More on penalties once my brain warms up.
I was saying to be careful about making the effect "too severe". The reason the PC making more rolls than an individual monster matters is because of this severity.
If it's a minor inconvenience, then you are right, it's probably in favor of the PCs.
If it's a longterm effect (like a maiming effect, etc), then the monster will die before it's "full duration" comes to effect, while a PC will see that effect for as long as it can last.
Losing a hand on a monster lasts for a couple rounds, losing a hand on a PC can last a horribly long time.
Personally, I'm not so concerned with 'whom it favours' as much as 'does it make a good D&D story/game'.
If being maimed makes it good for the narrative without ruining the gameplay, I'd say permanent injuries aren't an issue. However, D&D/ Pathfinder revolve a lot around a character's 'built' (I hate this term!), which can easily be ruined since tactics and styles cannot be easily interchanged and retrained (without losing much of your efficiency anyways).
In other games like Warhammer RPG where combat styles are less specialized and less dependent on abilities that you had to purchase with experience, permanent injuries can work. It even makes it part of its charms.
In D&D where your character has been developed as a two-hander since level 1, losing a hand is a bigger deal than a leg injury than prevents the use of the dodge feat for example. For the swashbuckler type however, losing the dodge feat and the whole tree that derives from it can be more disastrous than losing a hand that can be replaced by a hook.
That's why I'm a bit cold about permanent injuries in 3.x era of D&D.
'findel
That's why I'm a bit cold about permanent injuries in 3.x era of D&D.
They can still work, but you need a willing player.
A few years ago I ran a marathon weekend session of Legacy of Fire 1. During the session, an enemy gnoll managed to score a crit with its shortbow on a PC (who was also a gnoll...)
We drew a crit card, which told us that it was a leg shot and he lost 5 feet of movement. My ruling at the time was that he could accept healing in-combat, but without a heal check to remove the arrowhead, the 5ft penalty would remain indefinitely.
Here we had a player who thought that was nothing short of awesome and has gladly retained the move penalty even to the present day.
--
Now, that's a nice story, but I am totally against the inclusion of permanent maiming in the game. The best rule would suggest maiming for those GMs/Players who want it (sometimes an eyepatch is awesome), but it really shouldn't be something foisted upon you by the luck of the dice and a cold reading of the rules.
The question about "what you've experienced" was asked, and that was my answer.
Maybe no one here intends to include maiming or longterm, drastic penalties, however I have seen called shot and fumble systems that included such drastic effects.
I can't know what you are thinking beyond the words you've said, so I felt it was appropriate to air this potential hazard in an injury system.
Take my post only as cautionary words from experience.
Well, I think the issue of maiming is central to the discussion (by way of fumbles, which are not so much relevant).
My thoughts are as above. Maiming can be great, but it shouldn't be random.
Dotting.
I just want to make it known that I've hit a wall with this one. Usually I start these thinktank threads to test out an idea that I think is pretty good — often one that came to me in a dream!
This one I started because I wanted to nail down some good reason for a damage penalty so that people designing damage penalty rules could come up with something sleek and focused. Kirth's was pretty damn good, but it just didn't kickstart me like I'd hoped.
My own inspiration is sorely absent on this one. I am still hoping for a dark horse to come busting through and shake everyone up with a totally out-there idea.
So, if you have an out-there idea, or something came to you in a dream, regarding damage penalties, I am really eager to hear it!
Oh, no, Helaman, your stuff was fine. I actually kind of took them as State-of-the-rule posts... I only realized now that I haven't directly commented on it.
Let me go back now and do a point by point, maybe it will raise some issues.
Condition: Injured
Once a character receives Wound Damage they are subject to -1 to all rolls. Spell casting becomes 1 phase slower - so a swift spell becomes a move, a move becomes a standard action and a standard action spell becomes a full round action. (option to roll Fort vs damage taken to ignore penalty as a free action if you want another roll)
- This affects casters and melee monsters both.
-1 to all rolls seems about right. Treating actions as a continuum and staging up the spell's action cost is sort of unconventional. It's a logical way to go about it, but it just doesn't feel right to me. A forced concentration check seems like the way to go, but again, what DC? I feel like nobody has nailed a perfect DC formula that actually poses a threat.
