Well, lots of ideas were thrown here.
My suggestion is to keep it simple and respect 4th edition game mechanics as much as possible. This keeps micromanagement to a minimum.
For example, let's try to avoid having an event at time X actually "happen" at a time Y-later-than-X, such as the idea to apply wounds that "appear" the fight or "after" an extended rest. This is a recipe for much confusion. It also makes the fact of getting the wound itself pretty anti-climatic.
To all of those that talk about the death spiral, well, what do you expect? It is as if complaining that employees who put in overtime will earn more money! A "greater wounds" system is, BY DEFINITION, destined to "make the player feel the pain" and force him to stop sooner. If you do NOT have this reduction in capabilities, then by definition it is NOT a "special wounds system", right?
Ask yourself the question: What do you really want to achieve?
You want to achieve that some wounds are "harder" to heal.
You also do not want to unduly penalize fighters and characters which are, by definition, supposed to take the brunt of the attacks.
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"FAIRNESS":
If the wound system doesn't immediately affect combat capability, then it is quite unfair for the players. Here they get all those wounds which reduce their abilities in some way or other, but when *THEY* deal special wounds to their enemies, is is akin as if it was dust that was swept under the rug: the enemies take no penalties at all from wounds! (except the rare special ones which survive to fight another day).
And a wound which actually does not impose real penalties, who can take that seriouslY? Really?
Yes, there is a "death spiral", but it WORKS BOTH WAYS, not just for the heroes. A wounded hero may elect to be prudent. But the monsters, by definition, are much more numerous. Wounds the heroes make on the monsters should also count. If the only effect is reducing the power of healing surges, it is EXTREMELY unfair for the heroes vs the monsters.
That is also why I think that a greater wounds system should be STUPIDLY SIMPLE, at least in the "getting a wound" department, because since monsters would also have wounds, this must be kept track of, like any other of the numerous 4th edition statuses (such as "marked", "slowed" etc., etc.). Ideally, a "great injury" should be represented by a token that can be placed near or under the plastic figure representing ther monster or hero.
Now, what is fair? We have seen that we NEED penalties to appear straight away, so that players will feel rewarded for "dealing" critical injuries. In the very same combat that the wound appear. Otherwise only the heroes would pay a price for being injured like that.
But heroes fight a lot more monsters, in a typical day, than the opposite. Since by definition greater wounds "don't go away easily", this is bad for the hero. This penalty should thus be balanced by some form of opposite bonus.
Suggestion:
If you want to compensate, you could say that when players are at FULL HIT POINTS, they feel "extra good" or 'in perfect condition" and gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls, or whatever. This bonus might be called "feeling well rested", and impossible to have if the heroes have a status such as fatigued.
Thus, while wounded PCs might face the "death spiral thing", perfect-health PCs have the "Hey, we're not tired at all! So we can really kick butt now!"
Advantage in preparedness and all that.
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"GAME MECHANICS UNIFORMITY":
Also, allowing a Endurance check at a DC which increase with opponent level/2, is similar to allowing a simple "straight" save which takes into account the levels of the opponents, right? The big difference is wether the character is trained or not. Essentially, this helps fighters and the like who are "trained" in endurance, and makes skill focus in endurance a much more powerful choice. But it makes sense. However, it makes the "saving throw" used here quite *different* in terms of game mechanic than what 4th edition uses.
When a medusa petrifies you, does the difficulty of resisting her petrification depends on wether it is an ordinary or a super medusa? Nope, the difficulty is not dependent neither on the character's level, nor on the monster's level: 10+ on the dice and you successfully saved. It is not important wether you are trying to resist a mere 1st level power's special status or a 30th level power's special status: 10+ is the DC to beat. All the time. Always.
So why should the greater wounds saving throw work any differently? If you make it so, then also modify the whole saving throw system to take into account how "powerful" the opponent who made the special attack really is. I wouldn't touch that kind of rule modification with a 20 foot pole. So if the greater wounding system allows some kind of roll to "resist" or "avoid" the wound, then it should DEFINITELY be a standard save. If it is not, then it must then be some form of ATTACK ROLL made (probably againt Fortitude) at the moment the wound is inflicted, and no later.
This is just a matter of following the same game mechanics as the rest of the game.
