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Conners
2009-02-15, 05:31 AM
For those who are curious, I plan on using this for a large-scale free-roaming campaign, as well as smaller ones.


I already have some ideas for how I might do this... but I don't have the experience to properly judge if a feature is broken or the like.

Some basic Story methods to make things more believable include:

Adventurer Rites:
Something that has always bothered me is poison in DnD... In 3.5E, a 4th level adventurer fails his saves vs. some deadly poison--and takes six points of Con damage... Now with 4e, a deadly snake bites you, you take five points of poison damage, with continual 2 poison damage (save ends)...

With most biological creatures, when they have a toxin as deadly as snake venom injected into them (unless they are immune like honey badgers and rabbits), they go numb, pass out after a few minutes, or sometimes die only moments after skin-contact with venom (such as cobra venom). Poison and venom is strong stuff... yet adventurers seem to think no worse of it than children do with sour medicine.
So I've devised -- to make this a bit more believable -- the Adventurer Rites. These rites must be performed for you to become a sanctioned-adventurer/professional-warrior/whatever. Varying widely, the rites normally include: Special drugs: herbs, medicines and the like are taken over the course of a few months, the effects giving you a powerful resistance to poison, disease, and other such things (yes, like The Witcher).
Growing Immunity: Over a very long period, you are given tiny doses of poison and various diseases, building up your immune system to these items immensely.
Magical: After chanting for five hours, the rite is complete--your body changed so that toxins and diseases will pass through you doing much less harm.
Demonic (Warlocks and Evil characters only): You have made a demonic pact, giving you resistance to disease and venom with the now-demonic blood in your veins.
Divine: The God/Goddess/Pantheon you worship has given you a small piece of their divine energy after you completed a long rite of prayer. Now you shall stand the slings and arrows of nature far more stoically.
Biological: You've always been different form the others, whether it was a sickness going around your birthplace that never caught you, or the fact that you didn't even notice when you sat on an angry wasp.
Alchemy: Were it not for so many rites already existing for the combat of disease and poison, this potion which allows you to be like those who take the other rites would be in high demand.
Special Item: The charm you have gives you a special radiance, protecting you from diseases and poisons as though you were immune to their catastrophic effects.

Any ideas for mechanics these could effect? Story-wise, the Special Item rite would be ruined if you lost the item, and the Alchemy rite wouldn't work if you couldn't get at the potion or ingredients needed... so people who take those ones would be at a disadvantage (similarly, the demonic pact won't work if you repent fully, and the divine one will stop if you are forsaken by the one(s) you worship). Perhaps the mentioned two could give you extra resistance...?

It being too easy:
A realistic adventure would be a difficult adventure. While simply making the encounters harder with stronger monsters is one way of doing it, there's still the problem that you can't have the goblin dungeon full of gnolls. The other method is to increase the number of monsters, which can be good if used right.

My method would be a mixture of the above. Instead of using random, stronger monsters, however, I'd level up what suited the encounter somewhat, based on how strong that creature should be. Kobolds would stay as they are and just given more kobolds, but goblins, humans, lizardfolk and other things might get a level up or two so as to reduce the great distance between humanoid creatures.
What's more, it would be so difficult for a adventurer party to do the usual stuff, that they would need to hire Men-at-arms and mercenaries to help them out (in a free-roaming game where a good number of the players will be in separate locations, NPCs are going to be necessary to bring along).

Mechanical things that could make it more realistic.

Bleeding:
When a character reaches bloodied status, they begin bleeding. Their limit-point to bleeding is equal to their CON score in rounds. For the example, we'll use a Con score of 10: Simon the Sorcerer is bloodied, he is now bleeding.
3 rounds (2.5 rounded up, aka: a quarter of 10) later he receives a -1 penalty to FORT and Endurance checks.
5 rounds have passed, and now Simon takes a -1 penalty to everything effected by level (ability scores, attack bonus, skills, etcetera.), which will be referred to as a "Negative Level" penalty.
10 rounds have passed, and now Simon undergoes a -2 "Negative Level" penalty.
13 rounds have passed (12.5 rounded up to 13), and Simon falls unconscious form his wounds--he is then has to make death saves as normal. If he succeeds, then he manages to treat his wounds and get to his feet (story-wise, a failure might be that he treated his wounds but still died from lack of blood).

This sounds pretty broken, but it gets better: Outside of combat, the capacity for bleeding doubles because the characters can apply better pressure to their wounds.

Also outside of combat, you can Heal wounds without a check even if you aren't trained in Heal (as far as I know, you can't mess up bandaging wounds to the point where you can't try again).

In combat, it requires a DC 15(?) Heal check to bandage a character during combat.

Magic healing which restores you to more HP than Bloodied status stops the bleeding all-together, while magic healing that doesn't will still restore blood equal to the amount of HP recovered (the maximum you can heal blood to being the full Con capacity).

