Per-encounter injuries: a vitality/wound point system

[Lonely Tylenol]

Preamble
With 4th edition (and recent 3.5 books) moving toward a more per-encounter resource management system, I've been trying to envision what it would look like to have a system that allowed the characters to go adventuring for more than 15 minutes before they have to rest for 8 hours would look like. To this end, I've put together the following system that tries to rework hit points into a renewable resource. The desired effect of the system is to keep the meatshields in the party fresh for the next combat just as much as the warlock or the dragon shaman or the wizard with reserve feats is.

I envision a slowed system of damage attrition that allows the PCs to take a beating and then move onto the next combat ready for more action. I want it to deal with the problem that Mike Mearls describes where the first three of your four combats per day are extremely easy, while the fourth is murder. I expect that with this system, the PCs will face multiple encounters that are two or three ELs above the party level, will slowly be worn down, and will eventually have to rest to recover wounds.

The System

• You have 5 wound points (WP) in addition to hit points.
• You may recover hit points at a rate equal to your Con bonus (minimum 1) X your level every minute of uninterrupted total rest.
• Your wound points are depleted in specific ways.
  • On a successful critical hit, you lose a number of wound points equal to the weapon's critical multiplier -1, but you do not lose additional hit points.
  • When your hit points are equal to 0, you lose 1 wound point.
  • Your wound threshold is equal to three times your Con bonus (minimum 3).
  • Once your HP are 0, you lose 1 wound point every time you take cumulative hit point damage equal to your wound threshold. For example, if your Con is 14, your wound threshold is 2, so you lose 1 WP at -6 HP, -9, HP, etc. If you take damage in excess of multiples of your wound threshold, you take the appropriate number of wounds. For example if you have a wound threshold of 2, and you have 3 HP left, if you take 13 HP of damage you lose 1 WP for having 0 HP, then 1 WP for having -6 HP, then 1 WP for having -9 HP, for a total of 3 WP.
• Once wounded, you suffer the following penalties:
  

  Wound points   Effect
  5+           No effect.
  4            -1 to all attack rolls, saves, and checks.  To cast a spell, you must make a concentration check with a DC equal to 15 + spell level.
  3            -2 to all attack rolls, saves, and checks.  To cast a spell you must make a concentration check with a DC equal to 15 + spell level.
  2            -5 to all attack rolls, saves, and checks.  To cast a spell you must make a concentration check with a DC equal to 15 + spell level.
  1            -10 to all attack rolls, saves, and checks.  Your movement is reduced to half.  To cast a spell you must make a concentration check with a DC equal to 15 + spell level.
  0            Unconscious.  If you suffer an additonal wound, you will die.  You are dying, and will die in a number of rounds equal to your constitution score unless you are stabilized.  If you stabilize and subsequently become conscious without first being healed, you regain 1 wound point.

• Nonlethal damage is still tracked separately from lethal damage. Add lethal and nonlethal damage together to determine whether you lose wound points when you take damage. When you reach 0 wound points, you are not dying if the total of your nonlethal damage is greater than the total of your lethal damage. If this changes due to taking additional lethal damage, you are dying.
• You normally recover 1 WP per day of complete rest. A DC 25 heal check will increase this to 2 WP.
• Healing magic functions differently. In addition to their normal function, the cure X wounds spells can heal a number of wound points equal to their level. In order to use these spells in this manner, they must be cast on a character at the beginning of a rest period. After 8 hours of uninterrupted rest, the character regains the WPs provided by the spell. This is in addition to the WP gained due to a full day of complete rest, if applicable. The heal spell will restore all lost wound points when used in this manner. Any spell that restores hit points, including Cure minor wounds stabilizes any dying character, even if the character is dying as a result of wounds and still has hit points remaining. Heal restores all lost wound points. You may not increase your wound points beyond 4 unless you have hit points remaining.
• If you regain wound points through some means (such as becoming conscious after stabilizing), it does not also increase your hit points unless those means would also restore hit points normally.
• The Diehard feat gives you an additional wound point (normally increasing your total to 6). This can be taken multiple times.

Notes
So long as the PCs can avoid taking wounds, they should be able to recover all their HP between combats, so long as they're not dashing between encounter areas without taking a breather after each fight. If they rush, they don't get back their HP, which turns into a tool the DM can use to play with pacing.