Badly Injured: Character Falls below 50% of their total Injury points are subject to the fatigue condition as well as the Injured condition.Near Death: Character falls below 10% of their total Injury points are Exhausted as well as the Injured Condition.
- 25% seems a bit to close to 50% at early to mid levels and leaving it to the last 10% gives characters an option to run... which is not an effective option for Exhausted characters. 10% and 50% are slightly easier to calculate than 25% for those so challenged.
This is more or less exactly what I was suggesting about child conditions, but looking at it now, I'm not sure it's a good idea. Fatigue stacks kinda ugly with injured, if you catch my meaning. Maybe multiple injured conditions would be more clear, because it's pretty easy to say -x to all rolls vs Fatigued being "Str and Dex Rolls".
Conditions are removed once injury points exceed the threshold
I think this is a little ambiguous, but probably fine if I guess your intention correctly. You mean that if you're over 50% wound damage and the heal puts you back below 50% the conditions change, right?
(option to roll Fort vs damage taken to ignore penalty as a free action if you want another roll)
I love this. Maybe not this exactly, but the core concept of "fort save to shrug the damage off". This may be the bit that got me kickstarted, kudos.
I am thinking perhaps it should be a 1-time fort save at the moment of injury, though. The other one seems neat, but it will probably be slow in practice.
Conditions can also be improved by one step, Badly Injured to Injured etc, by a DC20 (cannot take 20) heal (as per heal deadly wounds) roll - the condition is re-established as soon as further injury damage is received.This moves heal to being relevant even in a game that has lots of healing but just isnt quite enough.
This last bit is something I'd like to expand upon. I think we need two states, and I think your idea of triggering on first wound damage and %50 is very good. I don't know if you've played Shadowrun, but their damage penalty is very frontloaded too — easy to make it to light penalties, and hard to make it to the bigger ones.
There, that put me in the thinking mood for sure. We'll see if the spirits visit. Thanks H!
(option to roll Fort vs damage taken to ignore penalty as a free action if you want another roll)I love this. Maybe not this exactly, but the core concept of "fort save to shrug the damage off". This may be the bit that got me kickstarted, kudos.
I am thinking perhaps it should be a 1-time fort save at the moment of injury, though. The other one seems neat, but it will probably be slow in practice.
I like the idea of making it a 1-time fort save, too. This relatively improves infrequent abilities like the Pathfinder Chronicler's Live to Tell the Tale.
EDIT: how about that injured thing giving a -1 on your DCs instead of increasing spell action cost (as right now it's kind of crippling), and instead of having multiple other levels of injury just make the character disabled if he ever has more injury damage than current HP (the way nonlethal damage knocks you out if it exceeds your current HP). this would allow some characters to continue acting (diehard feat, right?), be flavorful, and not require the invention of -too- many new conditions.
EDIT: how about that injured thing giving a -1 on your DCs instead of increasing spell action cost (as right now it's kind of crippling), and instead of having multiple other levels of injury just make the character disabled if he ever has more injury damage than current HP (the way nonlethal damage knocks you out if it exceeds your current HP). this would allow some characters to continue acting (diehard feat, right?), be flavorful, and not require the invention of -too- many new conditions.
Does anyone else hear Kirth laughing? :D
On the caster concentration rolls thing... I think the idea is to avoid creating extra dice rolls.
Actually, I think the Flak/Kirth method of nerfing Spell Save DCs is the best method. It reduces caster competence on close to 1-1 terms compared to martials taking a penalty on attacks. It doesn't add a roll, and it doesn't require unconventional action math.
Damnit Kirth. I was hoping we could be original. Why'd you have to get it right the first time?
There may be issues with Injured triggering on wound damage and heavy damage. When does anyone face half their HP in crit/failed save damage alone? It seems like it would be exceedingly rare, except in parties with no healing at all.
Plus, the unpredictable nature of crits (and the comparative reliability of failed saves) means we've once again devised a system that favors casters. :(
In the end, I feel like maybe wound penalties need to be divorced from the Injury healing method, in order to avoid skewing it toward casters — it should work off of total HP, not just wounds.
