Broken Bones

[gogo_jerrick]

In my last game, me and one of my players had a pretty nasty argument over the effects of cure spells. I use a varient critical system and to put it simply, a critical hit ended up causing a minor break his arm (in this varient, he suffers a -2 to melee attack rolls which doesn't even hinder him at all, being a mage with a religious use of spectral hand). I treat broken bones and sever wounds in the following way, you must heal the damage taken naturally for the hindrances to discipate. You are allowed to heal the hit point damage by any means, but the negative effects (the -2 to attack) remain until you heal a number of points equal to the hp damage done by that attack NATURALLY(he took 8 points of damage by the attack, so regardless if he healed himself magically, the effects would stay until he naturally healed 8 hp). He argued the fact that if you couldn't heal such a minute thing as a broken bone then he didn't even want to play a cleric type. The way I've always played it is that cure spells heal hit point damage and superficial wounds (ones that don't necessarily reflect any change in roleplay) and broken bones must either be healed naturally or with a heal or regerate spell. I know that the dm is always right but I like to be open with my groups ideas. Am I wrong in this thought? Is this varient unreasonable? I like to add things into my game that have a sort of "realism" and different things that have alot of roleplay value. Is this something that should be changed or rethought? thank you for any suggestions or thoughts.

 

[Eloi]

If critical hits are happening more than once every other session, the Cleric is going to feel a need to remove the lasting penalties resultant from those critical hits.

So he's going to feel the urge to acquire a spell.. maybe do some magical research, maybe just find out who has already done the research, but either way, he'll want to be able to fix things "like magic".

Shooting from the hip, this sounds like a spell roughly equivalent to a lesser restoration, affecting broken bones and other internal, slow-healing structures (osseous and cartilaginous tissues). If it only alters the critical aftereffects (reducing them to hit point damage, healable any-old-way) it might be second level - if it removes them entirely, perhaps third level.

Clerics do enjoy getting their charges healed - not "except for the broken bone", all the way healed. Praying to their Deity for their day's complement of little miraculous aids, and including a big batch of healing and miscellaneous cures, they would eventually figure out how to pray for a cure for long-term crippling injuries (like those which result from critical hits). Is there a campaign-specific reason why the Cleric can't heal this kind of thing.. yet?

If you drop a few clues that only the Keeper of the Saffron Cloak might know the correct prayer and ritual to heal this kind of debilitating injury, then the Cleric is going to be very pro- "let's go talk to the Keeper of the Saffron Cloak" and will help drive the adventure.

And if the Keeper has been taken in the last raid by a group of Ogres.. hello, time-pressure.

 

[the Jester]

In 2e I had a 2nd level cleric spell in the healing domain called mend bones just for this sort of thing.

 

[Enkhidu]

Why not simply make it so that real injuries (as opposed to the hurts that result from hit point loss) have "equivelencies."

For example: if a broken arm is a fairly serious injury, then I'd suggest that you either need to heal the hp damage done by the attack naturally, or benefit from a cure serious wounds spell directed at the injury itself (that affects only the injury, and does not restore hit points).

 

[Kristivas]

Cure spells repair wounds.

They don't give you back hit points, but also leave you wounded and bleeding all over the place. So, if they repair cuts and bludgeons and piercings, it's pretty safe to assume they knit broken bones as well. If they left you unrepaired, even when brought back to full, it wouldn't be much of a healing spell, would it?

Having full hit points and full ability scores (as in not having ability score damage) is a perfectly healthy character (barring curses and diseases and poisons and such). I really think you're doing your cleric an injustice by not letting his HEALing spells actually HEAL.

That's why there's no crit table for ability damage and broken bones (Repair Injury from 2e Skills and Powers) spell. The crits are there to add more to the game, but it's crappy to bog the game down with such minor inconveniences. Otherwise, when your fighter gets a lucky crit with his greatsword against the BBEG spellcaster, do you allow him to roll and break the NPCs jaw? How about break the sword-arm of the evil Warlord on the opening round of combat? That could ruin your whole planned encounter with one lucky shot like that, but if it's not fair for the PCs then it's deffinately not fair for the NPCs.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Funny how, in a video game, this wouldn't even come up. If healing spells didn't heal certain types of injuries, the player would just shrug and take it into account.

There are all kinds of "healing" that various "healing" spells do not perform. An argument based on semantics should never trump the kind of feel you are trying to generate for your game. You are perfectly reasonable in making this sort of adjustment in your campaign world. Instant gratification is not always the best form of gratification (in fact, it seldom is), and in the long run the player will likely gloat about what he managed to do despite the broken arm "you saddled him with".

It is in the nature of players to complain when things don't go their way. It is also in the nature of players to feel pretty good about how they dealt with their problems in the end. You should not feel bad about giving PCs problems. Minor inconveniences do not bog down the story; they are often what gives the story its texture and flavour.