I have deliberately avoided providing a way for characters to regain wound points "in the field". I want it to be dangerous to continue to adventure once you've built up some wound points, and engender a sort of "limping back to town" aesthetic. Once you take more than one or two wounds, you start to become a liability. However, if you're only a little wounded, you can still soldier on with few penalties. I also like the idea that once you're hurt, you start to look and act like it, so you don't see a party of adventurers coming back into town with 2 HP each, but just as capable of action as if they were fresh. If you want the characters to be able to adventure longer (or indefinitely, with my spellcaster rules, below) just allow the cure spells to heal wounds immediately, without the resting period.

I also like the idea of the cure spells becoming more powerful at higher levels, which, under the current system, they do not. They actually become comparatively less powerful since they add 1 die of healing every two character levels, while characters advance 2 HD every two levels. In this system, cure light wounds heals one wound on a 1st level character or a 10th level character. Cure critical wounds cures four wounds. That means that higher-level characters are back in the saddle much faster than lower-level characters after taking crippling injuries. It also has the pleasant side-effect that the cleric can do something other than just heal all the time. If a PC can just hang on until the end of a combat, he'll probably get his HP back, so a cure spell used to restore HP during combat may be a waste, but may also prevent wounds that will require a trip back to town to fix up.

Given that the fighter-types will get more mileage out of this than, say, a wizard will, I expect that the standard spellcasters will run out of juice long before the bashers are ready to call it a day. To remedy this, I suggest a house rule I've used in the past to try to extend the adventuring day: Allow spellcasters to recover their bonus spells if they rest for 1 hour. If time is of the essence or there's a dread creature on your tail, this won't help, but if you can manage to find a relatively safe place in the dungeon for a breather and some iron rations, you can be useful again for an encounter or two. Of course, if you use the optional rules for cure spells I mention above, that means that the clerics will be able to take an hour and remove most, if not all, of the wounds from everyone, which will allow the party to theoretically adventure without stopping forever.

If you are like me, and don't like save-or-die effects, you can alter them to instead inflict wounds. I recommend that they reduce the target's HP to 0, and inflict a number of wounds equal to their level -4, so that a 9th level save-or-die effect will reduce a normal, unwounded character to 0 WP, at which point that character will be unconscious and dying. If already wounded, the spell would kill the character. Spells less than 5th level (e.g. Phantasmal Killer) would not reduce the target's HP, and inflict a single wound. If this reduces the target to 0 WP, it falls unconscious and is dying. If the spell would reduce the target's WP past 0, it instead reduces it to 0.

edit: For optional and supplementary rules, as well as some Q&A, check out my posts which follow.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Over all I quite like it. A bit concerned about the bit on 'save-or-die' (hereinafter referred to as SoD) effects.

As I read it it seems that a 6th level SoD would reduce a character to 0hp and inflict 1 wound but a 5th level SoD would leave hp untouched but inflcit 5 wounds. With wounds being much more dangerous and much harder to heal I would say the 5th level SoD was much more effective. Is this intended or am I just confused?

Mm, just an aside: am I the first to use SoD as an acronym? Hope so. I like the sound of 'Dirty SoDs' and 'SoDding wizards.'

cheers, DoD

(SoD DoD!?)

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Over all I quite like it. A bit concerned about the bit on 'save-or-die' (hereinafter referred to as SoD) effects.

As I read it it seems that a 6th level SoD would reduce a character to 0hp and inflict 1 wound but a 5th level SoD would leave hp untouched but inflcit 5 wounds. With wounds being much more dangerous and much harder to heal I would say the 5th level SoD was much more effective. Is this intended or am I just confused?

My bad. It was actually supposed to be 1 wound, no HP, and with the caveat that you can't go below 0 or be rendered dying. I wrote it out pretty late, so didn't spot the error. It's fixed now.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

An addition, and an optional rule

Massive Damage

• If you take damage over the massive damage threshold (typically 50, see the PHB), you must make a DC 15 Fort save, or lose 1 wound point.

Option: HP caps
As an extra little hindrance that makes having a wound suck even more, you might try adding the following optional penalty: Each time you suffer a wound, your maximum HP are reduced by an amount equal to your hit dice. If the wound is removed, your max HP are increased by that amount again.

For example, Ed is a 4th level fighter with 28 HP who loses 1 wound point. His max HP drops to 24, exactly as though he had suffered a -2 Con penalty. Later, he takes another wound, and his max HP drops to 20. Even later, back at the inn, he drinks a potion of Cure Moderate Wounds, and goes to sleep. Overnight he regains 2 WP, and his max HP returns to 28.

