Looking For Feedback On One Of Our Houserules

[The Levitator]

Oh boy, I have been sooo hesitant to post this, but this forum seems to be a little more open-minded than others, so here it goes.

I'd like to get some feedback on a houserule we've implemented that has been working really well for our group. It's actually kind of 2 houserules combined to make combat a little more gritty without going to a WP/VP type of system.

Basically, I've created a condition called "Battle Fatigue". This stemmed from comments made by my players that they disliked the idea that a 100HP fighter fights just as well at 1 HP as he does at full. I understand the basic logic behind the abstract concept of HP, but I wanted to make something that suited my players idea of combat better.

Here's the way it works. As you lose HP, you enter various stages of "Battle Fatigue" that affects your STR and DEX during combat. It was designed to show the cumulative effects of parrying, swinging, taking shots, dodging, etc. and how those things would wear a fighter down. We also use a non-specific descriptive during combat. I should preface this by mentioning that we play a diceless game, using the autoroll feature in DM Genie to handle mechanics so that we can focus on description. When a player gets hit, I don't tell them the exact number of HP they have taken in damage. There are 2 reasons for this. This first is that we've found that the more hidden the metagame concepts are, the more fun and immersive combat is. The second is that by giving them only a general sense of their condition, it makes combat a little scarier. We use Maptools as a VT and they have a halo system that allows you to put different colored halos on tokens. Here are the 2 ideas combined into our system:

100% HP - Green - Healthy
75% HP - Yellow - Light Battle Fatigue (-1 STR, -1 DEX)
50% HP - Orange - Medium Battle Fatigue (-2 STR, -2DEX)
25% HP - Red - Heavy Battle Fatigue (-4 STR, -4 DEX)
0% or Less - Black - Down (dead, unconscious, stunned, or otherwise laying on the ground and out of the fight)

Once combat is over, and the players have a chance to look over their wounds and assess the damage, I give them their current totals. Recovering from Battle Fatigue is directly related to HP, so a player at Medium Battle Fatigue would increase to Light Battle Fatigue before being healthy enough to fight at full strength. I don't throw tons of encounters at my players per game day, so they have time between most encounters to natrually heal and also use potions, spells, etc. to get in shape for the next encounter. Even at this, we usually have at least 5 encounters per gaming session.

Using this system allows me as a DM the freedom to use descriptions rather than numbers and it's always exciting for players when they see halos changing colors. My goal wasn't to make it look and play more videogamish, although I can totally see how it looks that way. The idea was to create a system that works with our diceless style of gameplay and keep the focus on description and not numbers. We use a lot of variants that DM Genie tracks for me and it gives me a detailed description in the combat log so I know exactly what happened. The other variants we use are Armor as DR, a modified version of the Defense Bonus, Facing Variant and the Opposed Defense Roll Variant. The group feels that these things work well together to give us gritty but quick combat (mostly thanks to DM Genie and its autoroll feature).

I would like to get some feedback on this type of HP tracking system. Don't worry too much about being negative about it, because it works great for our group and I have no plans to abandon it. But, I would like to use the feedback to make any tweaks that stand out from other DM and player perspectives, and try to make it even better.

I should also mention that we use another houserule that eliminates instantaneous healing from potions and spells. We have a system that breaks healing into 5 levels of potency, with level 1 potency(system levels not D&D levels, in D&D terms, level 1 potency would be potions created by or spells cast by 1st-3rd level healers) heal at the rate of 1 HP every 8 rounds, up to level 5 potency potions and spells(10th-12th level healers. We peak at 12th and then buy feats, skills etc., similar to this thread on this style of advancement)which heal at the rate of 2 HP/rd. It's still fast enough to be miraculous, but eliminates the potion chugging fighter. My players felt that this was one area that felt too videogamish in D&D and this was my attempt to fix it and still have it fit in with our style of gameplay.

So, let 'er rip!

 

[Bayonet_Chris]

Battle Fatigue

I use something similar, albeit a bit simpler.

Hit points/vitality or more of an endurance level than straight-up "hit points". A large amount of damage taken at one time has a chance to do a serious wound and "injure" the character. Otherwise, they recover pretty quickly. Anyway, at half vitality/hp they gain the fatigued condition. At 0 or less, they gain the exhausted condition. Of course, these conditions directly affect the chances that they'll take a large hit and be seriously injured, so it all works out.

I originally started with a larger division of states, but decided it was too much trouble and I wanted it to be as simple as possible. YMMV. The concept is sound though.

 

[The Levitator]

I would actually favor the VP/WP system, but I haven't found a solid way to implement it into DM Genie properly. And I'm way too attached to my DM Genie to play without it (I'm such a geek!). Thanks a bunch for the quick reply!

 

[airwalkrr]

I'm not a fan of such systems simply because as a DM, my work is already cut out for me. I have enough things to track without having to tack on more modifiers. If DM Genie can track this for you though, then more power to you! I'm not opposed to it on a philisophical level, I just prefer running my games quick and dirty as opposed to running 2-hour combats.

 

[The Levitator]

I just prefer running my games quick and dirty as opposed to running 2-hour combats.

