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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9191926" data-attributes="member: 4937">Realistic or not, in terms of gameplay combat death spirals are just not very engaging and crippling characters after combat such that the player is effectively out of the session isn't great either.&nbsp; Realism for its own sake rarely makes for interesting game play or interesting story.&nbsp; My preferred system is a homebrewed modified version of 3.0e and it does add a 'Staggered' condition with a major downside (you can only take one action a turn) but that only kicks in when you are at 10% or less of your hit points - think about how rarely that happens at low levels.&nbsp; It adds to me a cinematic feel of the character nearing death as they progress through increasingly bad negative conditions close to zero hit points, and it's resulted in some great combats where players have to make interesting tactical decisions to protect a colleague and keep them in the fight or alive, but I wouldn't want it to occur more often than it does.&nbsp; Having it add occasional tension to a fight is one thing, but regularly gimping characters just for realism's sake isn't that great and even in D&amp;D I probably wouldn't have a &quot;you've been wounded&quot; consequence except that D&amp;D makes healing comparatively available and low cost.Like many realistic things I once wanted - languages, currency, numinous magic - injuries are something I've discovered needs to be confined to narrow areas for gameplay reasons.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9191926, member: 4937"] Realistic or not, in terms of gameplay combat death spirals are just not very engaging and crippling characters after combat such that the player is effectively out of the session isn't great either. Realism for its own sake rarely makes for interesting game play or interesting story. My preferred system is a homebrewed modified version of 3.0e and it does add a 'Staggered' condition with a major downside (you can only take one action a turn) but that only kicks in when you are at 10% or less of your hit points - think about how rarely that happens at low levels. It adds to me a cinematic feel of the character nearing death as they progress through increasingly bad negative conditions close to zero hit points, and it's resulted in some great combats where players have to make interesting tactical decisions to protect a colleague and keep them in the fight or alive, but I wouldn't want it to occur more often than it does. Having it add occasional tension to a fight is one thing, but regularly gimping characters just for realism's sake isn't that great and even in D&D I probably wouldn't have a "you've been wounded" consequence except that D&D makes healing comparatively available and low cost. Like many realistic things I once wanted - languages, currency, numinous magic - injuries are something I've discovered needs to be confined to narrow areas for gameplay reasons. [/QUOTE]

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