I'm finding it really hard to imagine an improvement on Kirth's system of -1 to all rolls and Save DCs at 50%, -3 at 25%. As far as executing the stated goal without any cruft, I think he's nailed it.
Now... that's not what I'm going to do.
I'm going to get little post-it notes, and have people draw from the crit deck when they take wound damage. You write the damage on the post-it, and stick it to the card. The wound will only be healed when the damage is.
Oh, but I'm considering Kirth's on top of this. Lots to think about.
Is -1 spell DC gonna do it? Some spells (ie Magic Missile) dont require saves and that -1 may not work well unless we stack conditions in that spirial we mentioned earlier.
I'm not sure. Certainly the spells I'm most concerned with require saves.
The Fatigued and Exhausted conditions aren't going to put the brakes on a magic missile either.
Is -1 spell DC gonna do it? Some spells (ie Magic Missile) dont require saves and that -1 may not work well unless we stack conditions in that spirial we mentioned earlier.
In earlier editions, magic missile was THE go-to spell when you wanted something very fast and very reliable. Because it was so hard to disrupt (because of the 1-segment casting) it retained usefulness for casters of all levels. I'm OK with that carrying over.
I liked the Injury thing - throwing it out against total HPs goes back to core true but you lose the whole injure/fast hitpoint regaining thing
Well, sort of. I would just have them as separate rules.
Damage penalty would be based on total HP.
Healing rate would use the Injury HP rules. After all, it is little more than a healing-rate houserule, it just happens to be a very cool one IMO.
They can live together, I think.
Thematically it seems Injury (you are hurt) vs HP (you are winded, strained from hectic defense) works best with the penalty mechanism though
Semantically, yes. But it depends on what the damage penalty represents.
The problem really is that damage spells would become a much more reliable means of inflicting penalty than martial techniques. That's bad. At least we want them to be equal, which is the cast if we use the HP total.
These caster vs. martial issues can be tricky, because most people have deeply held opinions on it.
I don't think separating the damage penalties we're working on here from the injury rules previously created is the best idea. Sure, save-or-damage spells may be more reliable than crits, but we can change how frequently they deal injury damage (to be less frequent) or we could think of another way to boost martial-dealt injury damage. One thing we could do is make it so a fireball (or similar spell) only deals injury damage if you fail the save by 5 or more. Then it's kinda like a skill check where if you fail, you fail (bam, full damage), but if you fail spectacularly, then you fall off the cliff (injury damage).
Re: Kirth laughing; yeah, I know I'd seen it earlier in the thread, but in the interests of keeping my posts short & readable I didn't want to spend forever cross-referencing.
I really think a damage penalty system would work nicely in conjunction with the injury house rule. I'd like to see some kind of connection there.
Re: magic missle (and some other spells) not requiring any rolls or saves; that's exactly what's good about them. Like Kirth, I don't see a problem with them keeping a relative advantage through the injured condition.
I don't like multiple steps of injured penalties.
Personally it seems to me that you can have the lighter condition (-1 on rolls & DCs) apply the moment you take injury damage. This represents the fact that you have actually lost blood, you may be distracted by pain, etc. As you take more injury damage, rather than this penalty compounding, you just get closer to being disabled (as someone said earlier, losing HP is its own penalty).
When does anyone face half their HP in crit/failed save damage alone? It seems like it would be exceedingly rare, except in parties with no healing at all.
Was this a response to my suggestion that a creature become disabled when its injury damage is greater than or equal to its current hit points? Note "current" hit points... so here's an example of what I mean.
You start with 100 hit points.
You get hit by a kobold spear, kobold gets lucky, crits, deals, say, 18 damage. You go to 82 and gain the injured condition (-1 on everything). Here, I'd like to see a Fortitude save to negate the condition, but for the sake of argument let's say you failed the save :)
Now assume you take 70 normal damage. Nothing hits you with a critical, you don't fail any saves. Your current hit points are 12; your injury damage is 18. Though you're not necessarily in a critical condition, all the parrying/dodging/etc. has really worn you down on top of your wound from earlier, and if you do too much else your wound may open and you could begin bleeding out. That's disabled—you can take move actions, but strenuous activity causes you to begin bleeding. And, of course, there are some characters that would benefit from this relatively--and those typically aren't casters (I'm thinking of things like diehard and orc ferocity).