You can spend a Standard or Move action to stop the bleeding for that turn ( while it's much better to stop it all together with a heal check, this is useful if you have an extra action).

Some creatures have a higher bleeding capacity, such as warforged. Such creatures have 1.5x the bleeding capacity (things like golems and undead don't Bleed mechanically at all).

Can this system be made better in any way?


That's all I have for the moment. Any advice, critique, or homebrew content of your own that you could post would be very welcome. Thanks.

Ravens_cry
2009-02-15, 05:46 AM
Be consistent.
You can have unicorns and fairies fly out of people butts at the drop of a hat, as long as that is what happens every time someone drops a hat.
As for venoms, Con damage is actually pretty nasty stuff. It lowers your hit points, and if you hit zero con, your dead. Period. None of that raising the dead stuff, your just dead.But if your going to make poison as lethal as you describe, make sure it's special, something that only happens when it's important. Unless your the kind of DM would rather see the players characters die in the first turn then for them to have fun. Also, I am not sure if your description is quite realistic for a human sized creature. For the things snakes catch, yeah. But if that was 'realistic' no one would survive been bitten by a snake unless they were bitten in the doctors office. If that's how you want to play it, your the DM, thou art god of thine fictional universe. But the goal in the game is to have fun.

Reluctance
2009-02-15, 05:59 AM
Realism and 4e do not get along well. Realism and D&D have always been strained at best, but 4e's openness to handwave everything except for what makes the PCs look cool on-screen is not the basis of a hardcore sim game.

Rather than trying to turn 4e into something it very pointedly is not, why not stick to games that are already closer to what you have in mind. AD&D in particular has plenty of deadly/difficult/"realistic" elements to encourage the sort of play you seem to want.

Inyssius Tor
2009-02-15, 06:12 AM
If you want lasting poison, use disease tracks.

Cubey
2009-02-15, 06:16 AM
Realism and 4e do not get along well. Realism and D&D have always been strained at best, but 4e's openness to handwave everything except for what makes the PCs look cool on-screen is not the basis of a hardcore sim game.

Rather than trying to turn 4e into something it very pointedly is not, why not stick to games that are already closer to what you have in mind. AD&D in particular has plenty of deadly/difficult/"realistic" elements to encourage the sort of play you seem to want.

So, in other words, previous editions had more instakilling/crippling elements. Then, the creators realized that only few players enjoy an environment where an unlucky roll (and only that - not being careless and rolling badly, just rolling badly) can kill your character, so they went away from that.
Also, I believe the original poster wants to introduce more grit to his 4th ed rather than switching to an earlier edition because 3rd- or AD&D have clunky mechanics and are poorly balanced.

Now, on to the OP - I don't like adventurer rites. They just have too much of a "player characters are special" vibe to me. Which works in Exalted - DnD, not too much. Instead, I'd opt for simple consistency like one of the posters above, but if you want to have dangerous poisons, then just make the characters not roll their saving throws until special conditions are met - an antidote is applied or poison is neutralized in any other way, sucking it out from the blood or whatnot.

Bleeding mechanics as you have them now are clunky (something more streamlined would work better) and unnecessary - most fights don't last long enough for strong bleeding effects to kick in, and bandaging bleeding wounds outside of combat is trivial.

Inyssius Tor
2009-02-15, 06:22 AM
Bleeding mechanics as you have them now are clunky (something more streamlined would work better) and unnecessary - most fights don't last long enough for strong bleeding effects to kick in, and bandaging bleeding wounds outside of combat is trivial.

We do have a system for long-term wound tracking; it's called the Healing Surge system. Just throw a bunch of encounters at the players each day, and--if necessary--cut down on the amount of surges they regain each night.

Also, you have read the West Marches articles... right?

Conners
2009-02-15, 06:33 AM
Be consistent.
You can have unicorns and fairies fly out of people butts at the drop of a hat, as long as that is what happens every time someone drops a hat.

As for venoms, Con damage is actually pretty nasty stuff. It lowers your hit points, and if you hit zero con, your dead. Period. None of that raising the dead stuff, your just dead.

But if your going to make poison as lethal as you describe, make sure it's special, something that only happens when it's important. Unless your the kind of DM would rather see the players characters die in the first turn then for them to have fun. Also, I am not sure if your description is quite realistic for a human sized creature. For the things snakes catch, yeah. But if that was 'realistic' no one would survive been bitten by a snake unless they were bitten in the doctors office. If that's how you want to play it, your the DM, thou art god of thine fictional universe. But the goal in the game is to have fun. It's as you say, that being an important rule of story telling (not like horror movies where they start out with it seeming like they're going to be smart and hide the gore--but later have them run into the dark with the monsters and show you their innards and whatnot in slow-motion...).

