This is the working set of rules i'm working on for my low magic campaign. This assumption made is there would always be a medic nearby (in a military campaign) but a divine healer is very rare and only infrequently available.
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Natural Healing: under the D20 RAW natural healing is simply too good and allows characters with severed limbs to bounce back to full health after 2 or 3 days of rest. This is not the case under the LCM Ruleset.
Characters recover their Con Bonus, or 1/3 their level (whichever is greater) to a minimum of 1 HP per day. This means that a “master” level character at 9th level would recover 3 HP/day unless he has a really high Con bonus such as a + 4 or + 5. Further this will not heal damage from Critical Hits or Massive Damage and without divine magic healing, or a medic to perform surgery, such a character can expect massive injuries to remain and a permanent reduction in HP, possible stat damage, permanent limb damage, etc. If a character is injured below 0 HP but is stable (no bleed effects), natural healing will mend their wounds at a rate of 1 HP/day until their HP raises to a positive number, at which point normal healing begins.
Treatment for Serious Injuries, Critical Hits and Massive Damage
A character who has taken damage equal to their MDT has suffered a Serious Injury, and will lose one Hit Point every round (or every minute if out of combat) until treated. This requires a successful Heal (1st Aid) Skill check against the targets MDT + 1 per bleed effect they are currently under. The attempt takes a full-round action; several tries can be made until successful. If the character is trying to dress his or her own wounds, apply a – 5 penalty.
Heal Check (First Aid)
A character who is under a bleed effect can receive healing via a Heal check equal to the DC of MDT Fort save + 1 per additional bleed effect they may be under (if any). If successful the Heal check reduces bleeding from 1hp/rd to 1hp/minute if they are still in combat, or 1hp/hour outside of combat. Multiple bleed effects are tracked separately and the effects are cumulative.
Triage (First Aid) A medic may make a Heal check (DC 15) as a standard action to determine the condition of a single creature. With a successful check, a medic may automatically determine whether a creature is dead, dying, poisoned, diseased, knocked out, etc and thus triage who is in the most immediate need of their skills.
Surgery (Serious Injury / Treat Deadly Wounds)
Treat Deadly Wounds completely stops bleed effects with a Heal Check DC of MDT Fort save + 1 per additional bleed effect. Otherwise the skill functions per RAW. REFERENCE There is no penalty to this check if performed in a clean, dry location with suitable equipment available, but a -4 penalty applies if it is performed with less adequate facilities (for example, using incomplete or low-quality tools or an inappropriate location) or -8 if performed with completely improvised equipment(for example, on the ground near in a dirty battlefield using only what can be found nearby). Each attempt will take at least 10 minutes during which time the bleeding damage is basically “on hold” until the check is resolved, failure however applies the additional 10 points (one per minute of bleeding) immediately. Success stops the blood loss with no additional damage taken. Treat Deadly Wounds: restores 1 hp per level of the injured victim, up to the Wisdom Bonus of the healer.
Long Term Care: During long term care the Medic makes a Heal check with a DC of the MDT (minimum 15), success equals an additional + 1 hp/day per 5pts by which the check succeeds. Otherwise the skill is as per RAW.
Ability Damage heals at the rate of 1 pt per 3 days, or 2 pt per 3 days with full bed rest, 1 pt / day with full rest and full time care of a medic / doctor
Effects of Disease – are applied once per hour, a successful Heal Check which beats the DC by + 10 slows progression to once per day. Long Term care with full bed rest also reduces progression to once per day and may attempt to cure the disease once per 3 days with a successful Heal Check vs the DC of the Disease.
Effects of Poison – are applied every round, a successful Heal check slows the poison progression to once per hour assuming the patient is resting. Long Term care may attempt to cure the disease once per hour with a successful Heal Check vs the DC of the poison.
Bleeding out at zero HP = At zero HP the character is unconscious and Bleeding Out (1hp/minute) until they reach their negative Con score. (NOTE: “unconscious” can also be interpreted as “too messed up to do anything” but still give a cool death speech, “Luke…I am your father…”)
Once you are past the negative Con score you are dead. At which point you still continue to lose 1 hp per minute. During this phase healing magic can still bring you back (but only magic can at this point) by healing enough damage to raise you to at least your negative Con score with a single spell or channeling attempt. If you receive such healing your condition is truly stable and you take no further loss of HP from blood loss and may begin natural healing.
