Long-Term Injury Rules

[Happy Funball]

I had thought about modeling long-term injuries before Kieth Baker mentioned the idea in his blog (really, honest ). My idea is mostly for long-term injuries to be used at the discretion of the PCs, mostly because I like having debilitating effects in the world and hate to kill PCs (yes, I am a wimp). This is cut from my House Rules document, so I do not have the debilitating poison rules yet...

Please, any suggestions are welcome.

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Long-Term Injuries & Debilitating Poisons

Both long-term injuries and debilitating poisons are modeled after the disease rules in the 4E DMG (p 49). Long-term injuries (LTI) can be gained in three manners: when dying, when gaining a second use of Second Wind, or by GM determination (which will be very rare, but don't tempt me). Debilitating poisons are modeled after more real-world poisons that do more than damage.

Dying and Long-Term Injuries
When dying, a player character can automatically stabilize (make no more dying saves but still unconscious) by taking a long-term injury. The severity of the injury depends on how many dying saves the character has failed.

Severity 0 - before any dying saves have been made
Severity 1 - after 1 dying save was failed but before another is attempted
Severity 2 - after 2 dying saves were failed but before another is attempted
Severity 3 - after 3 dying saves are failed and character otherwise dies

The effects of long-term injuries are based on the severity of the injury and its location. The GM determines the location of the injury based on the appropriateness of the damage. Just as with diseases, long-term injuries can heal or worsen. The character must make an Endurance check after each Extended Rest. Whether the character improves, maintains, or worsens depends on their Endurance result, just as with a disease. Likewise, as with diseases another character with the Heal skill can use their Heal skill to replace the patient's Endurance check.

Improve: Endurance DC 15 + ½ character level + 3 x Severity Rating (move left)
Maintain: Endurance DC 5 + ½ character level + 3 x Severity Rating
Worsen: an Endurance check which does not at least maintain will worsen (move right)

Examples:

Severity 0
Arms - Sprained elbow
Legs - Sprained knee
Chest - Bruised ribs
Nerves - Impaired senses

Severity 1
Arms - Broken hand
Legs - Broken foot
Chest - Broken ribs
Nerves - Concussion

Severity 2
Arms - Broken arm
Legs - Broken leg
Chest - Internal bleeding
Nerves - Brain Damage

Severity 3
Arms - Severed arm
Legs - Severed leg
Chest - Damaged spine
Nerves - Severe Brain Damage

Long Term Injury Track:

The victim is healed (Severity 3 injuries cannot fully heal without magic)
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The victim suffers only half the numerical penalties listed below (-0 / -1 / -2 / -5).
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Initial Effect: The victim suffers the penalties listed below.
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The victim suffers 150% the numerical penalties listed below (-2 / -3 / -7 / unconsciousness).
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Final State: the injury becomes permanent one severity grade higher (Severity 3 results in death). Magical healing is now necessary.

Most Common Penalties:

Severity 0
Arms: -1 to attacks, -1 damage
Legs: -1 to attacks -1 movement
Chest: -1 to attacks, -1 Healing Surge
Nerves: -1 to attacks, Perception and Initiative

Severity 1
Arms: -2 to attacks, -2 damage
Legs: -2 to attacks, -2 movement
Chest: -2 to attacks, -2 Healing Surges
Nerves: -2 to attacks, Perception and Initiative

Severity 2
Arms: -5 to attacks, Weakened
Legs: -5 to attacks, Slowed
Chest: -5 to attacks, -5 Healing Surges, Regain only half normal value with Healing Surge
Nerves: -5 to attacks, Perception and Initiative; Dazed

Severity 3
Arms: -10 to attacks, Weakened
Legs: -10 to attacks, Slowed
Chest: -10 to attacks, Regain only half normal value with Healing Surge, lose all Healing Surges (improves to -5 Healing Surges)
Nerves: Blinded & Dazed (improvement will remove the Daze effect)

Second Wind and Long-Term Injuries
A bloodied character can regain and use their Second Wind ability as a minor action. After the encounter the character makes a save. Success means the character gains a Severity 0 long-term injury. Failure indicates he gains a Severity 1 long-term injury.

