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Jerthanis
2009-12-06, 03:16 PM
I've been kicking around ideas for a D&D campaign, about a sort of lawless wild land without many stable towns, much less an organized kingdom, and few safe havens for the PCs to retreat to. In it, I wanted lengthy tours of sleeping on tree roots and muddy ground to take its toll on the capacity of the PCs without dooming them to automatic death. I was thinking that hurting the PCs' Healing Surges would be the perfect way to do this.

I have two ideas: Endurance checks versus a scaling DC based on how uncomfortable their surroundings are when taking a long rest, with failure resulting in regaining 1 or 2 fewer surges than the maximum. My only problem with this is that Endurance-trained characters with high Con, like those with tons of Surges would make the check almost all the time, while those classes with fewer surges would be put on the ropes by it regularly, making it a "rich stay rich, poor get poorer" style imbalance.

Second, I was thinking that the first time a character becomes bloodied in an encounter, they would have one "wound", and when you take a long rest, your maximum surges is reduced by your number of wounds. With a successful Heal check, the wound applies its penalty once and heals enough to no longer hinder you. Without one, it applies three times before disappearing. This would make healing before bloodied seem more attractive. In theory it may also balance out the advantage the Defenders might get from that first rule, as they might Endure their way out of the penalties for uncomfortable resting, but they'd have Wounds stack up faster than anyone else.

I'm also thinking of restricting people from taking Divine Power Source classes, as there wouldn't be any sort of organized religion anywhere, and no evidence of the existence of gods either. Would this compound unexpectedly with these two earlier rules? (Martial, Primal, and Arcane would all still exist)

Anyway, I'm looking for opinions on these houserules, problems I may have overlooked, and options I may not have thought of that may facilitate this idea better.

Artanis
2009-12-06, 03:55 PM
1- Overall fatigue

First off, I think the "lengthy" bit should be a major factor. If the world really is wild and uncivilized, then everybody will know that you won't last long unless you're well-supplied and know what you're doing. So it should take a while before fatigue comes into play.

The DMG has a few pages (starting on pg. 158) about environmental hazards and starvation and such that can be used as a good starting point. It even has a handy table with Endurance DCs for extreme environments like cold, heat, altitude, etc. to which you could add "area that generally makes it suck to be you."

I would also bring the Nature skill into play. Successful Nature checks could represent finding a decent place to camp for the night, and as such could make that day's Endurance checks easier (or simply not needed). If you decide to track rations, Nature also provides food to extend those rations.


2- Wounds

I have no idea how well the "wounds" thing would work out, other than that it would greatly depend on what other factors you decide to bring into play.


3- Divine power source

The other power sources provide plenty of classes for each role, so I don't think banning Divine would really upset much, if anything. However, you can keep the classes if you're willing to refluff the power source enough. Like making them Primal-esque, but powered by radiant-happy spirits instead of "normal" nature-y ones. Or something.

Mando Knight
2009-12-06, 03:59 PM
3- Divine power source

The other power sources provide plenty of classes for each role, so I don't think banning Divine would really upset much, if anything. However, you can keep the classes if you're willing to refluff the power source enough. Like making them Primal-esque, but powered by radiant-happy spirits instead of "normal" nature-y ones. Or something.

Like spirits of summer and sun, or something...

rayne_dragon
2009-12-06, 04:13 PM
Fatigue is pretty cool. My DM uses rules like that sometimes, but only under fairly extreme circumstances (drinking tainted water or traveling across volcanic mountains). I'm also a fan of keeping accurate track of food and water in D&D - it's usually easy enough for the players to get by on Nature and Dungeoneering anyway. I'd also let players, if they think of it, to use skills other than Endurance (like Nature or Dungeoneering) to be able to make or find resources that would let them rest better without loosing surges or making Endurance checks. This will help prevent the rich stay rich, poor get poorer thing you're worried about as long as your players are moderately clever.

The wounds thing sounds really good too. It adds an extra grittiness to it making getting hurt have long-term consequences and the Heal skill more essential to adventuring. I doubt it would balance out between the Defenders and the rest of the party. Or at least it wouldn't with the group I play with. You may also want to make it so that wounds can only heal with a stay in a proper bed, requiring a very good nature check or a trip back to town.

Removing a power source doesn't hurt much. It's only if you eliminate an entire role that the party hurts for it. The worst that can happen is a player really wants to play a particular class from that power source. Of course, you could always refluff the classes as non-divine if you're worried about some sort of imbalance. My DM refluffed all the Primal classes as martial or divine for his Dragonlance 4e game. Note that this has some interesting effects on being able to take certain feats, especially the ones from the "power" books - for example my Shaman has Rebuke Undead, but can't take the generic Primal class feats. It's odd, but hasn't been unbalancing.

jmbrown
2009-12-06, 04:56 PM
You might find my alternate rules of deprivation enticing. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121660) Under normal 4E rules, characters of higher level actually die faster than lower level characters.

