Maiming Your PCs

[Elrik_DarkFury]

Double post(i got carried away )

 

[rkanodia]

So I devised an ancient machine that was created by a forgotten race. It sucked in a nearby PC, ground off his arm, and replaced it with an Arm of Nyr, which was used as a key to the fortress it was found in. (The device had originally given the prosthetics to slaves so they could interact with the fortress.)

This suddenly reminded me of the opening movie for Syndicate, one of the coolest video games of all time. It's a tactical-squad game where you control a group of androids, going on various missions to assist in global domination. The android agents are obtained (as the opening movie shows) by basically kidnapping random people off the street, running them through a machine which cyborgifies them (looks kind of like the Vitruvian Man as it's happening, a guy stretched out inside a circle) and puts mind control devices in their skulls. Good times

Not that thar be anythin' o' relevance to the conversational topic at hand, mind ye. But for a landlubbin' game, Syndicate was quite close to being almost acceptable fare for a swashbuckling salt as meself.

 

[Richards]

We've never dealt with any limb loss, but I had one PC, my son's female elven mage/thief (in an AD&D 2nd Edition game), get her head shaved by jermlaine while she was unconscious (the result of one of their traps). She decided she'd wear her hood up until her hair grew back. Then, several adventures later, she fell victim to a pretty serious acid trap that left her horribly disfigured; the hood was up pretty much full-time from that point on!

Johnathan

 

[rkanodia]

Drelvin- loses legs almost every major combat. (Not so true as in older editions, darn it!) Makes it hard to run.

Now there's a character trait to note in the 'Personality' section.

 

[Piratecat]

I believe that a spell that never gets used isn't much of a class ability. As a result, I started trying to maim my PCs as soon as the cleric got access to regenerate.

 

[hong]

I believe that a spell that never gets used isn't much of a class ability. As a result, I started trying to maim my PCs as soon as the cleric got access to regenerate.

Me, I just folded regenerate into heal.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Me, I just folded regenerate into heal.

Makes sense.

Cleric: Oh, you got stabbed in the heart and brain, were poisoned, caught a nasty disease, suffered some magically induced mental illness and are suffering from frostburn, sunstroke, starvation and thirst. Let me just fix that. (casts heal)

Fighter: Hey - it didn't fix my missing pinky!

Cleric: Nahh mate, can't help you.... need a different spell for that.

 

[Kultar]

Makes sense.

Cleric: Oh, you got stabbed in the heart and brain, were poisoned, caught a nasty disease, suffered some magically induced mental illness and are suffering from frostburn, sunstroke, starvation and thirst. Let me just fix that. (casts heal)

Fighter: Hey - it didn't fix my missing pinky!

Cleric: Nahh mate, can't help you.... need a different spell for that.

See for me healing has always fixed what was still there. But if anything was cut off or missing then it wouldnt heal it as its not part of the body and regeneration would replace those parts.

Though in the way of maiming. I know the Aasimar Sun Mage that I am playing in Bardstephenfox's game recently took two crits from Gnolls with bows. One through the throat and the other tore off the side of his face. While he did recieve healing I plan on keeping some sort of scar from it and building that into his characterization.

 

[Terry Edwards]

I maim if it feels like the right thing to do. That is if it is theatrical and serves to hieghten a dramatic moment one of the PCs is likely to make a bodily donation. I do not discuss the possibility with players ahead of time, that would ruin a good surprise and it is usually not something I plan ahead of time. Spur of the moment dis-arming. Okay there was one time that I planned it...

It was a plane hopping campaign and as a running gag I was trying to tack on as many templates as possible to one of the PCs. Long story short he got caught between two cubes on Acheron as he was diving into a tunnel in the center of one of the cubes. I had planned that anyone failing their reflex save would lose a limb to the collision, he rolled a 1 on the save and survived the death from massive damage Fort save so I took all of his limbs. However, they were there to visit the artificier that lived in the center of one of the cubes and he was kind enough to mechanize the PC as a favor. Too bad the campaign ended before I got him to the demon spawning grounds in the abyss.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

The Rolemaster critical charts can give you some good maiming results.

I remember one (of the few) Rolemaster games I ran, my ex-wife's character ended up missing an arm from one of the first battles and then got paralyzed when an iron golem slammed her head, compressing her spine and severing her spinal cord.

On another character, a goblin got a good enough critical to slash the PC alchemist's chest twice, chop off one hand and behead him with a single attack.