When a successful hit is scored in battle, damage needs to be calculated. In the Hero@Heart system, damage is done more realistically than by counting off hit points like in many other games. We track each individual unit of damage as injuries done to the body, and an overall amount is considered for fatigue.
Calculating Injuries[]
Each weapon has a type of damage that it delivers and a base damage amount. For example, a knife would be Sharp (or Puncture, depending on how it is used), and might have a Poor base damage. When damage is done, the attack success counts as an Assisting roll toward the damage. Thus, if the attack was Good, that would be a +1 rank bonus, which when added to the +1 base damage would make 2 ranks of Sharp or Puncture damage. The GM would declare to the injured character "You now have two ranks of Sharp injury on your arm" (or wherever the damage was received) and they would mark it on their character sheet.
Armor[]
Characters may be wearing armor that stops certain types of damage from getting though to a certain body part. Taking the previous example of the knife injury to the arm, if the victim was wearing a heavy leather coat, the sleeves would cover the arms and thus act as armor. If the leather coat had Good protection against Sharp damage, that would remove 3 ranks of the injury, leaving just a scratch to the coat and mitigating all injury to the arm.
Fatigue Damage[]
Fatigue damage is the exhaustion caused by being injured, the type of injury which causes bruises and pain and weariness but no lasting injury. It is represented as an overall reduction in the character's Fortitude score. To find out how much the character is Fatigued, take the total number of damage ranks BEFORE any armor penalties are applied. Thus, a character who received Excellent damage but whose Fair armor mitigated two ranks of damage would take 2 ranks of injury but 4 Fatigue damage even though the armor reduced the injury. This amount is then temporarily subtracted from the victim's Fortitude.
Most melee weapons (any weapon that is still in the hand when it strikes an opponent) will also add ten percent of the attacker's Strength score to its Fortitude damage, rounded down. So, if the attacker has a Strength of 35, you would add 3 to the Fortitude damage done. In the above example, if the attacker had 40 Strength, the 4 Fatigue damage would become 8 Fatigue damage.
Punches and kicks only do Fatigue damage, using the result of the attack as base damage. Thus, if the attacker punched and rolled Good, then the base Fatigue damage for that punch would be 3 plus ten percent of his Strength. If his Strength was 65, the overall damage done would be 9 Fatigue damage.
Cumulative Injury[]
If a character receives the same type of injury to an already-injured body part, the injury becomes cumulative. If the injury was Poor (1 rank) Sharp damage before, and another Poor Sharp injury occurs, the injury increases to 2 ranks of Sharp injury. A character can withstand a number of ranks of damage equal to ten percent of their Fortitude score rounded down. Thus, if they have 80 Fortitude, they could take 8 ranks of damage before the part of the body is destroyed. See Damage-Related Penalties for more information.
Types of Injury[]
There are a number of different injury types: Blunt Damage, Sharp Damage, Puncture Damage,Mauling Damage, Crushing Damage, Suffocation Damage, Fire Damage, Cold Damage, Electrical Damage,Falling Damage, Poison Damage, etc. (see the main page for the rules about injury). These are just given as a means for the GM to decide what happens to a character when they are injured, and to add cumulative injuries of the same type to a person. The GM is able to take these basic types of damage and add his own or use existing ones: for example, if a character has acid thrown at them, the GM could use the closest listed damage type, which would be Fire damage, or he could make up his own "Acid Damage" injury type. A character who uses the butt of a gun to hit somebody obviously isn't going to do Excellent Puncture damage, so the GM could decide it would do Fair Blunt damage, or he may decide to come up with a Concussion injury type. See the individual injury listings for more information about how this would work.