A d20 Rules Experiment: Damage Thresholds and Wounds

[apoc527]

(Disclaimer: I doubt anyone from DP9 will be upset with me for using the terms "Flesh Wound" and "Deep Wound" but if they are, calling them "Light" and "Heavy" wounds amounts to the same thing.)

Ok, so there I was walking to class when an interesting thought poked its way into my skull. What if I combined the Damage Threshold rules from the Silhouette system (Dream Pod 9) with d20 Modern? This is what came to me. For those that don't know, the Damage system of Silhouette goes like this-

Every character has a Stamina score, and from this score three values are generated: Flesh Would, Deep Wound and Instant Death damage thresholds. It's not relevent how damage is rolled and tracked in Silhouette, so I'll leave it that. Needless to say, the system itself is hitpointless and fairly cool. Here's what the concept might look like if applied to d20 Modern-

Massive Damage Threshold-

The MDT will remain the same, that is, it's equal to the character's current Con score. All rules regarding the MDT are unchanged.

Flesh and Deep Wounds
This is the meat of this idea. Some people complain (perhaps rightly) that getting wounded in d20 is meaningless until you hit 0 HP. This is intentional in many ways, but I'm not going to debate this basic aspect of d20. These rules are an attempt to inject a bit more of *something* (I refuse to use the word "realism") into your d20 Modern games.

Light Damage Threshold- The Light Damage Threshold is equal to the character's current Con score. (Yes, the same as the MDT). Whenever you take damage equal to or greater than your current Constitution score, you must make a standard Massive Damage save. If you fail, you are reduced to -1 Hit Points. If you succeed, you take a Flesh Wound in addition to the standard Hit Point damage.

A Flesh Wound is a fairly painful, but not immediately life-threatening injury. It is up to the GM to provide a description of the specific wound, but the game effect is to apply a -2 Wound modifer to ALL rolls (including future Damage Saves) the character makes while suffering from his Flesh Wound. In this way, the character will be slowed down from damage he takes and become more susceptible to Massive Damage.

Deep Wound Threshold

The Deep Wound threshold is defined as TWICE the character's current Constitution. If damage dealt is equal to or greater than double the current Con score, the character must make a Massive Damage Save at DC 20. If he fails this roll, he is immediately reduced to -5 HP (basically a more dangerous Massive Damage Save). If he succeeds, he takes a Deep Wound.

A Deep Wound acts like a Flesh Wound except that the Wound penalty is -4 instead.

Healing Flesh and Deep Wounds

All wounds are immediately healed when the PC is restored to full HP. Treat all Wounds as Temporary Ability Damage for purposes of healing.

Alternate Ideas

As you can probably tell, this idea isn't fully thought out. If applying the Wound modifer to all damage saves seems a little unfair, you could try applying the current Wound modifer to the character's Massive Damage Threshold, thus forcing more Massive Damage saves, but not degrading his ability to take them. Note that this would also incur more Flesh Wounds, and make it much easier to inflict a Deep Wound.

Additionally, this system could be used to make a Hit Pointless d20 Modern, however I wouldn't recommend this. You could say that when the Wound penalty is equal to the Con score of the PC, he dies or something like that, but it doesn't work as well in d20 Modern as it does in the Silhouette system. I would probably only use them WITH some kind of HP system (also, too many hits would do very little damage to PC's with high Con scores).

I think this system is best suited to people who like the general idea of HP and Massive Damage, but want some kind of penalty for failing a save and taking damage in general.

I appreciate any and all constructive criticism. Remember, it's a Rules Experiment!

Oh, the obvious- this could be used in a more gritty D&D game, or any d20 game for that matter.

-----------------Replies from the Official D20 Modern Board---

"I admit that using the Variant rule of subtracting from Massive Damage THreshold is probably a bad idea. I prefer the penalty to the actual save. You might even want to make it half the penalty when applied to saves, since they generally aren't as high as skills. Of course, you could also just make it -1 for Flesh Wounds and -2 for Deep wounds, but I wanted to keep the "-2" of d20's circumstance modifers just for kicks."

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OK, so then say that the Wound penalty applies to all skill checks, saving throws, attack rolls, and (perhaps) melee damage rolls (it's never fun swinging a bat with a broken rib).

This is an interesting idea... Let's keep working it.

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Also, something a friend brought up was using just a -1 for Flesh Wounds and a -2 for Deep Wounds. This would be fine, but you have to ask yourself how many wounds you think someone should logically be able to take. In Silhouette, the average person takes about 5-6 total penalties worth of wounds (where a Flesh is -1 and a Deep is -2) or about 3 Deep Wounds or 6 Flesh wounds or some other combination. I'm wary of implementing a limit on the number of wounds you can take since that tends to limit the importance of HP, but the modifier selected should EFFECTIVELY limit the number anyway.



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-Apoc527

 

[Wolfspider]

Very interesting.

I've already implemented a system very similar to this, although I'm not familiar with DP9. (Instead, I think Earthdawn turned me on to the idea of wounds.)

Instead of having wounds inflict just a set -2 penalty, I've made things a bit more diverse (and random).

