proposed houserule for damage

[lunar2]

One of the problems with blasting/healing caster builds, and most martial builds, is that damage is irrelevant unless it's deadly. if you have 1 hp, you are as dangerous as if you had full hp. this proposed houserule would fix that.

variant 1: if you are at or below 2/3 of your maximum HP, you are fatigued. if you are at or below 1/3 of your maximum HP, you are exhausted (immunity to fatigue and or exhaustion does not affect this rule, since this is representative of how the body simply does not work as well while injured, rather than any actual tiredness).

variant 2: whenever your total damage (lethal and nonlethal) is equal to or greater than an increment of 10% of your maximum HP, you incur a -1 penalty to all ability scores (immunity to ability score penalties are not taken into account, as above. constitution penalties from this source do not affect max or current HP).

with either of these houserules in effect, HP damage becomes serious business again. healers are viable roles, because damage dealers can't effectively deal damage while injured.

i personally prefer variant 2, since the loss of mental ability scores hurts casters (in save DCs, spell slots, and max spell level) much more than simple fatigue or exhaustion.

[Ernir]

Note that making damage more generally penalizing is also very likely to nerf those who are most likely to take damage - meaning the melee.

Be careful about introducing "realism-enhancing" stuff like this.

[Curmudgeon]

Variant 2 is mechanically undesirable, because it means recalculating pretty much everything for the character.

Variant 1 with an increase to the next casting time increment when fatigued, and 2 steps when exhausted (swift action -> standard action -> full round action -> 1 round action -> 2 round action) would work better, I think. Removing the option to charge (combine movement and attack) hurts melee characters in the action economy when fatigued, and cutting them down to half speed when exhausted further limits what they can accomplish in one round. Adding action economy penalties for spellcasters keeps things equitable.

[lunar2]

Variant 2 is mechanically undesirable, because it means recalculating pretty much everything for the character.

Variant 1 with an increase to the next casting time increment when fatigued, and 2 steps when exhausted (swift action -> standard action -> full round action -> 1 round action -> 2 round action) would work better, I think. Removing the option to charge (combine movement and attack) hurts melee characters in the action economy when fatigued, and cutting them down to half speed when exhausted further limits what they can accomplish in one round. Adding action economy penalties for spellcasters keeps things equitable.

so, variant 1 with casting time increase, it is.

@ernir it actually had nothing to do with realism at all. it was simply making damage relevant, and therefore making blasting, healing, and DPS builds more viable compared to save-or-die and save-or-suck builds.

[Ravellion]

You could borrow a page from Star Wars SAGA edition and introduce a condition track. IIRC you had -0 (uninjured), -1, -2, -5, -10, unconscious. The -X would simply apply to all your rolls except for damage. Any hit that deals more than your constituition score in damage also puts you down one level of the condition track.

The cure spells have the possibility to increase your condition track. I'd say that for each 5-8 roll of a cure spell, you could move up one marker of the condition track, but that is a matter of taste. You'll have to make some decision regarding (lesser) restoration as well.

[jmelesky]

If you go with variant 1, i'd suggest a couple amendments:

1. Barbarian rage gives immunity to fatigue/exhaustion effects (or at least postpones them till after the rage). That's part and parcel of the rage fluff.

2. Melee types are given ways to mitigate the effects, since a great deal of their training involves pushing past the normal limits of their bodies. You can do that on a class basis (e.g. Fighters are fatigued at 2/5 HP, and exhausted at 1/5), or by BAB, or whatever. It may make sense to add something like that to some of the existing feats (Endurance might improve your ability to deal with it, for example).

Also, see the existing Vitality/Wound Point system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) for a different approach.

[Godskook]

This largely punishes tank/beatstick roles who are far more likely to actually take damage in a CR=ECL fight. This is a problem cause they're already disadvantaged compared to the casters.

[navar100]

Note that making damage more generally penalizing is also very likely to nerf those who are most likely to take damage - meaning the melee.

Be careful about introducing "realism-enhancing" stuff like this.

Exactly. It becomes unfun to play a warrior since warriors get hurt the most often. They're supposed to.

As it is, generally only spellcasters can apply status effects such as fatigue and sicken in 3E. Maybe a couple of feats can allow it. Tome of Battle added status affecting maneuvers. 4E I think applied it more broadly for warriors. Pathfinder provide warriors with more feats and class features that allow for doing more than just attack for hit point damage.

Getting hit in combat is bad enough. Don't add insult to injury by giving penalties just for the sake of getting hit. The attacker needs to have some ability to apply such a penalty.

[Mystify]

I don't think this will make the dynamics better. As people have said, it punishes the martial characters overly much. At the very least, give them some kind of boost to counter the effect. It also will have a escalating effect. The battle starts going poorly, so the party gets penalized and has a harder time pulling through. Initiative becomes even more important, as the first strike will leave the defenders unable to respond in full, further skeweing the balance. momentary swings in ability can cascade.

[Seerow]

Personally, I use a variant on Wounds/Vitality:

Vitality is what HP normally is.

Wounds are much lower. 5+con mod+1/2 level (round down). So a low level average person will have between 3 and 6 wounds, a PC is probably going to be more like 6-7 points. A high level character is going to be looking at a range closer to 18-25, depending on con.

