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[Phaezen]

Originally Posted by Rel

While I'm discussing making meaningful battles meaningful there's...

Healing - So you just fought the Dragon! Man he was TOUGH! Despite the Cleric's best efforts and spending every Healing Surge, the Dragon finally took down the Fighter. It was lucky that the Rogue and Warlock were able to finish off the Dragon while the Cleric helped the Fighter because he was down to his LAST Death Save! Phew! But 6 hours later the Fighter feels perfectly fine! Fresh as a daisy really! Not a scratch on him.

That may not bother you. I'm not saying it should bother you. But it bothers me. I like my games to be just a bit grittier than that. So I needed a way for PC's to occassionally take a wound that took them more than an Extended Rest to recover from. I don't want to slow the game to a crawl or take anybody completely out of the action for an extended time. Just want them to sometimes "feel that one in the morning" and not always be at 100%. So I came up with this:

Healing works as normal in most cases. However it is possible for the PC to become “Wounded”. Such a character has suffered physical damage severe enough to make recovery more painful and difficult.

There are two possible ways for a PC to become Wounded:

A PC who fails a Death Save while at negative Hit Points becomes Wounded.

Certain monsters (mostly Elite and Solo monsters) or Traps may cause a PC to become Wounded on a Critical Hit.

While Wounded a PC suffers from the following effects:

They do not regain full hit points after an Extended Rest. A successful Heal check allows them to regain hit points equal to one Healing Surge.

The PC loses full use of their Healing Surges. The PC has the same number of Surges as normal but these may only be used when “activated” by other healing effects (such as Cleric or Warlord Powers or Second Wind). Healing Surges may not otherwise be voluntarily spent in order to regain Hit Points.

A character may attempt to recover from being Wounded after an Extended Rest by making a successful Endurance check. If the PC is under the care of a character Trained in the Heal skill, that roll may be substituted for the Endurance check. In addition it is possible for certain Rituals to give bonuses to this Endurance check or to heal the Wounded condition outright.

(NOTE: Somebody in another thread pointed out a loophole that might require a bit more tweaking to this. I'll post about it here when that gets sorted out.)

healing is something of a concern of mine too, as is the 3 strikes and you are out. For lingering injuries, I will be experimenting with the lingering injury rules from Ari Marmell's Advanced Player Guide by XRP, which works off the disease track.

For the 3 strikes and you are out, I am considering the following:

When you fail your third death save in an encounter you don't die, but rather you are knocked unconscious, unable to continue in the encounter and worsen one step on the condition track.

While this reduces the chances of dying in any single encounter (as you can now only die by dropping to negative bloodied or falling off the lingering injury track) this will be countered by the penalties for having a lingering wound.

Phaezen