[Strain-Injury Variant] A Minor Change to Hit Points

[Evil Lincoln]

Vil-Hatarn, your question inspired me to whip up a dying rule.

It would be a small matter to increase the ongoing damage to include all injury damage, which would help with your issue somewhat. If you get Boromir'd by a hundred arrows, you're gonna bleed out awful quick.

But, as written, the Threshold of Death does not have characters die faster from multiple injuries. Your death timer is set by the last attack, which I think it dramatically superior.

[rainzax]

i think that the long-term healing rules as-written will be fine if you interpose a Fort save (or other CON check) between injury and recovery.

high-HP characters tend to have high Fort saves and Constitution anyhow, so this will indirectly address the concern about the relative speed of recovery between high- and low- HP characters (which was admittedly a minor hiccup).

given this, design could be redirected to questions like "With what frequency is the Fort save to be made?" or "What is an appropriate DC for the Fort save?" and such.

[Evil Lincoln]

Sure, with the caveat that it's all kind of irrelevant in most campaigns.

But I'm happy to hash such things out here.

[rainzax]

caveat understood.

so, in the spirit of 'remembering exactly how much damage that final blow dealt' per your other disabled-dying-death thread, in absense of healing (magical or skilled), per injury, maybe a daily Fort save equal to 10+damage must be made, lest the injury fester 1 HP per day, whereby a character cannot recover even strain HP while so festering.

[Technotrooper]

This is what I am currently thinking about:

Recovering from Injury: Untreated injuries do not heal effectively unless the victim succeeds at a daily Fortitude save equal to 10 + the total injury damage. Success allows the wound to heal at the normal rate (1hp/level/day). Injuries treated with the Heal skill also require a similar daily Fortitude save for damage to heal correctly at the normal recovery rate (plus any long-term-care advantages) but may use a Heal check in place of the Fortitude save if it is a higher result.

Trying to keep it really simple.

[Evil Lincoln]

Does anyone have a game where magic healing doesn't exist or is quite rare?

If so, we have about 15 variants here for you to play test. :)

[Jonah "Deadshot" Johnson]

Not entirely sure if this has been brought to the table yet or not but I was looking at the Strain-Injury rules and i realized something.Strain is almost identical to non-lethal damage, and in most of my sessions non-lethal damage rarely gets brought up, so what if we were to replace non-lethal damage with strain? they heal at the same rate and in the same methods. Also what if we used a variant rule from Unearthed Arcane 3.5 and made massive damage thresholds equal to Con Modifier +2/HD. just a suggestion and open to critique

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Indeed, the last iteration of the rule (from the previous page) addresses this.

Quote:

Non-lethal attacks: Non-lethal attacks deal only strain, even on a critical hit or a failed save. While a character still becomes dying when brought to -1 HP or less by nonlethal damage, its condition is automatically stable and does not worsen in subsequent rounds. A character can still die of nonlethal damage if its HP are brought to a negative amount equal to its Constitution score.

Hmm. This doesn't look quite right to me. More "realistic" perhaps, but nonlethal is meant to be an easy-to-use option for capturing or subduing creatures.

I think an earlier version was better, the one where nonlethal attacks dealt strain and if the amount exceeded your HP you fell unconscious at 0 HP.

[Laurefindel]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

I think an earlier version was better, the one where nonlethal attacks dealt strain and if the amount exceeded your HP you fell unconscious at 0 HP.

IIRC, this was brought up to allow bitter cold, severe heat, starvation and suffocation to have potentially lethal consequences without having to re-write their "damage type".

But I understand the issue, since Pathfinder has no mechanics for "holding your blows" other than dealing non-lethal damage (but in the same amount, which might end-up being lethal after all)

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Oh goodie, a new conundrum! I missed working on this one.

[Mir]

Final Blow- Here you have the blow that takes away the last of the creatures hitpoints doing injury damage.

-Just to clarify if something has 20 hp/10 con and it has taken 19 strain damage and 5 injury damage and bleeds the other 6 will this kill it?

This seems odd. I read something above and it sounded like injuries are unpredictable so it is possible for anything to kill you. What's odd here is that it is always that blow that kills you not an earlier one that causes injury.

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Mir wrote:

Final Blow- Here you have the blow that takes away the last of the creatures hitpoints doing injury damage.

