Grittier D&D (Wounds)

[misalo1]

Hi All

My players asked me if there was a way to add some ‘long term’ damage (or grit) to the game. They have trouble with the idea of sleeping away all of their damage. So, with their help, I put together a rule set that works with the hit point system from the PHB.

So far they like it -- but I wanted a hear from the masses.

I haven't add magical healing - yet.
I was think about one or two rituals but that as far as I got.

My Cleric (player) asked about Cure Light Wounds & Powers with Regeneration. Any ideas.

Please let me know what you think (about the rules – that is)

Edit: My second try.

 

[DanmarLOK]

If your players are good with it then that's fine, all the arguments against the spiral of death are not necessary or how it penalizes the front line more than the back line etc.

At a guess given the number of attacks a PC suffers and the 1 in 20 critical most characters are going to go to bed each night with at least a few wounds. Assuming you have a trained healer most of them should be pretty trivial to get rid of since 1's aren't automatic failures on skill checks.

It's only if they have a long 'work day' that their wounds are going to accumulate to the point where the healer won't be able to help them. Although that does raise the question what does a successful heal check do? Elminate all wounds or just move them to the next lesser catagory? Also how often are heal checks to recover this performed.

Given your specific situation (players requesting) the only issue I see is that it might end up to the "adventure for a day, recover for a week" issue. Which can be fine in some instances but in a dungeon delve, it adds a lot more work to the DM as each time the group is forced to retreat to heal up, the DM has to determine how much time the NPC's have to fix, repair, get reinforcements, and react to the players aborted attempt to infiltrate their lairs.

 

[misalo1]

how it penalizes the front line more than the back line etc.

That's something I'm going to bring up again next time we chat.
They have set up their PCs since the first talk about "grit".
We'll see if the paladin & fighter are still on board - the rogue, wizard, and cleric probably won't care.

Although that does raise the question what does a successful heal check do? Elminate all wounds or just move them to the next lesser catagory? Also how often are heal checks to recover this performed.

RECOVERING FROM WOUNDS
Wounds heal much slower that hit points; after an extended rest you recover 1 wound per character tier. A Heal check could increase or decrease this amount (see below).

TREAT WOUNDS (see HEAL skill PHB Ch. 5)
Make a Heal check to treat a character who is wounded.
Treat Wounds: Part of the wounded character’s extended rest. You must attend to the character periodically throughout the extended rest, and you make your Heal check when the rest ends.

DC: See the Table. The Recovery DC varies based on the character’s present Wound Category.
Success: Your patient recovers an additional 1d4 wound points.
Failure: Your patient gains nothing from your aid.
Failure of 5 or more: Your patient is wounded during the treatment; causing his condition to worsen (add 1 wound). Also, they do not heal during their extended rest.

Condition Effect
Extended Rest (Bed Rest) --------- +2 to Heal check
Full Day of Rest (24 hrs) ---------- +5 to Heal check
Full Day of Bed Rest (24 Hrs) ------ +5 to Heal check & natural healing x2

-----

I was thinking about the 'Success' result adjusting by the tier of the Healer.

 

[Garthanos]

D&D does have bleeding wounds, I thought increasing the number of them would help increase the grit level a little of course I also figured on featuring "true regeneration" which sealed wounds (big bonus save on going damage that isn't fire) and improved recovery from disease and long term injuries. Allowing something simple like the first failed death save to indicate a long term injury that used the disease track as a model and for which inspiring words would be ahem like talking to plants.
Sure heal the spirit and the body will follow.. .but ummmm not so fast.
Embrace that priests and warlords heal and inspire the spirit and are more about morale than the flesh. and the thing currently called hit points could have been called energy and accepting wounds only occur on that last strike that takes you down is kind of cool.

 

[misalo1]

Hello, Again

Tried out version 1 and ran into some problems.

First, play with a PC’s maximum hit points was more work than we thought. Maximum hit points goes down so does the healing surge value and the bloodied value. Three more things to calculate and keep track of – and a lower bloodied value makes a PC easier to kill (less negative hit points).

Second, I gave penalties to various rolls based on ‘reality’. This made them hard to track without checking your present condition (slowed down the game).

Third, there was no temporary effects, so my player’s felt like a wound was a punishment for getting hit. They wanted a mix of temporary and long lasting effects. It gave them some control over the wound.

So, here it my version 2 file. I left the v1 file online so the public could compare.

Thanks for your comments.

 

[Alex319]

Hello, Again

Tried out version 1 and ran into some problems.

First, play with a PC’s maximum hit points was more work than we thought. Maximum hit points goes down so does the healing surge value and the bloodied value. Three more things to calculate and keep track of – and a lower bloodied value makes a PC easier to kill (less negative hit points).

Second, I gave penalties to various rolls based on ‘reality’. This made them hard to track without checking your present condition (slowed down the game).

What kind of penalties? It might be possible to make a system for these penalties that is easy to use, if that's what you want.

Third, there was no temporary effects, so my player’s felt like a wound was a punishment for getting hit. They wanted a mix of temporary and long lasting effects. It gave them some control over the wound.

So, here it my version 2 file. I left the v1 file online so the public could compare.

Thanks for your comments.

I saw the temporary effects, and I'm a little confused. So suppose I currently have 5 wounds, and I take a critical hit which gives me 1 more, for a total of 6. Then at the time I take the wound I am weakened (save ends), correct? Now I make my save, and a few rounds later I get critted again, so I'm up to 7 wounds. I am now weakened (save ends) again, is that right? Or do you only get the "save ends" effect when you move into the next wound category, like from badly wounded to seriously wounded?