When a character suffers a minor wound (damage equal to or greater than MAS), I roll d4. The effects on the character are as follows:

1. Character suffers -2 wound penalty to all rolls;
2. Character suffers 1d4 temporary ability damage to one physical ability (STR, CON, DEX)
3. Character suffers 1d2 temporary ability damage to one mental ability (INT, WIS, CHA)
4. Character loses 5 ft. of movement

When a character suffers a major wound (damage equal or greater than twice the MAS), the effects are more severe (naturally):

1. Character suffers -4 wound penalty to all rolls;
2. Character suffers 1d4 permanent ability damage to one physical ability (STR, CON, DEX)
3. Character suffers 1d2 permanent ability damage to one mental ability (INT, WIS, CHA)
4. Character loses 15 ft. of movement

It's worked out so far pretty well. My players have a healthy fear and respect for combat (which is what I wanted).

We should work to hammer out some interesting rules variant here using a combination of our "gritty" systems.

 

[apoc527]

Oooh. I really like that idea. Adds more detail, but obviously also adds an extra roll. I suppose then that you could describe what happens really easily. If you lose movement, you can say something like, "And the orcs takes a wide high to low swing at you with an axe, catching your left thigh as you move to get out of the way. You feel a sting as the axe blade cuts a wide gash through your muscle and you are pretty sure this wound will slow you down some."

Bwahahaha. I love it. I have to go, but I will most definitely be back to discuss this.

 

[Mistwell]

Though I tend to dislike houserules at this early stage of play with d20 Modern, I do think this is an interesting addition. The suggested d4 for random effects is also interesting, though I do not like the idea of permanant ability damage if you are playing with no FX and have to way to ever fix it (since that seems pretty darn harsh on players).

 

[apoc527]

Yep, Mistwell, I would agree. However, I'd also say that in order to heal Permanent Ability Damage in a modern setting, it would just require true medical treatment at a hospital or something. Basically, I'd say that "temporary ability damage" is the sort that will automatically heal on its own, like a sprained ankle or something. If you get your leg halfway chopped off though, I'd just say that if you don't get serious medical attention, then it's your own silly fault and you'll have to live with no leg.

But for D&D games, I really like it. It definitely changes the feel of combat significantly, but I think it might do it in a good way. I'll look at both systems written up here and see if there's not some way to improve them by combining them. I really like the d4 "critical chart" though as I think it's cool and can totally help the DM out to describe damage.

 

[apoc527]

Very interesting.

I've already implemented a system very similar to this, although I'm not familiar with DP9. (Instead, I think Earthdawn turned me on to the idea of wounds.)

Instead of having wounds inflict just a set -2 penalty, I've made things a bit more diverse (and random).

When a character suffers a minor wound (damage equal to or greater than MAS), I roll d4. The effects on the character are as follows:

1. Character suffers -2 wound penalty to all rolls;
2. Character suffers 1d4 temporary ability damage to one physical ability (STR, CON, DEX)
3. Character suffers 1d2 temporary ability damage to one mental ability (INT, WIS, CHA)
4. Character loses 5 ft. of movement

When a character suffers a major wound (damage equal or greater than twice the MAS), the effects are more severe (naturally):

1. Character suffers -4 wound penalty to all rolls;
2. Character suffers 1d4 permanent ability damage to one physical ability (STR, CON, DEX)
3. Character suffers 1d2 permanent ability damage to one mental ability (INT, WIS, CHA)
4. Character loses 15 ft. of movement

It's worked out so far pretty well. My players have a healthy fear and respect for combat (which is what I wanted).

We should work to hammer out some interesting rules variant here using a combination of our "gritty" systems.

Ok, I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I really really really (really) like it, especially for a stock d20 Modern or d20 Future game. It would also work really well for a lower magic D&D game, but it would need some modifications for a Forgotten Realms style setting.

I was thinking about making a few changes to your table-

First, for Major Damage, I'd double the amount of ability damage done, but turn it back to temporary. I don't see wounds causing "permanent" ability damage. If you can heal from it, however slowly, it deserves to come back at the rate of point per day. Also, I might add 2 results to your Major Damage table (making it a d6 roll instead of a d4).

5. Arm Hit! Make a Fort save DC 15 to avoid losing the limb. Failure means the limb is permanently useless. (Details up to GM. A slashing weapon may very well remove the arm, a bludgeoning weapon just turns the bone into powder, etc).

6. Leg Hit! Make a Fort save DC 15 to avoid losing limb. Also slows you by a further 5 ft.

Or something along those lines. I just think if we're going to add a "critical table" we might as well allow for limbs to be lost. After all, how else are you supposed to justify a cybernetic arm or the use of the spell "regenerate."

Either way you do it, this idea is a good one and definitely gives a much grittier feel to an otherwise bland Hit Point system. I think this works really well because it puts the specifics of every wound into the GM's hands, meaning you don't have to worry about rolling hit location every time and using blowthrough and this and that like in other games.

 

[Wolfspider]

What about having one of the critical hit results be bleeding damage? Say, 1 hp/round for minor wounds and 3 hp/round for major?