What is the general opinion on the injury Variant?

[ocel]

What is the general opinion on the injury (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm)Variant; & has this rule been applied successfully in a 10-20 & higher ECL campaign before? And if not what additional houserules would make this variant compatible with most 3.5 campaigns? For example modifying the clause on undead, constructs, & other creatures lacking constitution with an substitute ability score like charisma, or strength as seen in this homebrewed awakened skeleton (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7966879&postcount=55).

[Tvtyrant]

It makes being a fighter more dangerous; anytime you take real damage you have a high chance of immediately being disabled. At low levels this is tremendously dangerous, as the fort save starts at 15 and goes up. At level 1 a Fighter has a 71% chance of being immediately disabled by any damage, at all. Other classes have higher chances but are less likely to get hit. Yeah, this makes combat really dangerous.

[ocel]

What about Magic incarnum or Tome of Battle, how do they fare under this variant, I would assume they would be relatively better than an average fighter?

[Greenish]

What about Magic incarnum or Tome of Battle, how do they fare under this variant, I would assume they would be relatively better than an average fighter?Eh, they're melee combatants as well. ToB has a few ways to get better fort saves, but they're only 1/round and require refreshing.

Really, with that variant, you'd be best off not engaging to melee yourself, ever. Handle Animal for the win.

[Tvtyrant]

I think it works well if your overhauling the system; I have thought about getting rid of AC and using this and reflex saves before. The problem is it makes everyone very, very squishy.

[ocel]

Hmm although it is elegant in its simplicity, it has the potential to be deadly. Am I correct? Perhaps with this a leadership feat, summoning enmass, or mass employment of hirelings is justifiable...What of the houserule suggestion I've mentioned in the first post? Perhaps combine it with rizban's parry rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136100)?

[Tvtyrant]

Hmm although it is elegant in its simplicity, it has the potential to be deadly. Am I correct? Perhaps with this a leadership feat, summoning enmass, or mass employment of hirelings is justifiable...What of the houserule suggestion I've mentioned in the first post? Perhaps combine it with rizban's parry rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136100)?

The Parry Rules are a good addition, and might make it work for the melee types. It kills Power Attack though :P

[ocel]

I thought so, while we are on the subject, is there anything else that would discourage combat, or players from enlisting a campaign with these variants?

[Greenish]

Heh, swordsage with huge dex, Combat Reflexes & Weapon Finesse (and Shadow Blade, of course): you can't touch this.

Should grab Uncanny Dodge from somewhere too, so you'll have two large ACs, and enemies have to beat the better one of them.

Though this "make any combat option cost a million of feats" is silly, there are other melee classes than fighter.

[Edit]:
The Parry Rules are a good addition, and might make it work for the melee types. It kills Power Attack though :PKills PA? Shocktrooper says "lolno". :smalltongue:

[KillianHawkeye]

At low levels this is tremendously dangerous, as the fort save starts at 15 and goes up. At level 1 a Fighter has a 71% chance of being immediately disabled by any damage, at all.

I don't think you've done the math on this correctly.

Let's say our hypothetical level 1 Fighter takes 1d4 points of damage from an enemy's dagger. That translates into a damage value of 1 (1-4 divided by 5, rounded up), the minimum result possible by a successful attack (AKA "any damage, at all"). The DC to resist this damage is 15 + the damage value, or 16.

Now let's be generous and assume that Fighter has a Constitution of only 10. That still leaves him with his +2 base Fort save. So Fighter needs to roll a 14 or better to resist the damage entirely. If he rolls anything from 5 to 13, he is Hit. If he rolls a 4 or worse, he becomes Disabled.

So in this scenario, Fighter has a 35% chance of being completely fine, a 45% chance of taking a Hit, and a 20% chance of being Disabled.

------

Now that being said, a level 1 Fighter with a 10 Constitution and his full allotment of 10 hit points ordinarily has a 0% chance of being Disabled by a 1d4 dagger attack, so we can see that this system does indeed carry an increased risk.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Eh, I see the Injury variant as being less lethal in general, although perhaps more swingy...and, examining it more thoroughly, really, really weird in many ways. The fighter above is more vulnerable to daggers, sure, but if he takes a hit from an ogre, he has (on an average damage roll) a 25% chance of being fine, a 45% chance of taking a Hit, and a 30% chance of being disabled. Normally, a minimum damage hit would leave him on his last legs (1 hp), and most hits would leave him dying or, with a high roll, dead.

And that's the big thing. Under this system, you actually can't die from active combat; you have to be disabled, and even then, take two hits and fail two saves to be killed. Even the massive damage variant and a coup de grace only leaves you dying, and dying is not as big a threat at higher levels. At a +0 Fort save, it's a 45% chance of dying, and 30% of becoming stable (odds getting worse each round). At a +9 Fort save, you have a base 75% chance of stabilizing, and it will take a string of bad luck to actually die. At +14 or more, you literally can't die from damage unless your enemies pound on your bleeding body.

This is pretty huge. Again with that fighter against the ogre, even if he lucked out and took minimum damage from the first blow, the next would certainly drop him and quite likely kill him. Here, his odds of going down are only 5% worse.

Healing is seriously buffed as well. 5 points removes disabled status or one Hit. But remember, you can suffer at most one Hit per attack, regardless of the damage it deals. A 1st level cleric with Cure Light Wounds can, on an average roll, utterly remove the effects of any single hit. Say a Great Wyrm red dragon drops a Maximized fire breath on our 10 con Ftr1. Normal rules, he's dead several times over, no matter what. Injury variant, he has a 95% chance of being disabled, a 5% chance of being completely fine (:smallconfused:). And, if he gets a Cure Light from his cleric pal, he is instantly brought back to full fighting form.

Now, the thing is, take a 20th level raging dwarf barbarian with Con 44 (18+2 race+6 item+5 level+5 inherent+8 rage) and a Cloak of Resistance+5. Fort +34, normal hp would be 495 average. Normal rules, that dragon breath would be a serious hit, but survivable. Injury rules, the DC is 63 (39 on a successful save for half), so unless Reflex succeeded, the dwarf is in the same boat as our Ftr1. On a 20 he auto-succeeds, and even with a 19 he fails by 10, and so is disabled. As it happens, that dwarf, and any character, also has a 5% chance of being instantly disabled by any single attack, no matter how weak.

The good news is, if his opponents can't deal more than 150 damage in one attack, once he is disabled, they have to pound on him until he rolls another natural 1 to finally leave him dying, and even then, since coup de grace won't actually do anything to help you finish a dying foe, have to get him to roll another natural 1 in one round to finally kill him, since (barring, again, a natural 1) he automatically stabilizes. So it's entirely possible that he could collapse on death's door from a kobold's rusty shiv, and subsequently take several-hundred hits from, I dunno, giant axes, dragon bites, the tarrasque, or meteor swarms, to finally kill.

I'm sure this has serious ramifications for people who rely on multiple attacks vs. single big attacks, but I don't think I want to get into it. Steadfast Determination would probably be the most commonly chosen feat in the game.

...Yeah, I don't think I like this variant very much.