Hit Point Alteration: Wound Multiplier

[Realms of Chaos]

The current hit point system in D&D has never seemed too realistic to me. While D&D tries its best to make fighting a dragon man-to-beast feasible, the process inevitably seems to involve a number of hit points so staggeringly high that a decent meatshield can take a hundred javelins to the face and walk out without any problem at all.

That said, there are a few alternatives to the traditional system. Through vitality and wound points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm), for example, the life of a hero is inevitably tied to a rather small sum of points, points that any old farmer could hit with a lucky shot. Even though that farmer can injure you in a serious way, however, the fact remains that you could still technically take a hundred pitchforks to the face and walk away with no problems (actually healing faster than with our current system). If you want to say that vitality points are serving as an “abstraction”. In this case, you are welcome to explain how those characters can repetitively jump off of 5-story buildings or stand in a bonfire for a few minutes (neither of which has any chance of getting a critical hit) and walk away more or less unfazed.

I’ve also about systems that basically spiral one closer to death as you go along (lesser wounds lead to greater wounds lead to death) but from what I’ve heard, using grades of wounds would prevent proper scaling of damage over the course of a 20-level rpg like D&D (In other words, it would be hard to have a CR 20 monster deal more damage than a CR 19 monster which deals more than a CR 18 monster and so forth). I may be mistaken in this belief, however, so you are free to correct me.

Below is a mechanic that I created over the course of a 10-minute brainstorm session.

The Wound Multiplier:
In this variant, most rules involving hit points work completely unchanged. One additional value that each player, NPC, and monster has, however, is a wound multiplier. At character creation each player has a wound multiplier of 0. At the end of each round in which a creature takes damage equal to or greater than half of their ECL (or HD if they have none), that creature's Wound Multiplier increases by 1. Whenever a creature takes damage, that damage is increased by xd6 before applying energy resistance and/or damage reduction, where X is the creature's Wound Multiplier. All creatures take a penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, armor class, save DCs of spells and abilities that they use, and to their caster level(s) equal to half of their their wound multiplier (rounded down).

Lowering the Wound Multiplier:
After 8 hours of rest, a creature’s wound multiplier is reduced by 1. If receiving bedrest via the heal skill, it is reduced by an additional 1. If the creature is at full health, it is reduced by an additional 1.

Any source of healing that would restore hit points other than fast healing and regeneration can be used to lower a creature’s wound multiplier. When casting such a spell or using such an ability, the caster may choose to halve any hit points healed (round down) to lower the wound multiplier of all targets by 1. For restorative items, the caster creating the item chooses how this decision is made ahead of time.

A creature restored from the dead returns with a wound multiplier of 0.

Other Rulings and Exceptions:

Damage taken from being dying and unstable is unaffected by your wound multiplier. Other sources of similar damage (such as nonlethal damage from thirst or forced marches), however, is multiplied.
If you take 50 points of damage or more from a single source while your wound multiplier is 1 or 0, it is increased by 2.
If a single attack or source of damage would deal more than one form of damage (such as a +1 frost shortsword), the agressor selects which form of damage is increased by the target's wound multiplier.