It doesn't make sense to me that you can't raise someone from the dead after they died from venom, when you can if they died from getting their head crushed by a dragon's foot.
With proper realism, unfortunately, EVERY bite from a deadly, venomous snake could be fatal (considering you're fighting demon snakes and the like)... and some would be indefinitely for most (again, cobra venom). And yes, in some places you get bitten by snakes all the time but end up all right (possibly because the snakes dry-bite you, of course), but we generally aren't bitten by magical devil snakes or two-ton spiders (weak venom, plus Large-sized spider, plus bite, would generally equal death :smalleek:).

As for what kind of DM I am, I don't really want to kill off my players with the snap of a snake's jaws (hence why I started this thread to get advice). In the spoiler tab under Adventurer Rites, I wrote down my idea as to why adventurers aren't constantly killed by poison (I don't blame you for missing it, my post is rather long :smalltongue:).


Realism and 4e do not get along well. Realism and D&D have always been strained at best, but 4e's openness to handwave everything except for what makes the PCs look cool on-screen is not the basis of a hardcore sim game.

Rather than trying to turn 4e into something it very pointedly is not, why not stick to games that are already closer to what you have in mind. AD&D in particular has plenty of deadly/difficult/"realistic" elements to encourage the sort of play you seem to want. My plan is not to make it completely realistic, for that would be pointless as you say. I just wanted to add a bit more realism into it.

The problem with AD&D, is that while it might be more realistic, its fun-levels are questionable due to over-difficulty. Also, while more difficult, I'm not sure of how much more realistic it is besides that (ever played a game of AD&D where the floor, ceiling, walls, room, furniture, and entire house was a monster which tried to eat you...?). You misunderstand if you think I want to kill my players a lot, the idea of the realism to make a "small" adventure seem more exciting and challenging.


@Inyssius Tor: Hmm... I'll have to look into that later, but for now I think it'll be simpler to stick with the Adventurer Rites.


So, in other words, previous editions had more instakilling/crippling elements. Then, the creators realized that only few players enjoy an environment where an unlucky roll (and only that - not being careless and rolling badly, just rolling badly) can kill your character, so they went away from that.
Also, I believe the original poster wants to introduce more grit to his 4th ed rather than switching to an earlier edition because 3rd- or AD&D have clunky mechanics and are poorly balanced.

Now, on to the OP - I don't like adventurer rites. They just have too much of a "player characters are special" vibe to me. Which works in Exalted - DnD, not too much. Instead, I'd opt for simple consistency like one of the posters above, but if you want to have dangerous poisons, then just make the characters not roll their saving throws until special conditions are met - an antidote is applied or poison is neutralized in any other way, sucking it out from the blood or whatnot.

Bleeding mechanics as you have them now are clunky (something more streamlined would work better) and unnecessary - most fights don't last long enough for strong bleeding effects to kick in, and bandaging bleeding wounds outside of combat is trivial. While I do have some respect and fond memories of the older systems, I would say you have more-or-less hit the nail on the head.

Hmm... that could work to be very interesting. However, there is still the problem of venoms like that of cobras', which can insta-kill you (demon snakes would likely have stronger venoms still)... Combine that with the complications of how you should portray venom and poison mechanics, and there is a problem.
I would like to discuss this further, though.

Changing the combat too much with bleeding effects wasn't really my intention, though you are certainly correct with the phrase "clunky". What I've learnt with bleeding, is that unless you are done in very badly or an artery is hit, you generally don't bleed to death at too fast a rate (and the way DnD is set up, I don't know if adventurers can really get debilitating injuries).
Bandaging wounds after a fight is trivial, but it does remind players of how trivial things like bleeding are dangerous too.
What would you suggest I do about bleeding to reduce the clunkiness?


I think I'll add longer-term injuries to the main post--making players realize that they are getting cut and stuff...

Ravens_cry
2009-02-15, 06:57 AM
It doesn't make sense to me that you can't raise someone from the dead after they died from venom, when you can if they died from getting their head crushed by a dragon's foot.
Like most fantasy, DnD health seems to be based on the idea of Élan vital, with Constitution reflecting how much 'life potential' one has. Certain things, poisons and others, lower that amount. If your amount equals zero, then you have no life in you. When a dragon smushes your head, your life potential remains the same. Think of it as a clay jug of water siting in a bowl, with the water representing the life potential, the jug the body. Smash the jug, the water is still there. The jug can be fixed or even replaced. However, remove all the water,and it is now just a jug. You can patch that jug all you like, but it no longer contains water, the body no longer contains life. That isn't how life works in the real world, where life is the workings of an nigh infinitely complex machine, but it is basically how we think of it instinctively, and it certainly simplifies things like healing.