Magical Healing: Regeneration Ritual
The ritual used to magically heal from a long-term injury is called Regeneration.

Regeneration Level 8
Category: Restoration
Time: 1 hour
Duration: Instantaneous
Component Cost: 250 gp
Market Price: 680 gp
Key Skill: Heal
This functions like the Cure Disease Ritual but instead magically ends all penalties associated with long-term injury, even Severity 3 injuries. Like Cure Disease, a Heal check is required, following the same rules as Cure Disease and using the same Heal check results (p 303). The functional level of the long-term injury is 5 + (Severity Level x 3).

Debilitating Poison
Coming soon to a dinner near you…

 

[The_Spider]

I like the idea of long term injuries but I dont like the idea that this makes players not able to die because at severity 3 they will always opt to take an injury naturally. Ill try out this system with one change. There will be no auto stabilize, so before saves for dying are made, if a player chooses to take an injury all dying saves are rolled with a +5 modifier. They can choose to do this at anytime before the roll, wherever they are on the severity track.

 

[Kzach]

This is way too complex for 4e. Really, if you want that level of complexity, then why are you playing 4e in the first place?

I've thought about this too and feel it should be far more simplified. The effect that reduces a character to 0 or lower determines the debilitating injury. I haven't done tables or anything, but you could easily attribute a list of injuries to keywords, ie. necrotic damage causes seeping, bleeding, wounds prone to infection, whereas heavy blades cause large slashing wounds.

To these, you also associate a keyword effect, like dazed, immobilised, blinded, prone, etc.

Healing requires a healing ritual, something that closes and cleans wounds, knits bones back together and regenerates muscle. Otherwise, natural healing using Heal checks against a DC probably set by the creator of the wound, ie. something like 10 + half creature's level + whatever ability modifier contributed to the attack.

 

[EnglishScribe]

I have a simpler suggestion:

Some attackings in addition to causing damage also cause wounds.

Each wound reduces the numbe of healing surges the wounded character has by one, and alsoo reduces the maximum by one. Healing works as normal, although the character has less opportunities to heal each day.

Restoring the characters maximum number of healing surges per day takes at least on day (or one week for a gritty feel) and a successful heal check per wound. The DC of the heal check is 15 + 5 x the number of wounds the character currently has. The healer receives a +2 bonus to the check for each additional full day the patient has rested.

Attacks that cause wounds should be rare, such as magic weapons of wounding, deadly poisons, high level precision attacks, and possibly firearms and seige weapons.

Considerations:
* The characters encounter survivability is reduced, but not drastically.
* The characters daily survivability is reduced.
* Makes very little difference to non-heroic creatures.
* Very little paperwork, just record the number of wounds.
* In the longer term multiple wounds can become very dangerous.

What do you think?

 

[Lackhand]

Pimping my own house rule:
Follow the rules as written, with a single exception: One never dies from bleeding out. Instead, when the rules would normally kill a character, they receive a "mortal wound".
This mortal wound is treated like a disease, causing a character to lose healing surges, use of limbs, vision, and so on as appropriate to the narrative type of wound sustained.

This is not the only way to be wounded: Characters may increase their risk/reward factors by raising the "death" flag. By raising the death flag, any-and-every attack that reduces the character below 0 hp inflicts the mortal wound condition (generally a very light form) and, moreover, anything that by the rules would kill a character does, in fact, kill them.
In exchange, they get a reward sufficient to occasionally convince the characters it would be a good time to raise the death flag -- I suggest all encounter powers recharge and an immediate milestone passes; for the remainder of the encounter the character may spend as many action points as they have available.

