Injuries

[reanjr]

I've created a tweak to represent injuries. Comments are welcome. The injuries option imposes limits to how many healing surges can be regained simply by taking an extended rest.

The Problem
From a narrative perspective, the game does not support any way for injuries to last beyond a single day under normal play. Coming out of the wilderness battered and bruised is an important narrative trope that is hard to emulate. Healers are another important trope that becomes mostly irrelevant when an individual can restore perfect health with six hours of rest.

The Solution

• player characters get an injuries statistic, tracking total healing surges, used healing surges, and injuries
• healthy characters have 0 injuries and 0 used healing surges
• when taking an extended rest, the number of used healing surges is reduced to the number of injuries; injuries have no other effect
• complete rest for a full day removes one injury
• every time a healing surge is used to regain hit points, increase the number of injuries to one half the number of used surges
• regeneration to full hit points also removes all injuries

Concerns

• how will this play out with leaders who use their healing surges mostly to heal others
• may throw regeneration out of balance if it is available only to some players

 

[Morrus]

Effectively, you're reducing the number of healing surges players have available.

I get your "simulationist" reasoning for doing it. The question I would ask is: does this additional penalty make the game more fun? I personally don't think it does.

And if you're reducing the typical number of healing surges available to PCs, you need to start adjusting encounter difficulty downwards - because healing surges are a resource, and encounters are balanced to a typical party's resources. What disadvantage do the monsters get to balance out the party with fewer healing surges?

For me - not seeing the benefit. It's an abstract game. Trying to un-abstract one little thing out of the whole doesn't strike me as something that would work well without a hell of a lot of jiggering around of stuff. It's an abstract hit point system - with all attendant flaws and strengths - and I can't help feeling that if you want to switch to s more realistic system you'll need to do quite a lot of work to keep it balanced, fun, and worthwhile.

Good luck, though!

 

[Catfae]

I personnaly think it is a good idea, thanks for sharing !

 

[MortalPlague]

I think the best approach ti injuries would be the approach Dark Sun takes to weapon breakage; gamble. Make injuries result from strain and trade for an extra attack or a similar bonus. Oh, and have scars.

 

[reanjr]

Effectively, you're reducing the number of healing surges players have available.

I get your "simulationist" reasoning for doing it. The question I would ask is: does this additional penalty make the game more fun? I personally don't think it does.

And if you're reducing the typical number of healing surges available to PCs, you need to start adjusting encounter difficulty downwards - because healing surges are a resource, and encounters are balanced to a typical party's resources. What disadvantage do the monsters get to balance out the party with fewer healing surges?

For me - not seeing the benefit. It's an abstract game. Trying to un-abstract one little thing out of the whole doesn't strike me as something that would work well without a hell of a lot of jiggering around of stuff. It's an abstract hit point system - with all attendant flaws and strengths - and I can't help feeling that if you want to switch to s more realistic system you'll need to do quite a lot of work to keep it balanced, fun, and worthwhile.

Good luck, though!

If you're running encounters as the game expects, according to the guidelines in the DMG, then this system may cause some issues. But I feel the game currently railroads the DM into a very specific encounter pacing that gets extremely boring. So, yes, I think this adds to the fun in many cases.

I'm not really sure how it could make the game any less fun:

Scenario 1: players finish several encounters and need to heal; they take an extended rest to get to full health; this takes 3 seconds of game time

Scenario 2: players finish several encounters and need to heal; they lie low and rest for several days to get to full health; this takes 3 seconds of game time

The difference in scenario 2 is the DM's option of pressing pacing at a titrated rate. Encounters in the first 6 hours are equivalent to default pacing. Encounters within the first couple of days have no adverse affect on gameplay other than tracking how many injuries are healed. But they offer additional DM encounter flexibility by letting the characters heal to a specific point before the next encounter. Allowing the players plenty of time to heal up then offers the default gameplay pacing, but offers the DM flexibility to have a slower story.

Edit: it might be argued this system loses the ability to run the default story pacing. That is, the characters get into a rough battle and then are gung-ho to go 6 hours later. I don't find this to be much of a loss for the stories I run. And a counter-argument could be that max HP now represents the old max healing surges scenario.