Spiryt
2009-02-15, 07:02 AM
Like most fantasy, DnD health seems to be based on the idea of Élan vital, with Constitution reflecting how much 'life potential' one has. Certain things, poisons and others, lower that amount. If your amount equals zero, then you have no life in you. When a dragon smushes your head, your life potential remains the same. Think of it as a clay jug of water siting in a bowl, with the water representing the life potential, the jug the body. Smash the jug, the water is still there. The jug can be fixed or even replaced. However, remove all the water,and it is now just a jug. You can patch that jug all you like, but it no longer contains water, the body no longer contains life. That isn't how life works in the real world, where life is the workings of an nigh infinitely complex machine, but it is basically how we think of it instinctively, and it certainly simplifies things like healing.

If you smash the jug, you must still find a way to collect water from the ground again though. :smalltongue:

I assume you can't be raised from the dead if poisoned in 4e?

Reluctance
2009-02-15, 07:04 AM
Whoops. The things you mentioned lead me to believe you wanted AD&D-level difficulty and deadliness. If you just want the illusion of verisimilitude, that's easier.

Seriously bleeding wounds should only come about when specific powers are used. Same idea with poisons. You'll want to keep in mind that adventurers tend to be in good physical shape, not to mention just a touch of plot armor. Cubey has a good point; if you want to say that continuing damage for bleeding wounds doesn't get a saving throw until the would is specifically bound with a heal check, or that continuing effects from poison damage don't get saving throws until you take some sort of special antidote, that should make them feel more dangerous without significantly increasing real lethality or complexity. (How powers interact with all this is entirely your call.) A minute or two tops if you don't treat the problem sounds like a good "heroically realistic" estimate for how long a person could last.

hewhosaysfish
2009-02-15, 07:06 AM
Be consistent.
You can have unicorns and fairies fly out of people butts at the drop of a hat, as long as that is what happens every time someone drops a hat.
As for venoms, Con damage is actually pretty nasty stuff. It lowers your hit points, and if you hit zero con, your dead. Period. None of that raising the dead stuff, your just dead.But if your going to make poison as lethal as you describe, make sure it's special, something that only happens when it's important. Unless your the kind of DM would rather see the players characters die in the first turn then for them to have fun. Also, I am not sure if your description is quite realistic for a human sized creature. For the things snakes catch, yeah. But if that was 'realistic' no one would survive been bitten by a snake unless they were bitten in the doctors office. If that's how you want to play it, your the DM, thou art god of thine fictional universe. But the goal in the game is to have fun.

Where does it say thaty creatures killed by Con loss can't be raised?

Tengu_temp
2009-02-15, 07:07 AM
If you just want the illusion of verisimilitude, that's easier.


Am I the only one who finds this statement rather offensive?

Conners
2009-02-15, 07:23 AM
@Ravens_cry: ...It sort of makes sense now, but then there's the question as to why poison takes away that retrospect of Con when other things generally don't.

@Reluctance: As answering Tengu's question, I do feel rather annoyed if Reluctance meant that the way it could be taken.
You are more right... except that it actually will be hard on average (as per Hard by the Encounter system--harder still if you don't have enough guys with you, since dungeons don't get less monsters for the adventurers' sakes).

Any weapon that damages you properly is likely to cause internal or external bleeding, I don't see why it would take a special power to do that. With the continuous damage idea... I'm not sure if bleeding=damage is the way to go about it. For one thing, you'd have to scale it somehow or it would either be too destroying at lower levels, or too insignificant at higher levels (I do want it less worrisome at higher levels and more troublesome at lower levels, but not to too great a degree).

Tsotha-lanti
2009-02-15, 07:52 AM
How can I add Realism to my Campaign?

Run it with The Riddle of Steel. Aw yeah. A combat system that passes muster at ARMA, complete with realistic damage-modelling ("hit points"? No, there's just pain, shock, bleeding, and dismemberment), realistic pacing, excellent archery and mounted combat, the works. There's even a system for transferring experience to new characters when you inevitably die.

Seriously, that's about the only thing you can do to make a fantasy RPG realistic: change systems. I guess there's a few other options, like GURPS (but, really, it has way more complexity and way less realism than TROS).

Baltor
2009-02-15, 07:55 AM
Am I the only one who finds this statement rather offensive?

No you are not. This is why in my opinion 3.x is better,yes it is more complicated, but that is to be expected if one wants more realism. 4e just seems tob lend it's self to cartoonieness.

Sebastian
2009-02-15, 07:55 AM
How to make 4e more realistic?

The simplest way is just to use another system, realism and 4e just don't mix.
Even 3.x was more realistic than 4e and that says a lot.

Conners
2009-02-15, 09:31 AM
Hmmm... I think I might look into The Riddle of Steel... it seems appealing somehow. However, there is the problem that adventurers might get killed off a bit too much... I'd have to test around with it.

But... is it just me, or do people never run games of that system on these forums?

