at least I always thought it worked that subsequent wounds in battle made you "one higher" (ie, wounded -> seriously, seriously -> dead if a hero)
Perusing this thread, I noticed this, and wanted to make a quick comment.
Wounding used to work very similar to your description. Your first wound in a battle made you "Wounded". A second wound made you "Seriously Wounded". And that was it. There were only these two states. Heroes were slightly different in that heroes could not be seriously wounded
in battle. If they received a second wound
in battle, they were dead. In all other situations (duels and assassinations) they were treated the same as everyone else. No one ever died from wounds getting worse. If you survived the battle, you would live.
That was changed a few years ago when the wounding system was updated right before the Fourth BT invasion. The way it works now, a wound gives you a variable number of wound points depending on how badly you were hit. Your status is determined by the total number of wound points you have accumulated. When heroes accumulate a certain number of wound points
in battle, they die. If they are not immediately killed during the battle, then they will survive. Heroes cannot die from a wound getting worse on subsequent turns. Everyone else will just be wounded no matter how many wound points they accumulate. The various descriptors to wounded status don't really mean anything, other than a general indicator of your state. It is possible to take four wounds and just be Lightly Wounded, or to go all the way to "Critical" from a single hit. (Especially from an infiltrator stabbing.) The time it takes to recover depends on how many wound points you have. A character recovers a variable number of wound points every turn change. Or if you are unlucky you accumulate a few more wound points and get worse.
On SI, *all* characters can be killed. That means that if you accumulate enough wound points, you will die. This can happen *anywhere*, not just in combat. It is even possible to get wounded today, then die three days later from it getting worse, without ever recovering. The older your character gets, the greater the possibility that this could happen. So far as I know, no one has died yet on SI, not even a normal hero death.