 

[reanjr]

I think the best approach ti injuries would be the approach Dark Sun takes to weapon breakage; gamble. Make injuries result from strain and trade for an extra attack or a similar bonus. Oh, and have scars.

Interesting you mention Dark Sun, cause the campaign I created this rule for is a Dark Sun campaign. I like the idea of the PCs stumbling back out of the wilderness battered and bruised after a long, arduous trek through the desert. It also gives the players a compelling reason to return to the city-states after adventuring without forcing random encounters - especially at low levels.

I like the idea of allowing players to take an extra standard action at the expense of an injury. I'm less sure of the balancing affect on gameplay, but it's something I'll definitely think about adding.

 

[MortalPlague]

I like the idea of allowing players to take an extra standard action at the expense of an injury. I'm less sure of the balancing affect on gameplay, but it's something I'll definitely think about adding.

I don't think it would be a huge gamebreaker; there is a cost, after all. Perhaps they're also dazed for a round afterwards? That would reflect the moment of realization that they've just been hurt pretty badly.

It just strikes me that a player is more likely to buy in to the system if they have an incentive to be injured, so to speak.

 

[S'mon]

I like the general idea of lingering injuries that cause PCs to start the day with reduced healing surges. I tend to only have 1-2 fights/day IMCs, so this would work well in my games; it might not work so well if you expected 4-6 fights/day.

I think the Disease track may be a good model for injuries, particular NPCs could inflict dolouous wounds (maybe on taking a PC to 0 hp, or just Bloodied?) just as they can inflict disease, and each progression stage would be a lost healing surge and/or other penalty as the wound becomes infected... I'd let Cure Disease function in most cases.

 

[Ferghis]

The Problem
From a narrative perspective, the game does not support any way for injuries to last beyond a single day under normal play. Coming out of the wilderness battered and bruised is an important narrative trope that is hard to emulate. Healers are another important trope that becomes mostly irrelevant when an individual can restore perfect health with six hours of rest.

I agree that this is a problem. But my solution is simpler: failed death saves represent disabling injuries.

If, at the end of an encounter, a character has accumulated ONE failed death save, that character has sustained a serious injury. The player must come up with the in-game injury and a related ability bonus to penalize by 1 for seven days or 2 for three days. Endurance and healing checks can reduce this time.

If, at the end of an encounter, a character has accumulated TWO failed death saves, that character has sustained a critical injury. Until the injury is successfully treated by someone trained in heal (the DC being that of a difficult healing check of the level of the encounter), the player must come up with the in-game injury and a related ability bonus to penalize by 2. After treatment, this penalty is reduced to 1 as an aftereffect. Only a Remove Affliction ritual will remove this aftereffect.

We all know what happens with three failed death saves. But this house rule has three effects:
1. Encounters always represent a danger of long-term harm (improving the narrative in general)
2. Healing and Endurance skills get a bit more play, making skills a bit more valuable.
3. Encounters that cause death saves are more memorable for players, and therefore more fun.

 

[reanjr]

I agree that this is a problem. But my solution is simpler: failed death saves represent disabling injuries.

If, at the end of an encounter, a character has accumulated ONE failed death save, that character has sustained a serious injury. The player must come up with the in-game injury and a related ability bonus to penalize by 1 for seven days or 2 for three days. Endurance and healing checks can reduce this time.

If, at the end of an encounter, a character has accumulated TWO failed death saves, that character has sustained a critical injury. Until the injury is successfully treated by someone trained in heal (the DC being that of a difficult healing check of the level of the encounter), the player must come up with the in-game injury and a related ability bonus to penalize by 2. After treatment, this penalty is reduced to 1 as an aftereffect. Only a Remove Affliction ritual will remove this aftereffect.

The injuries approach is much more self contained as the rule only comes into affect in play when spending healing surges to regain hit points and when taking a rest. Those are two specific triggering game events and then the rule can be forgotten until the next one.

D&D has enough bonuses and penalties to remember and add to every roll. I wouldn't want to add another one, especially one that lasts several days of game time and applies to a different attribute every time. These things get forgotten too easily as well, especially when the fighter gets to choose a -1 penalty to Cha for a week.

Keeping bonuses and penalties either permanent or short (one round/encounter) in duration seems to be a conscious design choice in 4e for a reason.