Test Page 5
One of the main complaints about 4e style healing - which is what we're using, basically - is that it can't sensibly model long-term injuries. You heal completely after a long rest: you get all your hit points back, and all your healing surges, and it's like nothing ever happened.
In the course of our games since implementing this particular approach to hit points, one thing I've noticed is that - with the exception of regen - players don't seem to look for healing until they're down. While this may be a function of our current game being filled with only casters, I've also noticed a general trend of not looking for ways to mitigate damage.
I am hesitant to remove regen because it feels thematically important to how Trinity works: we've got a significant undercurrent of FF feel going on, and I feel that messing with that would be to our detriment. So I don't want to get rid of it.
But at the same time, it's done weird things to our approach to healing and handling wounds and such. So, I think we may try to rectify this.
Injuries
Hit points are a weird abstraction of your ability to avoid an attack, dodge or otherwise juke around to turn a serious blow into a less lethal one, and just general combat endurance. That we have the bloodied condition should tell you something about this: basically until you're below 50% hit points, you are essentially untouched. Maybe got a few scrapes and bruises, but you're not actually hurt in any real meaningful way. That said, the LM saying things like "the cure spell invigorates you and closes your wounds" is just as valid if you are 25% of max HP or 75% - you still have wounds while not bloodied, they're just not dangerous or impairing you in any real way.
Injuries are intended to change this.
Broken Arm
| |||
|---|---|---|---|
| At least one of the bones in your arm has been broken, prohibiting its use. If it doesn't heal soon, the break may fester, eventually leading to death. | Attack: +12 vs Fort | ||
| Endurance: improve DC 23; maintain DC 20 | |||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| You are cured. | Initial Effect: You cannot make use of the injured arm. You cannot use two-handed weapons, and you can only wield a single light or one-handed weapon, implement, or shield at a time. You suffer a -2 penalty on Acrobatics, Athletics, and Thievery checks. | The infected break becomes painful. Increase skill penalties to -5, and you cannot use the arm in any way. | Gangrene sets in. Increase the skill penalties to -10, and you cannot use the arm in any way. You lose one healing surge that cannot be regained until you are cured; each subsequent failure causes you to lose an additional healing surge. If you begin the day with no healing surges, you gain dead. |
So basically what happens here, is that after a long rest (or every 24 hours if you're being cheeky and trying to avoid this nonsense), you have to make a check. If you suck, you go down the track (from 1 to 2, to 3, and so on). If you make the check, you get better, and go up the track (from 2 to 1, to 0).
The real question is - when would you get these? How do you mitigate them?
Getting Injuries
So I've got a few thoughts on when or how you might get these.
First, though, I want to specify - I don't think players can cause these to monsters. These are intended to model long-term effects, and that's an awful lot of book-keeping for the LM to have to deal with if players are causing broken bones and what-not all over the place. That said, these may have "neat effects" that players want to cause - if you're fighting a jerk who's using a two-handed weapon, being able to break one of his arms so that he can't use it anymore is a neat thing to do that players may want to have as an option. So I'm not ruling it out, but in general, as a player, you can maybe somehow cause the initial effect of an injury, but I'm not going to expect the LM to track it any further than that. Narratively, maybe, but certainly not mechanically.
Anyway. So, there's a couple options for causing these.
- Crits. Rather than taking more damage from a crit, you take an injury instead. I'm not sure if this would be a choice deal - for instance, as a player, you could say "oh, this guy crit me... I'll take an injury instead of the extra damage" sort of thing - or if it's a hard point of getting crit'd. Making it a guaranteed thing feels... overly random and potentially very punishing, though, so I'm not sure.
- Dropping to 0. Part of the goal here, I think, is to make players wary of dropping to 0 hit points. It's not a good thing, you don't want to do it. So if we give an injury upon hitting 0, that may encourage players to avoid this happening. That said, it has some issues - it might lead to a death spiral of sorts, which is not cool. That and let's say you get back up with a few hit points after hitting 0, then get smacked again - do you really need another injury?
- Trading injuries for death saves. As an addendum to this idea, maybe you can accept an injury instead of accepting a failed death save. This is... really weird, from a narrative standpoint, and basically says "in retrospect, that hit from that hammer hurt a lot more than you thought it did." I'm not sure how okay we are with this kind of retroactive stuff, though.
- Some fraction of hit points. Perhaps if an attack does an overwhelming amount of damage to you, it gives you an injury. Say the threshold is your healing surge value - any attack that does more damage than that causes an injury.
Healing Injuries
Normal effects that heal hit points don't fix injuries. You need dedicated effects, or to make the checks to get over the injury.