Assisting Characters who are bleeding out: A character who is Bleeding Out can be helped with a Heal check equal to the MDT Fort Save + 1 for each additional bleed effect. On a success, the character stabilizes and the bleeding reduces to 1 HP/Hour which allows for additional time for their wounds to be addressed by a competent medic or divine healer. Attempting 1st Aid on yourself is done at a – 5 penalty. A character who does not have the required skill in healing may still assist a character who is bleeding out by apply a full round action to slow the bleed effect. This attempt is made at a + 10 heal check, but the effect ends as soon as the would be medic stops rendering aid.
Magical healing on Bleed Effects is assumed to stop 1hp/rd per dice of the spell used, for example if the victim is suffering 3hp/rd from bleed effects it would require a 3d8 cure spell (or greater) to completely heal its bleed effect, or 3 spells at 1d8 used over several rounds to finally control the blood loss.
Optional More Gritty Bleed Effects if the scaling option for bleed effects vs the initial damage is being used (ie: 30 pts damage = 3hp / rd bleed) then to stop such a bleed effect the magical spell would have to contain 1 dice per 1hp/rd. 3d8 would be needed to stop at 3hp/rd bleed, 5d8 to stop a 5hp/rd wound, etc. In this case the bleed effects must be treated separately.
Un-Assisted Characters: A character who is unconscious and Bleeding Out without assistance is normally doomed to a slow and painful death at the rate of 1hp / minute.
Healing Magic and Raising the Dead
It is generally assumed that healing magic is being used at the time of the injury to avoid long term effects. When used after the fact a person’s life may be spared, but permanent maiming and ability damage which resulted from a severed limb or a blinded eye would still remain. Additional limitations may also be appropriate such as reduced movement rates, ranged attack penalties (in the case of a lost eye), etc. For such permanent injuries stat damage and reduced max HP would be expected.
Raise Dead, Regeneration, Restoration, and similar magics are completely BANNED. Once the character has died they are gone. Death is both serious and permanent.
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Constructive feed back is of course welcome.
Lazlo
Just realized I didn't include my rules on Massive Damage, which are featured heavily in this doc.
Massive Damage Threshold (MDT)
Massive damage: at 1/2 Con Score + (LvL x 2)
Fort Save: succeed on Fort Save with a DC 15 +1 / 3 pts dam taken or suffer the effects of massive damage
Fort Save Failure = unconscious and Bleeding Out at -1 HP for pcs. For generic (unnamed) NPCs however this results in instant death. Named “boss” NPCs are treated the same way that PCs are in this regard.
Fort Save Success = see above “Serious Injury”
Increase MDT by +10 for each size category larger than medium.
Toughness, Endurance and Die Hard feats modify the Massive Damage Threshold by +3 for each feat taken (see skills and feats)
Tough game.
Now, I might like the part about it taking longer to heal naturally, but everyone heals magically anyway, so that's not much of a problem. But you did say "low-magic" so I assume the PCs won't be casting multiple cure light wounds spells every day starting at level 1? If they are, your healing rates don't matter. At all. If they're not, then this makes an interesting change to healing rates. But it will drastically slow down the game. No more "The bad guy will kill the princess at midnight tonight. You must raid his castle, slay his guards, and fight your way up to the top of his tower, maybe 5 or 6 encounters, then face BBEG to rescue her". Your game won't be like that. It will be more like "Well, we charged into the castle but two of us got badly wounded in the first fight, so we retreated to spend a couple weeks healing before trying again. Sorry about the dead princess."
If that's the game you're looking for, where every dungeon takes 6 months of the characters' lives to complete (1 week of adventuring, 24 weeks of healing), then slowing down healing rates AND taking away healing magic is a good idea. And if you just slow down healing rates but you don't take away healing magic, then you haven't changed anything at all.
As for the rest, I challenge your initial premise. What part of RAW says "characters with severed limbs to bounce back to full health after 2 or 3 days of rest"?
First, it's nearly impossible, by RAW, to even sever a limb. I'm not sure I even know of a way (there used to be a "Sharpness" weapon enchantment but that seems to be removed from Pathfinder). Maybe some spell somewhere removes limbs, but I don't know of one.
If a character somehow loses a limb, it doesn't grow back. Ever. Not in 2-3 days of rest, not in 2-3 years of rest. You need magic for that (or natural regeneration but not many players have troll characters).
Maybe you meant that 2-3 days later they would have full HP but still be missing a limb. If that's what you meant, well, that part might be true, but since nobody ever loses limbs (in the RAW ruleset) it's not much to worry about. Even if it is true, there is not much call for one-armed adventurers, so that probably means immediate retirement and rolling another character, so it's still not a problem - except for the Player who has to make a new character.