To boost reliability of martial-dealt injury damage, we could make something like this...
- As a full-round action, you may make one attack at your full base attack bonus against a target. If you hit, roll damage as normal. Damage dealt in this way is injury damage. (Maybe the DC of the Fortitude save to avoid the injured condition could be @ -5 if the target isn't already injured?)
By default this suggested action would not be compatible with feats like vital strike or cleave. Also, not sure if we'd want to make this an automatic option available to everyone or a combat feat that some martial classes could take (decent BAB requirement?).
Don't let my personal preference for tidy, encapsulated rules stymy the discussion. If you think they can work together, by all means, post away!
Don't let my personal preference for tidy, encapsulated rules stymy the discussion. If you think they can work together, by all means, post away!
Um -- ok! It sounded like your aversion to making them intertwined lay in the Caster Advantage, which I think can be mitigated. :)
Don't let my personal preference for tidy, encapsulated rules stymy the discussion. If you think they can work together, by all means, post away!Um -- ok! It sounded like your aversion to making them intertwined lay in the Caster Advantage, which I think can be mitigated. :)
How?
How?Don't let my personal preference for tidy, encapsulated rules stymy the discussion. If you think they can work together, by all means, post away!Um -- ok! It sounded like your aversion to making them intertwined lay in the Caster Advantage, which I think can be mitigated. :)
*blink*
In the post of mine to which you previously replied, I made two suggestions—one to make injury damage from spells less frequent, one to make injury damage from weapon damage more frequent. I dunno. Could probably brew up other/better ideas, I'm just throwing stuff out there...
*blink*
In the post of mine to which you previously replied, I made two suggestions—one to make injury damage from spells less frequent, one to make injury damage from weapon damage more frequent. I dunno. Could probably brew up other/better ideas, I'm just throwing stuff out there...
Hm. Sorry, yeah, you did say that.
But, I'm hesitant to change the rule that works to accommodate the work-in-progress rule. Maybe it's just me.
Fail-by-five rules are nice, though.
The thing I would want to see most from HP variant rules is allowing more tactics in combat.
Imagine your party's Fighter squaring off against 3 enemy Fighters. In my experience what happens next is that the Fighter doesn't move from that spot until he/she or the enemies are dead. Focus firing enemies one by one, staying in range of the Cleric healing you, and maximizing the number of full attacks you get. Kind of boring.
Now if taking damage meant that you bleed (take extra damage per round) or if being injured meant you can only take half-actions and can't move as quickly suddenly everything changes. You go from focus firing an enemy until it's dead to peppering all you enemies with attacks so that they're all taking damage over time and can't escape as easily.
I think this would more interesting that the way things currently work.
There's potential to make it important for casters too. Say, the more damage you take the higher concentration check you have to make or if bleeding makes it harder to stealth or go invisible to run away because your blood trail can be followed.
I apologize if I'm just re-iterating what's already been said, I haven't had time to read the whole thread.
** spoiler omitted **
More on penalties once my brain warms up.
To put it purely mechanical terms, a Crit is roughly a free second attack. Damage is double. This is not fully true as DR, Percission Damage, and other factors come in, but those are minor in comparison. A Fumble of a dropped sword is the loss of a Move Action, and thus a Full Attck. This means losing anywhere from 1 to 5 attacks. You are a 16th level fighter you fumble the second attack (you have now committed to a full attack) roll and the sword goes flying. You are now out all the iterative attacks for this turn (count 2). You now have to either pick up the sword (assuming you don't have ass of GM who sends it flying out of reach) or draw a new one (move action) you now loose all iterative attacks (count total 5) for the turn.
I won't even count missed AoOs.
Fumbles should be calculated to be no more then the Crit multipler of the weapon used. Yes IMO if you include fumbles, bigger Crit weapons should have bigger fumbles. Same should go for threat ranges. Bigger range more chance of a fumble coming up.
Personally IMO player crits are counter balanced by NPC crits. It's a pure damage tit for tat. There is no good reason IMO beyond "gritty flavor" to make combat more complicated.
Intuitively the ideas are cool, and there is something about giving more penalties as HP go down that is attractive.