Implications of the Variant:
I’m sure that implementing this thing has far deeper implications than I could ever hope to fathom but I think that I could list some possible side-effects.
1. Anything can kill you: Using this system, anyone trying to stand in a fire will find themselves burning alive in under 2 minutes (by which time they’d have taken 210d6 fire damage) unless they are immune to fire or have decent resistance and a low wound multiplier. By the time you’ve leapt from your 3rd huge cliff, you’d need to be darn lucky to still be alive (instead of the normal 6+ cliffs our normal system requires). If you have a decently high wound multiplier, even angry farmers or guerrilla soldiers can give a player in this situation pause.
2. Teamwork… works: Unlike the current system, fighting together against a single enemy is particularly effective in this system. A rogue’s sneak attack not only reduce a Dragon’s hit points but also helps the fighter deal a lot more damage with his full attack. Not only does the fighter’s full attack seriously damage the dragon but it also penalizes its saving throws when the wizard casts his next spell.
3. Groups over Bosses: With this variant, “boss monsters” can expect to reach higher wound multipliers before death than mooks, meaning that they are more disadvantaged by this system. As such, large numbers of foes can actually help win battles and battles with boss monsters (such as dragons/liches/etc.) won’t last as long.
4. Infinite levels of lethality: As a character’s wound multiplier goes higher and higher, the gap between different increments of damage goes higher and higher. As an example, the difference between 1d8 and 1d4 is about 2 damage while the difference between 10d8 and 10d4 (if you have a wound multiplier of 10) is around 20. Multiplied enough, even the smallest difference between two sources of damage make one source seem far preferable to the other.
5. The return of combat healing: When each injury hurts the spells of the wizard, the attacks of the fighter, and even the sneakiest of the rogues, lowering wound multipliers becomes of paramount importance. As each blow increases the potency of the next, healing immediately (even in the midst of combat) is invaluable. On an interesting note, cure minor wounds becomes a decent utility spell when using this variant. Whether you like this change or not likely depends on your views towards the traditional “heal-bot” cleric.
6. Decent low-level survivability: Despite increased long-term lethality, this variant isn’t much more lethal for low-level characters than the normal game is. The first hit that a player takes only gives them a small penalty, the second only increases the penalty, and the third hit (when the damage is first multiplied) is about where a normal low-level character would be knocked out either way.
7. No Real Change at High Optimization: When everything revolves around uber-charging for hundreds of damage, launching death spells before rolling initiative, and other such insane tactics, it seems rather unlikely that your damage will ever get multiplied by too much. Similarly, though martial characters may be hit every now and then, you would need a pretty high wound multiplier before the penalty would stop most popular combos and locks.

As stated above, it only really took about 10 minutes of thought to come up with this variant. Do any other systems out there use something like this? What obvious errors have I overlooked? Questions? Thoughts in general?

[Domriso]

Hm, it's an interesting system. I'd like to see how it would play out in a session, but it seems like it should be rather intuitive.

That said, a boss with a few healers around him would be a damned hard opponent (like it should be).

[gkathellar]

I like it, save that it makes the cleric into a healbot. Those spells really should be swift actions to cast ...

[Adamantrue]

I really like the idea of this, as more lethal combat always seems more thrilling. I have some questions, though.

How would this effect some of the lesser fighting styles, such as Two-Weapon Fighting (or even the lowly Monk Flurry), compared to the 1-hit wonders such as a ToB Strike or an Uber-Charger?

Also, just so I understand the rules right, if I were to land 3 Shuriken right before a Charger hit, even if in the end DR would reduce it to 0, the Charger would still deal x3 damage, correct?

Finally, if you have Fire Resistance 10, and you stand in a fire that deals 1d6 each round...eventually, the Wound Multiplier would make the damage greater than your Fire Resistance, right?

I do think there should be some easier/faster ways to remove Wound Multipliers, outside of Healing spells. Like, if you reduced it by 1 every hour, maybe 2 if its an hour of rest.

[Seerow]

How would this effect some of the lesser fighting styles, such as Two-Weapon Fighting (or even the lowly Monk Flurry), compared to the 1-hit wonders such as a ToB Strike or an Uber-Charger?


I'd like to see the math on this as well. At first glance it seems as though it may go so far as unbalancing things in favor of TWFing. I mean, you get to do twice as many attacks at higher multipliers, that's a huge deal.




The other thing is all healing spells reducing the wound multiplier only by 1 just encourages the wand of cure light wounds rather than making general healing spells better (except maybe mass CLW). Maybe something like CLW reduces by 1, CMW by 2, CSW 3, CCW 4, Heal Reset to 0.

Reducing wound multiplier further since you are reducing the damage healed further. (For example Heal is giving up 75 hp in healing, compared to the ~5 hp of healing lost from CLW).

[Realms of Chaos]

I really like the idea of this, as more lethal combat always seems more thrilling. I have some questions, though.

How would this effect some of the lesser fighting styles, such as Two-Weapon Fighting (or even the lowly Monk Flurry), compared to the 1-hit wonders such as a ToB Strike or an Uber-Charger?[/Quote]

In most cases, the current system seems to lean in favor of 1-hit wonders over these lesser fighting styles. Indeed, even a TWF rogue is often less powerful than an average uber-charger and less flexible than a swordsage/warblade.