So, my next question is, how often in YOUR game do people actually lose limbs or eyes or suffer other permanently debilitating wounds? I'm assuming, since you're worried about it, that it actually happens in your games, so I assume you have some other house rules for it? Super deadly and/or maiming criticals, perhaps?
In that case, I will suggest that those rules only serve to hurt PCs. Nobody cares if a PC cuts the arm off of an ogre. Either way, the ogre dies. The GM has millions of more ogres, billions, trillions of them if he wants, all with two fully functional arms; he'll just use some of his spare ogres in the next encounter. But when a PC loses an arm, it's a big deal. Can be a career-ending deal, as in, time to roll a new PC.
So only the PCs are ever inconvenienced by these kinds of rules, which is why Pathfinder doesn't use them in the RAW.
If that is happening in your game, well, at least the players only lose low-level PCs to these super-deadly critical hits. Not too big a deal, they're low level, the players haven't had time to really start caring about them. Easy to replace.
It's high-level characters they really want to keep. They've been playing them for months, gotten to really care about them. It really sucks to lose a high level character.
Fortunately, they have spells like Raise Dead and Regenerate to make sure nobody has to lose high-level characters, even in super-deadly limb-severing games.
But now YOU have these rules that take those spells away. Now even a high-level character can have his career destroyed and force the player to roll up a new character, just because of a lucky roll by a monster?
I'm assuming a lot here, but is that what you're doing?
If I were to play in such a game, I wouldn't care a bit about my characters. In that game, my characters are just a collection of numbers on a sheet of paper. I might not even name them. I expect to lose and replace them so often that I just won't invest any thought into them, certainly not any roleplaying thought, except how to make those numbers really big so they are awesome super-mega OP game-breaking characters - so that they might live a while and I don't have to replace them very often.
If THAT's the kind of game you're going for, then I like your rules.
Thank you for the feedback!
So you are in part right, but only in part. Firstly my campaign is definitely low magic, and lower level, with PC's rarely seeing levels higher than about 10th in most campaigns. As for the availability of healing magic, you are correct: It is rare and never a guarantee to be available (Casters in general are only about 1/5 as common as they are in most campaigns). Combat is much more cautious as a result and good tactics are encouraged (most of my players are prior military so that helps a lot). Simply running head long into the front door of a castle, which will obviously be heavily guarded, is a fast path to heartache. Your assumption that even if the PC's were successful in the first encounter they would not be able to continue on due to heavy injuries is absolutely correct.
On the other hand: There is more than one way to assault a castle, and thinking around the obvious obstacle to discover what "Plan B" might look like is exactly what such rules are intended to encourage. Get players (and DM's) thinking about combat as a dangerous thing once again. You simply go running head first into a bunch of guys hacking at you with swords and axes, and sooner or later they are going to kill you. This is exactly why combat tactics like the Roman Phalanx came into play, to allow the average soldier a chance to survive an encounter which would otherwise have been suicide to attempt. (Check out the movie "The 300" to get a good idea how a shield wall works. Excellent example, very well done.)
On the topic of severed limbs in RAW, I'd draw your attention to the spell description of Regenerate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/regenerate) which clearly states that it works to regenerate missing limbs. So I must disagree that such things don't happen under RAW.
Further take a look at natural healing under RAW (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat#TOC-Healing) and you'll see that it is typically about 1hp per character level per night of bedrest, 2hp/level for a full day of rest, 4hp/level per day with a Heal check, and an additional 1hp/level with a second Heal check (Treat Deadly Wounds). That is up to 5hp/level per day of rest from non-magical means. So yes. They can spring back from virtually any injury with only a couple of days down time under RAW.
Your other question was: Do things like severed limbs regularly happen to PC's in my campaigns? No actually. They are included in the write up for completeness to better aid with understanding the campaign setting. The PC's are generally assumed to have access to magic not commonly available to about 95% of the rest of the world, most of whom are generally struggling just to get by. This level of Have vs. Have-Not was pretty pronounced in history and can still be seen in movies like Lord of the Rings and HBO's "Game of Thrones".
It is worth mentioning that this is actually part of a larger body of work i'm developing in which magic access is heavily restricted and not simply a bolt-on which is dropped into a "normal" campaign.
Thank you for your thoughts. It is actually very helpful and very much appreciated. Feel free to "kick the tires" on this so to speak and ask / challenge any question that you might think of.