 

[LonePaladin]

Assuming you would be applying these rules to all creatures and NPCs equally, how would it be used for things that do not have vital organs (such as elementals) or generally don't feel pain (such as undead)? Also, how do you account for fast healing and regeneration (the ability, not the spell)?

When you are at negative hit points, do you take an additional wound when the cumulative damage equals or exceeds your wound threshold? You stated the latter, but your example doesn't match the numbers you gave. (Specifically, you stated that the wound threshold is your Con bonus × 3; in the example, you had someone with a +2 Con bonus, which should be a wound threshold of 6 — you said 2 in the example. You then have him take another wound at –6 and –9 hp.) If it's actually six, then the example should have either –7 and –13, or –6 and –12. Someone with a 16 Con who is unwounded before reaching 0 hp should be able to last until he's at –36 hit points (and odds are he'll stabilize well before this).

If you make it a flat number, like Con + 1, then someone with a 12 Con can only last until –8 or –9 hit points. Your average Joe, with a 10 Con, can only stay alive to –5 hp this way. Maybe make it 2 × Con bonus? It would let average people last about as long as the current rules dictate (unless they take a crit beforehand), while characters with a higher Constitution will have a better chance of survival.

Also, in this system, people will start favoring weapons with very high critical multipliers, such as the scythe and pick. While they won't get critical hits very often, the ability to do three wounds — and give their target a minimum of a –5 penalty on all rolls in the bargain — is hard to pass up.

There are also some spells that are dependent on the 'save or die' routine to function fully, such as the 9th-level detonate spell from the Spell Compendium. This one specifically causes a fireball-like explosion to burst from the target, which dies in the process. A successful save just inflicts damage to it, but if it dies anyway, it explodes as if it had failed the save.

What about spells that aren't necessarily 'save or die' but have a special effect on the victim's death, such as disintegrate? Are they changed by this system?

As for the optional rule above? Anyone who gets badly hurt loses even more hit points, and is more likely to end up at 0 hp or less, which means they're more likely to take additional wounds. Coupling a combat penalty with additional hit-point loss seems a little harsh.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Assuming you would be applying these rules to all creatures and NPCs equally, how would it be used for things that do not have vital organs (such as elementals) or generally don't feel pain (such as undead)? Also, how do you account for fast healing and regeneration (the ability, not the spell)?

Fast healing works like it normally does, and impacts hit points. Under this system it turns into "being really hard to wound". You could, if you like, tack on "recover 1 WP per hour per point of fast healing," but I don't suppose it will come up often.

Regeneration still converts lethal into nonlethal damage. Nonlethal damage causes wounds just like lethal damage. If you have more non-lethal than lethal damage you don't begin to die at 0 WP, you're just unconscious. However, you look like Rocky in the last five minutes of the movie, and it takes just as long to recover. If you have regeneration, you recover WPs at the rate of 1 WP per round per 5 regeneration.

When you are at negative hit points, do you take an additional wound when the cumulative damage equals or exceeds your wound threshold? You stated the latter, but your example doesn't match the numbers you gave.

It's supposed to be "equals".

If you make it a flat number, like Con + 1, then someone with a 12 Con can only last until –8 or –9 hit points. Your average Joe, with a 10 Con, can only stay alive to –5 hp this way. Maybe make it 2 × Con bonus?

Well, actually, it's 3 x Con. My players fought a barbarian last week who took forever to go down for this reason. However, he really started to show that he was getting seriously wounded because he started missing them a lot with the -5 and -10 penalties.

It would let average people last about as long as the current rules dictate (unless they take a crit beforehand), while characters with a higher Constitution will have a better chance of survival.

With 3 x Con (min +1 x3), the average commoner goes down at -12 and dies outright at -15.

Also, in this system, people will start favoring weapons with very high critical multipliers, such as the scythe and pick. While they won't get critical hits very often, the ability to do three wounds — and give their target a minimum of a –5 penalty on all rolls in the bargain — is hard to pass up.

They do 2 wounds. You take wounds equal to the crit modifier -1.

Anyway, I wouldn't care too much if there was an increased focus on scoring crits in this way. In my game, I only use this system for PCs and "named" characters, so regular monsters still go down at 0 hp.

