Being naturally unCool

Question

Bubblegumshoe 68, "Effects of Cool Damage," talks about the negative effects of spending my Cool points down to 5 or lower. But it's totally possible (though understandably discouraged) to start with 4 or 5 as my Sleuth's maximum Cool rating (see page 9 "Character Creation" and page 19 "General Abilities (Cool)").

• Is it just so ridiculous a Sleuth would have a Cool rating less than 6 that we don't need rules for this situation? I can get behind that, but it doesn't seem explicit.
• Otherwise, does such a Sleuth permanently suffer penalties as if she'd taken Cool Damage?

Answer 1

I can't find a definitive answer in the rules one way or the other, but I'm inclined to say that the check for the effects of damage is what triggers the penalty, and refreshing to full will clear it, even if "full" is 4 or 5 Cool.

At 0-5 Cool, after taking damage, your Interpersonals only count half in a throwdown, +1 instead of +2. If it was true all the time, it would have been mentioned in the section on spending your Interpersonals in the first place. "As long as you have 6 or more Cool", sort of thing. Especially since there are some in-book variants which involve creating characters with even lower potential Cool ratings.