hayek
Explorer
If you go the serious wound route every time you get to zero, don't you just run away every time you get close and heal back up?won't that lead to more 15 minute days?
Agreed, but I think the issue is that -1 to all attacks/checks is too severe a penalty for a wound. Players will always go out of their way to rest if possible with that penalty. How about this:
every time you drop below 0 you get a wound.
if you have a wound, every time you make an attack/check, roll a d12 along with the d20. if you roll a 1 on the d12 you get -1 to your d20 roll... if you have 2 wounds, and you roll a 2 on the d12 you get -2 to the d20 roll, and so on...
this gives the benefits of:
1. there's some flavor to the wound and you know it's there because you're always rolling that d12, but it's not a severe enough penalty to make you want to rest immediately whenever you get one - a -1 every now and then isn't really going to effect things, but it occassionally will allow for a memorable moment when that wound made you pull up your sword arm just a little too soon and miss...
2. opens up cool mechanics to interact with it - Grizzled Veteran feat = +1 to all d12 wound rolls. Barbarian Rage = while raging, you don't have to make any wound rolls. etc...