Halaster
2009-02-15, 09:42 AM
Hi.

Whether you want to call it realism, verisimilitude or the illusion of either, the best thing you can do is not to generalize. Take Rolemaster for example: there were several categories of poison, each with different levels of lethality and usually a specific effect for each poison (paralysis, partial or total; death; blindness; weakness; you name it). The problem is obvious, and explains why more players enjoy D&D: it gets rather complicated rather quickly.
But if you are in for this kind of thing, make a write-up for every poison, or category of poisons you use. Handle it like powers. Attack is poison level (just set one or use the creature's level/HD) vs. Fortitude, the effect may be damage, a negative modifier, attribute loss, insta-kill, whatever you please. Print out the list and have it handy, you'll be looking it up a lot. Should cover that.

For the bleeding, this is a little more complicated. To use my favourite fantasy RPG for reference again: RM completely separated actual injury and HP loss, the latter only describing a general weakening of the character. So, every attack caused HP loss, but could also cause actual injury, including bleeding, which would be expressed as HP/turn lost.
Now D&D rolls all possibly harm that may come to a character into one description: HP. So basically, normal bleeding from injury is accounted for by HP loss from an attack anyway. Only extraordinary blood loss over and above the average is worth even noting. And that, as has been mentioned, should be left to special powers.
Otherwise you would have to devise a different damage system. I could think of something like this:
Every character's hitpoints are divided up into muscle, bone, blood, organ and nerve damage, with each having separate effects, each attack, depending on type, causes different areas to be damaged (e. g. blunt attacks cause 50% muscle, 50% bone, nothing else or something like that).
More realism, but again, bookkeeping becomes a pain.

So, is it worth it? Probably not. It's not what D&D is about in any edition. I don't know TROS, but it sounds like that. The abovementioned Rolemaster, as well as Harnmaster definitely are. So perhaps you would profit from leaving 4e behind. Perhaps you wouldn't.

CU,
Halaster

RebelRogue
2009-02-15, 09:50 AM
No you are not. This is why in my opinion 3.x is better,yes it is more complicated, but that is to be expected if one wants more realism. 4e just seems tob lend it's self to cartoonieness.
I'm not trying to say 3.x is better or worse (I enjoy both 3.5 and 4e a whole damn lot), but the last time I played in our 3.5 8th level campaign (Gestalt, but that's not really the point, since it's pretty much all skill based) some very cartoonish stuff happened (mundanely, mind you), and there's still 12 levels before we're epic. Simple things like jumping, falling etc. have been cartoonish in D&D for a while! D&D is about playing fantasy heroes that do impossible things on a regular basis - 4e is more conscious about this than any edition before it (whether people like it or not). If this is not what you want, D&D isn't really a good system for you, basically, although you can always stress different aspects according to playstyle.

In this light my advice to the OP is: trying to add this level of realism to D&D is, ultimately, defeating the purpose. 4ed acknowledges this more than ever, and therefore have made things such a poisoning streamlined and easy to handle. Your suggestion is not "wrong" and if it's what makes you happy, go for it. It is of course still your game. It's just jarring against D&D playstyle (especially 4ed playstyle).

Tsotha-lanti
2009-02-15, 10:42 AM
Hmmm... I think I might look into The Riddle of Steel... it seems appealing somehow. However, there is the problem that adventurers might get killed off a bit too much... I'd have to test around with it.

But... is it just me, or do people never run games of that system on these forums?

http://www.driftwoodpublishing.com/

It's not a very broadly-known or popular system, probably because the publisher is tiny. (Heck, it may be self-published for all I know.)

It's an excellent game, though. It's deadly, but that can be mitigated with Luck/Drama Points (which the GM can hand out as you see fit). Combat is realistically lethal: even if you don't get killed by the first blow, the shock and pain will probably put you at a disadvantage, letting your opponent finish you up - or at least score another hit that puts you at a bigger disadvantage, etc. Of course, if you're a tough and skilled fighter, you can still win. I seriously prefer games like this, because it makes the PCs avoid combat like people would in real life, encourages the GM to make sure every fight is meaningful and story-related instead of a random encounter, and makes the players think and use clever tactics to ensure an advantage. Nothing beats engaging the players' cleverness-glands.

The combat system is also very tactical - forget about D&D-style "exchange blows until someone runs out of HP." There's a wealth of maneuvers, and playing with your dice pool can be very interesting.

The absolute favorite part, for me, is how faithful it is for real combat. It's got an ARMA (http://www.thearma.org/) seal of approval for a reason. The fights have the feel of Talhoffer's fechtbuch come to life, or of Kurosawa samurai films. The system is equally appropriate for armored knights fighting with longswords and for Edo-period samurai dueling unarmored with their katanas.

