So as it stands ALL my melees end with one side defeated at various levels, and the winning side COMPLETELY unscratched, which seems a bit wrong.
Your suggestion of allowing explicit wounding attacks and effects does the same thing... ie it distracts from the whole purpose of reducing APs to win the melee... it is colour to the system, and again my players will ignore it.
What I may have a look at instead is that AP losses actually do the wounds you describe, as an EXTRA effect of losing AP. I realise this makes an AP loss more significant, but I dont think it will be staggeringly greater...
For eg:
You attack an opponent and bid 20AP, you get a 1x win and inflict 20AP... which becomes a flaw of "Wound 20", if the players want to be more illustrative they could say 'attack his sword arm' for 20AP and you could add extra effects, like a roll to not drop his sword etc... The "wound 20" (or "Arm wound 20") would apply a negative augment, -2, to all actions needing a good arm. It would have to be healed later on as well... given time however it would heal naturally, it isnt a permanent effect... although a Critical/Fumble result in the exchange could be made permanent wounds...? optional.
This means that you lose AP and you gain negative mods at the same time... doubel dipping on the system. However if you look at the values and APs being used it isnt a significant mod...
Eg warrior A has skill 10w2 (50) and 100 AP. During a melee you will suffer 100APs of loses before defeat (maybe 140), which is -10 (or - 14) to his skill... a significant, over the entire melee, change, but not a staggering one. What it does mean is that characters with LOTS of APs compared to their skill will suffer more... and I actually like that idea.
Doing this adds more flavour to the whole AP system to me, which currently seems to be a very dry part of the HQ system. It means that even the winner can end up with wounds from the various exchanges.
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