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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Johnny Angel" data-source="post: 3423858" data-attributes="member: 13334">Have you playtested this?  It seems to me that the massive damage system as it is punishes people for not putting their highest stat in CON.  Plus, a lucky hit can put a character out of the action, dramatically changing the balance of an encounter out of pure blind chance.  Characters should feel that something is at risk when they engage in combat, but one unlikely but devastating die roll shouldn't be the main threat hanging over their heads.  I like the way some other games give you different wound levels instead of hit points, and these wound levels have an effect on your ability to function.  I'm thinking here of Savage Worlds, specifically, or Paranoia.  I've considered creating a damage track like you get in Alternity with different effects as you get down the track, only based on hit points rather than your CON score.  But this would require a modification of my chargen spreadsheet and would also de-standardize the sheet, making it less useful to anyone else out there who might be taking advantage of it.  But your idea of a Massive Damage track that would be separate from hit points could serve such a function with little extra book-keeping.  Hit points would still be an abstract counting coup, and characters could be nickled-and-dimed into submission, but I can see this making combat feel more deadly -- characters would find themselves woefully debilitated -- while what it really does is cushion the sudden death factor. Furthermore, this can be integrated into the medical system.  In my game I have elaborate rules to deal with healing so that it's neither magical ('poof' you're healed) nor is it nearly as limited.  My campaign is a future campaign, after all, and field medicine is better, but not nearly as good as the Plastiflesh from d20 Future.  I would probably want to assign a different Treat Injury DC to each level of the Massive Damage Track.  I'm also thinking that the effects should be ones that can't be effectively healed in the midst of combat.  Also, it seems that with this system already cushioning Massive Damage, it's possibly overly generous to have stage 3 be Disabled.  I'm thinking Dying is more like it, but if the person is stabilized they become Stable instead, and if brought up to at least 0 hp they become Disabled, or if more they are In Shock (nauseated).Possibly, it would also make sense for Shaken and In Shock to stack, since it doesn't make sense that a person worse off, although reduced to one action, would take that action without the penalties he would have had before he got shot again.It also occurs to me that you could have the three-stage Massive Damage track for Heroes and the regular Massive Damage rules for Ordinaries.</blockquote>

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