Through wound multipliers, the playing field is evened out a bit. Two-Weapon Fighting becomes a worthwhile consideration for more than just rogues, flurry of blows stands a chance of doing something, and even a normal full attack seems to pack a lot more punch (seeing as each hit lowers the target's AC against the next).

One additional fighting style that this variant makes palatable (at least I'm pretty sure) is ranged weaponry, including archery. With a damage multiplier, the notorious low damage of arrows and bolts stop making much of a difference. Furthermore, being far away from the enemy may mean taking fewer hits and keeping a lower multiplier.

I'll concede right now that pouncing uber-chargers and TWF rogues might get a bit out of hand. Then again, there are few foes who could survive enough hits from these enemies for the multiplier to matter one way or another. When this variant is played to its strengths (focusing on groups/ambushes/hordes over singular bosses), the craziness shouldn't be too noticeable.

The only worry in my mind is that less powerful 1-hit wonders like the scout might be a bit hosed by this system if they try to stay in melee (though a ranged scout might still be fun to play and spring attack might let such a melee scout survive).



Also, just so I understand the rules right, if I were to land 3 Shuriken right before a Charger hit, even if in the end DR would reduce it to 0, the Charger would still deal x3 damage, correct?

Finally, if you have Fire Resistance 10, and you stand in a fire that deals 1d6 each round...eventually, the Wound Multiplier would make the damage greater than your Fire Resistance, right?

Actually, this wasn't my intention when I wrote this but I do see now that the wording suggests that and I'm torn on whether I like this or not.

On the one hand, I don't have a hard time believing that a high-level barbarian at the top of his game (WM of 0) could take any number of punches from a commoner and walk off as the blow fails to sink in and ruling things this way might make sources of energy resistance far less valuable (though still viable).

On the other hand, it would be an interesting twist if shuriken and fukimi bari were able to impact the course of a combat even if they could do almost nothing to a creature directly and this interpretation would make a good many more weapons viable in general, which is certainly a good thing.

What do people think about this?


I do think there should be some easier/faster ways to remove Wound Multipliers, outside of Healing spells. Like, if you reduced it by 1 every hour, maybe 2 if its an hour of rest.

Actually, there's a pretty simple reason why I'm not doing something like this:

In your example, it would be possible for someone to lower their WM by 16 with a night of rest. If your multiplier is that high, however, that would mean that you have taken a whole lot of damage. If each of the 16 things to hit you dealt 1d8 damage (unmultiplied), you have taken a total of 121d8 damage (average of 544 damage).

If you survive and the party has a healer, you can probably heal all that damage and lower your WM to 0 in under 24 hours.

If you survive and the party does not have a healer, you are going to be walking around with intense wounds for the better part of a month and your WM will take a bit less time than that to heal.


WM is intended as a measure of damage much like hit points (the various penalties represent pain, fatigue, and less superficial aspects of injury while the actual multiplier represents vulnerabilities and complications from prior injuries) so having it heal at a super-accelerated pace doesn't make much sense to me.

The system written above was created so that:

You may be forced to camp in enemy territory and rely on characters with penalized spot/listen checks as lookouts.
Even if you escape an encounter alive, a forced march or simple starvation can still do you in before you reach civilization.
Wandering into an unfamiliar town when damaged can be highly dangerous if the town happens to be xenophibic, even if occupied by human commoners.


In short, it was made so that things DO pile up over time and so that even the small things become incredibly dangerous if you aren't careful and don't have a healer. This approach to gaming may be too gritty for some players, however, and isn't intended for everyone.


The other thing is all healing spells reducing the wound multiplier only by 1 just encourages the wand of cure light wounds rather than making general healing spells better (except maybe mass CLW). Maybe something like CLW reduces by 1, CMW by 2, CSW 3, CCW 4, Heal Reset to 0.

Actually, I wouldn't be so fast to claim that this system demands wands of cure light wounds. It forces a healer to make tougher tactical choices in the midst of combat.

