Long-Term Injury Fun?

[HeinorNY]

I think that long term injuries should be part of a plot, or a story mechanism. Not something that may happen in a random basis.

For example, when fighting the BBEG one of the character receives a hit that would kill him outright, as dropping him directly to -10 or by massive damage. Instead of killing the PC, the DM determines he instead loses an arm. He is defeated, but not killed. He gets a second chance.
I did it once when playing Arcana Unearthed. Regeneration spells were rare, so the character had to find a way to overcome his injury. He finally found a mage that created a magical arm made of emerald.

The long term injury really added something for the game. It created an interesting story arc for the group. That's how I think long term injuries should be used.

If a long term injury rules are trivial like "damn I lost my arm again, handle me another regeneration scroll" or "ok DM, I've lost half my healing surges, consider I spent weeks in bed DM. Ok let's go back to the dungeon" than it's just a waste of book space.

 

[Pale Jackal]

If a long term injury rules are trivial like "damn I lost my arm again, handle me another regeneration scroll" or "ok DM, I've lost half my healing surges, consider I spent weeks in bed DM. Ok let's go back to the dungeon" than it's just a waste of book space.

I agree (I hate high level magic), and while you may not be addressing me in the slightest: I think adding some attrition adds a, "What are we willing to risk to succeed?" element to the game, similar to E6's Death Flag (which I heartily enjoy.)

And I do think there's an element of style to the party carrying on even though the wizard is walking with a limp, leaning on his staff, and is covered in blood. Yes, you could imagine this without these rules (who isn't covered in blood?), but rules can help. =)

 

[AllisterH]

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Like I said, it was a first attempt. You'd probably have to limit what attributes each class could take the penalty in.

Which breaks the "realism" of long-term injury even more. "I'm a druid and I can only suffer injuries to wisdom?" Yeah, explain that.

.
Or you could just go old-school and make the PC roll on a table to determine randomly which attribute is affected. After all, nobody can control where an injury will land.

Something like:

01-15 : Strength
16-30 : Dexterity
31-45 : Constitution
46-60 : Intelligence
61-75 : Wisdom
76-90 : Charisma
90-00 : Movement

Or is that too evil?

Which still favours certain classes. A druid makes out like a bandit in that table while a monk is boned HARD.

I'm skeptical about the implementation of long-term injuries since
a) if the injury is severe enough that it is a penalty, people will just camp however long it takes OR it forces one class to be on bandaid duty.

b) if the bonus for having the injury is incentive enough to continue, the injury itself wasn't that serious to begin with.

 

[Nine Hands]

My suggestion for long term injuries:

1) Define one or more criteria for taking a long term injury, such as the following: falling to 0 hp, becoming bloodied, being critically hit
2) Define a number of extended rests required to remove a single long term injury (for example 1 for one day, 7 for a week)

For every long term injury taken, reduce the number of healing surges you get back at your next long term rest. Remove long term injuries at the appropriate rate.

Example: 'When bought to 0 and when critically hit' '1 day'

Kashra the Dwarf Fighter has 13 healing surges. During a tense adventuring day she is brought to 0 once and criticall hit twice. She takes 3 long term injuries. When she rests for the night, she awakens with 10 healing surges and 2 long term injuries remaining.

After another adventuring day she racks up another 3 long term injuries, bringing her total to 5. She rests for the night and is at 8 healing surges and 4 long term injuries. She lets the party know that she'll really want a week off in town soon.

That is a pretty decent way of doing things as it slows down the rate of healing for characters and does not impose some painful die roll penalty on them. Penalties are fine in the short term but really hurt the players over the long term.

Sounds like a good easy system.

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, I'll post another idea I had, which is very simple, and draws its inspiration from the Condition Track in Star Wars Saga Edition.

When you go into negative hit points, you receive a "persistent" injury, and drop down 1 level on the condition track. It takes one week to heal one level on the Condition Track. The conditions are:


Uninjured: Fine. No penalties. Even characters who are "bloodied" are "uninjured."
Injured: -1 to all skills, attacks, defenses, and ability checks. Movement reduced 1 square.
Wounded: -2 to all skills, defenses, and ability checks. Movement reduced 2 squares.
Maimed: -5 to all skills, defenses, and ability checks. Movement reduced 3 squares.
Disabled: -10 to all skills, defenses, and ability checks. Movement reduced 4 squares.
Dead: Deceased.

