Hello all, I'm looking into lingering injuries and how to implement them in my campaign. I think they make for a great way to incentivize players to be more mindful of their hit points and not fall into the method of whack-o-mole when in a tough fight. However with the research I've been doing most of what I have found is either too complex, too simple, or too harsh. So I'm trying to use what I've found and make my own. This is what I have so far:
Injury- When a character reaches 0 hit points, or takes damage greater then half their maximum hit point value in one attack, the player must make a constitution saving throw with a DC of 10, or half the damage dealt which ever is higher. Upon failing, the player must roll a second d20 to determine the type of injury acquired, based on the type of attack and damage dealt. Other actions may be required to properly heal certain injuries, such as splinting a broken arm before healing it. Many Injuries can be healed through normal medicinal means and time depending on their severity, though scars will persist. Injuries can be healed magically though some with a greater cost then the spell would normally have.
There are three levels of Injury:
Minor- Can be healed with a spell of 2nd level or higher Major- Can be healed with a spell of 5th level or higher and a cost of gemstone dust worth 200gp Grievous- Can only be healed with Regeneration Spell, or equivalent, and a diamond worth 750 gp
Though I'm not sure on what is better in terms of implementing the injuries. I was thinking of using a progressive scaling, the first time you roll it's on a minor table, then each time you are forced to roll before the next long rest it get's worse. Or each constitution save after the first injury just makes the current injury worse rather then gaining a new one. But I worry about the odds of ending up with too great a wound too quickly. Is it better to be a single table with the odds leaning more towards minor, then major, then grievous? Of course then they may end up losing an eye or an arm due to one bad roll which seem's harsher then what I'm intending.
My goal is to make falling unconscious when you have a healer to pop you back up have a greater consequence, with the risk of it becoming something detrimental to your character increasing the more you abuse that tactic. But I don't want to make the game much more complicated, or end up with the consequences ruining the fun of the game or being worse then death of the character for the player. Any help or advice would be wonderful, my players said the idea sounded neat so I want to work on something but I'm still new to balancing and am unsure how to go about it.
I've started using this method and it is adapted from previous LARPing experience and does require a little extra space on a character sheet:
Total HP and Locational HP.
Total HP is what you conventionally have and Locational HP is 1/3 of that (rounded up to nearest whole point)
Locations are: Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right leg.
When a player takes damage roll a d6 (1 = head, 2 = Chest, 3= Left Arm, 4 = Right Arm, 5 = Left Leg, 6 = Right Leg) and add fluff ot describe where the injury was taken.
Effects:
If Head or Torso are reduced to zero HP then PC falls unconscious but does not need to make death saving throws
If arm is reduced to zero then arm is broken/cannot be used/loses grip on anything it was holding.
If a leg is reduced to zero HP then the leg is broken and speed is reduced by 50%.
If both legs become broken then speed drops to 5ft and PC must use arms to pull themselves along the ground, if both legs and one or both arms are broken then speed becomes zero.
If a location is reduced to twice its Locational HP then the location is severed, If head or Chest become severed then this results in character death and Revivify will NOT work.
If the taget is unconscious and you are in melee with it then you cna pick which body part to attack.
Just to reduce the strain somewhat, you can use Hit Dice during rests as normal to heal damage and these restore Total and Locational HP.
If Healing is used:
Potions only heal Total HP
Magical Healing heals both Total and Location Healing but the location to be healed must be specified at teh time the healing is given.
Example:
Rob has 33 HP, his locational HP is 11.
Rob is hit for 12 points of damage and the DM rolls a d6 rolling a 2 and tells Rob that the blow imbeds itself in his chest and deals 12 damage. Rob marks off 12 HP from his total, reducing it to 21, and 12 from his chest location and declares he is unconcious from the blow and his chest is at minus 1 HP.
Next turn the party cleric casts healing word and specifices they are healing Rob's chest they heal 4 HP, Rob adds 4HP to his total HP bringin that back up to 25 and location HP bringin that upto 3 and he is conscious again. He takes no further damage and has a short rest after the battle rolling a Hit Dice and restores 5 HP to his total bring it to 30 and his chest locational HP back to 8HP.
***
You can also apply this to the BBEG and powerful bosses so players can be more tactical in their attacks and provide that sudden swing in fortunes or represent that coup de grace to unconscious or sleeping opponents.
