Resting, Healing and Wounds - a proposed house rule

[ravenheart]

Here's something I worked up recently. The Moderate Rest shamelessly stolen from 77IM (can't find the thread for the life of me, though!), and the wound system has it's roots in this thread by Rel.

MODERATE REST
✦ Just like Short Rest: A moderate rest works just like a short rest in all respects, except as described here.
✦ Duration: A moderate rest lasts one hour.
✦ Regain Healing Surges: After a moderate rest, you regain all spent healing surges. (You can then spend healing surges if you want, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)
✦ Renew Daily Power: After a moderate rest, you can renew one spent daily power. You select which daily power at the end of the moderate rest. (You also renew all your encounter powers, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)
✦ Requires Adequate Sleep: Similar to an extended rest, you must have slept for at least 6 of the last 24 hours in order to gain any benefit from a moderate rest.
✦ Once per Milestone: You can only take one moderate rest per milestone reached. If you haven’t reached a milestone since your last extended rest, you can’t take a moderate rest.

HEALING SURGES
✦ Unyielding Morale: Whenever you would be hit by a critical hit, you can turn it into a normal hit by spending a healing surge.
✦ To the End: You can avoid making a death saving throw by spending a healing surge. Your condition does not change.
✦ Decisive Recovery: If you have spent all of your healing surges, you can regain a healing surge per tier by expending a daily attack power, as a standard action. See the table below.
✦ Act of Desperation: To use a daily attack power you must have a required amount of spent healing surges per tier of the power. See the table below.

WOUNDS
✦ Critical Wounds: Whenever you are hit by a critical hit, you gain a Critical Wound. Your hit point maximum is reduced by half your healing surge value or 1/8 of your hit point total, whichever is less. Any healing that would heal you beyond this value but less than your original hit point maximum is treated as temporary hit points. If you accumulate another Critical Wounds, you suffer a Lethal Injury. If your temporary hit point maximum reaches your Bloodied value, you are Crippled. You can have up to four Critical Wounds simultaneously.
✦ Lethal Injury: Whenever you fail one or more death saving throws, you suffer a Lethal Injury. Your healing surges heal value is halved. If you gain another Lethal Injury, you are Crippled. You can have up to two Lethal Injuries simultaneously.
✦ Crippled: Your speed is reduced to 2, your carrying capacity is halved and you take a -2 penalty on all saving throws, defenses, attack and damage rolls, and skill and ability checks.
✦ Recovering from Wounds: Make an Easy Endurance check at the end of each extended rest for each Critical Wound you have accumulated; a success indicates a recovery. Make a Moderate Endurance check at the end of each extended rest for each Lethal Injury you suffer, a success indicates a recovery. Make a Hard Endurance check at the end of each extended rest. A success indicates you are no longer crippled. An ally can substitute any Endurance checks when recovering from wounds with a Heal check.

Thought I'd share. What do you think?
EDIT: Couldn't make the table fit very well, so I attached it instead.

 

[Paul Strack]

Hmm. Well, your moderate rest rules mean the party can regain all their surges after two encounters. I am hard pressed to imagine an encounter that would cost the party half its surges without killing them outright, so I think the moderate rest basically means the party effectively has an infinite amount of surges. I am not 100% sure of that, because of the way Lethal Wounds halve the surge value, but that seems to be the net effect.

This means most of the meaningful long-term wounds are in the crits, lethal wounds and crippling. I think you can make the rules much simpler if you ditch tracking healing surges entirely and focus on these other wound effects. I do think you could make a viable alternate wound system by imposing long-term effects to critical hits and failed death saves.

I'd be a bit leery about the crits, though. The number of crits a party member suffers largely depends on lucky, and a string of bad luck could relay hammer one or two party members. If this is something you are OK with, then no worries.

 

[ravenheart]

Hmm. Well, your moderate rest rules mean the party can regain all their surges after two encounters. I am hard pressed to imagine an encounter that would cost the party half its surges without killing them outright, so I think the moderate rest basically means the party effectively has an infinite amount of surges. I am not 100% sure of that, because of the way Lethal Wounds halve the surge value, but that seems to be the net effect.

This means most of the meaningful long-term wounds are in the crits, lethal wounds and crippling. I think you can make the rules much simpler if you ditch tracking healing surges entirely and focus on these other wound effects. I do think you could make a viable alternate wound system by imposing long-term effects to critical hits and failed death saves.

I'd be a bit leery about the crits, though. The number of crits a party member suffers largely depends on lucky, and a string of bad luck could relay hammer one or two party members. If this is something you are OK with, then no worries.

Thanks for the feedback!

The thing with moderate rest is in it's length. It's 1 hour. Sometimes you might have 1 hour. But when the ancient tomb is collapsing, the dark wizard is about to perform his sinister ritual or the maharajah just sent his entire army after you - you won't have that hour. And even if there isn't any imminent danger, resting might mean giving your adversaries more time to prepare for your arrival (assuming they know you're coming), refresh their numbers, reset traps etc. And sometimes adventurers are foolhardy and rush into the dragon's lair; curiosity killed the cat, you know? I do think I need to change one thing in the Moderate Rest write-up, for consistency: [FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]

✦ Renew Daily Attack Power: After a moderate rest, you can renew one spent daily attack power. You select which daily attack power at the end of the moderate rest. (You also renew all your encounter powers, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)

This way it only applies to daily attack power, as the healing surge options also refer to.

