing reduction in effectiveness as a result of cumulative effect of all wounds received.
Ongoing impairment is worked out by using the worst wound that the character is currently carrying (e.g. a character with 3 light wounds and a medium wound would count as medium wound level):
| Worst wound level | Penalty on all dice rolls | Difficulty of dice roll to keep going |
| None | 0 | -5 |
| Scratch | 0 | -2 |
| Light | -1 | 0 |
| Medium | -2 | 2 |
| Serious | -4 | 4 |
| Critical | -6 | 6 |
| Fatal | n/a | n/a |
Impairment from being wounded. A character's current wound level may give him/her a penalty on all dice rolls (see the table above). This reflects the effect that wounds have on a character's general effectiveness.
Keeping going when wounded. If a character tries to maintain his/her activity without resting, he/she must make a dice roll against his/her WP + Athletics(Stamina) to do so. The difficulty depends on his/her wounds level (see above) [Note the penalties for his/her current tiredness and wounds levels also apply to this dice roll]. A dice roll must be made every hour. Failure means the character must rest for at least an hour before trying again.
Note that the immediate reaction to and knockback from a wound are worked out before any increase to ongoing impairment associated with that wound takes effect.
See also: example of a wound