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LarryBiscuit
2013-06-05, 03:11 PM
Me and my friend as co-DMing a campaign that takes place during a war, and we'd love to have a Combat Fatigue sort of system in it.

So for say, during combat, every round that you swing a weapon, you make a percentile roll against your Strength x4 (18 strength = 72), so for that 18 strength you need to roll UNDER a 72 to succeed the check. Every round combat goes on, you take 2 or 4 off of the roll (72 -> 70 -> 68 -> 66, etc.)

We were thinking about using the Endurance skill as a modifier to it somehow.

What do you guys think are some good penalties for failing the checks? Some polishing of what we have? How would we make Fatigue work for casters (Sorc, Bard, Wiz, Cleric, etc.?)

Thanks in advance, fellow players!

Mando Knight
2013-06-05, 03:39 PM
Just limit the ability of players to take (mostly extended, but possibly also short) rests. A lack of healing surges and daily powers is fatigue enough.

Your given example degenerates your players too quickly (and stamina should be based off of Constitution whenever possible). It shouldn't take an Epic-tier hero with superhuman durability to have a 0% chance of being fatigued after six seconds. Adventuring keeps you relatively in shape, even if you're just a scrawny wizard.

OzymandiasX
2013-06-05, 04:01 PM
A homebrew I played in used something akin to the following:


Characters have a Fatuge Point (FP) score equal to their Con score (not modifier). Feats or abilities may give a bonus (Endurance gave a +4 bonus, the Run feat caused running to not cause fatigue, Bless gave a +2 to FP, healing restored the spell's level in FP, and others I've forgotten :))
Any round spent doing strenuous activity cost 2 FP. This includes melee (attacking or defending), grappling, etc.
Any round spent doing moderate activity cost 1 FP. This includes ranged combat, spellcasting, simple running, etc.
Once your FP reached 0, you were Tired. This caused a -2 penalty to attacks, damage, saves, etc.
Once your FP reached negative your max FP value you were Fatigued. This cased -4 penalties, -2 AC, and inability to run.
Once your FP reached negative double your max FP, you were Exhausted. At Exhausted you were incapable of taking anything other than a single Move action and took a -4 to AC.
Once per combat you could spend a full round action to Take a Breather regain half your Max FP.
Resting for 5 minutes regained a number of FP equal to your Max FP. (So if you were negative, you may still not be full)

This worked out pretty well, as most combats this wasn't an issue. Melee characters tended to have higher Con scores and others could use FP more slowly. The system came into play mostly in drawn out combats or cases where the PCs had to immediately flee or were trying to follow an opponent who was fleeing.

It was somewhat cool and cinematic when it did come into play, but I'm not sure it was worth the extra effort and rules of tracking it. When it did come into play it made already long combats even longer when everyone on both sides was taking penalties to hit and damage.