I created the healing surge options to help prevent wounds in general, or at least give an alternative to suffering a wound. But I think I sort of got confused when it came to the dailies. Here's a new version:

HEALING SURGES
✦ Unyielding Morale: Whenever you would be hit by a critical hit, you can turn it into a normal hit by spending a healing surge.
✦ To the End: You can avoid making a death saving throw by spending a healing surge. Your condition does not change.
✦ Decisive Recovery: You can regain two spent healing surges by expending a daily attack power, as a standard action.
✦ Act of Desperation: To use a daily attack power, you must spend a healing surge without gaining any other benefits.

This way, there'll always be incentive to use healing surges and still treat them as a form of limited resources. Also, it's a viable option to nova:ing.

The wounds are a bit complicated right? Well, I figured adrenaline would keep them from showing and maybe they are too easily accumulated, so I made them a) avoidable (Saving throws) and b) less messy by removing the clause on temporary hit points etc.

WOUNDS
✦ Critical Wounds: Whenever you are hit by a critical hit, make a saving throw at the end of the encounter. A failure indicates you gain a Critical Wound. Your hit point maximum is reduced by half your healing surge value or 1/8 of your hit point total, whichever is less. For every other Critical Wounds you gain, you suffer a Lethal Injury. You can have up to four Critical Wounds simultaneously.
✦ Lethal Injury: Whenever you fail one or more death saving throws, make a saving throw at the end of the encounter. A failure indicates you suffer a Lethal Injury. Your healing surge value is halved. If you gain another Lethal Injury, you are Crippled. You can have up to two Lethal Injuries simultaneously.
✦ Crippled: Wheneveryou gain a fourth Critical Wounds or a second Lethal Injury, you are Crippled. Your speed is reduced to 2, your carrying capacity is halved and you take a -2 penalty on all saving throws, defenses, attack and damage rolls, and skill and ability checks.
✦ Recovering from Wounds: Make an Easy Endurance check at the end of each extended rest for each Critical Wound you have accumulated; a success indicates a recovery. Make a Moderate Endurance check at the end of each extended rest for each Lethal Injury you suffer, a success indicates a recovery. Make a Hard Endurance check at the end of each extended rest. A success indicates you are no longer crippled. An ally can substitute any Endurance checks when recovering from wounds with a Heal check.

Now, I'm just wondering: should I allow a single recovery check after a moderate rest?

 

[ravenheart]

Ok, I re-imagined the wound system, here's the newest version to the house rules:
[sblock][FONT=&quot]MODERATE REST[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Just like Short Rest:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] A moderate rest works just like a short rest in all respects, except as described here.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Duration:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] A moderate rest lasts one hour.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Regain Healing Surges:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] After a moderate rest, you regain all spent healing surges. (You can then spend healing surges if you want, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Renew Daily Attack Power:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] After a moderate rest, you can renew one spent daily attack power. You select which daily attack power at the end of the moderate rest. (You also renew all your encounter powers, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Requires Adequate Sleep:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Similar to an extended rest, you must have slept for at least 6 of the last 24 hours in order to gain any benefit from a moderate rest.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Once per Milestone:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] You can only take one moderate rest per milestone reached. If you haven’t reached a milestone since your last extended rest, you can’t take a moderate rest.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]HEALING SURGES[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Unyielding Morale: Whenever you would be hit by a critical hit, you can turn it into a normal hit by spending a healing surge.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] To the End: You can avoid making a death saving throw by spending a healing surge. Your condition does not change.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Decisive Recovery:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] You can regain two spent healing surges by expending a daily attack power, as a standard action.
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Act of Desperation: To use a daily attack power, you must spend a healing surge without gaining any other benefits.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]WOUNDS[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Wound Points: Whenever you are hit by a critical attack, fail a death saving throw or are bloodied for the first time in an encounter you gain a wound points. At the end of every encounter where you gained a wound point you must make a saving throw with a penalty equal to the total amount of wound points you have. Failure indicates you are Wounded; if you are already Wounded, you become Injured instead; if you are already Injured, you become Crippled instead. If your wound points exceed your Constitution score, you automatically fail your saving throw. At the end of a short rest your wound points are reduced by your Constitution modifier. At the end of an extended rest your wound points are reduced by your Constitution score.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Wounded: You take a -1 penalty to attack and damage rolls, saving throws, defenses, and skill and ability checks. If you are Wounded, make an Endurance check with a level-dependant Easy DC at the end of each extended rest; a success indicates a recovery.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Injured: You take a -1 penalty to attack and damage rolls, saving throws, defenses, and skill and ability checks. Reduce your speed by 2. If you are Injured, make an Endurance check with a level-dependant Moderate DC at the end of each extended rest; a success indicates a recovery. A failure by less than 5 means you are Wounded instead, but you must take an additional extended rest to recover from it.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Crippled: You take a -1 penalty to attack and damage rolls, saving throws, defenses, and skill and ability checks. Reduce your speed by 3. Your carrying capacity is halved. If you are Crippled, make an Endurance check with a level-dependant Hard DC at the end of each extended rest; a success indicates a recovery. A failure by less than 5 means you are Wounded instead and a failure by less than 10 means you are Injured instead, but you must take an additional extended rest to recover from it.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]✦[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Recovering from Wounds: An ally can substitute any Endurance checks when recovering from wounds with a Heal check.[/FONT]
[/sblock]

All in all, I think it was a mistake messing with hit point and healing surges, too much of an abstraction anyway. Not sure what to do with potions and high-powered healing. Probably needs a ritual to help get rid of wounds.