I am currently running the Shackled City Adventure Path under Pathfinder rules. Combat tends to last too long and so I am considering implementing a gritty variant into my next campaign - bleed.
<bigger>Bleed</bigger>
Anyone hit by a slashing or piercing weapon in real life is left with an open bleeding wound. This rule introduces that level of verisimilitude without making a huge mess. Living beings, unless otherwise specified, when struck with a slashing or piercing weapon will suffer 1 point of bleed per damage die rolled.
For example, Phobus strikes Ferris with his falchion and rolls 2d4 for his damage dice. This inflicts a wound of 2 bleed damage each round afterward, with the damage taken at the end of Ferris’ turn. If Ghanis strikes Ferris later in the round with his rapier for 1d6 points of damage, this increases Ferris’ total bleed to 3. If Dmitri the rogue sneak attacks Ferris with his dagger for 1d4 + 2d6 damage then Ferris’ bleed damage goes up to 6. If Dmitri has the Bleeding Strike Rogue talent, each die causes two points of bleed.
To stop bleed damage, a character must either receive healing treatment or survive long enough for his or her body to begin mending. A healer may make a DC 10 + total bleed check to bind a character’s wounds and stop the bleed. This consumes one use of a healer’s kit. Magical healing cures bleed instantaneously. If a healer’s kit is completely emptied, the situation becomes direr. Some supplies can be acquired spontaneously with an appropriate Survival check for the area; if this is successful the check becomes DC 15 + total bleed. If the Survival check is failed, the healer must improvise almost everything, making the DC 20 + total bleed.
In the case that there are no healers and a character cannot treat their own wounds, a Fortitude save may be attempted on rounds that the character can focus on stopping bleeding instead of attempting a Heal check. Using his or her hardiness to stop bleeding is difficult, the DC is 20 + (2 x total bleed). Each attempt is a full round action.
To preserve the Death’s Door rule, bleed is slowed when the character becomes unconscious as the character enters shock. Characters with less than 5 bleed are dying as normal. For every 5 bleed while conscious, a dying character will lose an additional hit point each round as they attempt to recover. If the dying character successfully stabilizes, they recover from all bleed.
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What are thoughts on this? I have not yet play tested the variant. Any ideas for how bludgeoning weapons should work? I have considered that each die of bludgeoning damage causes 1 point of damage that cannot be healed through magical means.
Any ideas?
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That certainly is gritty. Personally, I wouldn't use these rules in my campaign. Having to track how much bleed a character has adds more to remember as well as more math to do each round (I speak from experience with GameMastery's Critical Hit Deck, which uses a bleed mechanic).
Also, I tend to view hit points as more of an abstraction than an actual meter of life. Yes, the killing blow is always an actual injury, but any random hit against AC isn't necessarily a wound. That is, taking 8 damage might not mean an actual stab wound so much as a heavy strike against your shield, adding to the stress of battle. This helps explain why 10th level fighters can be stabbed by a longsword 10 times in a row and still dance around like nothing happened.
If you want to speed up combat, there are a number of other tips I'd suggest using before actually changing the mechanics of the game.
Just off the top of my head:
- Have everyone roll attack and damage at the same time. If they miss, ignore the damage roll.
- Have spellcasters keep a sheet of notes with the rules for the spells they prepare/use most often. This includes marking down the final result of common buff spells.
- Same as above for fighter types that use various combat maneuvers.
- Same as above for NPC stat blocks. Basically, you want to reduce page-flipping during combat.
- Use a single initiative roll for all characters controlled by a single person. I.E. the bad guys all go at once, the druid and his companion act on the same turn, etc.
- Have unnamed NPCs die at 0 hp; or, more accurately, don't bother rolling stabilization checks for unnamed NPCs.
- Use grappling/tripping/disarming sparingly. Anything that involves multiple opposed rolls slows down combat.
