NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5713299" data-attributes="member: 53980">I've talked to people who've complained to me that one of 4e's biggest shortcomings is that nothing in 4e (aside from minions) can be one-shot.  That certainly isn't my cup of tea, but it appears that some people like that sort of thing.I still vaguely recall that back in the day we occasionally used a hit location table with critical hits.  The worst effect on that table, sitting right around 100% (or maybe 98-100%?) was decapitation.  If you rolled decapitation, aside from the rare instance of someone who could live without a head, it was instant death.There were numerous other "death-spiral" effects on that table that could quickly end a character's career, such as limb loss.  IMO arterial bleeding fits right in.There are ways around the inconvenience created by a swingy system.  When we used those critical hit tables, we usually made a "back-up" character or two, because odds were pretty good that a few characters would die sooner than later.  Admittedly, nowadays we like to get a bit attached to our characters, which is why we haven't used those tables in a long time.I assure you, I understood the implications of bleeding when I designed it.  It's intentionally brutal.  I put it in because it seemed like something that at least some people who like gritty games would want.  There could even be two tables for the gritty sub-system; one with only hindering injuries, and an expanded table that includes deadly injuries like bleeding and decapitation.  There's no reason why an optional ruleset couldn't have a "dial" for grit.</blockquote>

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