From your initial post, I assume that the PCs have the ability to produce similar critical effects against their foes. Therefore, it is probably safe to ignore any argument based on "Would you let your PCs do that to your NPCs?"-type reasoning.


Good gaming!

RC

 

[Thia Halmades]

See RC? Coffee. Good morning.

I come from the 'realism is good' camp myself, so really I only have a couple of key points here.

- You've clearly HR'd your healing system. Were the PCs advised of this in advance? As in, is this the first time this has happened and they are just now discovering the fatal flaw, or were they apprised of the situation prior?

If they knew before, and had a total grasp of it, then the argument is somewhat moot. The jerk answer is - "Your campaign, your rule." The polite response is: "I understand what you're saying, but I explained this before, and it adds a 'look & feel' to this campaign that otherwise isn't represented in the rules. We can work out ways for you to accelerate this process."

For example: If you want to include this variant (taking away from the Cleric) than you may want to include variant healing as well - since your rule stipulates that the PC need only heal naturally the damage taken, then they'll be able to do it fairly quickly, healing their HP in a night, it'll probably take two nights or so. With a successful Heal check, you may allow the Cleric to properly set the bones, thus 'doubling' the heal rate for that wound, rather than letting it heal over time.

- Since you HR'd the healing system, have you considered Eloi's suggestion? A mending spell would handle this just fine.

Me personally, I side with the DM. Look & Feel is huge to making the campaign play out in your head how you want it too. However, we are using a 'heroic' damage system - you aren't critically injured until you hit 0. Everything before then is just a flesh wound. Wanting to represent a more significant combat/damage system is admirable, but most folk are playing D&D to be heroic. They don't consider getting their jaw shattered to be heroic. Clearly, they don't watch enough action films.

RC brings up an excellent point as well, though - so long as the sword swings both ways, then heroism becomes as much about overcoming adversity as it does about not getting incapacitated. Here's a though. Why don't you post the entire rule so we can review it? That way we'll have a clear idea of whether the system in general is balanced.

My initial reaction? This is fine. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the interest in handling combat that way when most of my PCs opponents are demons, undead & constructs.

 

[Cecil Solomon]

There's nothing wrong to having severe injuries and limiting what magic can be applied to it, but the game system and world should be consistent.

In a world where magic exists, where wounds can be cured with a relatively minor spell, it is only natural to assume that someone would have applied that "science" to learn how to set and repair a more significant wound. It might require a higher level spell, but someone would have figured it out. The practicioners with this ability will be the true healers in your world--the king's physician.

On the other hand, if your cure disease spells cure any disease and your neutralize poison spells neutralize any poison, then you may want to have the cure spells re-knit any wounds. A HR to make it more realistic would be to require a Heal check to be successful.

Just my random thoughts

 

[Kepli Sire]

Broken bones seem to be a bit different then your average damage in a RPG.

This is how I did it:
For instance, when a PC/NPC falls from a certain height and misses a certain roll, he/she might break something (up to the DM to determine when this is).
Healing something broken with healing spells is fine, but the character would suffer a penalty for a few weeks to get it fully healed.
Suffice it to say, broken bones (or missing limbs for instance) don't happen often in my campaigns, but they are more severe due to a long-term effect.
This does not change the rules in any way other that adding an extra penalty ... and a caution factor for the players

Sometimes a small addition or change can be enough to add more realism. You often don't need a whole new ruleset.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There's nothing wrong to having severe injuries and limiting what magic can be applied to it, but the game system and world should be consistent.

In a world where magic exists, where wounds can be cured with a relatively minor spell, it is only natural to assume that someone would have applied that "science" to learn how to set and repair a more significant wound. It might require a higher level spell, but someone would have figured it out.

Actually, this highlights a problem with most fantasy worlds. Consistency and treating magic as a "science" do not go hand-in-hand. As an obvious example, if magical healing is divine in origin, then there is no "figuring out" to do; the gods either allow you that level of power or they do not.

Even where magic can be treated as a science, the idea that "If X is possible, then someone will know how to do it" flies in the face of common sense. Making a jumbo jet is possible. It was possible 2000 years ago. No one knew how to make a jumbo jet 2000 years ago. For those who say that this reasoning doesn't apply, I will point out that kites were being made 2000 years ago, which may be as close to making a jet as cure light wounds is to mending bones in a given campaign world.

Likewise, nothing that we do now medically was "impossible" during the Civil War. Yet, no one had the level of medical technology then that we have now. Penicillin didn't "become" an antibiotic because it was discovered; it became usable because it was discovered. Until it is discovered, it cannot be used.

Obviously, there are things that are possible right now that we have no idea how to accomplish. If this were not the case, we wouldn't be spending so much money in research.

That is what is realistic, because that is how the real world works.


RC