-Just to clarify if something has 20 hp/10 con and it has taken 19 strain damage and 5 injury damage and bleeds the other 6 will this kill it?

Yes.

Mir wrote:

This seems odd. I read something above and it sounded like injuries are unpredictable so it is possible for anything to kill you. What's odd here is that it is always that blow that kills you not an earlier one that causes injury.

Injuries result from critical hits and failed saves too. So in the above example, if the 19 damage was from a single critical hit, then that was injury too. The injured PC would have 1 HP and a 19 point wound, but would not be dying.

[Mir]

I went through all the posts here and I was going back and forth on the debate with 3.5. After sorting through it in my mind I realize I agree and disagree with both of you.

I really like the system as it stands but I think it looses something by dropping non-lethal damage. Right now non-lethal attacks do strain damage which is recovered very quickly. I understand the rational but think it falls apart.

Let's say you have someone attacking with a lethal melee attack. They are either not quite hitting (things are getting parried dodged or just scraping a bit) or they are doing real injury with a cut or stab.

If someone is going into a boxing fight though everything converts to not quite a real hit. Boxers in real life are not trying to kill each other (normally) and if someone dies it is a tragic accident. That said though they are getting some pretty solid hits in that are both non-lethal but not something you shrug off in 5 or 10 minutes.

I'm not sure why non-lethal was dropped. Why not have non-lethal attacks do strain damage except on a critical in which case they do non-lethal damage. You have 3 damage types yes but it introduces no new concepts you haven't already. The rules overhead seems almost non-existent. This also allows for a bunch of customization.

Example: Optional base rule change-
Non-lethal attacks do non-lethal damage on a critical.

Optional sub rules:

1) Lethal melee attacks do non-lethal on a role of 20 and injury on a confirmed critical.

---This gives melee attacks a bit more punch and allows a greater guide to narration. No new rolls etc are added. I think after 1 session people wouldn't even think about it any more.

2) Spells with saving throws do strain damage on a save, non-lethal on a normal failed save and injury on a roll of a 1.

---Some comments seem to indicate that people find they don't like that spells do so much more injury damage than melee attacks.

I think I had another thought that was with me as I was drifting off the other day but I can't think of it. I did have one concerning healing though.

3) Heal or Survival skill necessary to heal all strain damage. A ten can be taken. If no-one has the skill only half is healed and the rest converts to non-lethal.

---This seems at first to introduce greater accounting but I don't think it really does. Many characters already have these skills and given you would only need to have one point in one of the two everyone would now put a point in. I think it would add a bit of nice narrative room without really incurring any overhead.

[Mir]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

Mir wrote:

This seems odd. I read something above and it sounded like injuries are unpredictable so it is possible for anything to kill you. What's odd here is that it is always that blow that kills you not an earlier one that causes injury.

Injuries result from critical hits and failed saves too. So in the above example, if the 19 damage was from a single critical hit, then that was injury too. The injured PC would have 1 HP and a 19 point wound, but would not be dying.

I understood this I was pointing out that such injuries will never kill you unless you have already taken enough strain damage that the attack that does injury damage puts you blow 0. None of those other injuries were really life threatening only the one that hit after you got the bruise on your arm.

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Mir, the issues you're raising are valid, but you're brushing up on a level of complexity that is more than I'm personally willing to include. I'd love to see solutions for these issues proposed, but myself I'm trying to keep it simple.

Nonlethal damage still needs work in this variant, you're right. I'm not sure it needs to be a third damage type, though. I rather prefer it as strain. I'm still thinking about this one.

Mir wrote:

never kill you unless you have already taken enough strain damage that the attack that does injury damage puts you blow 0. None of those other injuries were really life threatening only the one that hit after you got the bruise on your arm.

I consider it a feature that you can be grievously injured but still remain conscious, or that the system would reflect something like a deep stab wound well before you ran out of HP. These situations occur in real life injury with some frequency.

Recall that Strain-Injury is really just a rule about recovery rates. Injuries don't recover on their own. That is the penalty for being injured vs. strain — it consumes resources to heal (or in a low-magic or low-healing campaign, it poses a much greater problem).

[Charender]

I was thinking about the non-lethal damage issue, and here are some of those thoughts.

