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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ipissimus" data-source="post: 3451643" data-attributes="member: 41514">And alot of people agree with you, which is why DnD and a lot of other RPGs present expanded combat mechanics to deal with more realistic injuries. Just remember that you are running the risk of having your players bog down in combat-centric games, assuming you are the DM, you'll have to push them into combat after a few of them lose limbs or sensory organs.Streamlining character generation doesn't really help. Players tend to gain a certain sentimentality over their characters, they become an investment of emotion particularly if they are getting involved in the game world. Yes, I have seen players spit the dummy over dead characters. Heck, I've seen them spit the dummy over being hit by a surprise attack they had no opportunity to defend against. Players develop swat-style tactics and a level of paranoia in an effort to counteract practically any possible encounter. Is this bad? No, it means they're involved with the game.But it has certain side effects in my experience. Bogging the game down with indecision as they prepare to fight a powerful foe is one of them, even in high level groups with multiple clerics in regular DnD games. The goal of any combat is, after all, completing your objective with the minimum use of resources.However, the average combat-centered DnD game is really a huge ego trip for the players... much like a holliwood action movie. Big explosions, blood everywhere, kung fu fighting, the works. You don't see too many heroes getting their limbs hacked off in the movies, they are the heroes after all, the people the audience has an emotional investment in. They can get hurt, they can bleed, they can be captured and tortured just to show how bad the bad guys really are. Then they get up, say something witty, dismember a thousand goons with various household appliances, and in the next scene they have a clean shirt.Because we all want to lay the smackdown on the bad guy and be invincible. That's probably the basic appeal of DnD game as presented in core. But if you'd prefer to play gritty and realistic, hey you're catered for! I enjoy that style of game too. I'll take Sin City over Spy Kids any day... but in an RPG it's a little different, you have to cater to the needs of 5+ people and not all of them are going to take well to becoming permanently blinded or having both arms lopped off in every other session.Should the players feel that their characters are in danger? Definitely, no matter which style you play. But crippling and debilitating injuries, while realistic, will detract from the fun of the game. As a hypothetical situation, imagine a player who's character is practically disabled every game. This player isn't going to feel good about playing the game any more, retiring a character or having them killed off often feels like failure to a player. Kick the puppy too many times and they won't come back, even sidelining a character a character in a hospital can become problematic. What does that player do if he's the only one convalescing? Play a different character? What if he doesn't want to play a different character? Do you give him an important NPC to run? What if he gets that NPC killed? Is it fair to make the rest of the party wait while his character recouperates? But the BBEG's nuke is set to go off in an hour, they can't afford to wait!In one fell swoop, your game bogs down, the pace is lost and your players may be unhappy. Naturally, it falls to the DM, already heavily burdened, to be prepared for all these inevitable questions. They are certainly soluble but they are also problematic and there's no single answer.I've played this sort of game a few times and I enjoy it immensely. I am an avid Call of Cthulhu player and, back when I was a noob at the game, the DM and the other players were happily experienced in the game already and made sure I knew that my character would likely go insane and get ripped apart by some reality-bending horror if I was really lucky. CoH really does teach you to take injury to a character in a philosophical manner, but then CoH isn't really a combat-centric game. Sure, you can try to fight Nyarlathotep... but you're not going to win. I would consider dialing back the combat a bit if I introduced serious injuries... heck, the standard dungeon crawl format isn't realistic anyway.</blockquote>

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