Not thay I agree with the "flat save difficulty" approach. I'm just saying: Keep your house rules consistent with the rest of the game system you choose to play in. If you change one, then change the other, or make no change at all. Being overall consistent is much more important that doing some mixing and matching to suit one's own purposes.
If resisting a wound *IS* a form of saving throw, then definitely use the basic game mechanic: 10+ on a d20 to resist.
If resisting a wound *IS* a roll made AFTER the moment of the actual attack, then it is DEFINITELY a saving throw.
And if you want to make characters who usually take the brunt of the attacks resist more, find another way.
Or, we might take the standard 4th edition approach: All 3rd edition saves are turned around and transformed into attack rolls. We are in this case not talking here about "avoiding" the critical wound, but the opponent "successding" in making a critical wound or not, which also makes sense. This last approach has the advantage of being immediate: if it it occurs, it is right after the attack roll, as part of the same attack. The advantage here is that it takes into automatically account both the attacker and its target's power levels.
In short, that last approach would be more like: "Okay, did that attack *actually cause a greater wound?*"
The disadvantage however is that a critical hit 20 would then have to be followed by another attack roll, making the first 20 a bit anticlicmatic. And also work quite different from the default way the game mechanics usually work for most powers which give special status effects. So I'm much more inclined here to be more in favor of the extra roll being a plain save rather than some form of bonus attack roll vs fortitude.
Finally, I would avoid the "half number of healing surges" or "healing surgres have half effect" altogether. These numbers are small enough that they would probably unduly penalize a character with an odd number of surges or hit points per surge (since we round down everyting, right?). We also want to stay away from the death spiral: if the character suddenly loses half his healing capability, then it means he will become TOTALLY useless in the second half of the day, after half the encounters of the day have passed.
It is better to have a character at reduced efficiency who can still play and participate somewhat for the whole game, than a character who works at peak efficiency but then suddenly forces the party to completely stop too soon, else he will surely fall in the next encounter. You want to have a player who roleplays being seriously wounded, not a sort of brickwall that stops the entire group.
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"GREATER WOUND" TRIGGER:
One of the most important thing to look at is the "trigger". How often does a "greater wound" have a chance to appear? What are the ODDS of such a wound appearing? Depending on the answer, the effect, both in terms of in-game penalties and how long to repair, may or may not stack with itself.
Another question will be determined by the answering of the first question: How serious is the condition? If it is a rare occurance, then it can be serious. If it appears every time a critical hit is rolled, i.e. every damn game, and probably several times every damn game, then it is a common situation and should be much less serious in its effect.
The "when bloodied" th4reshold is a really bad idea, because healing might then go like this: "Damn, I'd have preferred to heal 1 hit point less, now I'm just above my bloodied threshold and the next hit will AUTOMATICALLY greater-wound me". Not the best design.
To a lesser extend, same thing for the "failed death save". This means the zero hit points becomes a threshold which can be abused the same way as the bloodied threshold. Seriously, I fail to see the majority of attacks that "down" a creature as being "critical wounds". Like Conan surrounded by peons and hit on the head and falling unconscious, he doesn't wake up with broken bones of his intestines flapping about 5 feet from the rest of his body. He just got knowed unconscious, his luck ran out, but it doesn't necesseraly means that that last blow HAD to be an about 50% chance of a critical wound.
In short, don't extra-penalize players from not being able to heal back to ful hit points. Getting "downed" more often is already punishment enough.
So basically only Critical Hits should count. Does falling from too many wounds should count? What about a character with only 1 hit point left that takes a measly 2 points of damage, surely that shouldn't "greatly wound" him. Again, I'd stay away from the "death save may cause a critical wounds" situation.
Linking the actual damage dealt to the character's level could be a good idea. Higher level heroes can shrug off more, after all. However, we will see latyer that this is not such a good idea, because it tweaks too much the occurence of critical wounds. In a dungeon say kobold lair vs lots and lots of weak enemies that deal only small no damage, critical wounds will NEVER happen, and even only then only on critical hits, and vs super-strong solo brutes, the damage they deal would be sufficient to cause critical wounds ALL THE TIME.
So it is best to flatline this, and make this occur only on "lucky shots", wether the monster is weak ors strong. This will prevent critical wounds from being unheard of for entire game sessions at a strength, then plaguuing your entire pearty like hell all at once because of a couple ecounters in a row against particularly "strong" monsters that deal their damage "more rarely but in big blows". Spread out the happenstances of critical wounds a bit more evenly over the gaming sessions, so to speak.