I'm just continuing the discussion here, responding to your responses.
So you are in part right, but only in part. Firstly my campaign is definitely low magic, and lower level, with PC's rarely seeing levels higher than about 10th in most campaigns. As for the availability of healing magic, you are correct: It is rare and never a guarantee to be available (Casters in general are only about 1/5 as common as they are in most campaigns). Combat is much more cautious as a result and good tactics are encouraged (most of my players are prior military so that helps a lot). Simply running head long into the front door of a castle, which will obviously be heavily guarded, is a fast path to heartache. Your assumption that even if the PC's were successful in the first encounter they would not be able to continue on due to heavy injuries is absolutely correct.
I never said anything about charging into the front door. Even sneaking in through the sewers or climbing over the walls, sooner or later (as these games generally go) there will be combat encounters. If those encounters leave you with missing hands, eyes, feet, livers, or whatever, well, that's an invasion-ender. Even if they don't permanently maim the PCs, just the possibility that the PCs are running out of HP, possibly suffering temporary debilities, and lacking healing magic means they must withdraw (if they can). Probably long before they get to the final boss.
There's a reason that entire armies laid siege to castles rather than climbing over the walls or up through the midden, and there's a reason why nobody ever conquered a well-defended castle with just 4 invaders.
Luckily, Pathfinder gives us a system where we CAN do that (I would not want to be in the game where I needed 100 fellow players, all crammed around the table, trying to invade a castle).
But you're creating rules that take us back to reality and away from Pathfinder norm.
Nothing wrong with that, but as I said in my first post, don't expect any missions like "Hack your way through a handful of encounters to confront the BBEG before he kills his hostage princess." They just aren't likely to make it that far if you're using "realistic" debilitating combat AND no magical healing.
On the other hand: There is more than one way to assault a castle, and thinking around the obvious obstacle to discover what "Plan B" might look like is exactly what such rules are intended to encourage. Get players (and DM's) thinking about combat as a dangerous thing once again. You simply go running head first into a bunch of guys hacking at you with swords and axes, and sooner or later they are going to kill you. This is exactly why combat tactics like the Roman Phalanx came into play, to allow the average soldier a chance to survive an encounter which would otherwise have been suicide to attempt. (Check out the movie "The 300" to get a good idea how a shield wall works. Excellent example, very well done.)
Awesome.
If the mission is "Sneak up through the midden, slit a few sleeping throats, stealth your way to the princess' cell, and whisk her away to safety back out the midden without ever raising the alarm" then that's an awesome mission.
But to that I say two things:
1. Pathfinder may not be the best game system for this style of play. There are many that are better for it.
2. How often can these characters with these classes do mission after mission of the stealth-but-don't-engage variety before it gets stale? How soon before the fighter wants to actually USE all his weapon and armor training, and how soon after that is he retired with a peg leg and a missing arm?
On the topic of severed limbs in RAW, I'd draw your attention to the spell description of Regenerate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/regenerate) which clearly states that it works to regenerate missing limbs. So I must disagree that such things don't happen under RAW.
The answer to that is the Sword of Sharpness which has existed in prior versions of this game since the 70's. But doesn't exist anymore.
I challenge you to show me where to find the actual rule that tells you when a limb is severed. In this game system, lost Hit Points don't represent severed body parts lying on the ground. There is no rule for that. I'm not even sure if there's an optional rule for it in the official Pathfinder stuff, though I won't rule out a monster or a weird ability somewhere that I've overlooked - but even if those exist, they must be pretty rare).
So unless YOU add rules for it, nobody is losing limbs and the Regenerate spell has some fluff text that isn't used much, probably at all, by anyone playing the current iteration of this game.
Further take a look at natural healing under RAW (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat#TOC-Healing) and you'll see that it is typically about 1hp per character level per night of bedrest, 2hp/level for a full day of rest, 4hp/level per day with a Heal check, and an additional 1hp/level with a second Heal check (Treat Deadly Wounds). That is up to 5hp/level per day of rest from non-magical means. So yes. They can spring back from virtually any injury with only a couple of days down time under RAW.
Of course natural healing is very fast. Too fast. In my first post I said I liked the idea of slowing down NATURAL healing. I agree with you that the idea of having the crap beaten out of you, nearly to death, and being fully recovered in two days of bed rest (for many characters it only takes one day) is unrealistic. Even by spinning it that HP represents dodging and avoiding damage (that we can somehow heal magically - how do you heal my ability to dodge a blow?), then you get the opposite problem: "I fought so hard and dodged so many blows this morning that I'm out, I'm done, I cannot dodge any more blows today and possibly tomorrow, too". Which makes no sense.