Hope that all makes sense.....
EDIT: the above is really for damage resulting from a "to hit roll", for damage resulting from a saving throw such as Fire Ball or lIghtning Bolt you would take 1/3 damage to each location as well...for example if you were in the radius of a freball and took 30 fire damage to your total HP then you would also take 10 damage to each location.
There may be some other little niggly points as well such as Psychic damage always dealing damage to the head.
Its simpler than it sounds, you just need each player to have something like this:
The Total HP section at the top is like the normal space on a character sheet, the Locational bits you just enter in the maximum for each location (so: Head: 10, Torso: 10 etc) and then deduct as you would for normal HP.
This does require a bit of honour on the part of the players to actually be honest with when they have a limb broken etc but I have managed it as part of combat behind the DM screen, I had 4 tables like this, one for each player, and just noted damage down as it got inflicted but it is easier if the players manage their own sheets.
Edit....just realised the table I put in doesn't show up on heres a link to a version that should work...
I considered initially creating some permanence to injuries as you describe here by creating some hurdles to resolving the injuries but my initial tests revealed two problems.
1. If there is a way for players to "fix" an injury or effect, they will halt the adventure, reverse course and pursue that the fix until its fixed. In essence they will stop the game from progressing until the issue is resolved. Its very disruptive to the campaign.
2. By placing levels as a market on something, aka must use level 2 spell for example, means that the system becomes less relevant as the players become more powerful, so you have a temporary fix by instilling some respect for injuries, but by the time they can cast regeneration spells the entire system is only slightly more taxing or relevant then not having one. As such its a good idea to create a system that players will respect as much at 1st level as they will at 15th level.
I read your discussion and thought it was an interesting idea, though I think it's a bit more then I'm looking for personally. I like when my player's take negative modifiers for the sake of having flaws in their character and I wouldn't want to punish one for taking a negative in constitution by making them now the only ones at risk of instant death. I don't really want to change the base system too much and the way hp work's as it is. I think hp and death saves is all good, for the sake of being an abstract representation of your ability to continue fighting, and the sake of "shit happens you can't account for".
I see your point on the derailing of the campaign, and how searching for a fix can become problematic, I'm not sure my player's will go that far once told "There isn't anyone here who knows how to help you." But I won't know until I test it out.
As for the system becoming less relevant as they get to higher level's I think that kind of sort's itself out. Yes minor injuries become meaningless when they can be fixed with a level 2 spell and healer's have plenty by level 15. But based on what I understand of the tiers of play, at higher levels PC's are essentially legends and powerful beings beyond a normal mortal's ability. I think that for someone who has gained so much in power and ability, a simple concussion should be easy for them to negate. Within combat it is still a problem until it get's to the healer's turn, and even then it still takes extra resources as healing an injury will not heal hp. But when they win the fight something like a broken arm should be more easily repaired. What I feel helps balance it is that at higher levels the chance of death increases as the evil they fight is also more powerful. The squishier PC's are at a risk of multiple injuries as they can very easily take half their hp in damage, spells can instant kill without any way to prevent it, and BBEG's can be more vindictive and continue to hurt PC's even after they hit 0, thus forcing death upon them. So the need for the system is less, as the risk of death becomes almost inevitable.
My only issue is being sure there is a consequence for exploiting the fact this is a game and the player's aren't as scared of the giant sword crushing them into the ground when a healer can make sure they don't die. In that regard's I thought of something that might work, based on how exhaustion works.
1d20 injury table, but you have to fail three constitution saving throws before you roll on it. So the first time you hit 0 hit points, or take massive damage, you make an injury save, if you fail you get a wound(predetermined not a table), if you fail a second injury save you get a worse wound(also predetermined), and if you fail a third save then you roll on the injury table and take the injury you get. Wounds can only be healed through a long uninterrupted rest(wounded can't stay up for watch) where you lose one level of wound per uninterrupted rest. if you continue to take wounds after receiving an injury then, like exhaustion, it can eventually lead to death.
The system you describe for determining constitution certainly seem's interesting, but as you state it works under assumptions. One of which is that an adventurer is a reasonable intelligent person. ... I have yet to meet any character who is out doing the kind of crazy things adventurers do and are completely sane, except for the ones protecting their crazy found family. Lol. I can think of a lot of reason's that someone might go out without having good constitution. Some of my character's I have specifically wanted their constitution lower because of their backstory and the reason's they were adventuring.