Damage Threshold is determined by a combination of level, constitution score, and armor. So a tank with 16 con and full plate will have a much higher threshold than a character with no armor and 12 con.

Wounds are inflicted by taking hit point damage that exceeds the target's damage threshold. Beating it inflicts 1 point, every 10 additional points it beats it by inflicts 1 extra wound. Critical hits automatically inflict at least 1 wound point, in addition to the extra damage.

Every 3 points of wounds incurs a -1 penalty to basically everything (including save DCs).





The biggest difference is the reduction in how many wound points are taken by the characters who are supposed to be taking damage. This allows the penalties to be implemented without hurting the beatsticks quite so much. It also lets wounds/vit to be implemented without a crit being basically guaranteed death.

It works relatively well at low levels, at higher levels I'm thinking another factor for DT is needed, but haven't really had a lot of time to test a few of the ideas for it I had in mind, and even then how much is needed would vary drastically by optimization level.

[Tyndmyr]

I would propose instead that penalties can be taken INSTEAD of taking hp damage, as a voluntary option on the part of the target.

Note, however, that this does tend to prolong fights, as nearly any condition is worth taking instead of dropping and bleeding out.

[Tvtyrant]

A possible suggestion is to modify the Massive Damage rule (which is RAW btw) to be a series of Fort saves against suck. Melee characters have good Fort saves anyways, so it won't be that bad for them.

The problem with this is that it doesn't effect enemies very often either, and the Cleric/Druid laugh at the attempt to balance them.

Another option is to make BaB tricks, where you trade to hit in order to add a fort save against a suck. This runs into the problem of course that a Gish is going to be better at this than a straight melee character is, due to their access to True Strike.

Edit: If I was going to do this, I would make it somewhat like Eyebite or Holy Word. There would be a table, and the more to-hit you lost the more a failed save would crush the enemy. -1 Blinded, -5 Shaken and Blinded, -10 Stunned Shaken and Blinded, -15 Dazed, Stunned, Shaken and Blinded, -20 Dies

[lunar2]

as for punishing melee characters. in every game i've played, anyone with the ability to targets casters as a priority, so they do take their fair share of damage. also, monsters take damage too, so it's not like only the PCs get hurt. since no group I've been in has ever gotten into the high-op routine triple digit damage area, initiative isn't really a big deal. and the entire point of the rule is to validate blasting, in-combat healing, and melee builds, which are currently borderline useless.

with this rule in place, the wizard that casts bestow curse does absolutely nothing if the target makes the save, while the wizard that casts fireball possibly slapped the fatigued status on some or all of the opponents.

[DeAnno]

Mechanics like this can worsen problems of rocket tag at high levels, because even if the side that goes first doesn't kill it usually cripples.

I think Seerow has the best idea so far, and he's right that balancing such a thing at different levels and optimization environments would be pretty tough. At the low end of damage lethality, it can take a dozen hits to kill a man, and at the mid-high end (metamagic DPR, chargers, various ToB combos), it is routine to one shot PCs with a single coherent blow. At the end of the day this is probably the type of thing that belongs in E6.

[jmelesky]

I'm now realizing that this should probably be over in the Homebrew board (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15). It's a slower board, but you should get some more focussed feedback.

[Person_Man]

You could borrow a page from Star Wars SAGA edition and introduce a condition track. IIRC you had -0 (uninjured), -1, -2, -5, -10, unconscious. The -X would simply apply to all your rolls except for damage. Any hit that deals more than your constituition score in damage also puts you down one level of the condition track.

The cure spells have the possibility to increase your condition track. I'd say that for each 5-8 roll of a cure spell, you could move up one marker of the condition track, but that is a matter of taste. You'll have to make some decision regarding (lesser) restoration as well.

SWSE is a great game, and the condition track works very well within the context of that game. But note that a lot of special abilities are directly tied to lowering or improving the condition track. So I wouldn't just graft it onto 3.5 D&D, because doing so would probably have a lot of unintended consequences. For example, builds that rely on battlefield control (especially Summons) become even more powerful, whereas front-line tanking builds become weaker.

[Mystify]

SWSE is a great game, and the condition track works very well within the context of that game. But note that a lot of special abilities are directly tied to lowering or improving the condition track. So I wouldn't just graft it onto 3.5 D&D, because doing so would probably have a lot of unintended consequences. For example, builds that rely on battlefield control (especially Summons) become even more powerful, whereas front-line tanking builds become weaker.
Saga edition also has a much tighter control on the damage per hit, so its not easy to knock down condition tracks with every hit. You are right, it was a central mechanic well supported by the abilities, and grafting it into something else wouldn't work as well.

[FMArthur]

If you do a smoother progressive damage scale (like a cumulative disadvantage by 1 in CL and in all rolls involving you that aren't damage for every [Con score] damage you've taken), I don't think beatsticks actually get shafted as badly as it seems because it wears down the enemies as well, reducing their ability to hurt these attack-soaking party members and defend against them as well. I suppose it mostly depends on how available out-of-combat healing is to the group and makes it more vital to not start off a battle at low-HP though.