So, I agree, natural healing in this game seems too fast to me, too.
But I disagree with your original premise that "characters with severed limbs to bounce back to full health after 2 or 3 days of rest". That just doesn't happen (I define "full health" as having all my limbs, too). So IF you find a way to sever a limb, no amount of bed rest is going to grow it back. That character will never be back to "full health" and just about no character class can function well in this game with just one arm (a Dervish Dancer could do it) and nobody is much good with just one leg.
That's retirement time for everybody.
Which is why the game doesn't do it. Ever.
Having to retire, or lose, a character because his leg got chopped off and you're not able to cast Regenerate yet is realistic, but makes for a lousy ROLE-playing game when players keep losing their characters before they develop their personality and get into their ROLE.
Your other question was: Do things like severed limbs regularly happen to PC's in my campaigns? No actually. They are included in the write up for completeness to better aid with understanding the campaign setting. The PC's are generally assumed to have access to magic not commonly available to about 95% of the rest of the world, most of whom are generally struggling just to get by. This level of Have vs. Have-Not was pretty pronounced in history and can still be seen in movies like Lord of the Rings and HBO's "Game of Thrones".
Well, it's good to know that healing is available to your PCs, and that you're not lopping limbs off in every other combat. PCs might live longer and you might actually be able to give them time-sensitive missions that involve more than one combat encounter.
It is worth mentioning that this is actually part of a larger body of work i'm developing in which magic access is heavily restricted and not simply a bolt-on which is dropped into a "normal" campaign.
You're sending mixed signals.
You've said "low-magic" and "magic access is heavily restricted" but you have also said they have healing magic.
Either they do or they don't.
If they do, then much of this is irrelevant. If they don't, then this game just got much harder and much less varied (sooooo many monsters that can't be used because of the very real risk of TPKs).
I'm just continuing the discussion here, responding to your responses.
Thank you. For what it is worth I have largely agreed with you as far as what the challenges are / would be if these rules were simply dropped into a standard Pathfinder games and the only thing affected were the rules on injury and dying. However as previously touched on, such is not the case. This is also why you question of either there is magic, or is not magic, is not entirely accurate. There IS indeed magic, but it is much more rare. For example the number of spell casters in the campaign are only about 20% of what would be present in a typical campaign. Secondly there are no potions, aside from salves made via alchemy which actually work surprisingly well, but heal over the span several minutes. Such salves add bonuses to heal checks as well.
Aside from the lack of healing potions, there are no scrolls, no wands / rods / staves as they would be recognized in a typical PF campaign setting. They are still there but typically only to add a bonus to casting specific types of spells, such as a "Staff of Healing" increasing the Dice of a Cure XX Wounds spell to the next dice size (1d10 for ex vs 1d8 under RAW). Or a Wand of Fire adding a + 2 or + 3 to the DC of a Fire related spell.
Scrolls are completely gone. Most casters are rarely more than 7th - 8th levels, with the campaign "Lords" being around 10 caster levels, and very rare compared to non-spell casting peers.
I'll also share a campaign concept with you regarding your "rescue the princess" scenario. You are 100% correct that a small group of 4 - 5 would typically not pull off such an adventure themselves, but rare it would be part of a larger military operation where they are the elite SF team which is sneaking in the back door (over the wall, in through the drain, etc) while the mass combat style fight is taking place out front.
Further the types of encounters they are likely facing while they do so will be against lower CR foes in greater numbers vs single large CR creatures loaded with special powers and spells / spell-like abilities. Bare in mind that I have compared the setting to Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, and while you still have Balrogs and White Walkers in these settings they are very rare compared to the mundane threats faced which can kill you just as fast.
For what it is worth, I thank you for the input. It is along the lines of what I was hoping to get. There will be other articles along similar lines I'll be posting over the next few weeks as I look for feedback of other aspects of the campaign setting (as opposed to doing it all at once). I'll be cross linking the articles for anyone who would like to see what the finished product looks like. Next I'm going to tackle the combat section vs merely the injury / dying piece and it focuses on things like what effect a shield wall has, class based defense bonus vs Armor as DR, revised flanking, and Bushwhacking rules, etc.
Stay tuned and you'll see behind the scenes on why I've opted for this particular combination of variant rules.
The second article on Combat can be found here:
Low Magic - Variant Combat Rules
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t45d?Low-Magic-Variant-Combat-Rules#1
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