- If someone swings at you and you avoid it via great effort(IE strain) it really does not matter if they were trying to do lethal or non-lethal damage.

- If someone lands a telling hit(IE a critical hit) with an attack that deals non-lethal damage, you really shouldn't receive an injury from that, but it would be very fatiguing, just like strain.

- Non-lethal damage is easier to recover from than lethal damage, just like strain is easier to recover from than injury.

So overall, I think treating non-lethal damage as strain is the way to go. non-lethal damage and strain have more in common than they have differences. I would add the following exceptions.

-Non-lethal damage sources never cause injuries.
-If you are dropped by strain damage(IE a non-lethal hit that cannot be converted to injury), you are knocked unconscious with no chance of bleeding out.

[Laurefindel]

Charender wrote:

-Non-lethal damage sources never cause injuries.
-If you are dropped by strain damage(IE a non-lethal hit that cannot be converted to injury), you are knocked unconscious with no chance of bleeding out.

Isn't this what's in the variant document already?

But I agree with Charender: Non-lethal doesn't need to be a different type of damage, just a different type of attack (i.e. one that never deals injury)

[Mir]

For me I will be including non-lethal damage. I find the difference between strain and injury to far and really think something is lost by dropping it out. I will probably only use it when people use non-lethal attacks which is at best 5% of the time. When they are doing non-lethal attacks there is no need for injury damage so in most combats only two kinds of damage are being tracked. Either injury and strain or non-lethal and strain. The additional overhead here I see as tiny and a non-issue. If I used some of my additional optional rules the overhead would increase but I would only consider these if I wanted a much grittier campaign.

[Threeshades]

So I'm in a campaign that uses Strain-Injury now, and i searched the rules up and down but can't find the answer to a critical question:

When does a character become incapacitated and start dying? When they hit 0 strain, or 0 injury, or in either case? And is it going to be strain or injury damage (probably injury but it should be clarified) they suffer while bleeding out? Oh and when are they dead -(CON) Injury or 0 injury?

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Threeshades wrote:

When does a character become incapacitated and start dying? When they hit 0 strain, or 0 injury, or in either case? And is it going to be strain or injury damage (probably injury but it should be clarified) they suffer while bleeding out? Oh and when are they dead -(CON) Injury or 0 injury?

A character becomes incapacitated at zero Hit Points. Remember, strain and injury are damage types that both draw from the same pool of hit points. They are not separate pools like Vitality Points.

So when strain +injury > hit points, the character is incapacitated. If the damage was lethal, then they are also bleeding.

I personally treat bleeding damage as strain.

[Threeshades]

Ah okay, now I get it. Thanks!

[Helaman]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

Threeshades wrote:

When does a character become incapacitated and start dying? When they hit 0 strain, or 0 injury, or in either case? And is it going to be strain or injury damage (probably injury but it should be clarified) they suffer while bleeding out? Oh and when are they dead -(CON) Injury or 0 injury?

A character becomes incapacitated at zero Hit Points. Remember, strain and injury are damage types that both draw from the same pool of hit points. They are not separate pools like Vitality Points.

So when strain +injury > hit points, the character is incapacitated. If the damage was lethal, then they are also bleeding.

I personally treat bleeding damage as strain.

Updated my House Rules to the same. Makes more sense.

[Broken]

Hey, instead of 10%, because math, why not heal the fortitude save bonus?

and instead of 1%, con mod?

Just to be able to look at character sheet and go - I heal that.

Either way, this super cool.

[rainzax]

hey forum,
i will be implementing this rule into my game starting in two weeks.

i have 5 triggers which turn strain into injury:

1) felling blow
2) save fumble
3) critical hit
4) trap damage on surprise round (!)
5) massive damage

also using Technotrooper's variant above:

Recovering from Injury: Untreated injuries do not heal effectively unless the victim succeeds at a daily Fortitude save equal to 10 + the total injury damage. Success allows the wound to heal at the normal rate (1hp/level/day). Injuries treated with the Heal skill also require a similar daily Fortitude save for damage to heal correctly at the normal recovery rate (plus any long-term-care advantages) but may use a Heal check in place of the Fortitude save if it is a higher result.

I will add - failure contracts filth fever.

question - yes this will never come up - but should a trained Heal check get a +10 to the roll?