Even then, Greater Wounding shouldn't occur TOO often. You don't want it to crop up every other fight.
And the severity of the erxtra healing difficulty shouldn't be incredibly drastic. One full extra day of resting should easily take care of things. this is D&D, after all. Even a condition will will have an impact only until the first half of the next day is more than serious enough.
If we keep in mind that hit points mostly represent some form of karma or luck to avoid serious attacks, then there are basically only two situations were we can say that an attack was "serious enough to cause an out-of-the-ordinary injury:
- On a critical hit on the target.
- When the target is downed.
I'd keep it ONLY to the first situations. This will make critical hits have a "special" status. Being low on hit points doesn't mean you suddenly will soon have a critical injury, it just means you will be more easily knocked out, and the "severity" of the injury is more represented by your death save.
We must also remember that this is D&D, not Castles & Crusades. We don't want TOO REALISTIC a simulation, just something to make the game more varied and interesting. We also do not want the wounds system to be a mere appendix that occurs every game, and thus a "second hit points bar". We also want the players to take such wounds at least somewhat seriously.
So the effects should be serious enough and rare enough to be both "special" and "important".
So not every time that a critical hit is rolled, or a creature falls down, should count. And maybe not even HALF of those times. We want this to occur at some regular frequency, yes, but not every other fight.
How many critical hits are rolled in an average fight? Lets say on average 4 heroes vs 4 villains (there are solo monsters, or traps which replace monsters, but there are also mobs of weaker monsters), with fights lasting on average at least 2 and a half rounds (well, with most adveresairies still up and fighting anyway). This means that on average at least (on average) 2 critical hits per fight, 1 on each side.
If we want a wound to occur on average once or twice per game, then the odds of making one should be claibrated with the amount of fighting in the campaign. If there is a lot of roleplay and stuff and fights occur only rarely, sometimes you have 2 fights then the next game no fighting at all, then EVERY critical hit and going down could be "automatically" a greater wound, no save allowed. If the campaign is mostly dungeon crawls with at least 8 battles per gaming session, then this should be toned down **a lot**.
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MONSTER POWER:
Some monsters deal a LOT of damage with their blows, while others deal only measly damage. If you tie in a threshold such as "dealing at least X damage" to making the greater wound appear, then this means that your little kobold will almost NEVER deal a serious injury while your strong ogre will deal such VERY frequently. Shouldn't skill count also?
I think it is probably best to keep things relatively smootth, fluid and simple. If your hit points are a measure of your luck, then you could say that a critical hit by an opponent "bypasses" that luck. A wound is a wound is a wound. Wether it is a little tiny knife straight and deeply planted into my eye or my chest, it is possible to see that it could DEEPLY HURT just about as much as being slammed into a wall by a large tree-sized greatclub. Wether from something small or big, a greater wound is something that REALLY hit a weak spot. This corresponds well with the concept of critical hits. An ordinary hit may deal as much damage as a creitical, but a critical hit is, well, critical! It's got some chance to really hurt. Even if you say smaller attacks just tend to penetrate deeper toward vital organs, while larger attacks were more of a "general brutal shock" thing, in the end, the damage is not too important. This is also a decision to make. And its not because a character is downed that is luck FULLY ran out. It ran out enough for it to be downed, but it doesn't automatically mean that it ran out so badly that he down because he got "critted". He may just be knowed out, or having had too many smaller wounds, not something extreme.
However, being severely wounded by tiny monsters may, generally, be a bit frustrating to the players. Do you want a mob of weak monsters to have a chance to "really hurt" a hero, or is this totally impossible? Like when Conan the Barbarian is surrounded, and *one* weak enemy manages to land in a lucky shot and knock him out... And when he wakes up he's got a heck of an headache. Is it merely going down, or a greater wound?
I would simply rule that minions cannot deal Critical Wounds.
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DEFENDERS VS NON-DEFENDERS
You might want to make the odds of a greater wound related to who gets attacked. Otherwise this penalize the Defenders - a lot! However I find it hard to see how to do that without complications or not following the basic game mechanics for how things usually work.
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EFFECT:
Since the effect should be somewhat serious, it should not stack. Being greaterly injured should be serious enough already without doubling the effect. However, it should not pose such a strong penalty as to make the character nearly useless in battle.
So the effect of a greater wound should not stack.