That said, I will not implement it for a simple reason: It is a pain to keep track of, especially when using percentages of HP to gain conditions, and especially when there are tons of monsters around.
Think about it, people are going to get hurt pretty much every battle. And quickly too. You're going to have to apply this rules every time for every individual, even for the monsters. This has to be done individually because of different degrees of the penalties to make matters worse.
It depends on the method, and the players.
I'm quite happy with the fumble deck, since some effects are more sever than others, and some simply don't apply (in which case the character gets off scot-free).
I prefer specific to generic penalties for this reason. My players love the fumble deck too, mainly because specificity rewards good planning and encourages role-playing.
"Sorry man, I've got to draw your fumble card... okay 'Dropped Weapon', it's gonna take you a move action to pick up your sword."
"Ah, damn. Okay, that's fine, that's why I keep that +1 shortsword."
I don't intend upon using the Fort save method; I'd prefer these to be static penalties. My reasoning is thus...
I'm right there on the fence with you roll8dn. In my case, I agree that' I'll pass on the fort save — but I do plan to make rage ignore damage as an automatic feature. Barbarians need the help, IMO. And this way I won't have to track which BRB have that power.
sorry just dotting.......
sorry just dotting.......
Just post: "•" ;)
Concerning Damage Penalties:
I like KISS. Kirth's ruling on the matter is as simple and efficient as it can get. It is a very elegant rule (I know this term has been overused, but this time it really is).
Therefore, two 'levels' of penalties:
- -1 to AC, spell saves DC and to all and every dice roll.
- -3 to AC, spell saves DC and to all and every dice roll.
If used with Evil Lincoln's variant HP rule, I'd set the first level on first blood (i.e.: as soon as character receives injury damage) OR when one drops below 50% total HP.
The second level of penalties would kick-in when a character is both injured AND below 50% HP.
I would expect those penalties to be rather harsh and capable of altering gameplay compared to RaW. In this regard, adopting this houserule would have a bigger impact than E. Lincoln's variant HP rule alone. Yet, this would further encourage the fact that combat don't have to be fought to the death, and the feeling that 'injuries hurt'. I wouldn't imagine an animal to fight past the first set of penalties for example (unless dominated, rabid, cornered, etc) and few humanoid encounters would risk it past the second set of penalties.
E. Lincoln makes a good point about criticals being (relatively) whimsical and saving throws (relatively) reliable. While this does indeed favourise spellcasters a bit more, it doesn't bother me much.
There is a point where magic is powerful and caster deserve respect. This rule already bring fighters forward, and the type of magic that would benefit from such a rule isn't of the most problematic type anyways. If we see more fireballs because of this rule, the happier I'll get.
'findel
*** page jump ***
Concerning Damage Penalties:
I like KISS. Kirth's ruling on the matter is as simple and efficient as it can get. It is a very elegant rule (I know this term has been overused, but this time it really is).
Therefore, two 'levels' of penalties:
- -1 to AC, spell saves DC and to all and every dice roll.
- -3 to AC, spell saves DC and to all and every dice roll.
If used with Evil Lincoln's variant HP rule, I'd set the first level on first blood (i.e.: as soon as character receives injury damage) OR when one drops below 50% total HP.
The second level of penalties would kick-in when a character is both injured AND below 50% HP.
I would expect those penalties to be rather harsh and capable of altering gameplay compared to RaW. In this regard, adopting this houserule would have a bigger impact than E. Lincoln's variant HP rule alone. Yet, this would further encourage the fact that combat don't have to be fought to the death, and emphasize the feeling that 'injuries hurt'. I wouldn't imagine an animal to fight past the first set of penalties for example (unless dominated, rabid, cornered, etc) and few humanoid encounters would risk it past the second set of penalties.
E. Lincoln makes a good point about criticals being (relatively) whimsical and saving throws (relatively) reliable. While this does indeed favourise spellcasters a bit more, it doesn't bother me much.
There is a point where magic is powerful and caster deserve respect. This rule already bring fighters forward, and the type of magic that would benefit from such a rule isn't of the most problematic type anyways. If we see more fireballs because of this rule, the happier I'll get.
'findel