Jerthanis
2009-12-06, 09:43 PM
The DMG has a few pages (starting on pg. 158) about environmental hazards and starvation and such that can be used as a good starting point. It even has a handy table with Endurance DCs for extreme environments like cold, heat, altitude, etc. to which you could add "area that generally makes it suck to be you."

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, so it's nice to know it's not actually nearly as much of a homebrew idea as I was thinking.



You might find my alternate rules of deprivation enticing. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121660) Under normal 4E rules, characters of higher level actually die faster than lower level characters.

These are cool, and I will probably gank them to go along with my ideas.


Fatigue is pretty cool. My DM uses rules like that sometimes, but only under fairly extreme circumstances (drinking tainted water or traveling across volcanic mountains). I'm also a fan of keeping accurate track of food and water in D&D - it's usually easy enough for the players to get by on Nature and Dungeoneering anyway. I'd also let players, if they think of it, to use skills other than Endurance (like Nature or Dungeoneering) to be able to make or find resources that would let them rest better without loosing surges or making Endurance checks. This will help prevent the rich stay rich, poor get poorer thing you're worried about as long as your players are moderately clever.

What I'm a little worried about with this is that if a lot of different things can be justified as a solution, it won't be so much a "being out in the wilderness for a long time is harsh and leaves you ragged and worn" and more "If you choose one of these four skills then you function normally in this game."

Also, I remember when I was a wussy child hiking the Appalachian sleeping on a soft mat in a modern-era sleeping bag in a waterproof tent and being too cold and uncomfortable to get to sleep all night, so I imagine equipment and shelter only play so much of a part in the basic ability to get rest in averse conditions.



The wounds thing sounds really good too. It adds an extra grittiness to it making getting hurt have long-term consequences and the Heal skill more essential to adventuring. I doubt it would balance out between the Defenders and the rest of the party. Or at least it wouldn't with the group I play with. You may also want to make it so that wounds can only heal with a stay in a proper bed, requiring a very good nature check or a trip back to town.

The game I'm planning this for would be a game where the basic assumption of returning to town would be largely impossible, as towns are tiny where they even exist, and the PCs would be involved in week or month-long expeditions, so I wouldn't want it to be absolutely impossible to recover from several wounds.

I did sort of realize that I had the Defender thing backwards, so it might be another rule where the big, tough style characters are penalized less again. I'll have to rethink this and decide if it's what I want.



Removing a power source doesn't hurt much. It's only if you eliminate an entire role that the party hurts for it. The worst that can happen is a player really wants to play a particular class from that power source. Of course, you could always refluff the classes as non-divine if you're worried about some sort of imbalance. My DM refluffed all the Primal classes as martial or divine for his Dragonlance 4e game. Note that this has some interesting effects on being able to take certain feats, especially the ones from the "power" books - for example my Shaman has Rebuke Undead, but can't take the generic Primal class feats. It's odd, but hasn't been unbalancing.

Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing I didn't think about. Power-source oriented feats, items, and so forth. Thanks for reminding me about them.

Anyway, thanks for your responses. I'll give it some thought.

Yakk
2009-12-07, 01:34 PM
Make it an extended skill challenge when interesting.

Have some areas be more hard core than others (give regions levels). With appropriate equipment, everyone has to make an easy endurance DC check. With poor equipment, average. Naked, hard DCs.

On top of that, you are making other checks to get where you are going. Boosting your DCs by a notch on the 'get where you are going' check lets you give everyone a +2 on their endurance check, or one person a +5.

The problem with all of this is that it can easily get tedious. "Make 20 endurance checks everyone!" -- zzz.

incubus5075
2009-12-07, 03:18 PM
The wound thing sounds a bit complicated, here is something that I do as a DM to make everything gritty, life threatning, etc. A little background is that I played World of Darkness and DnD for years and I found that in WoD stuff was intense because you could die from a couple hits, or a single good one so defense and running away played a large role. In DnD eveything was drawn out and combat sometimes took forever. So I asked my players if they would mind a more realistic damage scale. We decide to try it out, tried alot of ideas and eventually found one that worked. Halfed the monsters hit points but doubled their damage. The leaders and defenders can now help take a chunk out of the baddie but multiple healing surges are used per encounter, sometimes enough that the players wake up needing to spend more surges...kind of like you wounding idea. This is what My group and I do so no hate posts needed :)