I'm really new to DMing, and ttrpg's in general. While I'm all for trying new system's for one shot's or fun short campaign's, I'm likely always going to run in either D&D 5e, or newer. Learning the 100's of different system's that have existed over the year's is just too much for me. And for me, the flavor of the character should always come before the mechanic's of the game. So I'm attempting to develop something that, while might be specific to this system, won't make any assumption's on the character's part or overtly punish someone for their build choices, but instead only punish for poor tactical choices or abusing mechanics.
That of course is just me, and I think what you describe sounds really interesting for a game where some assumptions are being made already. It sounds cool. ^^
I always like the idea of injuries, but in practice, I find they can really punish (punishment in the sense of getting beat up, not in the sense of a penalty) the players too much. A few encounters per session, a campaign that goes on for a couple years, and sooner or later, someone is going to get that bad roll that just completely screws their character. Enemies don't have the same problem, because they are, the vast majority of them at least, only ever going to be in one fight, the one where the characters kill them.
For the characters, though, in fight after fight after fight, injuries will start to stack up. I know my fighter can drop two or three times in one encounter. That's a lot of rolls on the chart. And if you do specific injuries you can end up really sticking it to people, based on a die roll. Say you have a character that took the two weapon fighting style, and also the feat and the whole thing, but you cut his arm off, or otherwise make it unusable. It can be fun for a little while, and can certainly be a good arc for the character as they find other things to do. But, as lizard says, you can end up really derailing the campaign because you know that player isn't going to want to move forward until they've fixed the problem. Not every player, some might just embrace it, but it can really run the risk of making it not fun for that player, and making the whole campaign about them fixing their arm, and so everyone else becomes a secondary character. Unless someone has access to 7th level spells, and then they just fix it on the spot. At which point, it's little more than a speed bump. It's really tough to thread that needle between a meaningful, but not character (and campaign) destroying injury, and annoying to the point of irrelevance.
The wounds thing could work, if you don't get too specific (imo, obviously) Though be prepared to slow down the campaign a lot, because the fighter and barbarian and pally, and tanks in general, are probably going to need lots of weeks of rest time. It can be cool, for a gritty campaign, and can really make ticking clock style campaigns even more tense. Just be prepared. Maybe do something like let them make a con save at the end of each day to speed up the recovery, to better reflect that tougher characters can get over injuries more quickly.
You can also just make the injuries cosmetic. A scar here, a broken nose there, maybe hair singed off someone's head. And then have NPCs comment on the appearance. Sometimes RP effects can be cooler than mechanical ones.
Hello all, I'm looking into lingering injuries and how to implement them in my campaign. I think they make for a great way to incentivize players to be more mindful of their hit points and not fall into the method of whack-o-mole when in a tough fight. However with the research I've been doing most of what I have found is either too complex, too simple, or too harsh. So I'm trying to use what I've found and make my own. This is what I have so far:
Though I'm not sure on what is better in terms of implementing the injuries. I was thinking of using a progressive scaling, the first time you roll it's on a minor table, then each time you are forced to roll before the next long rest it get's worse. Or each constitution save after the first injury just makes the current injury worse rather then gaining a new one. But I worry about the odds of ending up with too great a wound too quickly. Is it better to be a single table with the odds leaning more towards minor, then major, then grievous? Of course then they may end up losing an eye or an arm due to one bad roll which seem's harsher then what I'm intending.
My goal is to make falling unconscious when you have a healer to pop you back up have a greater consequence, with the risk of it becoming something detrimental to your character increasing the more you abuse that tactic. But I don't want to make the game much more complicated, or end up with the consequences ruining the fun of the game or being worse then death of the character for the player. Any help or advice would be wonderful, my players said the idea sounded neat so I want to work on something but I'm still new to balancing and am unsure how to go about it.
I've started using this method and it is adapted from previous LARPing experience and does require a little extra space on a character sheet:
Total HP and Locational HP.
Total HP is what you conventionally have and Locational HP is 1/3 of that (rounded up to nearest whole point)
Locations are: Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right leg.