If everything is going okay near the start of a battle and nobody is too damaged, CMW or CLW might be preferable to keep WMs down for as long as possible. If many people are taking damage across the battlefield, a quickened mass cure light wounds may well be preferable to heal.

If someone is taking a lot of damage and has a high WM, a cleric has to choose between using their wand of CLW to lower the WM for minimal cost (leaving the target with massive damage), using Heal to cure most of the hit points and leave the WM where it is (risking a more dangerous hit next round), or using Heal to cure some of the hit points and lower the WM (while, as you point out, wasting most of Heal's potential).

While low-level heals do remain useful far longer when using this variant, there's still this kind of difficult question that needs answering.

[Adamantrue]

Personally, I like the idea of turning Shuriken into more of a Tactical Weapon.

Another hypothetical. Say you cast Vigor on someone before combat, and Lesser Vigor, with the option of halving the damage healed (rounding down) to remove a Wound Multiplier point each round. Is that a viable approach in your system? Nope, Fast Healing doesn't count.

[Realms of Chaos]

Another hypothetical. Say you cast Vigor on someone before combat, and Lesser Vigor, with the option of halving the damage healed (rounding down) to remove a Wound Multiplier point each round. Is that a viable approach in your system? Nope, Fast Healing doesn't count.

Although fast healing doesn't work, let me point out something similar along the same line of thought. With this alternate, a crusader (ToB) becomes one of the best healers in existance.

Also, note that a dragon shaman/monk/paladin can divide thier pools of healing into increments of 2, healing 1 hit point and lowering their WM by 1 each time. As such, these forms of healing may really be worth something now.

[Morty]

I'm not really into D&D anymore, but I like this variant. It solves two problems I have with D&D combat, namely the absurd amounts of punishment characters can take - there's heroic badassery and there's ridiculous, and people shrugging off a rain of crossbow bolts belongs firmly in the latter category - and that at a certain point, no amount of low-level enemies can be of any threat to a high-level foe.
However, I feel that this houserule may work better if armor class wasn't notoriously difficult to raise to a level where it matters.

[Quellian-dyrae]

This is a pretty cool system, but I do see some potential issues.

Damage multipliers are incredibly powerful. I'm thinking that rather than a strict multiplier, you might be better served going with say a +1d6 damage bonus. I know that seems small, but I think it still does what the system is aiming for (keeps weak attacks escalating in effect) without making already-powerful attacks utterly devastating.

Another idea I have for this would be something like a "threshold" where an attack has to deal more than a certain number of damage to increment the wound multiplier. Damage that doesn't could reduce the threshold until the next increment so weak hits can still pile up, but overflow from a strong attack wouldn't increment it multiple times.

I will bring up the full attack issue again. Extra attacks are already very powerful. The real weaknesses of TWF is that it requires a reliable source of bonus damage, which this variant provides, and it loses more power when you can't full attack, which restricting the wound multiplier to once per full attack regardless of number of hits would actually bring closer into balance. I'd suggest doing that, although if the system were additive it might not be as big an issue.

For healing, what if you also had the option of sacrificing all of the healing to do the 1/2/3/4/reset thing? That would add another tactical choice; do I give my ally back some hit points, or seriously restore its fighting power and prevent more future damage.

[Neon Knight]

Yeah, I see issue sup the wazhoo for this one. It certainly does make multiple attacks an attractive option... probably too attractive. And it treads into ugly territory.

For example, I have a CL 9 caster who chucks a magic missile at a monster. He gets 5 missiles. Does each missile count as an individual damage source, or is it all counted as one damage source? You'll start running into these issues all the time, because 4 sources of damage doing 1d10 each (really 7d10 total) are going to be more dangerous than one source doing 4d10. Every time this sort of issue comes up (and it does come up; check out the rules for seeing when precision damage applies to multiple attacks and the inconsistencies that arise from that).

Another issue is that regenerating/fast healing monsters are a joke. Even if they heal hitpoints, they don't heal wound multipliers, so if you are capable of inflicting damage on something, you're pretty much capable of making it irrelevant, given enough time. You don't need fire or acid to beat trolls, or silver to best werewolves; just stack wound multipliers until you can down him in one hit anyway, and until he can't threaten you at all because he attacks at -26.

