D&D 5E Lingering Wounds Revamped

[akr71]

You call it being a vicious DM - I call it playing my monsters with intelligence (where appropriate). I get that it is a friendly game, but you haven't yet said why the healers can move about the battlefield freely. If they are slowed down at least for a round or two, it puts a sense or urgency on the death saves that wasn't there before.

And when a downed party member is targeted, the rest of the party will rally around their fellow - some will target the opponent and others try to save the party member.

Inventing new rules to fix a problem that only exists because existing rules aren't being used seems time consuming and cumbersome. That's just my opinion based on my experiences - YMMV

 

[Springheel]

You call it being a vicious DM - I call it playing my monsters with intelligence (where appropriate). I get that it is a friendly game, but you haven't yet said why the healers can move about the battlefield freely. If they are slowed down at least for a round or two, it puts a sense or urgency on the death saves that wasn't there before.

Healing Word has a range of 60 feet. How often are your healers so far away that they can't get within 60' of a downed character? It's a bonus action, so they can even disengage and run their full movement if necessary.

 

[akr71]

Healing Word has a range of 60 feet. How often are your healers so far away that they can't get within 60' of a downed character? It's a bonus action, so they can even disengage and run their full movement if necessary.

True enough. Battles don't often spread out so much that moving 20 to 30 feet won't get you within 60 feet of a downed character.

However it also says "a creature of your choice that you can see within range." The people I play with the people I DM for insist on having their character act on what the character knows and sees. Which means if the healer is engaged in his or her own combat, they may not notice that someone has fallen, let alone see the fallen comrade through the chaos of combat. I have not experienced the 'whack-a-mole problem' in my own games - in fact it has been my experience that combat rarely lasts long enough for death saves to become an issue unless an opponent target them. A character would have to be dropped in the first couple rounds and had some extremely unlucky rolling on his or her death saves.

Again - these are just my opinions based my my experiences. If the OP wants to homebrew something to fix a perceived problem, go right ahead. I have not experienced the problem the OP has and I tried to illustrate why I think it has not been an issue in my games.

 

[redrick]

Requiring more powerful healing spells to cure the increasingly severe injuries from the injury table seems totally reasonable. When I used the lingering injury table in my game, I just adjusted it to read "a healing spell cast at level n or higher," depending on how serious the given condition was. I don't remember exactly what the breakdown was. Using a sort of "wound points" system seems like a little more work, but also has the added bonus of letting characters get lucky with a low level spell if they don't have access to higher level healing magic.

FWIW, in my game, I ran Lingering Injuries as an alternative to going unconscious when getting reduced to 0 hp. Basically, characters could "lean into" the attack, increasing the risk of serious injury, but also allowing them to stay in the fight a little longer. I made this worth it by allowing my monsters to behave monstrously to downed PCs. We had some pretty great, gonzo combats where the last character standing kept taking lingering injuries, resulting in cracked ribs, internal bleeding and the eventual loss of an eye, but at least he survived to get his friends to safety. This is probably the opposite of a simulationist solution, though.

 

[Crazedjedi]

FWIW, in my game, I ran Lingering Injuries as an alternative to going unconscious when getting reduced to 0 hp. Basically, characters could "lean into" the attack, increasing the risk of serious injury, but also allowing them to stay in the fight a little longer. I made this worth it by allowing my monsters to behave monstrously to downed PCs. We had some pretty great, gonzo combats where the last character standing kept taking lingering injuries, resulting in cracked ribs, internal bleeding and the eventual loss of an eye, but at least he survived to get his friends to safety. This is probably the opposite of a simulationist solution, though.

That's an intriguing idea. I'm sure my players would prefer a choice instead of mandatory wounds. How many times can your players take wounds instead of going down in one fight?

 

[redrick]

That's an intriguing idea. I'm sure my players would prefer a choice instead of mandatory wounds. How many times can your players take wounds instead of going down in one fight?

At the time, I didn't place any restrictions or cascading penalties on it. The player could just keep getting sliced and beaten to ribbons while managing to stay conscious and on their feet. Some of the lingering injuries are quite debilitating, even before you start losing limbs, so the character who decides to go that route becomes less and less effective. (If I remember correctly, the cracked ribs and internal injuries both require the character to make a save or forgo any actions that turn.)

That particular campaign only lasted a few months. Maybe partly because half of the characters were missing hands and eyes. Also because I got married and took a long honeymoon and another member of the group took over DM'ing duties while I was gone. If I were to do it again, I would probably look for a way to make the permanent injuries (loss of limbs, hands, heads) only possible under certain circumstances, like a second attempt to stay standing after reduced to 0, or something similar. Honestly, that was a pretty deadly campaign.

 

[Bradley Hindman]

In our first campaign, I found it very disappointing how easily unconscious players could be revived. As there are six PCs and thus multiple sources of healing magic in the group, they could play reverse whack-a-mole for an incredibly long time.

If the "whack-a-mole" syndrome is truly the dominate reason you are considering lingering injuries, a simpler solution is to not allow low-level healing magic to return players to consciousness. Perhaps, a short or long rest is required to regain consciousness once a character has healed above zero HP.

This change would encourage PC healers to use their healing magic pre-emptively before their comrades are down and unconscious. Further, it avoids the meta-game thinking that encourages healing unconscious people because it is more hit point efficient. (An attack that takes a foe down with more hit points than necessary effectively means that the excess amount disappears and doesn't need to be healed.)

If you don't want to completely remove the return to consciousness in the middle of a fight, one of the benefits of a cure spell cast with a higher level slot might be to circumvent this restriction. Or perhaps that is an advantage of healing potions. There are a variety of ways to rejigger the rule.