Alternative Environmental Damage

[Sadrik]

I am okay with magic shoring up the environmental danger factors, like shadow I don't want the game to be all that grim. Cure disease, neutralize poison, remove curse, resist elements, water breathing, helm or underwater action, ring or fire resistance, ring of warmth, myrlund's spoon etc. all of these things are prevelent and easy to aquire. If the game system puts no value on them then they are pointless. This is not the call of the wild, however, I do want the players to know that there is a danger that exists and they should be prepared for that danger.

Back to the crunch for a moment, If you are using a wound/vitality system change the non-lethal damage to wound damage. If you are using a HP system deal CON damage instead. Honestly I think that non-lethal damage should be removed from the game anyway. So converting to CON or wound damage in these few instances does not bother me in the least.

If your players are arguing that they should not die and should not starve but should only be fatigued without food the SRD is not working for the people sitting around the table. It is a funky metagame game. At the least it puts the DM in a very awkward situation.

 

[Celebrim]

Back to the crunch for a moment, If you are using a wound/vitality system change the non-lethal damage to wound damage. If you are using a HP system deal CON damage instead. Honestly I think that non-lethal damage should be removed from the game anyway. So converting to CON or wound damage in these few instances does not bother me in the least.

The problem with this as I see it is that you are making your argument for the change in the rules from the basis of realism without it in any way being clear that you are actually becoming more realistic.

In reality we find that there are some sorts of injury that you recover from in minutes and other sorts of injury that you recover from in days (or longer, if at all). You're arguing essentially that not merely all environmental damage is the sort you recover from only after days, but that all damage is the sort you recover from only after days and that just doesn't jive with experience.

We've all been cold. We've all shivered and shook with chill. We've all been outside at times when we were underdressed and hense strongly motivated to not stay outside very long. I doubt that most of us considered that at the time we were probably mere hours or even minutes from death, because a succor - a source of life saving warmth - was generally near at hand. However, if you are out in the cold for very long without proper protection that's exactly what you are risking. Yet, take that person risking death and restore them to a place of warmth and within minutes they are perfectly fine and restored to full vigor and capacity for action.

Now, we know that if we stayed out longer we'd begin to risk injuries that we'd not so easily recover from - frostbite destroys tissue, chilbins errupt on the skin surface, major organs begin to shut down, etc. All these things take a long period of rest in a warm environment and sometimes medical treatment to recover from. But the point is that while this may be true, it doesn't elimenate the existance of the dangerous and debilitating before the lethal symptoms begin to set in.

I think it is very clear that cold (and all sorts of other hazards to the body) have this same sort of separation. Even injuries are like that. Most of us have played contact sports and most of us have probably experienced taking a hard, painful hit that left us debilitated for some minutes, but which, after that period was over left very little significant and lasting effect. We soon forget about the bruise or the abrasion, and sometimes discover we've taken no lasting harm at all. We 'walk it off', and then we are 'good to go'. I'm not arguing that realistically all injuries are superficial (as they are in 4e, for example) but I am arguing that reaching for Wound of CON damage too early is over doing it. Wound or CON damage is something that should be left for the extreme case - stage 3 hypothermia, to go for the particular example at hand. I think you should only go that far when the person has already been fully debilitated by the cold, thirst, hunger, or whatever.

 

[Ashtagon]

I'm toying with the idea of Con damage that can't be healed until a condition is met, but once the condition is met, it heals naturally at a high rate.

eg. (numbers drawn from a hat): Drowning inflicts 1d6 Con damage per round once you are no longer able to hold your breath. Once you have access to breathable air again, this is restored at 1 Con per minute.

Most environmental damage could be treated similarly.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm toying with the idea of Con damage that can't be healed until a condition is met, but once the condition is met, it heals naturally at a high rate.

eg. (numbers drawn from a hat): Drowning inflicts 1d6 Con damage per round once you are no longer able to hold your breath. Once you have access to breathable air again, this is restored at 1 Con per minute.

Most environmental damage could be treated similarly.

I think this is overly complicated. In addition to the fact that attribute adjustments wreck havoc on play speed, you are introducing a whole new system of 'non-lethal CON damage' to replace 'non-lethal hit point damage'. I think effectively the two systems could be made equivalent.

The basic idea is:

"For some time you can endure discomforting situations without excessive harm, but after a while you begin to take more serious damage that is not easily recovered from."

Non-lethal damage is intended to reflect that "For some time you can endure discomforting situations..." part of the idea.

Where 3.X has always had a problem is with the transition point between nonlethal and lethal damage. This is pervasive throughout the system. Examples:

1) You can bludgeon someone with your fists until knocking them unconscious, and no matter how hard you hit them, you don't risk killing them.
2) Heat causes non-lethal damage, but at some point it stops causing nonlethal damage and begins to cause lethal fire damage. What is that cut off point? 150 F? 200 F? 400 F? How hot must the environment be before the heat damage is lethal?
3) Cold is the same problem. Being out in 50 degrees below zero still causes but intermittant nonlethal damage. How cold does it have to be to cause lethal cold damage, and why is there such a sharp and sudden transition between the two?
4) As other haves pointed out, starvation is mildly unpleasant but its hard at high levels to die from it.

I think transition problems are the main problem with the system. If you are really worried about the damage not scaling to character level, then I don't think you should implement non-lethal CON damage but scaled non-lethal damage.