Thirdly, this variant isn't even semi-realistic. It's probably even less realistic than the default method of dealing with hp, which isn't even intend to be realistic in the slightest. And do things like constructs, undead, elementals, and the like really have any reason to suffer wound penalties? Why does the Tarrasque taking one point of damage suffer the same penalty as a lesser beast taking 49 damage?

Multipliers are just damn messy and dangerous to work with, two. Outside of crits, they do happen to e fairly rare, and with good reason. If I wanted to achieve the goals of this homebrew, I'd use some combination of SAGA's damage threshold/condition track rules, and some kind of onslaught penalty/multiple defenses penalty.

[Adamantrue]

What if this had a ceiling, as far as how high your Wound Multiplier can be? Say at x3, so that no matter how many goblins are swarming you, at the worst you'd still only take triple damage from their attacks, and have the -3 penalties to everything.

There'd still be the Magic Missile problem, but at least it wouldn't get any worse. But using a Threshold to determine when you have an increased Wound Multiplier may take care of that.

[Domriso]

I think the easiest way to work it would be to have damage need to hit a certain threshold before it can inflict a wound modifier. Multiple small attacks won't do much, but one strong attack can make all of those smaller attacks start to hurt.

[Howler Dagger]

i think a thresold would work well, but how about make it so your wound multiplier can only go up at a rate of 1 per round?

[Domriso]

Yeah, make each creature have a threshold, and then have the Wound multiplier only go up once per round, if that. That makes multiple attacks still useful, but not terribly so, and it makes it so that a couple of mosquito bites don't kill you.

[Realms of Chaos]

Bonus Dice: As far as changing the multiplier into straight-up bonus dice, that's an interesting solution. It stops uber-chargers from becoming more devastating while a halfling's dagger could still become dangerous. I think hat I'll incorporate it right now.

Thresholds: As far as thresholds to make tougher creatures seem tougher, that does seem to be in order, though I can't think of a good baseline for that threshold. Does anyone have any ideas regarding this?

Limits: Regarding a limitation of WM increases per round, 1 increase does sound perfectly reasonable.

Regeneration/Fast Healing: Take note that these are purposefully nerfed in this alternate (just like damage reduction, energy resistance, and AC). While still a welcome addition, this alternate exists to prevent anyone from going on indefinitely. Also, I actually like the idea of a mob of commoners bashing a troll for so long that it remains dormant for months, starving and ready to repeat the cycle.

Constructs/Undead/Plants/etc.: I have never bought the "certain creatures don't have weak points" arguement and probably never will. I think that having a pre-existing notch in a treefolk's trunk could set up for a more powerful strike, that a golem's head can't be injured in any way that would harm its vision, or that a zombie isn't still relying on its tendons to walk around. This might be going against canon but I don't see the problem with including WMs on all creatures.

Big creatures becoming worthless: As soon as we can establish what a fair threshold would be, a commoner's pitchfork won't be killing off dragons or tarrasques anytime in the near future. That said, this system works against the concept of boss monsters in a big way (as it says in the OP) as worlds with this system can have mobs of commoners destroy umberhulks, weaker dragons, and any other creature whose threshold they can overcome. If you want to run a game in which players seek out mythical creatures to kill them, this alternate probably isn't for you.

Edit: A provisional threshold has been put in. Opinions?

[Morty]

I can't really comment on the number-crunching part of the variant... but I don't think that because a big group of weak characters, even commoners, can fell high-CR creatures with that houserule it means that heroes become less useful or obsolete. Even if a mob of commoners with pitchforks can kill a dragon, giant, umber hulk or somesuch, a lot of them will still die, maybe more than a half of them - the difference is, they'll kill that monster instead of dying after doing nothing. So they're going to prefer to let a group of adventurers handle it unless they have no other options.

[Realms of Chaos]

Did a bit of brainstorming and I finally came up with a way for smaller hits to accumulate into a WM increase without keeping track of separate sub-thresholds. You still must be able to damage the creature to contribute but this seems a bit smoother than the previous version.

