Homebrew Homebrew Rule: Incapacitation, Bloodied, and "Powering Through"

[Justice and Rule]

Hello!

It's been a while since I've done this, but reading through some posts and having put my campaign on a brief hiatus got me to thinking about how to spice things up and address issues other people seem to have with the game. And when it comes to issues with the game, one of the obvious ones would be the Incapacitation trait: I think it's something everyone gets and, for the most part, is a good rule. However, I do understand some critiques of it, and I think people here have given good commentary on it. For example, @payn talking about the Bloodied condition and how you could potentially use that to create more of a shift in how the battle goes, and I know @Staffan has brought up how 13th Age allows spells to merely cause damage to certain levels of enemies instead of causing massive debuffs. And I think there is a way to integrate both these ideas into PF2's Incapacitation to make the game better. So let's get to it.

Bloodied

The Bloodied condition is reached when a creature reaches half health or below. While a creature is Bloodied, the Incapacitation effect no longer applies and they gain the special free reaction Powering Through.

Powering Through

When affected by something with the Incapacitation trait, a creature may take untyped damage equal to the Character Level of the attacker (if a technique) or double the level of the spell slot used (If a Spell) to count as not being Bloodied, and thus regain the benefits conferred by Incapacitation again. This damage cannot be increased or decreased by anything else, nor can it be negated.

Note that when I say "creature", I mean "Non-Player Character". You could certainly allow this to affect players, but I don't see it being as big in that direction.

But the idea is that once you hit below half health, you can start to fire off the bigger spells, and depending on how big the slot is, while it might still be reduced by Incapacitation, you are forcing an already-wounded creature to spend its reduced hitpoints to do so. They can "power through", gritting teeth and straining muscle, but they'll likely still get a small effect and also take a bit of damage to boot. I tied it to the level of the technique or spell slot, to prevent someone from tossing bunches of first level spells and expecting to get a bunch of good damage off it. Same with making it a free reaction; you can't just wear it out like "Legendary Resistance".

You can modify the idea in a bunch of different ways (Add half the CR to the damage taken, make Bloodied reduce your level by a set amount instead of negating Incapacitation altogether), but I think the concept gets to what some of the people here wanted. Would be interested to see if this hits the sweet spot.

 

[payn]

I like the sound of it. I do think there is potential for PCs with bloodied too. It would be scary if certain spells become save or die/suck when bloodied. You can even bake in a lot of PC character choices. Perhaps a Barbarian needs to be at 25% to be bloodied as long as they are raging? Or maybe a feat can give you some extra buffs to keep bloodied from being so vulnerable. Just spitballing.

 

[Staffan]

This seems like a good idea at first glance. It stops the major thing Incapacitation is meant to stop – trivializing boss monsters with save-or-suck spells, since you need to get them down to half hp before using them. And high-level creatures probably still have good saves, so it's definitely not a sure bet, but at least it's not useless the way Incapacitation spells often are in PF2.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I like the sound of it. I do think there is potential for PCs with bloodied too. It would be scary if certain spells become save or die/suck when bloodied. You can even bake in a lot of PC character choices. Perhaps a Barbarian needs to be at 25% to be bloodied as long as they are raging? Or maybe a feat can give you some extra buffs to keep bloodied from being so vulnerable. Just spitballing.

Yeah, part of not doing it for PCs was to keep things heroic, the other was to avoid bunches of options around it because I was just writing it as quick as possible.

I do get the appeal of it and how it can work in the fiction, certainly: even a few levels higher, getting surrounded by a horde of pre-master ghouls can suddenly become dicey when they start hitting you and your HP crawls lower. And baking it into certain class features wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

You could probably apply the concept of "Powering Through" to certain non-incapacitation spells sometimes, too. Fury Barbarian? Oh, they can power through spells with the Mental Tag, incapacitation or no. Same with doing stuff with "Bloodied" and varying it up. You are bloodied? Oh, well, you cause more damage now, etc. I know there are Feats out there like that, but you get the drift.

This seems like a good idea at first glance. It stops the major thing Incapacitation is meant to stop – trivializing boss monsters with save-or-suck spells, since you need to get them down to half hp before using them. And high-level creatures probably still have good saves, so it's definitely not a sure bet, but at least it's not useless the way Incapacitation spells often are in PF2.

Yeah, and it also stops you from leading with big incapacitation spells, too. Feels more appropriate that you wait until they are weaker, at which point they get what is basically a Legendary Save at the cost of damage. It also allows you to maybe make a few other spells Incapacitation (COUGHSLOWCOUGH) while still allowing them to do something.

Also: I was going to leave the option to Power Through after the saving throw roll, so it doesn't get used on a passed save or something. I feel like that was implicit in the writing, but worth making it explicit here.

 

[ReshiIRE]

An interesting way of doing it. I'll put this away in a homerule suggestion list for when I run another game.

My suggestion has always been that Incapacitation only upgrades a Critical Failure to a Success*, and no further. Essentially, protect bosses from being completely destroyed, but still have the Success effect pop up and the Failure effect sometimes pop up.

It's something I'd certainly experiment with, and see if I'd prefer this Bloodied version or to only slightly weaken Incapacitation by making it so that a Success against a lower rank Incapacitation effect doesn't upgrade to a Critical Success.

Note: with how Natural 1s lower the success of a roll by 1 step, this means that a natural 1 on a Save from a creature benefiting from Incapacitation will take the Critical Failure effect regardless.

 

[stonehead]

I think this is a much better implementation of incapacitation than RAW. I wonder if it would be better without Powering Through though. The damage is going to be very small, less than 5% of the creature's health. A level 10 caster still isn't going to want to cast an incapacitation spell on a bloodied creature a higher level than it. The extra damage really isn't worth a greater degree of success.

Spell DCs also don't scale as well compared to monster defenses as attack bonuses do, so maybe if your party has whittled a creature down to half health, spending a spell to get a ~1/4 chance of ending the fight is fine.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I think this is a much better implementation of incapacitation than RAW. I wonder if it would be better without Powering Through though. The damage is going to be very small, less than 5% of the creature's health. A level 10 caster still isn't going to want to cast an incapacitation spell on a bloodied creature a higher level than it. The extra damage really isn't worth a greater degree of success.

Spell DCs also don't scale as well compared to monster defenses as attack bonuses do, so maybe if your party has whittled a creature down to half health, spending a spell to get a ~1/4 chance of ending the fight is fine.

Powering through isn't mandatory, but I like it because it forces people to still use higher spell slots for those incapacitation spells because, the threat of taking extra damage becomes incredibly real when you double the spell level and the enemy is already at half health. You could, arguably, increase the damage a bit to make it even more worthwhile (Add one's proficiency bonus instead, which would definitely be higher than the spell slot), but I like the idea of spending some HP to maybe negate the spell, if only because it still gives the bosses some level of resilience, but at cost.

However, I do see both sides of it and understand your view. Definitely would like to hear how it goes if you decide to try it.