 

[KarinsDad]

I had a real problem with PCs being nearly fully healed all of the time, even if there was no magic, with the hit points and healing surge system.

We added a wound system for serious physical damage (cracked ribs, pulled tendons, etc.). Hit points became in our game minor cuts, scraps, minor burns, getting the wind knocked out of the PC, being knocked out, etc. So far, it has worked out pretty well. A few PCs get wounded on occasion and it does make players feel like their PC is getting beat up in the serious fights.

We have not run into a death spiral situation yet.


1) PCs have wound points equal to their Constitution. A PC that gets knocked unconscious is wounded and takes a wound point. Each time he fails a save while unconscious, he takes another wound point. If he fails the three saves while unconscious, he is dead (just like the normal rules). A PC also takes a wound point if an opponent does a critical on him. A PC who is at half or less of his wound points (round down) is at -1 to all D20 rolls. A PC who is at zero wound points is dead.

2) Healing of wound points: An extended rest heals one wound point. A Potion of Vitality heals one wound point (and 1/4 hit points), a Potion of Recovery heals two wound points (and 1/2 hit points) and a Potion of Life heals all wound points (and 50 hit points on a dead person, 3/4 hit points on a living person). Magical healing from an arcane or divine source heals one wound point per day maximum per PC. A maximum of 3 wound point healing sources can be used per day per PC (1 extended rest, 1 potion, 1 spell).

3) Bloodied creatures are at -1 to all D20 rolls. Creatures that can fight at zero or fewer hit points are at -2.


This is simple enough that it has not caused any bookkeeping problems. Once or twice per encounter, some PC in the group usually takes a wound point unless a PC goes unconscious in which case, that PC can take multiple wound points.

One thing we have observed it doing is putting an urgency into unconsciousness. Players do not nonchalantly allow another player's PC to just bleed out. And, players try even harder to not get bloodied or fall unconscious in the first place (fewer bad tactics like allowing Opportunity Attacks when the player does not have to).

But the main thing for me is that the PCs feel a bit more real. There is a threat to any single attack because a 20 can wound the PC. Hit point damage just felt like numbers on a sheet of paper with no umph or urgency to them because they could be restored so quickly and (for all intents and purposes) effortlessly.

 

[misalo1]

I saw the temporary effects, and I'm a little confused. So suppose I currently have 5 wounds, and I take a critical hit which gives me 1 more, for a total of 6. Then at the time I take the wound I am weakened (save ends), correct? Now I make my save, and a few rounds later I get critted again, so I'm up to 7 wounds. I am now weakened (save ends) again, is that right? Or do you only get the "save ends" effect when you move into the next wound category, like from badly wounded to seriously wounded?

I was thinking...
Only when you move into the next wound category.

 

[CapnZapp]

I believe it's more trouble than it's worth to add the grit to "normal"damage.

Keeping it to whatever happens when you have lost your hit points is probably a scenario that's easier to make work well with the rest of the game and its basic assumptions.

That is, current hit points are clearly designed to fluctuate wildly. One second you're at 7 hp, the next you're back at 97 hp. Messing with this (your ability to simply add back hp using surges, mainly) will probably mess too much with the inherent design of the game. Especially the bloodied condition - which is almost the opposite of "grimness": if anything, you're supposed to become better when bloodied. In any regard, the game expects characters to become bloodied "all" the time, so this level is inappropriate for a grittiness addition (think of it as coming too "early" in the downfall of a character)

However, what happens when you fall (go zero hp or below) is another story.

Yes, the core game is very lenient with this (even ignoring your negative hp for healing purposes, and essentially only requiring you to spend a move action to stand up from prone), but this I feel can be changed with less overall impact on the game.

That is, the game doesn't break just because being downed just got more dangerous. Normally, you're supposed to have time to react well before that time (unless, say, if we were to make becoming bloodied significantly more dangerous), and if you know being downed is dangerous and unhealthy, the game offers several mechanisms where you can make it a priority of avoiding this (focusing more on healing than dealing... damage that is)

As for the exact rules on what happens at this time, I don't have any special considerations. I just wanted to discuss the fact that adding the grit "too soon" will probably be hard to do right!

 

[KarinsDad]

Especially the bloodied condition - which is almost the opposite of "grimness": if anything, you're supposed to become better when bloodied.

Not really. Most PCs do not get better when they get bloodied.

And there are many examples of the opposite. When a foe gets bloodied, the PC (or NPC) is at an advantage over that foe.

In any regard, the game expects characters to become bloodied "all" the time, so this level is inappropriate for a grittiness addition (think of it as coming too "early" in the downfall of a character)

I totally disagree. When I watch many sporting events, the tired team is often suddenly mauled by the fresher team.

Grittiness by definition is that the game is more plausible and realistic, not that it's fluffy and cute and hit points mean nothing until one gets to zero.

As for the exact rules on what happens at this time, I don't have any special considerations. I just wanted to discuss the fact that adding the grit "too soon" will probably be hard to do right!

A simple rule of -1 to all D20 rolls (for both PCs and NPCs) when bloodied is a totally fine way to "do it right".

It affects combat only ever so slightly, but it psychologically affects players more than it actually affects the game.

Every creature on both sides of the encounter might be bloodied, but the -1 rarely comes into play because a) the encounter is over half over and b) nobody rolls exactly the number that would have hit but now doesn't (at most, one or two PCs or NPCs might fail the roll).

The combat is not really that heavily affected by the rule, but it FEELS grittier. It feels more threatening. There is a slightly increased set of urgency for each player because his PC is at -1 for the rest of the encounter unless he gets healed above bloodied.

To me, this is absolutely the right way to add grittiness. And, it is very logical to the players. Bloodied = slightly wounded.