I couldn't agree with you more! If I didn't have DM Genie, there's not a snowballs chance in Equador that I would run a game like this. With the system we have in place, an average combat of 8 combatants at 5th level (where my current group is on one campaign), combats tend to run anywhere from 8-15 rounds (this group is pretty tactical). I looked up my DM Genie logs and the last encounter they had went 14 rounds. That combat took about 30 minutes in real time. I'm sure there are groups out there that resolve combat more quickly, but considering the number of variants we use, we feel like it's pretty fast. I should also mention that we use a 2/1 combat time/real time ratio, so each person has 12 seconds to begin to declare their action or they are considering delaying action. They can end their delay immediately after the next creature in initiative order. On average, this happens about once a session and usually just because someone blanks or panicks and can't decide what to do on the spot. Our gaming sessions average about 4-6 hours, and we usually have 4-6 encounters per gaming session. It's a good balance for our group because they are roleplay heavy, and with only a couple of hours in each session devoted to combat, it leaves more time for storyline and details.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think that the idea is fine, and several groups use something similar.

Some possible questions to discuss about when using this sort of system are IMO:

- What is actually more realistic between being fatigued during a fight and after a fight? In a certain way when under stress you're less likely to feel fatigued (at least if the stress lasts less than a minute, as in a typical D&D combat), but when the stress ends all fatigue catches up. So maybe even a system that works the other way around could make sense as well: not fatigue during the fight, but immediately after, if you've sustained enough damage.

- This system uses penalties on physical attributes, which hurts warrior-types mostly, but could be extended to other penalties, in order to give everyone a penalty. Of the mental attributes perhaps only Wisdom would make sense to get a penalty from being wounded, so it's not much of a balancing factor except for divine spellcasters. Perhaps a nice addition could be introducing a Concentration check to cast spells when below a certain hp %.

- Finally I think that having 4 different fatigued level could be a bit too much, particularly for low-level low-hp characters. I would probably simplify it so that there is only 2 levels (normal and fatigued).

 

[starwed]

Why not just apply a flat penalty to all rolls? (Possibly to AC and spell/other ability DCs as well.) That's a bit simpler than mucking with penalties to ability scores. Each bracket gives you an additional -1, and it should penalize most classes about the same amount.

 

[The Levitator]

I think that the idea is fine, and several groups use something similar.

Some possible questions to discuss about when using this sort of system are IMO:

- What is actually more realistic between being fatigued during a fight and after a fight? In a certain way when under stress you're less likely to feel fatigued (at least if the stress lasts less than a minute, as in a typical D&D combat), but when the stress ends all fatigue catches up. So maybe even a system that works the other way around could make sense as well: not fatigue during the fight, but immediately after, if you've sustained enough damage.

- This system uses penalties on physical attributes, which hurts warrior-types mostly, but could be extended to other penalties, in order to give everyone a penalty. Of the mental attributes perhaps only Wisdom would make sense to get a penalty from being wounded, so it's not much of a balancing factor except for divine spellcasters. Perhaps a nice addition could be introducing a Concentration check to cast spells when below a certain hp %.

- Finally I think that having 4 different fatigued level could be a bit too much, particularly for low-level low-hp characters. I would probably simplify it so that there is only 2 levels (normal and fatigued).

That's actually a really cool way of thinking of it! I actually like the fact that it affects melee combatants more, as it might encourage more strategy with ranged weapons and spells. My group is pretty tactical, but they still tend to jump into melee pretty quickly. It also makes toe-2-toe fighting more dangerous than sitting back and firing arrows. And honestly, the only reason I have 3 levels of fatigue (it's not 4 actually, there's light, moderate and heavy battle fatigue) is that it was very easy to script into DM Genie and since it handles it automatically, it's no extra work for me in-game. In fact, DM Genie even places the current fatigue of the character right in their condition notes and automatically adjusts their STR and DEX when they take the appropriate amount of damage.

I totally understand the thinking of having the fatigue kick in after the battle rather than during. My thinking was even though the adrenaline is pumping during combat, wounds and combat still affect your ability to fight at your peak level. I can only compare this to kickboxing, as I use to fight as an amateur many moons ago. But I know that in that arena, fatigue kicks in pretty quick (sorry about the bad pun). And even though you are in the moment and feeling like you are fighting well, watching videos of myself showed a definite slowing in speed and less exact technique at the end of rounds compared to the start of them. Taking all of those shots also takes a lot of wind out of you and forces you to breathe differently, which also contributes to slower movement and reactions.

I am going to put a little more thought into how the characters are affected after combat though. Thanks for the input!

 

[The Levitator]

Why not just apply a flat penalty to all rolls? (Possibly to AC and spell/other ability DCs as well.) That's a bit simpler than mucking with penalties to ability scores. Each bracket gives you an additional -1, and it should penalize most classes about the same amount.

That's kind of how we were initially doing it. I was just applying a flat penalty to attacks and AC. But I felt that applying the modifiers to STR and DEX better reflected the effects of combat on the body. I mentioned in my above response that I used to kickbox and found that even though I felt fine at the ends of rounds, watching it back on video, I could see that I was actually a little slower on my attacks and slower to respond and cover against attacks. I also noticed my form wasn't quite as good at the end of rounds as it was in the beginning. My thinking is that the 2 attributes most affected would be STR and DEX. Having it affect STR not only has the potential to affect your ability to hit and cause damage, but encumberance might also play a role in your movement too. And having it affect DEX not only potentially affects AC making it harder to dodge attacks, but would also affect DEX based skills like Balance and Tumble. These skills would seem to be harder to do when fatigued as opposed to being fresh.

The idea of a flat negative modifier that affects ALL rolls is intriguing. A fatigued spellcaster might not be able to focus on their spell as well and increase the chance of failure. A fatigued rogue might have a more difficult time seting up a sneak attack being a little less nimble. I'm definitely going to put some thought into that idea!