Implementation of Long-Term Damage

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm personally in love with Star Wars' Condition Track and Persistent Conditions. In a nutshell, when wounded past a certain point, you take a -1/-2/-5/-10/disabled penalty (to all defenses and checks), and if the condition that caused it is persistent, it stays around until whatever cures it is enacted. So if it's blindness, it might be a persistent -5 until a cure blindness is applied, or whatever.

This would be what I would apply as well.

The only significant issue being that Star Wars has lots of ways to engage the Condition system and 4E does not.

Though I wouldn't be surprised to find suggestions for these type of systems or something similar but rarer - unusual poisons, diseases, wounds, or conditions in 4E that we just haven't seen yet - in the DMG.

 

[Celebrim]

@ Celebrim: While your solution may be most realistic, it has some excess baggage that is counter-intuitive to the simplicity that 4th edition heralds.

So far, the reviews have either been positive or negative, but whether positive or negative 'simplicity' hasn't been a word often heard. I think it is fairly clear that streamlined or not, 4E is still a quite complex game. That is in fact, one of the three or four areas of 4E I approve of.

Plus, have reduced bonuses to abilities is still an icky mechanic that should be avoided.

I'm not sure why. It's only one step ickier than the suggestion by some others to introduce something like the SWSE wound track. In any event, it will be less icky to implement in 4E than 3E. Injuries to Intelligence or Constitution won't involve nearly as complex of an accounting as in 3E.

Still, it doesn't seem like your concerns match mine.

 

[keterys]

Well, depending on how gritty you want it to be, have certain triggers reduce your max healing surges by 1 until you receive long term medical care (or ale and whores, whatever's appropriate)

Possible triggers:
* Reaching bloodied (once per encounter)
* Being reduced to 0 hp
* Taking a critical hit that does at least X damage, where X could perhaps be Con score (possibly w/ +1/2 level), but variable depending on how gritty you desire.

You could have the healing surge penalty only kick in when resting, or have it literally remove them (which could get evil with the bloodied mechanic since you're not likely to use one before bloodied and you'd lose one as soon as you hit bloodied...). You can allow the Heal skill to combat the effects of this ability, so that only if multiple of the above triggered in a single encounter would you be hit with it. Magic items, like ye olde ring of regeneration, might soften or remove this penalty entirely.

And it's still a pretty simple system, whereas most penalties are a lot less so and the condition track discourages some D&D-like behavior... ie, actually fighting when really hurt, while not actually encouraging you to go to town.

 

[AZRogue]

Well, I'm considering pulling out the Rolemaster (or MERP) critical hit tables whenever someone gets to negative hit points.

"Oh, sorry about that. Your Healing Surge brings you back up to full but you have no limbs."

 

[Sir Brennen]

If I were going gritty, I'd still try to keep it simple:

During combat, a character can receive a Severe Injury. Each Severe Injury reduces a character's maximum number of healing surges by a like amount. This can happen in a couple of ways:

• Taking a critical hit indicates a Severe Injury. A character can only receive one Severe Injury per encounter this way.

• Falling into negative hit points indicates a Severe Injury. A character can only receive one Severe Injury per encounter this way.

• Severe Injuries are healed at a rate of 1 per day.

• Becoming bloodied imposes a -2 penalty on attacks and defenses.​

Even Grittier options:

• A character with Severe Injuries must make a Saving Throw each day. Success indicates their number of Severe Injuries are reduced by one.

• When a character becomes Severely Injured, in addition to reducing their maximum number of healing surges, he incurs an penalty as well. The exact penalty is determined by rolling a d6:

1: -2 Fort Defense
2: -2 Ref Defense
3: -2 Will Defense
4: -2 Attack Rolls
5: -2 AC
6: -1 square of movement​

This penalty is removed once the character no longer has any Severe Injuries. A character can only have one such penalty at a time. (If this option is used, Bloodied should not carry a penalty with it.

• Combine both options above for Even Grittier Still.​

Of course, how healing magic would interact with these rules would also have to be determined once we have those rules.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I currently use a "shock" value in my game, equal to the player's Fortitude (10 + Class bonus + 1/2 level + Con bonus[note that my group has been using flat defenses as saves for nearly three years now). Anytime the player takes more damage than his Fortitude defense, he incurs a penalty of -1 to all d20 rolls. If he takes multiple serious wounds, the penalties are cumulative. It takes 1 day to cure these sorts of wounds.

Since we also use multiple dice by BAB whenever he picks up a weapon (meaning a 8th level fighter uses 4d[W], it makes combat much more deadly and fast, since we don't use a lot of magic in the first place.

 

[HeinorNY]

I'm personally in love with Star Wars' Condition Track and Persistent Conditions. In a nutshell, when wounded past a certain point, you take a -1/-2/-5/-10/disabled penalty (to all defenses and checks), and if the condition that caused it is persistent, it stays around until whatever cures it is enacted. So if it's blindness, it might be a persistent -5 until a cure blindness is applied, or whatever.

What I don't like from the SWSE Condition Track rules is that it doesn't take into account psychological factors, like morale and adrenaline.
Sometimes a wounded enemy becomes even more dangerous.

 

[nightspaladin]

We really aren't entirely sure that 6 hrs of rest heal everything btw. It spells that out implicitly in the DDXP quick rules, but remember these are rules designed to play what is essentially a public beta test of the mechanics. The paper says all the rules you need to know to play 4e at DDXP. There may be more complicated damage rules in the real game, but since the scenerios they were running were designed to be quick and light, it may be they left it easier to reset than normal.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

The main intention of these long term injuries to recreate the feeling of the PCs coming out fight with a dragon, knowing that the fight took something out of you that can't be cured just a night's rest.

If this is the goal, I would suggest going with limiting the healing surges available, and reducing the amount of healing a rest provides based on that...
what I mean is something like:

Your max number of healing surges per day is reduced by one for each critical hit you sustain. If you are reduced to below 0 hit points, the number is reduced by two. This does not affect the number of healing surges you have to use in that day.

When you rest, you regain a number of hit points based your max number healing surges.
- 1 surge, regain 1/4 hit points
- 2 surges, regain 1/2 hit points
- 3 surges, regain 3/4 hit points
- 4 or more, regain full hit points.
At the end of your rest your max healing surges increases by 1 if you still have a reduced amount. You regain only that many healing surges to face the new day with.

Example: Joe Fighter has 5 healing surges. In a fight he takes two critical hits and gets knocked to 0 hit points, reducing him to a max 1 healing surge. During combat he can still use the 5 healing surges he started the day with.
That evening the group rests. Since his max is 1, he wakes up from the rest with 1/4 hit points and his max healing surges improves to 2.
Avoiding combat, the next evening the group rests. His max is 2, so he wakes up with 1/2 hit points and 3 healing surges...
etc..


With this any character that was severly beat up will take a couple days to recover and will tend to avoid heavy combat. You can describe it as physical injury, or morale issues, or simple combat exhaustion.

 

[PeelSeel2]

I am just going to do things like:

Black Mamba Poison:
Physical Ailment
Effect:
Character is immediately reduced to an effective state of negative hit points. If full save is made (rolling a 20), character is reduced to one standard action per round and cannot use healing surges except through magical means. If magical healing is provided, the result is per standard rules. If no saves are made, character dies.