This has the advantage of helping a long againsat the infamous "death spiral".
And you want to keep things as simple as possible. The next question is, if a character is wounded like this multiple times, do we make the time taken to heal longer? If it occurs often, I'd say yes. If it is a rare "serious buisiness" thing, I'd say no.
Maybe the wound system should work the same way most statuses work. Lets say a spellcaster cast slow on the fighter, the fighter gains a slow token. A second spellcaster casts slow AGAIN on the same fighter. If the fighter can have two tokens, then the wounds system should be the same: two wounds, each treated indepedently, but with effects that do not stack. If in that campaign the already-slowed fighter does not actually gain a second slow token, an approach I would recommend in order to avoid the infamous "rain of tokens", which may occur when the players are fighting against several identical monsters with a gaze area status-adding attack, or when the PCs have several area attacks which all create the same status effect (very easy to abuse this until enemies are crushed by the weight of status tokens), then wounds is a single-token thing, too.
Its bad enough being wounded, in such an approach having a second wound is just an opportunity to roleplay how more desperate to act the character becomes. Like in the movies, a hero can get wounded, and wounded, and wounded, but once the initial "wounded effectivelessness reduction" is done, additionnal wounds don't seem to affect neither his capabilities or determination nor the time he must afterward spend in an hospital i.e. seemingly, and opposite of how it works in real life for really serious wounds, all wounds heal totally separately and in parallel, simultaneously.
This is a bit like having a little burn mark on your left arm: If it takes say 1 week to fully disappear, then gaining a little burn mark on your *right* arm 1 minute after the first burn mark will not slow down the healing: in one week (not two!), both burn marks will be gone.
In short: I recommend not doubly penalizing a character more than a single "rank" of wounding, no matter how many times he gets "really badly hurt". Either you're really hurt, and it doesn't matter how many times you got "really" pounded upon, you are hurt and doing you best to act. After all, D&D must be kinda heroic. Its bad enough of a penalty being wounded like this, without the player whose PC is critically wounded starting to feel really afraid to do anything more for fear of becoming REALLY crippled in such a way that would make him near-useless for SEVERAL gaming sessions. Stop the damage at some limit, and one step, I think, is more than enough punishment. And it keeps things very simple, too.
Sure, a PC might "elect" to STAY wounded "this way at least it won't get any worse". But would you really wish to play a PC that is CONSTANTLY suffering from penalties which reduces his capabilities? Yep, not really. So that problem solves itself, really.
One step needed to get rid of the status should be enough.
In short: You are either critivally wounded, or not. No "counting" of a separate hit points track, just a little additionnal checkbox on the character sheet. And, for the monsters, simple "critical wound" tokens become enough.
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LEMON AND ORANGES:
A good way to make a wound system more accepted is to give a small bonus if the heroes manage to keep themselves in top shape.
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PROPOSED INJURY SYSTEM:
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*** Perfect Condition: (Optional Rule)
-> A character at 100% health, and without any negative effect on him, including effects which do not readily affect his health, such as for example being slowed, is said to be in Perfect Condition, gaining a +1 to all of his attacks. This bonus generally applies only to creatures with at least one of the following attributes: Player-Character, Important Non-Player-Character (DM Call), Elite Creature, Leader Creature, Solo Creature. If the DM wishes to put some special emphasis on how superbly-well-rested-and-primed-for-battle some ordinary NPCs or creatures are, then he might give them the Perfect Condition bonus even if they do not have any of the attributes listed.
Example:
Jack doesn't have a scratch on him, so he attacks at +1. Then an enemy slows him down without damaging him. Jack loses his bonus. The next round, Jack makes his save and is not slowed anymore. As he is again in pristine condition, he immediately regains the bonus.
*** Character Sheet Modification:
-> A single "Critical Wound" checkbox is added to the character sheet somewhere, probably near any checkboxes for trackinbg a disease, but as a separate entry.
*** Critical Wound:
-> Definition: A critical wound is a severe injury with serious and lasting effects. A creature can become critically wounded several times, and may keep track of the various injuries for storytelling purposes, but this is needed only if wished. Critical wounds do not stack, and their effect is the same wether the creature gets one or several critical wounds. As the main thing that is necessary to heal critical wounds is mainly lots of rest, healing several critical wounds is not harder than healing only one. It may be a bit less realistic, but its all right like that. Just concentrate on the worst injury you have. That is why there is only one checkbox on the character sheet.