When a player takes damage roll a d6 (1 = head, 2 = Chest, 3= Left Arm, 4 = Right Arm, 5 = Left Leg, 6 = Right Leg) and add fluff ot describe where the injury was taken.
Effects:
If Head or Torso are reduced to zero HP then PC falls unconscious but does not need to make death saving throws
If arm is reduced to zero then arm is broken/cannot be used/loses grip on anything it was holding.
If a leg is reduced to zero HP then the leg is broken and speed is reduced by 50%.
If both legs become broken then speed drops to 5ft and PC must use arms to pull themselves along the ground, if both legs and one or both arms are broken then speed becomes zero.
If a location is reduced to twice its Locational HP then the location is severed, If head or Chest become severed then this results in character death and Revivify will NOT work.
If the taget is unconscious and you are in melee with it then you cna pick which body part to attack.
Just to reduce the strain somewhat, you can use Hit Dice during rests as normal to heal damage and these restore Total and Locational HP.
If Healing is used:
Potions only heal Total HP
Magical Healing heals both Total and Location Healing but the location to be healed must be specified at teh time the healing is given.
Example:
Rob has 33 HP, his locational HP is 11.
Rob is hit for 12 points of damage and the DM rolls a d6 rolling a 2 and tells Rob that the blow imbeds itself in his chest and deals 12 damage. Rob marks off 12 HP from his total, reducing it to 21, and 12 from his chest location and declares he is unconcious from the blow and his chest is at minus 1 HP.
Next turn the party cleric casts healing word and specifices they are healing Rob's chest they heal 4 HP, Rob adds 4HP to his total HP bringin that back up to 25 and location HP bringin that upto 3 and he is conscious again. He takes no further damage and has a short rest after the battle rolling a Hit Dice and restores 5 HP to his total bring it to 30 and his chest locational HP back to 8HP.
***
You can also apply this to the BBEG and powerful bosses so players can be more tactical in their attacks and provide that sudden swing in fortunes or represent that coup de grace to unconscious or sleeping opponents.
Hope that all makes sense.....
EDIT: the above is really for damage resulting from a "to hit roll", for damage resulting from a saving throw such as Fire Ball or lIghtning Bolt you would take 1/3 damage to each location as well...for example if you were in the radius of a freball and took 30 fire damage to your total HP then you would also take 10 damage to each location.
There may be some other little niggly points as well such as Psychic damage always dealing damage to the head.
Its simpler than it sounds, you just need each player to have something like this:
The Total HP section at the top is like the normal space on a character sheet, the Locational bits you just enter in the maximum for each location (so: Head: 10, Torso: 10 etc) and then deduct as you would for normal HP.
This does require a bit of honour on the part of the players to actually be honest with when they have a limb broken etc but I have managed it as part of combat behind the DM screen, I had 4 tables like this, one for each player, and just noted damage down as it got inflicted but it is easier if the players manage their own sheets.
Edit....just realised the table I put in doesn't show up on heres a link to a version that should work...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=10-BkvyglByOA2o8lR-YjIOfBThLYK-zP
I read your discussion and thought it was an interesting idea, though I think it's a bit more then I'm looking for personally. I like when my player's take negative modifiers for the sake of having flaws in their character and I wouldn't want to punish one for taking a negative in constitution by making them now the only ones at risk of instant death. I don't really want to change the base system too much and the way hp work's as it is. I think hp and death saves is all good, for the sake of being an abstract representation of your ability to continue fighting, and the sake of "shit happens you can't account for".
I see your point on the derailing of the campaign, and how searching for a fix can become problematic, I'm not sure my player's will go that far once told "There isn't anyone here who knows how to help you." But I won't know until I test it out.
As for the system becoming less relevant as they get to higher level's I think that kind of sort's itself out. Yes minor injuries become meaningless when they can be fixed with a level 2 spell and healer's have plenty by level 15. But based on what I understand of the tiers of play, at higher levels PC's are essentially legends and powerful beings beyond a normal mortal's ability. I think that for someone who has gained so much in power and ability, a simple concussion should be easy for them to negate. Within combat it is still a problem until it get's to the healer's turn, and even then it still takes extra resources as healing an injury will not heal hp. But when they win the fight something like a broken arm should be more easily repaired. What I feel helps balance it is that at higher levels the chance of death increases as the evil they fight is also more powerful. The squishier PC's are at a risk of multiple injuries as they can very easily take half their hp in damage, spells can instant kill without any way to prevent it, and BBEG's can be more vindictive and continue to hurt PC's even after they hit 0, thus forcing death upon them. So the need for the system is less, as the risk of death becomes almost inevitable.
