(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."
-------------
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.
-------------
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.
_________________________
-Apoc527
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."
-------------
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.
-------------
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.
_________________________
-Apoc527