One of the fun things that sets UA apart from other games, is the GM tracking of Wound Points. Having the uncertainly of exactly how fucked up you are really adds to the stress in combat. Does the fact that you’re experiencing a sharp pain in the chest and difficulty breathing after that whack with the baseball bat betoken a broken rib, punctured lung, flail sternum, hemothorax, myocardial contusion or cardiac tamponade? Kinda important to know, since some of those will kill you in short order.

Describing the subjective effect of wounds can be daunting for anyone without some medical training though. To help out, I use Radical Approach’s Trauma system, which is a (largely) system agnostic publication that exhaustively details injury to the human body in gaming terms; from the symptoms that the victim experiences, to the actual underlying issue, to complications, treatments and long-term consequences. Want to know how long it’ll take to bleed out from a severed carotid artery, or at what point brain damage occurs due to lack of oxygen? You’ll find out here.

Trauma covers injuries to all parts of the body, and classifies wound severity into superficial, nasty, grievous, grim and mortal. Types of trauma are slash, crush and pierce, as well as burning (and electrical burns, if you want to detail exactly what happens when your Agrimancer strikes that guy with lightning). Diagnosis and treatment are detailed for each wound type and location.

Adapting Trauma to UA takes a bit of effort, so I’m going to share my approach here:

Wound Severity
Each wound received is classified by severity, based on the percentage of the victim’s total Wound Threshold, as follows (rounded up in all cases): Superficial 10%, Nasty 25%, Grievous 50%, Grim 85%, Mortal 100%. I add another severity after Mortal called Dead, which is equal to Wound Threshold + (Fitness / 10), at which point the victim is really, most sincerely, dead. That is, for an average Wound Threshold of 50, a victim would receive a Superficial wound at 1-5 points, a Nasty wound at 6-13 points, etc. Since wounds are tracked separately, a punch that inflicts 4 damage results in a Superficial 4 wound, and if later the victim gets knifed for 11 points, he suffers a Nasty 11 wound; i.e. although the total number of Wound Points accumulated increases, the wounds are distinct.

Hit Location
As expected with a highly-detailed trauma system, knowing whether you got hit in the head or the leg is very important. UA doesn’t care about hit location, so use the following distribution based on the ones die of the attack roll: 1-3 Arm, 4-5 Chest, 6-7 Abdomen, 8-9 Leg, 10 Head. Assign left/right for limbs as circumstance dictates. The reflects the expected distribution of wounds in Trauma. For called shots, the specified location is hit, and for matched successes and criticals, let the attacker choose the location.

Trauma Tables
Trauma has a table for each hit location and severity, which details six injuries per type of attack (slash, crush and pierce). To determine the rank within the table, use the tens die of the attack roll.

Fatigue
Fatigue imposes a Penalty to all actions as follows: Fresh – No effect, Winded -10%, Exhausted -20%, Drained -30%.

Unconsciousness
Unconsciousness due to accumulated wounds (all those Superficial wounds eventually take their toll) occurs at 85% of the Wound Threshold (the same number as a Grim wound). Unconsciousness caused by trauma lasts 1d10 hours or until roused for any trauma below Mortal. If Mortal, the unconsciousness lasts 1D10 x 2 hours, and the patient cannot be easily roused and will remain unfocused and dazed until the wound has healed enough to a lower severity.

First Aid
There are plenty of people who don’t have actual medical training (i.e. an identity with Medical) who can still render decent first aid, provided the wound isn’t too bad. This reflects boy scout training, that first aid course you took as a kindergarten teacher, etc., so I allow Knowledge to be used for Golden Hour treatment of Superficial and Nasty wounds; higher than that and only the Medical feature is going to help. Surgery and treatment thereafter require Medical as normal. Accurately assessing the extent of an injury also requires Medical, but feel free to roll Knowledge on a PC’s behalf if they want to try, then give them a partial diagnosis (and dangerous misdiagnosis on a failure).

Healing
Healing in Trauma reflects real-world recuperation times, which can be a bit slow for gaming purposes. If you prefer to use the UA rates applied to severity: Superficial and Nasty wounds heal at the rate of 1 Wound Point per wound per day (with convalescence). Grievous, Grim and Mortal wounds require hospitalization and Fitness checks per day to heal 1 WP per wound, and often have long-term effects that will need to be addressed during play.

Violence Stress
Being on the receiving end of a graphic wound (or inflicting the same, in some cases), may call for a Violence Stress Check. If you want to vary the rank of the check per wound severity, use the following: Superficial 2, Nasty 3, Grievous 4, Grim 5, Mortal 6.

Difficulties and Penalties
Translate the Trauma difficulty levels into UA Difficulties as follows: Easy: 0, Tricky: 10%, Hard: 15%, Severe: 20%, Extreme 30%, and Insane 50%
Translate the Trauma penalty values into UA penalties as follows: 1D: -10%, 2D: -20%, 3D: -30%

Hopefully that helps you adapt Trauma to UA, and gives your PCs another reason to avoid rushing into combat.