-> The uselessness of ordinary healing: Critical wounds represent damage that goes beyond simply needing the flesh to heal inside the wound. It represents really drastic effects, such as broken bones that stick out, exposed and ripped internals, destroyed organs, ammunition fully stuck inside the body, or what-have-you. Ordinary healing, wether natural or magical, is not of much help against these situations. Magical healing is basically greatly accelerated tissue regeneration.
Ordinary healing does not involve any intelligence or telekinesis: the organs are repaired simply because, when the healing occurs, they are still more or less in one piece, the damaged parts are right next to each other, and would eventually have healed naturally. It would just have taken a lot longer. The healing isn't able to actually move and replace ripped displaced tissue exactly where it should be to "connect" to the other ripped half, unless it is already right beside it, for example.é In the same manner the healing is not able to readily expel things that should not be there, like a lodged arrowhead. It will just try to grow tissue around it. Ever heard about a patient, in theroy fully healed, that had say a scalpel "forgotten" inside him, and who regularly feels quite sick because of it, until it is discovered years later? Doesn't feel good even if the tissue healed around it. Wether natural or magical, healing is a bit like that: It heals stupidly.
With critical wounds, the organs are too damaged, or too far apart, and the wound is way too complex for mere tissue regeneration to work. Simply trying to make the flesh heal without first putting the damaged pieces back together the way they should, or providing some form of guiding hand for the healing to process exactly along the right path, rather than a strong burst of regeneration of flesh and blood in all directions, would probably only result in a grossly misshapen body that would not move or function like it should. Without proper guidance and surgery, a character with a broken leg could theroetically be healed with a perfectly unmarred leg and back to full hit points, but he would risk having a bone that did not set in the right place, and one of his leg is now at a not-so-straight angle. Such a character wouldn't be in pain anymore, but he sure would not function at peak efficiency. In essence, he would still suffer penalties from his "critical wound". Magic helps replace lost flesh and blood, sure, but only proper application of knowledge can allow a critical wound to be effectively dealt with. Against a critical wound, healing is not enough, skilled surgery is actually needed.
-> Critical Wounds and Rituals: There exist some rituals which provide a better form of healing, where the organs will find where they go by themselves and knit themselves back together in the right order, without needing any special healing knowledge. However, ordinary healing, even if magical, does not have that kind of intelligence or refinement behind it. In essence, such a ritual which removes critical wounds involves both healing and healing knowledge, maybe from an extraplanar source, in order to intelligently guide the healing process.
-> A critical wound has the following effects:
-> A -2 circumstance penalty to attack rolls.
-> If the acts more than what a slowed character would be able to do, he takes 1 point of damage after its actions in the round.
-> Does not regain hit points from extended rests.
-> Regains healing surges normally.
I tried several other penalties, but this sytem is simple and effective. Penalties in D&C 4th are reduced from 3rd edition, a flat -1 wouldn't be serious enough, and a -4 is way beyond what 4th edition recommends. In essence, when critically wounded a character attacks with the same difficulty as if he was prone and swinging a melee weapon at an enemy.
Note that only attack is penalized, not defense. This is also to stay away from the "death spiral". A wounded character instinctively think a LOT more about defending itself than attacking, so -2 penalty to attack is a minimum to take the penalty seriously, and -4 would be way too drastic, and letting defense the same is okay.
Note that the way I formulated the slow lets heroes ignore it, but at a cost. This -1 hit point is not THAT much of a penalty. The critically wounded fighter charges into melee: 1 damage. What is 1 damage in an entire fight? Not much. Not negligible, but surely not a showstopper. Then, unless the group plays badly, the fighter should always be near enemies, so thereafter the condition isn't too bad. Every once in a while, he might need to make the choice between getting 1 damage or losing some actions.
The point of damage is serious business, but not a showstopper. The character can still act, but is penalized for trying to move around too much, as the wound reopens a bit, etc. This is actually a stronger penalty on characters which need to move fast to attack their target in melee, or on those which do not have a lot of hit points and try to flee from a fast enemy. Well, how're ya gonna run away with yer broken legs, bibbo?
When a critical wound is received, the injured player, wether he is the one causing or receiving the injury, is encouraged to describe the results of the attack, within reason. A critical wound is not a one-foot-hole in the middle of the chest. That is called being outright killed by a devastating attack.