What exactly wounds are I haven't pinned down; I've been thinking that they use some combination of removing surges (1, 3, or 5 as it worsens?), penalties to attack (-2 and -4, probably none on the initial condition though), and status effects (staggered, blinded, and so on -- in the worse conditions).

It might even kill you.

 

[Happy Funball]

This is way too complex for 4e. Really, if you want that level of complexity, then why are you playing 4e in the first place?

I think it is more complicated in print than it actually would be in play, but what do I know, I made it up last night. It is really just a -1/-2/-5/-10 penalty. I added some examples to make it not just completely barren of flavor. And besides, since it is up to the players to use, I am not too worried about complexity.

Follow the rules as written, with a single exception: One never dies from bleeding out. Instead, when the rules would normally kill a character, they receive a "mortal wound".
This mortal wound is treated like a disease, causing a character to lose healing surges, use of limbs, vision, and so on as appropriate to the narrative type of wound sustained.

This is essentially all I have done. I just added some hard game rules to it.

I have a simpler suggestion:

Some attackings in addition to causing damage also cause wounds.

I am not sure that is a simpler solution. My rule is not intended to make 4E more gritty. My rule is intended to add some controlled script immunity to the PCs while restoring the verisimilitude of combat. I really like the healing and HP in 4E, but without any possibility of longer term damage (longer than 8 hours and a nap) it strains even my desires.

You could certainly implement wounding rules off critical hits, following the disease structure, but, to paraphrase Kzach, I think that is in the wrong system.

I like the idea of long term injuries but I dont like the idea that this makes players not able to die because at severity 3 they will always opt to take an injury naturally. Ill try out this system with one change. There will be no auto stabilize, so before saves for dying are made, if a player chooses to take an injury all dying saves are rolled with a +5 modifier. They can choose to do this at anytime before the roll, wherever they are on the severity track.

I appreciate the idea of wanting characters to die (which, even under my system they can still die at negative bloodied HP). Under your alteration, I am confused how you would determine which Severity rating you ended on? I might instead suggest a +2/+5/+8/+10 bonus depending on which Severity they wanted to take, so taking a Severity 3 would (+10 bonus) would mean you'd stabilize most likely, but you'd be stuck with a Severity 3 impairment. Although it would have the oddity that someone with a severed leg would be more likely to survive unconsciousness than someone with bruised ribs. But that can be "hand-waived" away if you like the rules.

 

[Runestar]

I think I would sooner die than suffer long term injuries. Since the penalties you get from being raised go away within a day, but the drawbacks of injuries stick around for much longer. So I am actually better off just killing myself to get rid of all my injuries.

My gameplay experience is that players in general like to be at full strength, and dislike having any sort of penalties tacked onto them which would hamper them from displaying their full prowess. This is why they hated being stat/lv drained early on in the campaign back in 3e, or having their weapons sundered.

 

[Happy Funball]

I think I would sooner die than suffer long term injuries. Since the penalties you get from being raised go away within a day, but the drawbacks of injuries stick around for much longer. So I am actually better off just killing myself to get rid of all my injuries.

My gameplay experience is that players in general like to be at full strength, and dislike having any sort of penalties tacked onto them which would hamper them from displaying their full prowess. This is why they hated being stat/lv drained early on in the campaign back in 3e, or having their weapons sundered.

Well, the magic I proposed to fix all these problems is about the same as resurrection (cheaper, at least) so you can get injured and then regrow an arm. Now who doesn't want to do that?!?

Although it does bring an interesting oddity that the Resurrection ritual does not require a Heal check but the Cure Disease (and my Regeneration) ritual does, and may kill you. That may be a design oversight in Resurrection. Of course, the resurrectee is already dead, so it is hard to punish them even further.

 

[the Jester]

I'm pretty sure that crits will be my LTI mechanism, once I start making any house rules in a few months or so. I'll prolly have them be healed over a certain amount of time and put in story-appropriate penalties. Pretty much wingin' it, much like the rest of 4e (and I mean that in a very, very good way).