Lingering Injuries

[trentonjoe]

I am working on a way to make "Lingering Injuries" more "lingering". I think my mechanic is a little clunky. Any suggestions are welcome.


Lingering Injuries



Lingering injuries can add a dynamic that improves the combat narrative as well as the story arc. When presented with a long term penalty, characters are forced to make decisions. Suddenly, the formerly simple path becomes more complex. Combat tactics will change and the games narrative may be forced into a detour as an immediate concern becomes more pressing than the overarching plot.


The trick is to make them linger. They should be neither permanent nor easily curable. If a simple Cure Wounds or Lesser Restoration can remove the penalty, no wounds will last more than a day if the party has a 3rd level Cleric.



Lingering injuries have a Injury Point Value. Actions taken to heal the injury reduce the point value. When the injury is reduced to zero points all penalties are removed and the character is healed. As a general rule, lingering injuries should start with points equal to twice the character level plus 1d6.



While magic shouldn’t be an immediate fix, it should help. Others factors used to heal these lingering wounds are long rests (time) and medicine skill checks (knowledge).



The following actions reduce the Injury Point Value:

Long Rest- 1 point/rest
Curing Spell- 1 point/spell level
Medicine Check DC 15- 1 point
Medicine Check DC 20- 2 points
Medicine Check DC 25- 3 points

 

[Inez Hull]

You could link a corresponding spell to a level of wound - this would work much easier in previous editions where Cure Light/moderate/serious/critical wounds were explicitly named spells, but you could allocate a wound level to an effect which meant t required healing of that spell level.

There was another Lingering Injures thread a little while back here It may be worth posting in that too.

My personal preference is not to add any form of wound to critical hit rolls, but rather use a Death & Dismemberment table, where wound effects accumulate once your Hit Points drop to zero. This assumes that hit points are a mixture of combat fitness, skill and morale but not really significant physical wounds - however real wounds are accrued once HP are reduced to 0. If you are interested I've posted my version tweaked for 5E here and also have been running a series of posts on death & Dismemberment tables on my blog.

 

[edhel]

Personally I'm not a big fan of bookkeeping and rolling skill checks that don't have interesting stakes. I'd just use the PHB / DMG downtime rule where you get to roll to get rid of an injury after three days of continuous rest. Spells or other appropriate care might give you an advantage to your roll or shorten the rest interval, or the combination of both.

In my campaign I use the Paizo critical hit deck which gives similar results as the injury table, and the resting rule has worked well so far. Sleeping in a moist cave might also not count toward recovering from your injuries - or maybe it just gives you a disadvantage to your roll. Rolling a natural 1 might even cause you to become diseased.