Hey Brass..
CT is my meat and potatoes- although I don't have the Animal Encounters supplement, here is what I know.
First, I broke out my "Starter Edition" which has some verbage which clarifies some of the rules..
(1) When applying the "first wounding", ALL dice rolled for that wound are applied randomly to one charactistic. If a characteristic is reduced to Zero with any "first wound" then the character is rendered unconcious immediately and the remaining dice or fractions of dice (left over from the characteristic that is now 0) are randomly assigned to the other remaining characteristics. Note that this procedure applies (strangely) only to the "first wounding" of the combat per character involved (I personally forsake this rule in games I run- only on the "first wound" of the combat? Too silly).
(2) Remember, all Book 1 combat is predicated on a 8+ "to hit" die roll, which is modified (as you know) extensively by various factors.
Teeth +1 is a plus one to hit, not damage.
The rules state:
"For simplicity, the damage dice should be rolled once when the animal is generated; the animal would inflict that number of hits every time it hits. A roll of 0 or less equals 1; an animal always has the ability to do some damage. If the referee wishes to take the trouble, he can roll the proper number of dice every time the animal hit; in this case, a roll of 0 or less would equal 0."(Book 3-Worlds and Adventures, page 30, under the "Animal Wounds" header (GDW, 1977-81)).
To know how many dice to use to calculate an "actual" wound roll, you'd have to compare back to the table to see. For example, a 25kg animal is created and has Teeth +1 as a a weapon.
The ref can choose to roll 2D in advance and determine that the creature ALWAYS inflicts 8 wounds per hit, or, knowing a 25kg creature gets no bonus and teeth do 2D damage, this creature was created and the creator rolled 2D and got a 8, and you can instead just roll 2D every time it hits (my preferred method). (See the Animal Sizes and Weaponry table on page 33).
Note that there is a confusing typo on page 30 (Book 3) in the Animal Wounds section! It states that "If, for example, the animal has teeth as its weapons, then the weapons range matrix in Book 1 states that teeth inflict 1D hits when they hit."
In fact, the range matrix shows that teeth inflict 2D hits! So, if you took the 1D value in the text for the truth and tried to make sense of some of the pregenerated animals, you'd easily be confused at how they arrived at the values they do.
Remember, the rules are your guideline; feel free to modify as common sense dictates...
