Most of the above post has nothing to do with what I said. I know what each section is discussing and what it is a subset of. My entire point about NPC effects being about ignoring the piddly details of Hits, Stuns, etc. (effects) is entirely dependent on that very point. So thanks for helping my argument again.
That being said, the biggest reason I think everyone is misinterpreting this rule is that no realistic Player Character could ever expect to survive (without going unconscious at the very least) 10 hits in an entire encounter, let alone a single round. So why should all NPC's. even a 4-year-old child, be able to take more damage than a PC?
Don't believe me about PC survival? That is because you are skipping an important rule. Page 225, The Types of Damage: "Hit = Hits to C1, C2, C3" followed by "Hits to Characteristics are applied randomly and in Dice amounts"
So, if a players armor is penetrated by a bullet, which does Hit damage, then for each Hit the player takes a dice of damage to a random characteristic. Mathematical odds say that even with A's across the board 10 hits will guarantee 1 stat drops to 0, 2 is fairly likely, and 3 is a still reasonably possible.
I find my interpretation of the rules much more satisfying than genuinely believing that the actual intended interpretation is that we are to ignore the injuries themselves, not merely just the effects, as I posit.
However, despite the obvious massive stacking of the entire system against the PC making a run in with just 2 thugs almost a guaranteed loss (unless you brawl them), there is still hope! If you ignore HIT SYSTEM V0, as I have seen suggested in other threads because it is supposedly just added as an optional rule, then Hits don't cause characters to loose the use of limbs, go unconscious, or even die. The due reduce stats of course, which can be worse than dying if the enemy is still around to capture you, but you are still alive pretty much no matter what. It isn't just Hits either... Even being dropped in a pool of lava doesn't seem to cause any lasting harm as long as someone fishes you out. All that heat does is cause damage to C1-C4 as well as unconsciousness if you fail a C3 check. But death? Nope, doesn't say it causes death.
Don't believe me again? No problem. Read the entire core book VERY carefully. No where in it other than in V0 does it say what the actual EFFECT of a wound or characteristic reduction is on the character (we even have to just ASSUME that a reduced characteristic lowers C+S rolls). It has a system for determining where you are hit. It tells you how sever the injury is on a table that is apparently just used to set the difficulty of healing the wound. It tells you (mostly) how a medic can diagnose and treat the injury. What it doesn't tell you is what the actual impact is to your character. It doesn't say when Hit (or most other types of injuries) by themselves are severe enough to cause unconsciousness, or even when they cause death. As far as I can tell the only way to die is old age...
Still doubt me? Do what I did and search on the master PDF for:
death, dies, dead, unconscious, wound, severity, injury, Hit system V1, etc. I did those for the entire document, and a few other related things, and nowhere in the rules other than V0 did it say what the actual effect of characteristic damage is on a character. I may have missed something, but I doubt it. The rules seem to be missing some rather important stuff, both for and against the player, which is disappointing. The mass of errors, mix of old tables and text with new, poor or missing examples, and complete lack of discussion of some of the most basic rules, like injury effects, makes the book a big paperweight. Hopefully there will be an updated PDF version at some point with most of this fixed so we can have all the rules in one place, instead of having to rely on separate errata.
