Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Characters & Combat, page 31

Okay, let’s see what’s next. We finish off the wounding and death section with a few notes on unconsciousness. Basically, you’re out for ten minutes, and every one of your characteristics is then at the midpoint between where you were when you got knocked out and your max. So, as the book says, if you’ve got a strength of 8 and get knocked out with your strength at 4, when you wake up, it’s at 6. Okay, that makes sense. It takes three days to get back to full strength. I’m sure some medical skill can reduce that.

Of course, the more hurt you are to begin with, the longer it takes to recover. If you had two stats at zero, then none of your stats recover, and you’re out for three hours. And you’ll only get better with the medical skill. Looks like the three days is as good as it will get.

Next, we’re on to how characteristics affect combat. Good; I was wondering if a 5 Dex was as good as an 11 when shooting a gun.

So the weapons tables, which I haven’t seen yet, will rely on the character’s strength for melee weapons. As in, if you’re not strong enough, you can’t even lift the thing, let alone hit someone with it. Sounds good; that dweeb sitting at the computer isn’t going to be jumping up and pulling out a two-handed sword like Conan. Even better, if your strength is higher than the ‘advantageous’ strength of the weapon, you get bonuses to hit with it. Nice! There’s a big difference between characteristics, then.

Hmm…that might affect Jamie Rollinson’s melee combat skill; sure, he’s trained to use a blade, but he can barely lift the thing now. I’ll have to see if he can even use his weapon once I get to the weapons tables. One page at a time, remember.

Dexterity, as every gamer knows, affects your accuracy. Well, that won’t be a problem for Jamie. His dexterity is average, sitting at a 7, so his Rifle skill will help with that. I assume he can still lift the rifle…

Endurance is still decent, at an 8, and this actually affects how many attacks you can make! Interesting. That’s a realistic way of handling combat; the idea that you can just keep swinging or shooting without eventually getting tired doesn’t sit well with me at all.

And we now learn that there are four classes of blows and swings: Surprise, combat, weakened, and special. Surprise blows mean that if you’ve got the jump on them, you can swing away without stopping (one per round, of course). Combat blows are the typical ones you get to take before your endurance runs out. And you can only take as many as your endurance total, so for Jamie, that’s eight swings with his blade in one fight before his body has had enough and wants a break. And it takes 30 minutes of break to get them back.

Now, sometimes you’re going to be fighting past your endurance. And that means you’re using ‘weakened’ blows, which have their own weapon-specific penalty on the tables You can do as many of these as you want, and you can even use them before you’ve run out of regular combat blows if you want, to conserve your strength for a tougher opponent behind the guy you’re currently dealing with. Cool concept; it’s elegant and functional at the same time.