The game works for high fantasy (although magic is so powerful it has to be rare, or your world will be borked), low fantasy, sword & sorcery, or historical period games. A few perfect settings for it that pop to mind would be medieval/renaissance Europe, Arthurian fantasy, jidaigeki / chanbara, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Conan.

Satyr
2009-02-15, 11:38 AM
Riddle of Steel is only one more realistic system; there are many other ones (like my personal favorite in this regard, Harnmaster, or the most versatile game of them all, Gurps); if you look for an alternative system, try Witchcraft (http://www.edenstudios.net/witchcraft/WitchcraftCorebook.zip), which has the significant advantage of being free and is almost as adaptable as Gurps and a great replacement for D&D in grittier settings like Dark Sun or Midnight.



Generally speaking, making a campaign more realistic is a noble aim (and perhaps a necessary one if you want to avoid to constantly insult the player's - and your own intelligence) but you almost always will collect the flame of those people that you "are playing it wrong" if you set value on versimilitude. It is best to ignore these people.


I use the following house rules for D&D 4th edition, if I ever play it again, for exactly the same reason - I find it rather stressful to constantly and to the required tremendous degree stupify myself for the game and to have a bit more details for the character design; they are also good for the game's suspense, which is always a pleasant and in the case of 4th edition and its many suspense killers within the rules perhaps necessary addendum.


Hitpoints and Healing
The believable representation of injuries was never a strength of D&D, but it got worse with the 4th edition. Injuries are just completely insignificant, which is somewhat sad, because this destroys both the plausibility of the gameplay and a source of roleplaying suspense. So we tried to change this to make it more believable.

1st, Hitpoints are renamed into Stamina. The Stamina is calculated exactly as the hitpoints were before, but it is not the amount of wounds and injuries the character can suffer, but more a representation of the character’s condition, endurance, resourcefulness with his physical capabilities to make it more believable, that the Stamina of a creature is completely regained with sufficient sleep, which just fails when you of hit point loss as open, bleeding wounds. SO, what goes up and down in the game is the character’s Stamina. which is regained through taking a break, breathing deeply perhaps eating a bite and spending a healing surge.

Loss of Stamina are not necessarily injuries, it is heavier breathing after dodging an attack, running out of breath in a fight, scratches and bruises under the armor etc.

Apart from the Stamina, characters have a number of wound points equal to their Constitution score + half of the character level. When the character runs out of Stamina (which was formerly when the hitpoints reached 0), all additional damage are subtracted from the wound points, until those reach 0. In this case, the character is dead. Additionally, every critical hit also deals one point of wound point damage.

Injuries heal much slower than Stamina. Every character must make a Constitution check (Difficulty 20) per day, to heal a point of injury damage. A successful heal check (DC 20) allows a second roll for the regeneration, as does the use of any form of healing powers.
While the character is injured (has not the full amount of injury points), they have only half of their usual healing surges. If they are severely injured (less than half of their total injury points left), they also suffer a –2 penalty to all their rolls.

Optional Extra Gritty Special Rule: Instead of every critical hit, every single [W] of damage deals also one point of injury damage or twice that many in the case of a critical hit. With this rule, people can die before they run out of Stamina and Constitution suddenly becomes extremely important for almost any character.
I love this rule and I am very willing to use it, because i think that the game's suspense in fights profits greatly from the increased deadliness.


Encounter Powers
Encounter Powers leave a slightly bitter taste in the mouth. Certainly, it is fun when you can use a special power to decide a battle but on the other hand it is a bit stupid when a fighter suddenly seems to forget his secret strike after using it. It is obvious that you need some kind of limitation for powers like this to have a certain degree of resource management and it is probably quite important for the balance of the game, but it is still silly that you can not repeat an effective attack within a combat. So, we tried to come up with a rule, which does not soften up the limitation of encounter powers while still circumvents this break of verisimilitude.

Surprisingly, the renaming of the now Stamina was quite helpful for this. It is not that hard to explain how a special maneuver also represents an additional effort, and that this effort can be quite straining as in costing the character’s Stamina. So we came up with a solution: You can reuse any encounter power as often as you want, but doing so will cost you Stamina points. It is actually as if you deal damage to yourself to regain one of the already used encounter maneuvers. The lost Stamina depends on the category of the power – heroic tier powers cost 1d8 points of Stamina to regain, Paragon Tier Powers 2d8, and Epic Tier powers 4d8 Stamina points.

This makes characters more versatile and therefore more powerful, which hopefully acts as a counterbalance to the increased danger through the new injury rules. Still, regaining encounter powers through this way is linked to a certain risk and sacrifice, which can contribute to the game’s suspense.