That is, starvation/pressure/heat exaustion/thirst/cold exposure/etc. wouldn't do a flat 1d6 damage, but 1 damage/HD of the character. So, a 1st level character would take 1 nonlethal damage, and a 20th level character would take 20.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Valhalla, how can you argue with me that being burned alive for 4 minutes or falling 100 feet is insignificant and then comment that 1d6 nonlethal and fatigue from starving is a terrible fate? That's quite a discrepancy.

They're insignificant in the context of the rules of game. As real world events, they are hella' significant. As literary events they are notable. As events in the rules of the game, they are barely worthy of notice, just like those 15 blows form the ogre's club are barely worthy of notice.
Burning for four minutes deals 40d6 damage. That's a lot of damage, which averages at 140. If 140 damage won't put the character at disabled or worse then it's insignificant, by itself, in the context of d20 games. It may mean the character needs to take a week or two off, but that's no big deal.
1d6 nonlethal is almost always insignificant in the context of d20 games. Fatigue, especially fatigue that can't be countered by healing magic, is almost always significant in d20 games.

Oh, and interesting side note: Sarvation is resisted with CON checks, not Fort saves. Hawken's fighters are in better shape under his rules than under the SRD.

The fact is many effects cause a person to suffer cardiac arrest (resulting in death if no one else is around to tend to them with the proper medical training). Many effects cause brain death, paralysis, nerve damage, organ failure, internal bleeding, etc. These effects/side-effects/after-effects are not even considered or handled at all by the rules.

Right.
So, why are you making one instance of these effects (falling trauma) more dangerous than another instance of these effects (trauma due to violence)?
Why is falling suddenly the deadliest thing in the game?
Why is falling deadlier than being on fire for four minutes?
Why is falling deadlier than having a master of the spear ram a spear through your chest?

You want falls to be dangerous? Cool, go for it. BUT do it in a unified manner, one that makes equally deadly threats equally dangerous. Do whatever you want (Falls deal 1d4 Charisma damage per 6 feet), but make everything else consistent with it, otherwise you'll hear a mighty squawking from me.

]If you want a super heroic game, play one.

Thanks, I do. In fact I'm ending this post to go run one. I love the universe, and some days it reminds me why.

 

[Celebrim]

My rules for falling.

1d20 + size modifier per 10' fallen divided by the result of rolling a 1d6. If the surface you land on is harder than soil, you also are 'attacked' by it - a flat stone surface attacks as a mace, for example. Generally, the 'floor' makes at least one attack at +5 bonus with a 'strength' bonus of +1 per 10' fallen. In the case of spikes or sharp surfaces, 'the floor' makes 1d4 attacks. Critical hits do apply.

If the total damage from the falling event - falling damage plus the attack by the floor exceeds your massive damage threshold (50 for medium sized creatures, 40 for small), then you make a DC 15 massive damage save. Failure can mean anything from a crushed skull to broken limbs (random result on a table). Moreover, if the fall is bad enough that it drops you below 0 hit points, you have to make a massive damage save regardless of how much damage you took.

So, maximum damage falling into a 10' deep pit cut into stone is 38. Of course, that's really unlikely; more often than not, you'll end up taking 4 or 5 damage. (I should also note that 1st level characters start with 8 bonus hit points, which makes 38 damage not as extreme as it sounds.) Maximum damage from falling into a 20' deep stone pit is 60, which, since its higher than a medium creatures massive damage threshold means there is a small but real probability of death regardless of character level. Of course, there is also a small but real probability that a 1st level human commoner (avg 10 hit points) falls off a 200' cliff, lands on turf or packed snow, takes 3 damage, and walks away with minor bruises.

My point?

There are other ways to make falling really bad and stop metagaming without making falling objectively worse than getting critical hitted by 20' tall giant wielding a 200lb battle axe.

 

[Sadrik]

I also agree that falling damage should fall into the regular paradigm of damage. Perhaps distinguishing between internal and external trauma. External trauma would be applied to HP and internal trauma would be dealt with by wounds or CON damage.

It would also be nice to have a simplified and general rule about internal trauma too perhaps 1d4 CON and then the interval would be based on the severity of the situation. Gosh I wish that 3e was written from this type of stance on rules. Rather than explicitly writing an individual rule that is similar but different for every situation instead make a rule that is broader and can get applied to many situations. Neither here nor there...

Anyway using the internal/external split I may have to rethink my stance on a couple of the following, nearly all stay the same:

Acid- acceptable
Cold- replace non-lethal damage with CON damage but d4 CON instead of d6 (as heat) [cold damage??? - 1d6 cold damage per interval no save]
Slippery- replaced with grease spell effects
Darkness- acceptable
Falling- remove all instances of non-lethal damage
Falling Objects- acceptable
Heat- replace non-lethal damage with CON damage [fire damage??? - 1d6 fire damage per interval no save]
-Catching on Fire- remove the destroyed equipment clause
-Lava- acceptable
Smoke- replace non-lethal damage with CON damage [as inhalation poison???]
Starvation- replace non-lethal damage with CON damage
Thirst- replace non-lethal damage with CON damage
Suffocation- acceptable
-Slow Suffocation- remove non-lethal damage and instead work it like Suffocation but every 15 minutes
Water- Remove instance of non-lethal damage completely
-Pressure- acceptable
-Hypothermia- deleted use Cold instead
-Drowning- acceptable

Poison- Secondary damage is continued until made twice in a row (as disease)
-Onset time- (new rule) change it from immediate to some increment of time rolls save every minute thereafter
-Dose- (new rule) increase the base DC based on the dose per dose adds +2 DC
Disease- acceptable

Also what about radiation?