Now, consider this. In my old Age of Worms campaign, the same raging barbarian I mention above killed a PC in one shot by rolling a crit on the first round of combat, doing 58 points of damage with his greataxe (x3 crit modifier). He died due to the bonus damage alone, without even considering the rolled damage or the massive damage save (which I don't use anyway). Under my system, the PC would have taken 2 wounds, been at full HP and -2 on his rolls, and would have been a bit haggard but still good for the fight.

There are also some spells that are dependent on the 'save or die' routine to function fully, such as the 9th-level detonate spell from the Spell Compendium. This one specifically causes a fireball-like explosion to burst from the target, which dies in the process. A successful save just inflicts damage to it, but if it dies anyway, it explodes as if it had failed the save.

Yeah, I don't really care about having to shave off a few odd spells here and there if they don't play well with my system. In this specific case, however, you could just apply the appropriate number of wounds on a failed save (5, for a 9th level spell).

What about spells that aren't necessarily 'save or die' but have a special effect on the victim's death, such as disintegrate? Are they changed by this system?

Disintegrate does damage. If it does enough damage to kill you outright (to -15 if you're the aforementioned 10 Con guy), you're disintegrated. If it doesn't, you just take the appropriate amount of HP damage, and wounds if applicable.

As for the optional rule above? Anyone who gets badly hurt loses even more hit points, and is more likely to end up at 0 hp or less, which means they're more likely to take additional wounds. Coupling a combat penalty with additional hit-point loss seems a little harsh.

Yup. That's why it's an option and I spell out that it makes wounds suck even more. It's just something I thought of for people who might not like the whole "getting totally healed to full HP after each combat" thing. It's an option specifically to make things more deadly, and definitely optional.

 

[LonePaladin]

They do 2 wounds. You take wounds equal to the crit modifier -1.

Nope, it's three; those weapons have ×4 damage on a critical hit.

Would you mind re-editing the original post to fix the example text? You might also explain the part about fast healing and regeneration.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Nope, it's three; those weapons have ×4 damage on a critical hit.

Would you mind re-editing the original post to fix the example text? You might also explain the part about fast healing and regeneration.

Whoops. You're right. However, I still don't think it's really a problem. They're all martial weapons, so not everyone has access to them. There are probably more attractive tactics than swinging around a pick, doing 1d6 damage each round, on the hope that you'll crit eventually. The scythe does a bit more damage, but it's a two-handed weapon.

If it bugs you, just remove the line concerning criticals doing wound damage.

There are a few edits that I have to make. I tend to keep my wiki updated, and alter this page less often. As for regeneration and fast healing, they're on page 1, which is good enough for me. I'll add a note to the first post to tell people that there's more below.

 

[King-Panda]

A simple fix to x4 multipliers would be as such:

Weapons with a multiplier of x2 deal 1 Wound point of damage.
Weapons with a multiplier of x3 and x4 deal 2 Wound points of damage.

If something comes up, due to feats, spells, etc., that increases it to x5 or even x6, just have those do 3 WP damage. Seeing as how powerful x5 or x6 is in the normal HP rules, I think it's fair.

I also think that the checks for casting spells while wounded should scale. 5 + level of the spell for 1 WP of damage, 10 + level of the spell for 2 WP of damage, 15+lvl for 3, and 20+lvl for 4. This way, a slightly wounded 1st level caster will have a better than 50% chance (4 ranks and +1 con) to cast any of their spells.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A simple fix to x4 multipliers would be as such:

Weapons with a multiplier of x2 deal 1 Wound point of damage.
Weapons with a multiplier of x3 and x4 deal 2 Wound points of damage.

If something comes up, due to feats, spells, etc., that increases it to x5 or even x6, just have those do 3 WP damage. Seeing as how powerful x5 or x6 is in the normal HP rules, I think it's fair.

Sounds like that would work just fine. That's one of the great things about house rules. They're non-canon, so you can tweak the hell out of them until they suit your style.

I also think that the checks for casting spells while wounded should scale. 5 + level of the spell for 1 WP of damage, 10 + level of the spell for 2 WP of damage, 15+lvl for 3, and 20+lvl for 4. This way, a slightly wounded 1st level caster will have a better than 50% chance (4 ranks and +1 con) to cast any of their spells.

It does scale. Remember, you take increasing penalties to all checks as you get wounded. That includes concentration checks. I'm actually experimenting with a fixed 15+spell level-wound penalty variation for this reason, just to see if I can identify an ideal level of difficulty for my desired play style.