Minions
Again, minions are mostly renamed and used a little bit different. Now, they are called cowards, and they will flee immediately when they are hit, no matter how significant the injury was. If they are unable to flee, they will fight desperately to their death, but will run on the first chance or they beg for mercy as if they were bloodied and successfully intimidated.
Fleeing enemies are treated exactly like beaten enemies for the purpose of XP gain, but perhaps they regroup and ambush the characters again (not very likely since they are cowards and will try to avoid any as many risks as possible, but still…).
Mindless creature minions like many undeads will be treated as before.

The reason for this houserule is not necessarily foremost the game’s verisimilitude, but mostly because minion massacres and goblin or kobold genocide is just not heroic. Reaping through hordes of helpless and faceless victims – and most minions are nothing more than that – is not heroic, it’s just mass murder. No one of us was comfortable with the idea of slaying of waves and waves of cronies, so we came up with the coward explanation to not think of our characters as maniac psychopaths.

Hobby Skills.
Hobby skills are meant as a way to individualise the different characters and give them additional traits that represent individual interests and strengths. Everything can be a hobby skill which is not covered by a real skill or a similar already existing trait. Examples for hobby skills would be Cooking, Weapon Lore, Board Games, Heraldry, Play Instrument or other skills which have more impact on the character than a regular use in the game.
Hobby skills work exactly like regular skills, but they have a more limited application. You can create skill chalenges for them, you can focus in a hobby skill (perhaps you want to become a legendary cook or something).

Under fitting circumstances, a Hobby skill can give you a +2 synergy bonus to skill checks when the check is related to the hobby skill - perhaps your cooking skill grants you a bonus to taste the poison in the meal because you know how this should taste or your knowledge about military procedures is helpful to alanyse the commando structure of an invading hobgoblin army.

Every character starts with 2 + Intelligence Modifier Hobby skills. You can trade one hobby for a skill focus on a hobby skill. Every 5 levels afterwards, each character gains either a new hobby skill or a skill focus in one of his existing hobby skills.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-02-15, 02:18 PM
Realistically, if you get thick/protective boots or waders, then snakes or scorpions hidden in a bush are much less dangerous....

But anyway, as for realism:

-Penalize the players for walking around fully armed and armored, all day every day. This has NEVER been cool in society. Armor is heavy, uncomfortable, and a gorget will stop you from turning your head or speaking clearly. If an NPC sees someone fully armored up and they're not obviously guarding something, the NPC's logical assumption should be that these guys are here to start some ****.

-Learn about real combat/dueling. Even if you in no way modify the rules, you can use it in your descriptions when you tell the PCs what happens. Some good things to remember: there are vital artery lines going up the inner thigh, groin, and armpits of the human body; getting stabbed or slashed in these areas is always a deathwound. Realistic longsword (in D&D, "greatsword") fighting involves "choking up" on the blade past the guard (hence those long leather handles at the base of the blade), and often clocking people with the butt of the sword.

-Be sure to know the environmental rules (and damage from environment) like the back of your hand. Don't let your PCs get away with diving into freezing rivers, falling into snowbanks, or riding in full plate harness for hours in the desert! I really had to doll out a lot of damage from freezing before my players finally started wearing cloaks and jackets in one campaign. T_T

-Don't have them survive entirely on ale and trail mix, that would just be dumb. Give them a hireling or lackey who can both slaughter and prepare meat. In my campaign, my players ALWAYS get a supply wagon and mule team; to carry cooking pots, cauldron, firewood, flour and millet sacks, ale, wine and water, dried and salted peas and lentils, chives and other spices, live chickens and piglets for fresh slaughter, and once even several cows for fresh milk, cheese and eventually beef. If the PCs need to move stealthily, they can range about a day ahead of the wagon, or if needs must move over rough terrain, they can bundle everything on the backs of mules.

-Hirelings. A PC team is like any powerful fighting force: it needs a lot of material support. Dudes to help them out of armor, repair the armor and equipment (meaning you'll need someone who can work metal AND someone who can work wood--for the wagon). One or more grooms for the mules, someone who can prepare food; depending on how "Medieval" your campaign gets you may want to stop at a monastery and borrow a monk to be your company's notary and money-man. A half-dozen dogs are a good thing to have on any expedition (Cortez and Pizarro brought a sizeable force of hounds with them), and someone to take care of them is a good idea also. In some campaigns I've actually had my PCs at the head of a force of close to 20 men and not quite that many animals.

Halaster
2009-02-15, 02:28 PM
Hi.

Not to step on anyone's toes, but do yourself a favor and ignore Piedmon Sama's suggestion. If you start keeping track of what your characters eat, wear, and how exactly they gut that beasty, you won't have any time for actual playing. It's not that I don't appreciate my players coming up and stating what they will take with them into the Winterlands, but mostly I like to play their journey out with all the dangers and fun, so I just subtract them a set amount of money for "winter equipment and stuff to eat" and that's that.