[jiriku]

Wounds must also reduce spell and ability save DCs, or the system disproportionally impacts martial characters over casters and special ability users.

[Realms of Chaos]

Wounds must also reduce spell and ability save DCs, or the system disproportionally impacts martial characters over casters and special ability users.

An excellent point. Added.

[ocel]

Maybe the threshold should be: Base = 10+2 per HD or Ecl?

[Drachasor]

Have you considered adapting the SW SAGA Condition Track for this? A wound that sticks is just a persistent condition. For spellcasters, have the track also impose a penalty to Caster Level.

[Realms of Chaos]

Ocel: I'm not sure if I like that threshold as the entire point of this alternate is that wounds build up and even lesser creatures can destroy a larger one given enough time and numbers.

Making the threshold that high generally prevents the WM of a creature from increasing unless a huge chunk of its hit points are taken out in a single round (and low level creatures like goblins, ogres, and commoners would preretty much have to be killed in a single round so that their WM could increase, which seems to go against the point). Making this system incompatable with this sort of weak creature seems odd because it's supposed to encourage battles with them (at least from a DM's perspective).

Also, if we have a creature with even 5 hd and DR 5/magic, that would require 20 damage (not including damage prevented by DR) in one round to increase the WM, something that would require a simply huge number of attacks in order to accomplish, enough so that this system isn't really making much of a difference any more.

Drachasor: Having never played SW Saga, I honestly have no clue what the condition track looks like, don't know what a persistant condition is, and don't even know what "a wound that sticks" is. Could you please explain it to me?

[Drachasor]

Yeah, sure I'll give the gist of it with names and mechanics translated to D&D:


Normal: Just what it says. No penalties to anything.
Awkward: -1 Penalty to Saves, Attacks, Caster Level, and AC
Injured: -2 Penalty to Saves, Attacks, Caster Level, and AC
Hurts Bad: -5 Penalty to Saves, Attacks, Caster Level, and AC
Oh God, Make It Stop: -10 Penalty to Saves, Attacks, Caster Level, and AC
Unconscious: Technically no penalty to anything, but you are down for the count


Recovery: 3 Swift Actions one after another (may be spread over two rounds), can move you up one rank on the condition track (so from Hurts Bad to Injured, for instance). You'd probably want to add some other things that move people up and down.

Threshold: You move down 1 when you take damage greater than 10 + Level + Constitution Modifier + Misc (in SAGA there are feats that raise this number, also each size over medium gives a +5 bonus each step).

Special attacks can also move you down the track. Typically stuff that normally would cause blindness or other status effects are handled by the condition track in SAGA, but these need not be the case for your use. Such special attacks can apply Persistent Conditions (PS). If you are inflicted with a PS, then you cannot move back up the track through spells, abilities, or Recovery until that PS is removed. You can still be pushed further down. So if you have Poisoned as a PS, then someone that gets poisoned can't get back into their full fighting shape until they get a cure for that poison.

I think this can be modified to your needs (such as make the Threshold a number for damage over the course of a round, rather than a single attack). It's a fairly simple and elegant system. It doesn't do the bonus damage thing, but you will take more damage because your defenses are worse. Same net result, really.

[ocel]

RealmsofChaos: You've made more than one valid point on the previous issue, but I wish I could inflict more than one wound point, other than per one turn or:
If you take 50 points of damage or more from a single source while your wound multiplier is 1 or 0, it is increased by 2.
Edit: Maybe something like scaling for massive damage.

[Adamantrue]

RealmsofChaos: You've made more than one valid point on the previous issue, but I wish I could inflict more than one wound point, other than per one turn or: Perhaps a Feat or two would be in order? Something based on Power Attack, for example?

[Arcran]

I like it but I think 1/2 your ECL is low for the multiplier. With that your basically going up a rank every time you get hit.

[Realms of Chaos]

I like it but I think 1/2 your ECL is low for the multiplier. With that your basically going up a rank every time you get hit.

In a round of serious combat between creatures of equal might, it is intentional that anyone taking real damage in a round i going it increase in WM. The threshold is made to give back a bit of validity to energy resistance and damage reduction and to make it so that a mob of peasants can't just go out and kill anything (unless it already has a high WM, at least).