*** Removing Critical Wounds:
-> A character can use the Heal skill to tend another character's critical wounds. This requires attending the injured character for an entire extended rest. The healer does not derive any extended rest benefits, as he is not resting but taking care of someone else. No more tan two characters can tend a single patient together. This may be called surgery, applying herbs, whatever is needed to support the story.
-> If attended, the critucally wounbed character then rolls a saving throw.
-> On a success on the save, the Heal skill check's difficulty is Moderate.
-> On a failure on the save, the Heal skill check's difficulty is Hard.
-> If the Heal skill check is successful, the Critical Wound status is removed.
-> Even if the Heal skill check is a failure, the patient regains his Healing surges.
-> A character can attend more than one character, splitting his attention between them. However, each additionnal patient imposes a -2 penalty on all Heal checks.
-> Only one Heal skill check is allowed per extended rest, and no more than two healers can collaborate on this task.
-> It is possible to Heal oneself, but in this case the Heal skill check is one step harder to make: Moderate becomes Hard, and Hard becomes Impossible.
-> It is possible to use one dose of Herborist Herbs to make the Heal skill check one step easier to make: Hard becomes Moderate, and Moderate becomes Easy. Herborist Herbs are to be used as cataplasms on openb wounds, for making special broths, etc. The availability, encumbrance and cost of Herborist Herbs depends on the DM, but a minimum of 1 pound and 5 gold per dose is recommended.
Essentially, this approach is fun because both the character with the wound AND the healer get to rolls. The first character to see "how well his body is resisting the wound", and this determines the difficulty for the healer, making the event quick to resolve, but somewhat of a team effort. Note that even if everything fails, 4 healings surges and the critically wounded PC is back to full hit points.
However, the generral result is that extended rests will now require 12 or more hours instead of 6, as those that heal the critically wounded character can't rest while taking care of his critical wound. There is also the interessting tactical choice between "do I replenish myself first, or do we try to get rid of the nasty wound as quickly as possible?". I used "takes much longer to heal" as an important parameter. A critical wound means that, more often than not, the next rest period will have to be longer than usual, but most of the time not critically so (if you can stop for 6 hours, you probably can stop for 12 hours instead).
*** Receiving Critical Wounds:
-> Anytime an attack is a critical hit, the target must immediately make a saving throw. If the target fails, then it is critically wounded, and must check it's "Critical Wound" checkbox on its character sheet, or receive a Critial Wound" token that is kept near its figure on the battle grid.
-> If the character actually dies, he theretically gets a critical wound. But resurrection magic is much better and stronger tqn normal healing, and fixeds that, so its a moot point.
-> Falling down in the negative hit points does NOT cause a critical wound (unless, of course, the attack was a critical hit).
-> Minions never deal crtitical wounds.
-> Minions are always instantly killed by a critical wound.
(I put the last one in there in case the DM uses a system where minions have say 1/5 of the hit points of the normal creature instead of only 1 hit point, which IMHO is quite stupid as you qciuld have a demon lord sending after you a host of his demons (so, lots of HIGH LEVEL minions), and a single low-level area power could easily take them all out. Minions are much more easily dealt with, okay, but they should not be RIDICULOUSLY SO easily dealt with, I think.
*** Combattant's Hardiness:
-> All creatures trained in the Endurance skill automatically have the following hability:
-> When making saving throw to determine if a critical hit causes a critical wound, two d20 instead of one, keeping the best result. Note that even if 1 AP is spent to reroll the save, you still reroll both d20.
-> Only PCs, Important NPCs, Elite, Leaders, and Solo Monsters can have this ability.
*** Making Critical Wounds Easier to Avoid: (Optional Rule)
-> If a character fails a save against a critical wound, he can spend 1 Action Point to try to fully reroll his saving throw.
-> If he has Combattant's Hardiness, he rerolls both d20.
-> Only one extra chance to avoid a Critical Wound is allowed.
-> Only PCs, Important NPCs, Elite, Leaders, and Solo Monsters, may use Action Points to reroll a Critical Wounds saving throw.
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I'm not quite totally satisfied with that system yet, tough. But its a close thing. However, it covers all the overall objectives rather nicely without too much complications or special rules. It really advantages for the party to make the defenders take most attacks, as they have a much better chance to resist the condition.
But for now I'm done with it.
power.
