Suffocation, Thirst, and Hunger as disease tracks

[cmbarona]

The title says it all. I just thought these up, and I'm pretty sure the math is a little (or a lot) off, and the conditions inflicted are pretty similar to one another. Chances are, I also missed a few typos, so please nitpick. What do you think?

Suffocation, thirst, and hunger tracks: These tracks work similarly to diseases, with the following exceptions:

• Not Diseases: Heal checks do not help, and no effect that cures diseases will help.
• Recurrence: This term is abbreviated as [R]. Each of these conditions has a [R] line that indicates the time without breathing, drinking, or eating, that measures how bad the condition is. All [R]s are cumulative until the condition is cured.
• Attack: the condition makes one attack per [R].
• Endurance: the target makes one endurance check per [R], and the [R] sets the DCs as indicated.
• Curing: the target cannot improve past the Initial Effect without breathing, drinking, or eating. Doing any of these will improve the target’s state on the track by one per [R].

Suffocation
[R] Once per round; Special: The DM may want to abbreviate this condition as 10[R] snapshots in non-combat situations (effectively calculating [R] once per minute).
Attack +1[R] + 1/2 level vs. Fortitude.
Endurance improve DC 10 + 1[R] + 1/2 level, maintain 5 +1[R] + 1/2 level, worsen 4 + 1[R] + 1/2 level or lower

The target can breathe normally.
← The target takes a -1 penalty to all attacks, defenses, checks, and saves.
↔ The target has a coughing and/or gasping fit and takes a -1 penalty to all attacks, defenses, checks, and saves, and a -10 penalty on stealth.
↔ Initial Effect The target takes a -2 penalty to all attacks, defenses, checks, and saves.
↔ The target cannot spend healing surges.
↔ The target takes ongoing damage each [R] equal to their level.
↔ The target takes ongoing damage each [R] equal to their level x 2.
↔ The target takes ongoing damage each [R] equal to their level x 5.
→ Final State The target dies.

Thirst
[R] Once per day
Attack +10[R] + 1/2 level vs. Fortitude.
Endurance improve DC 20 + 5[R] + 1/2 level, maintain 15 +5[R] + 1/2 level, worsen 14 + 5[R] + 1/2 level or lower

The target’s thirst is sated.
← Reduce the penalty to -1 and remove the weakened condition.
↔ Initial Effect The target takes a -2 penalty to all attacks, defenses, checks, and saving throws.
↔ Add the weakened, dazed, and slowed conditions.
↔ The target will occasionally hallucinate. The target cannot spend action points nor healing surges.
→ Final State The target dies.

Hunger
[R] Once per week; Special: [R] begins at 1 after the first day without eating.
Attack +10[R] + 1/2 level vs. Fortitude. Special: attacks are made once per day, not once per [R].
Endurance improve DC 20 + 5[R] + 1/2 level, maintain 15 +5[R] + 1/2 level, worsen 14 + 5[R] + 1/2 level or lower

The target is well-fed.
← Initial Effect The target takes a -1 penalty to all attacks, defenses, checks, and saving throws.
↔ Increase the penalty to -2 and add the weakened condition.
↔ Add the dazed and slowed conditions.
↔ The target cannot spend action points nor healing surges.
→ Final State The target dies.

 

[arcseed]

I like it.

But, um.. worsen needs to be exactly one less than maintain, no?

 

[cmbarona]

Blarg. This is what happens when something like this is slapped together. I'll edit the original post...

 

[Crashy75]

Subscribed.

 

[Neubert]

I would remove the "improve" Endurance DC unless you will use the three for magical effects. An affected character shouldn't be able to suddenly have their thirst sated because they have a great endurance skill. Getting air/water/food would automatically remove the effect (maybe with an aftereffect though, like the coughing fit described under suffocation).

I am not sure I understand the attacks and checks per [R] - wouldn't it just be one of those? (Checks, in my opinion).

Also, I would maybe make the initial effect have no penalties, so you can slap it on the characters as soon as they go without any of the three essentials. How long they can go without it is just a matter of how long they can roll well enough

Besides that, I really dig the concept.

 

[cmbarona]

Thanks for the feedback. Perhaps I can tweak the wording, but essentially the attacks per [R] indicate how often they are "attacked" by the condition and how often they make Endurance checks. This separates it from the disease mechanic, which makes attacks upon exposure and Endurance checks every day. Additionally, as the [R]s stack, the effects become increasingly difficult to shrug off. So I should probably make some linguistic turn to differentiate between [R]s as a unit of time and [R]s as a unit of difficulty.

To answer one point, though: a character with a high Endurance can't suddenly have thirst sated without drinking anything. Read the Curing line in the introductory description. The improve DCs are meant to indicate a character's ability to shrug off an effect through sheer force of will and bodily toughness. Additionally, I don't like the idea of instant cures because it implies that people who have gone without food for several weeks are suddenly better after a nice square meal. Hence eating/drinking/breathing improve the state rather than curing the character.

 

[Neubert]

Ah sorry, I completely missed the "Cured" line.

 

[evilgenius8000]

Very nice!!! Saves me the trouble of coming up with my own after learning about the horrendous errata that occured.

 

[ukingsken]

I'm completely onboard with your mechanics here. My only worry is that the mechanic for suffocation would be hard to deal with. D&D doesn't easily lend itself to minutes. Hopefully a suffocating character would occur during combat or even some sort of skill challenge with a trap involved.

My suggestion would be to change it from per minute to maybe every 3rd or even 2nd round. I think it would lend a bit of immediacy to the condition and make it easier for the DM to adjudicate. Thoughts?

 

[cmbarona]

I'm completely onboard with your mechanics here. My only worry is that the mechanic for suffocation would be hard to deal with. D&D doesn't easily lend itself to minutes. Hopefully a suffocating character would occur during combat or even some sort of skill challenge with a trap involved.

My suggestion would be to change it from per minute to maybe every 3rd or even 2nd round. I think it would lend a bit of immediacy to the condition and make it easier for the DM to adjudicate. Thoughts?

I was thinking about this myself. This is definitely one of those grey areas where we walk the line between cinematics and simulation. I like the idea of making it per round (I hesitate to make [R] 2 or more rounds, since people would have the tendency to forget about regularly applying it), but that obviously won't work with my current track. Any suggestions for how it might look? More states and different DCs, obviously...