Now this IS, in some sense, a death spiral mechanic. However, taken with LostSoul's injury box idea, you could allow the player to raise the long-term injury flag if and only if he decided the risk/reward was worth it.

So you might see people taking injuries that gave them -2 for a week or so, but not going further. I imagine people would only risk beoming disabled under desperate circumstances or when they were pretty sure they'd have some post-adventure downtime to recover.

Being -2 to all your checks and defenses (except saving throws, of course) may hurt, but it's hardly crippling. It's at -5 where it turns into a death spiral.

You could monkey with it of course. For instance, by requiring it to be a massive damage (in excess of your fort defense) in addition to reducing you to negative hit points. Or by making it conditional on a failed save after recovering from negative hit points, or limiting it to hitting negative hit points when you're out of healing surges, or some combination.

I may mess around with something like this after I get familiar with the 4E rules. If it interests my players.

 

[JohnSnow]

Which still favours certain classes. A druid makes out like a bandit in that table while a monk is boned HARD.

If that's the case, that's a fundamental flaw in the class design, not the injury system.

Although on further reflection, I like the Condition Track idea much better.

 

[Lurker37]

This is Dungeons and Dragons, not Hospitals and Hernias.

Long-term injuries as DM-controlled plot hooks are fine. As a direct result of rules mechanics? Go ahead and put them in - I'll go ahead and find another game. I'm not going to waste my hobby time playing a cripple when I want to play a hero.

 

[Gansk]

I played in a group once where the DM consulted a critical hit chart every time someone was critted. It was awful. And it played out pretty much as you described.

But that little vignette and what I'm trying to accomplish are two completely different things. I can't speak for others. Maybe that sounds fun for them. But for me, I'm interested in another kind of experience.

Basically, I'm looking for a light "attrition" system for prolonged dungeoneering. So, if a party goes into a dungeon for a week, there's a "survival" element to play. Nothing that destroys a character or necessarily sends them off into a death spiral.

But something that makes the resource management of Healing Surges a bit more exciting. And makes the dungeon a little more challenging.

I agree, and here is a simple but 'gritty' rule suggestion:

Each time you go to 0 hp or below, your maximum number of healing surges is reduced by one.

Each time you go up a level, one of these lost healing surges is restored.

 

[Warbringer]

I'm thinking these events are off-camera and should come with a bonus power - new power source - flawed - as well as penality (if applicable)

I'm thinking that these off camera rules also cover

Dying from a non-bloodied state - Any time a character is reduced to a Dying state by a blow that bypasses being bloodied, the character recives a wound. This is either merely descriptive or creates some bizarre power... (critically wounded by the ageless troll "Harbringer", the dwarven hero Karak sustained a pariculary gruesome wound. When he gets mad his left shrivels in it's socket only to regenerate 5 minutes later. This generates +4 bonus to initimidate, but a -4 penality to Notice when the eye is shriveled

critical kills by players - When the play kills a monster with a critical hit they are free to describe the outcome...beheading, lopping of a limb, even whether the monster lives or die

mutilation of helpless victims - when a victim is incapacitated they can be executed, knocked unconscious or have a limb removed... many a rogue walks my campaign missing an appendage.

 

[JohnSnow]

mutilation of helpless victims - when a victim is incapacitated they can be executed, knocked unconscious or have a limb removed... many a rogue walks my campaign missing an appendage.

I think it's safe to say that any time you perform a coup de grace that would kill a defenseless foe, you can instead choose to maim him.

And you could offer it as an option to players whose PC is "killed" but don't want to die. Many players would rather have a PC die than have him live with one hand. But a player who wants to should be able to, for example, have his PC take a permanent injury in lieu of losing his character.

e.g. - The coup de grace that should have ended Kieran's career instead left him blind in one eye. Kieran the rogue lived, but took a permanent -1 to his attacks, perception and initiative to reflect his loss of depth perception.

But he's alive!