D&D 5E A Simple Way of using the Lingering Injuries Table

[Fralex]

I would add some kind of secondary-conditional modifier to appropriately moderate threat levels, such as either a level-based condition or an HP-based condition. Say, when a crit deals more than 25% of your health. This would keep lower-level foes dangerous to lower-level enemies, but because 25% is an adjusting number representing smaller portions of your health as your health goes down, it would make lower-level threats less dangerous to a full-HP character, but more dangerous to a less than full-HP character, which fits in with your visualization of HP as how much "fight" a person has left in them. Less fight? More vulnerable to lingering injuries. This would shield high-level characters from being utterly devastated by mobs of cats without neutering the danger presented by high-level foes.

Oh, I see. Since the likelihood of a crit increases the more enemies are attacking you, many weak foes would be more dangerous than one strong foe. Part of me wants to say that sounds about right for a mob to be the most dangerous enemy, but the idea that injury severity should be based off damage severity makes a lot of sense. Like I said before I plan to test this idea out as-is before making changes to it, but I definitely want to see how replacing the old rule about advantage with a rule that goes something like this would affect gameplay:

-Roll on the Lingering Wounds table whenever a monster scores a critical hit. If the hit took away less than 25% (or whatever number best represents the mild/severe threshold) of your HP, roll on the table with advantage.

It should be noted that when you roll on this table normally, 50% of the time your injury will be inconsequential. Rolling on it with advantage will rarely cripple you.

 

[Rhenny]

I think the double trouble from the Critical hits is a bit much.
I roll for Grievous wounds at 0hp. Players roll a d6 and the corresponding stat has Disadvantage to all rolls until healed or some weeks of rest.

This is simple and easy to use. Generally I hate looking up charts to determine thing in game so this is more like how I'd play it. He d6 random ability score gives the DM enough to work with to narrate the injury in a vivid way too.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I have found a good balance for meaningful injuries is:

(i) use the slow healing rule (ie only get HD back on long rest, not HPs)
(ii) when reduced to zero hp (no crits), roll on the injuries table (we use an expanded table and the injuries/setbacks involved cannot be healed by simple cure wounds spells, it must be lesser restoration or more depending on the injury. So the player has to choose between removing the injury or gaining hp from a spell slot).

In our games however players don't regularly drop to zero hp. They are quite careful about staying up and fighting - perhaps due to the injuries rule! But this means when they do suffer an injury, it's a kinda cool thing.

 

[Daern]

I also play in a game that uses an elaborate injury chart that kicks in when a character drops. Our heroes are quickly becoming a troupe of freaks. My ranger is missing an eye. A warlock lost both legs, a paladin is missing 4 fingers. Horrible stuff. It's certainly realistic, but I dunno how much I love it. I guess it does make me wonder if I'll more or less lose my character each time I fall. As a melee dude my character falls a lot.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I also play in a game that uses an elaborate injury chart that kicks in when a character drops. Our heroes are quickly becoming a troupe of freaks. My ranger is missing an eye. A warlock lost both legs, a paladin is missing 4 fingers. Horrible stuff. It's certainly realistic, but I dunno how much I love it. I guess it does make me wonder if I'll more or less lose my character each time I fall. As a melee dude my character falls a lot.

Yeah I actually think permanent injuries like losing eyes or digits etc should be very rare. Our injury/setback table has 4 possible permanent injuries (lose ear, eye, arm, leg or similar). You have to roll 1-4 on the d20, and you get a "death save" to turn it into a "damaged" eye, limb etc instead of lost. But yeah if you are very unlucky you can get permanent injuries in our game, which require greater restoration or regenerate or similar to restore. On the other hand in some instances you can just add a hook hand, peg leg, etc

The standard injury table in DMG is quite punishing - you don't get any kind of save.

 

[fjw70]

I do injuries with failed death saves, but I don't use the lingering wounds table. A wound moves you up a step in the exhaustion chart.

 

[GX.Sigma]

My homebrew system:

1. Whenever you get knocked to 0 hp, instead of making death saves every round, you roll once on the Death & Dismemberment table. (Results range from "very messy instant death" to "lose a leg" to "just a flesh wound" to "second wind!")
2. All your injuries are healed between sessions. (In my campaign, the PCs are working for a beneficent god-dragon. You might say they have access to a high-level cleric in town, or some Wolverine healing factor.)

 

[Flamestrike]

The way I run it is this:

Any time you are reduced to 0 Hit Points and not killed outright, you may instead elect to remain on 1 HP and concious. If you choose this option, you must immediately roll on the lingering injuries chart, and accept the result.

Once you have used this feature, you must finish a long rest before using it again.

This makes critical hits a 'buy in' from players that want them, and doesnt disadvantage the PC's. When you get dropped you can instead choose to get maimed or badly injured and stay up.

Works a charm.

 

[Chocolategravy]

As Shidaku pointed out, their suggestion of happening on a crit is a really bad one. The other options they suggest are if anything worse. Failing a death save for instance to then have your leg spontaneously fly off your body as you lay there? Wut? Some serious ret-conning happening there.

The effects on the table itself don't lend it to making sense in too many situations. I could see it as a replacement for a death save when hit while unconscious. Or maybe attacker's choice to turn a crit into a regular hit plus injury on a target that is incapacitated.

 

[neobolts]

What I decided to do was make it optional. When a PC suffers a critical hit, they can choose to turn it into a normal hit by suffering a lingering injury. Likewise, if the PC dies (such as by failing a third death save), the player can choose to have the PC suffer a lingering injury instead of dying. Depending on the circumstances, I will then either roll my special hit location d12 or choose an appropriate type of injury (bludgeoning damage might result in broken bones, while fire damage might leave a disfiguring scar, and so on).

The point of making it optional, though, is that it becomes the player's choice to deal with a debilitating injury. Not everyone likes being saddled with such a thing, and forcing it on such a player can lead to bad feelings.

This is pretty cool. I'm going to think about using a modified version that isn't quite as kind, just to address instant kills. it would work like this: instant kill damage results in a lingering injury and they start making death saves instead of being outright dead.