Sustaining Damage Imposes Penalties on D20 Rolls

[Alex]

One problem, is that 'death spiral' effects aren't particularly realistic, so his suggested reasoning is flawed.

Any other reason for it?

Geoff.

I'm pretty sure the 'death spiral' is the intended goal, kind of a knife fighting mentality so-to-speak. I'm not sure I subscribe to it either.

I'm concerned as well that it will slow the adventure down considerably because the party will insist on continually healing up to full hps and that we'll spend more time 'in-camp'.

Also I'm concerned that by lowering attack rolls and saving throws we would effectively be raising ACs and the DCs of spells cast with regard to wounded characters. It seems like this system would decrease the offensive effectiveness of non-spellcasters while increasing the effectiveness of spellcasters, since warriors rely on their attack rolls to hit while spellcasters rely on their opponents saving throw rolls to fail. Or am I just crazy?

Alex

 

[Afrodyte]

I've seen something like this in another system, and it wasn't that hard to keep up with. Basically, along each injury level, you have the adjustment. It's pretty easy to set up if you use pencil for the HP. It'd be set up like this:

Uninjured: (box for total hp) -0
Light injury: (box for writing down 3/4 total hp) -2
Moderate injury: (box for 1/2 hp) -4
Serious injury: (box for 1/4 hp) -6
Critical injury: 0 hp

The only problem would be where to put more hp when you level up without having to recalculate everything. If the hp you get is evenly divisible by 4, you can just distribute accordingly. However, if it isn't, distribute the remainder from serious upwards until you are done.

As far as what the penalty applies to, I'm inclined toward making injuries give temporary attribute damage to physical attributes (Strength and Dexterity mostly*), reflecting how injury makes it harder for characters to exert themselves. This gives a -1 for each injury level to attacks, skill checks, and saving throws depending upon those attributes. This isn't too bad for mid- to high-level characters, although low-level characters would certainly feel it. If you wanted to really lay on how much it sucks to get hurt at any level, increasing the penalty to -6 for light injury, -8 for moderate injury, and to -10 for serious injury might be worthwhile. The average person reduced to serious injury is incapable of moving on his/her own, though not unconscious, and I think that's about right.

*I'm reluctant to penalize Constitution because being reduced to 0 Constitution makes you more dead than being reduced to 0 hp. Also, I'm not sure that broken bones and torn ligaments affect your immune system.

 

[mafisto]

Damage Penalties

The grim-n-gritty variant hit point rules (original) use a similar mechanism. Basically:

75% and below: -2
50% and below: -4
25% and below: -6

The penalty affects attacks, skills and saves.

The math is simple and rarely slows down play. The idea behind it is that wounded people do not function as well as healthy people. There is no bonus for surplus hit points directly, however if one goes from 50 HP to 60, the penalty thresholds change. Which is a bonus, if I'm not mistaken.

Give it a shot. Naturally it will make combat more hazardous, but for both parties. If you hit an enemy hard outright, there's a much lower chance that he/she/it will be able to hit back.

 

[reanjr]

These aren't hard to synch at all -- just set the DC at X + 2 * spell level, and the difficulty of casting the highest-level spell scales with ranks perfectly.

DC 5 + 2 * spell level is almost impossible to fail for those with max ranks, and DC 10 + 2 * spell level gives a higher chance.

Well, I guess what I was referring to was the fact that 2*Caster Level based DCs just don't fit with the way other DCs are done in the system. It's a d20 issue as far as the feel of the system. I sometimes get a little hung up on trying to make house rules as much like RAW as possible.