Also, such ideas always favor the sticklers for detail, and anyone who simply has no idea about survival hiking, greatsword combat or the details of keeping a cowherd happy get unfairly penalized. I really loathe GMs who want to get me into detail about how exactly I'm going to butcher that pig, because they either want to play havoc with my character or laugh at me for not knowing. That's nerd stuff no one with any self-respect should take lying down.

As I said, though, it's not all off. Do remember environmental rules, do encourage your players to hunt to supplement their diet, do reward original combat moves that make everything more lifelike. Just remember, realism is not about reading six encyclopedias before breakfast, but about the feel of "it could happen this way".
As any movie author or director will tell you, that doesn't mean you have to do it the way it's really done.

CU,
Halaster

Piedmon_Sama
2009-02-15, 02:41 PM
My suggestion wasn't that you preoccupy the PCs with mundane details, it was equipping them with experts to do that for them. Obviously Sir Bruce Handsome isn't going to slaughter his own meat, that's why he has Weakteeth the Goblin with him. Really, how long does it take you to say:

"As you trudge out of the dungeon entrance, you can see smoke from your camp a quarter mile back in the trees. Your men have already slaughtered a sheep, its guts piled on a cloth canvas as its legs stick out of a boiling pot over the fire. As you approach, your men come up to you and help you out of your armor, someone providing Sir Bruce with a cup of wine, Fr. Fingerlender approaches and asks about expenses incurred in depleted magic items he should note, etc. etc."

Like some poster here put in his sig, it's called verisimilitude, and it does wonders.

Halaster
2009-02-15, 02:56 PM
First off: sorry for misrepresenting you, but the topic is a bit of a red flag for me.

But do you really want to weigh down a party with all that? It seriously limits what you can do. I just have this kind of situation, because my players came up with it more or less without thinking it through and got themselves three porters and a cook (in order to get them out of a slave booth, mostly). Now, whenever want to chase some enemy, sneak past something or similar adventury things, they always have to bother finding a way to bring the party along. We've wasted like an hour each evening (with an average 6-8 hours playing time) making arrangements for the baggage train. Time we might have spent having more fun.

So, no, it takes me almost no time, to come up with little descriptions like the one you provided, but unless the PCs are on a military campaign or camped outside that dungeon they're just raiding, it just makes for a lot of hassle, having to deal with the extra effort created by all those people. In addition, to achieve verisimilitude, you would have to actually play all these NPCs, because otherwise they turn into another note on the character sheet and add little to the game.

In fact, a game that deals with "hired help" on a regular basis, Pendragon, where all characters are knights and thus have a squire, explicitly recommends blending the squire into the background as much as you can. Basically, the just show up when someone needs a lance. Of course, that's an Arthurian genre convention, but it also reduces the paperwork.

CU,
Halaster

hamishspence
2009-02-15, 03:01 PM
hired help on a large scale doesn't really make sense at low level. Mid-lvel, more so- and even then, sould be handled carefully- its lik Leadership- can get out of hand.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-15, 03:19 PM
hired help on a large scale doesn't really make sense at low level. Mid-lvel, more so- and even then, sould be handled carefully- its lik Leadership- can get out of hand.

Pshaw, who ever said large scale? You're hiring squires and torch-holders, not mercenaries. In 2E any party worth its salt would have at least someone with a sack to haul around all the loot :smallbiggrin:

I'll second using the Disease Track for really deadly poisons. You have to remember that, in 4E, commoners are minions; a snake bite will kill them outright. Even seasoned types (Soldier 1) may be badly affected by even small viper poison; a serious snake (doing Poison 5 or 10) could drop 'em right quick.

But yeah, in short to add "realism" to any game is all in the plotting, not the rules. Sure, you might need to avoid some absurd results (swimming in lava or stage-diving off cliffs) with house rules if they become a problem, but mostly it's up to you to keep the players honest. Track food and water & carrying capacity (and how they carry it!), use more weather-based hazards and make sure that politics and social pressures affect the adventurers. If you need to make things "grittier," then charge the PCs with more Healing Surge damage in response to environmental stresses.

For example, set up some Endurance Skill Challenges for things like forced marches, marches in inclement weather and the like. You can have the lowest Endurance bonus player make the checks, or have everyone just roll it on their own. Success has no ill effect; failure costs you 1 Healing Surge.

Oh, and have night-time encounters. :smallbiggrin:

Halaster
2009-02-15, 03:27 PM
Sounds not so bad. Make it part of the action. Just replace some monsters with environmental hazards. If I get this right, 4e actually handles these "challenges" as encounters, complete with XP and all. So yes, perhaps you should use them that way. Scaling a mountain or crossing a desert should not just be a matter of the GM saying "OK, you get there", but neither should it branch out into a beginner's course in survival training. So perhaps some well-placed challenges solve the problem nicely.
Also gets you around having the players come up with everything and shifting some of the work onto the characters, who are after all the ones in the action.

CU,
Halaster