My only issue is being sure there is a consequence for exploiting the fact this is a game and the player's aren't as scared of the giant sword crushing them into the ground when a healer can make sure they don't die. In that regard's I thought of something that might work, based on how exhaustion works.
1d20 injury table, but you have to fail three constitution saving throws before you roll on it. So the first time you hit 0 hit points, or take massive damage, you make an injury save, if you fail you get a wound(predetermined not a table), if you fail a second injury save you get a worse wound(also predetermined), and if you fail a third save then you roll on the injury table and take the injury you get. Wounds can only be healed through a long uninterrupted rest(wounded can't stay up for watch) where you lose one level of wound per uninterrupted rest. if you continue to take wounds after receiving an injury then, like exhaustion, it can eventually lead to death.
The system you describe for determining constitution certainly seem's interesting, but as you state it works under assumptions. One of which is that an adventurer is a reasonable intelligent person. ... I have yet to meet any character who is out doing the kind of crazy things adventurers do and are completely sane, except for the ones protecting their crazy found family. Lol. I can think of a lot of reason's that someone might go out without having good constitution. Some of my character's I have specifically wanted their constitution lower because of their backstory and the reason's they were adventuring.
I'm really new to DMing, and ttrpg's in general. While I'm all for trying new system's for one shot's or fun short campaign's, I'm likely always going to run in either D&D 5e, or newer. Learning the 100's of different system's that have existed over the year's is just too much for me. And for me, the flavor of the character should always come before the mechanic's of the game. So I'm attempting to develop something that, while might be specific to this system, won't make any assumption's on the character's part or overtly punish someone for their build choices, but instead only punish for poor tactical choices or abusing mechanics.
That of course is just me, and I think what you describe sounds really interesting for a game where some assumptions are being made already. It sounds cool. ^^
I always like the idea of injuries, but in practice, I find they can really punish (punishment in the sense of getting beat up, not in the sense of a penalty) the players too much. A few encounters per session, a campaign that goes on for a couple years, and sooner or later, someone is going to get that bad roll that just completely screws their character. Enemies don't have the same problem, because they are, the vast majority of them at least, only ever going to be in one fight, the one where the characters kill them.
For the characters, though, in fight after fight after fight, injuries will start to stack up. I know my fighter can drop two or three times in one encounter. That's a lot of rolls on the chart. And if you do specific injuries you can end up really sticking it to people, based on a die roll. Say you have a character that took the two weapon fighting style, and also the feat and the whole thing, but you cut his arm off, or otherwise make it unusable. It can be fun for a little while, and can certainly be a good arc for the character as they find other things to do. But, as lizard says, you can end up really derailing the campaign because you know that player isn't going to want to move forward until they've fixed the problem. Not every player, some might just embrace it, but it can really run the risk of making it not fun for that player, and making the whole campaign about them fixing their arm, and so everyone else becomes a secondary character. Unless someone has access to 7th level spells, and then they just fix it on the spot. At which point, it's little more than a speed bump. It's really tough to thread that needle between a meaningful, but not character (and campaign) destroying injury, and annoying to the point of irrelevance.
The wounds thing could work, if you don't get too specific (imo, obviously) Though be prepared to slow down the campaign a lot, because the fighter and barbarian and pally, and tanks in general, are probably going to need lots of weeks of rest time. It can be cool, for a gritty campaign, and can really make ticking clock style campaigns even more tense. Just be prepared. Maybe do something like let them make a con save at the end of each day to speed up the recovery, to better reflect that tougher characters can get over injuries more quickly.
You can also just make the injuries cosmetic. A scar here, a broken nose there, maybe hair singed off someone's head. And then have NPCs comment on the appearance. Sometimes RP effects can be cooler than mechanical ones.
We have just started using lingering injuries in our campaign. Things I learnt-
1. needs to be simple
2. loosing an arm or eye etc is not any fun for players
3. needs to be a deterrent to players not worrying about zero HP,
4. needs to be fixable - and make healers popular
I came up with this
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/rSf-1gXdn95g