D&D 5E On Lingering Injuries

empireofchaos said:

a) whether people use the Lingering Injury options;

b) what their reasoning behind choosing to use it or not to use it is;

c) people's take on whether things like internal injuries come up too often, and how they cope with the frequency;

d) and, how people read the stipulation about magical healing (whether any magical healing removes the injury, or whether it has to be a specific kind of (higher level) spell?

Click to expand...

a) I'm considering using this death & dismemberment table for my next campaign (currently taking a break from GMing), but I'm still not sure if I want to inflict that kind of brutality on my friends. (tl;dr: roll on the chart when you get to 0 hp; results range from instant death to second wind)

b) I don't like how 5e handles death and dying. Getting down to 0 hp is barely an inconvenience as long as you have a party healer (and since there's no negative hp, sometimes it's even a better strategy to let your allies fall to 0, because your healing will be more efficient). I want combat to be a last resort with real consequences, rather than always being the obvious choice. I also want more turnover in characters, and I want it to be an actual challenge to get to the later levels. Basically I want it to feel more like a horror movie than an action movie.

c) On the chart I'm talking about, half the results don't last beyond your next turn. The other half effectively remove you from the rest of the adventuring day and can't be healed with low-level magic. This is the main reason I'm hesitant, since I'm not interested in the player not getting to play anymore that session, and in some cases actually becoming a burden to the party for the rest of the adventure. At least if the character dies, the player makes a new character; what if the character is just incapacitated for the rest of the adventure? On the other hand, maybe that will strongly motivate players to avoid falling to 0 hp at all costs, which is what I'm going for.

d) The thing that drew me to this chart is how it handles this issue: more severe wounds can only be cured by higher level spells (and the spell can either cure the injury or restore hp, not both).

So here is my takeaway from this discussion so far:

1) It's good to have lingering injuries in 5e, because healing is so easy (even for the gritty variants), and combat should have consequences.

2) It's a bad idea to tie lingering injuries to crits, because crits happen so frequently

3) It's a good idea to tie lingering injuries to death saves (it's a system that's already defined, and while imperfect, it's easy to use)

4) Recovering from injuries should require more sophisticated magic than just Cure Wounds (depending on the severity of the injury).

I've seen some decent crit tables and injury tables (including the one @GX.Sigma proposes above), but I guess I want to get away from having to read detailed tables in the middle of combat. So I propose a fairly simple system that (imo) jibes with the spirit of the 5e rules.

When a character drops to 0 HP, roll a d4, and consult the following chart. If the character has failed one death save, roll an additional d4, and if he/she has failed 2 death saves, roll 3d4.

Roll Result Remedy to Reverse

1 Stunned 1 rd. after any cure, DC 10 Constitution each subsequent round to reverse (applies to all results below also)* Lesser Restoration
2 Minor Scar (as per DMG)** Lesser Restoration
3 Festering Wound (as per DMG) Lesser Restoration
4 Horrible Scar (as per DMG)*** Greater Restoration
5 Limp (as per DMG) Greater Restoration
6 Arm Useless (sprained/broken) - no weapon use, disadvantage if using off arm Greater Restoration
7 Broken Ribs (as per DMG)**** Greater Restoration
8 Internal Injury (as per DMG)***** Greater Restoration
9 Eye loss (as per DMG)****** Regeneration
10 Arm loss (as per DMG) Regeneration
11 Leg Loss (as per DMG) Regeneration
12 Fatal Wound (incapacitated 1d4 days, then death) Heal

Variants:

* - Ringing ears. Disadvantage on hearing Perception until 3 day rest taken
** - Lose tooth - Disadvantage on Charisma/Persuasion, 25% spell failure if verbal component, Regeneration to heal
*** - Scar hurts in wet conditions (rain, snow, etc.) - When attempting action, DC 15 save, no actions/reactions until next turn
**** - Pierced lung - Action or bonus action, but not both. If 2nd lung punctured, death
***** - Skull fracture - When attempting action, DC 20 Con save, or no action/reaction until next turn
****** - ear (disadvantage on hearing perception, and charisma persuasion checks, advantage on intimidation), finger (disadvantage on slight of hand/dex checks), or nose (disadvantage on smell perception, and charisma persuasion checks,advantage on intimidation) loss instead

This way, no one is going to want to play games with being dropped, and will certainly want to cure dropped characters ASAP.

Also, so as to avoid setting up yet another tracking system: if a character is dropped to 0 HP, armor loses 1 pt of AC value (if small shield, it is destroyed).

I suggest using them as a player buy in with the following rule:

'When you are reduced to 0 hit points and not killed outright, you can choose to remain on 1 HP and recieve a lingering injury. You must finish a long rest to use this feature again.'

Makes lingering injuries a player buy in (so doesnt punish the PC's, and its there only for players who want it).