Handling Permanent Injuries

[Fauchard1520]

When permanent injuries are on the table, there are two basic ways things can go.

• Good Ending: He cuts off my hand? Like Skywalker at the end of Empire? Badass!
• Bad Ending: Thanks for making my guy unplayable. Jerk.

That leads me to two associated questions.

1. As a matter of player psychology, how do you help afflicted PCs arrive at Good Ending instead of Bad Ending?
2. What's the best system you've seen for handling permanent injuries?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

 

[overgeeked]

When permanent injuries are on the table, there are two basic ways things can go.

• Good Ending: He cuts off my hand? Like Skywalker at the end of Empire? Badass!
• Bad Ending: Thanks for making my guy unplayable. Jerk.

That leads me to two associated questions.

1. As a matter of player psychology, how do you help afflicted PCs arrive at Good Ending instead of Bad Ending?
2. What's the best system you've seen for handling permanent injuries?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

I disagree that the "bad ending" is actually bad in itself. It's a bad player reaction to the situation, not a bad situation. As the saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothes." The good player will take that and work with it make it a part of the character and keep playing. The bad player will throw a fit and repeat that phrase you included about the DM being a jerk. If the player doesn't want harm to come to their character, they shouldn't be playing anything with even a hint of possible danger in it. You risk your life on a daily basis? You can end up losing an eye or a finger or a hand or a leg. Some settings have magic or tech to replace those lost bits, but not all.

The player psychology behind the "bad ending" is that the player doesn't want their precious character to have any flaws or drawbacks or hindrances. That's not how most games work. Especially not action-adventure games...which cover the majority of RPGs. If the player wants their character perfect, whole, and intact, then they don't want to play an action-adventure game. They don't want the risks associated with even a whiff of verisimilitude.

The best system for handling permanent injuries is to use them and filter out the players who don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions in the game and those who don't want to actually play action-adventure games.

There are plenty of amazing games out there where injury and death aren't an assumed part of play. A lot of them are really quite fun. Once you cross into "I'm going to gleefully murder ten-thousand orcs to level up" land, missing PCs bits is an option.

 

[CleverNickName]

1. As a matter of player psychology, how do you help afflicted PCs arrive at Good Ending instead of Bad Ending?

Easy: just ask the player how they want to handle it.

If the player wants a dope adamantine prosthetic hand or something, go with it.

If the player doesn't want to play a disfigured or differently-abled character at all, you shouldn't force them to.

 

[Dioltach]

As with most things, it's good for the game if it opens new and exciting doors. Just telling the player, "You have a DEX penalty, you can't dual-wield or use a bow and getting dressed takes twice as long now" is no fun for anyone. Even if the player did something stupid and you decide to chop of the character's hand instead of killing them outright, it shouldn't be without any prospects of getting better.

So impose a penalty, sure, and make some jokes about lending a hand, but follow it up by a rumour of a mechanical/magic hand that can be attached, or a smith who can make a prosthetic hand - if the party can provide the materials. In the meantime allow the character to capture a Crawling Claw and fasten it to their stump. For added fun, make it a right hand on a left stump - with delusions of being the dominant hand!

 

[Scars Unseen]

Easy: just ask the player how they want to handle it.

This, like many topics of this nature, seems like the kind of thing that should be addressed before the first session. It's not like most games have actual mechanics for dismemberment, so it's something the GM should have in mind as a possibility before they even get started, and that shouldn't be a possibility that they should keep to themselves.

 

[Lanefan]

If there's a possibility of dismemberment (and it rather makes sense that there should be) there ought to be some means of fixing it, maybe at considerable expense; using the same design rationale behind there being a possibility of reviving a character if and when it dies.

Older D&D had a high-level Clerical spell called Regeneration for, among other things, just this. It also had a spell called Wither that rendered a limb useless if the victim failed a save; along with some magic weapons (e.g. Sword of Sharpness) and traps whose special effect was to now and then chop something off.

Seems it'd be easy enough to port similar elements for both dismemberment and fixing thereof into any fantasy game. Otherwise you risk a situation where the PCs meet a peg-leg pirate* who, by the game's own mechanics, couldn't exist in the setting.

* - or better yet, someone wants to play one!

 

[Umbran]

I disagree that the "bad ending" is actually bad in itself. It's a bad player reaction to the situation, not a bad situation. As the saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothes."

So, who is the game for? Should what is good or bad in the game not be defined in terms as good or bad for the players?

The player psychology behind the "bad ending" is that the player doesn't want their precious character to have any flaws or drawbacks or hindrances.

Overgeeked, you overstate, and use a broad brush, and seem to be trying to assert that problems are really about a personal flaw in any player who is put out by such things. The result is to dismiss a thing that has a lot of nuance to it, without actually addressing the nuance, and being kind of insulting in the process.

 

[RangerWickett]

A sprained limb is a light wound. It'll heal after 1d6 days of rest or medical care, or a first level spell.

A broken limb is a serious wound. It requires 1d6 weeks of rest or medical care, or a third level spell.

A lost limb is a critical wound. It won't heal naturally, but a fourth level spell will do the trick.

In all cases, you have to receive it within a window of time or else the natural healing process will lead to the body considering the injury part of the status quo, ineligible to be 'healed' by magic. Likewise, if you don't rest, or get a medical care that's bad, a light or serious wound can set improperly.

If a fifth level spell can raise the dead, a fourth level one can regrow a leg.

If players know this, injuries become a setback, not a permanent weakness. And if you want wounds to still show up, have a few rare types of magic deal wounds that magic cannot heal, but make them super obvious so players can try to avoid them.

 

[aco175]

This brings up the argument about HP and how they are represented. There is also problems with damage from 10 levels of slaying monsters and not a scratch on me. Now, suddenly, the DM is giving my PC a lasting problem. Maybe cool, if I have something to do about it and make it cool again.

I do not want to be forced to take levels of rogue to finally get ranged mage stump in order to do something normal.

 

[Fauchard1520]

This, like many topics of this nature, seems like the kind of thing that should be addressed before the first session. It's not like most games have actual mechanics for dismemberment, so it's something the GM should have in mind as a possibility before they even get started, and that shouldn't be a possibility that they should keep to themselves.

I don't know that Session Zero is the answer to this one. Permanent injury is a plot point that can come up, but it doesn't usually make the list:

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That's why I'm looking for systems that do this. If giving the player a way out of the drawback is important, what system does that best? If establishing it as a baseline part of your grim and gritty game is important, what system is best at that?