[ocel]

Overall I think this variant has potential, although a little more refinement in mechanics & presentation, might improve some aspects of it. Anyone interested in testing it in the indeterminable future?

[Silva Stormrage]

Just a question about this variant, how does it work with Undead/Negative Energy. For example dread necromancer, would their charnel touch be able to cure the wound multiplier? Are Undead affected by the wound multiplier at all?

Also the penalties might be a bit high, I would suggest making the penalties -1 to saves/attack rolls/ caster level etc for every 2 wound multiplier instead of every one.

[Realms of Chaos]

Almost missed that last reply entirely.

It was intended that undead can reduce their wound modifier in a normal manner and that negative energy can be used to reduce them further. Undead/Constructs who do not heal naturally, however, do not reduce their WM on their own (as would make sense).

Also, the penalties have been halves as that indeed seems a lot more fair.

Drachasor: Also, to properly respond to the idea of a wound track:

I don't see much in that large description that makes me see the concept in a different light from my OP, even though everyone recommends it. The big reason that I'm not down with it is that it seems to serve an entirely different purpose from what I'm going for.

The example system that you give, while capable of making individual battles more intense and gritty, doesn't seem to add anything beyond the scope of the battle where you're injured. At the end of a combat, it sounds like you can take a few rounds to lower yourself down the ladder and go on your merry way with but a few hit points missing.

This alternate was intended to make the entire world grittier. Getting hit in battle has a realistic chance of messing you up for a while (not just the duration of the combat), even lesser foes can pose a risk to high level characters who have been battered around, and not getting hit becomes a real concern.

[ocel]

Is there any other form we can determine wound points aside from surpassing the ecl or hd thresholds, perhaps, if we multiply those with another factor, or establish a base like 10, or less? I'm also looking for ways to inflict more than one wound point aside from 50, preferably something that could be scaled.

[Drachasor]

The example system that you give, while capable of making individual battles more intense and gritty, doesn't seem to add anything beyond the scope of the battle where you're injured. At the end of a combat, it sounds like you can take a few rounds to lower yourself down the ladder and go on your merry way with but a few hit points missing.

This alternate was intended to make the entire world grittier. Getting hit in battle has a realistic chance of messing you up for a while (not just the duration of the combat), even lesser foes can pose a risk to high level characters who have been battered around, and not getting hit becomes a real concern.

You could always adjust the mechanics of recovery for the Condition Track as well as the track itself. The basic structure of the condition track I think serves you better since a lowered AC means normal people will have an easier time hitting the players.

[Realms of Chaos]

You could always adjust the mechanics of recovery for the Condition Track as well as the track itself. The basic structure of the condition track I think serves you better since a lowered AC means normal people will have an easier time hitting the players.

Um... the version tht I wrote also penalizes AC. :smallconfused:

[Drachasor]

Um... the version tht I wrote also penalizes AC. :smallconfused:

Not much. A guy with 30 AC would need a WM of 20 to just have AC 20.

I do feel that just lowering AC and saves is quite sufficient for the effect you want, btw.

[Lappy9000]

Wow this is...elegant. Fixes a bunch of problems, is easily implemented, and is simple to boot.

I'll definitely ask my group if they want to use this :smallcool:

[ocel]

Aside from the suggestions I made, I'm curious if we can modify healing to make this variant, grittier..., for example, depending on the severity of the injury, whether by wound points, &/or a certain percentage of a characters hp, the amount of time or hp needed to recover would be multiplied by that value.

[137beth]

Just a question about this variant, how does it work with Undead/Negative Energy. For example dread necromancer, would their charnel touch be able to cure the wound multiplier?

I'd rule they do reduce wound multiplier, since Inflict spells on undead are essentially the same as cure spells on living.


Are Undead affected by the wound multiplier at all?

Yes, he said this earlier in the thread, ALL creatures have WM. No exceptions.


Also the penalties might be a bit high, I would suggest making the penalties -1 to saves/attack rolls/ caster level etc for every 2 wound multiplier instead of every one.
I disagree. Normally most encounters will end in a few rounds anyways, so you would die before WM started to matter. The penalties are fine as they are.