More penalties besides damage question

[tim01300]

What experience have other DMs had with other penalties onto a situation besides just damage.

For example If a player falls into a pool of lava, survives the 20D6 damage and continuous damage over the next two rounds but with like 4 hp left. Would it be wrong and cheap to also say the character is horribly burned and takes a penalty on charisma checks or something along those lines? Until they are given a regenerate spell? It just seems a little more flavorful to me, rather than he pops out and the cleric his him with a few cure serious wounds and off we go. Or is this just being an extra **** to my players?

Also removing body parts or sustaining concussions when hit with critical hits? Anyone ever taken a players hand or something?

*note* in my games we haven't ever used to death due to massive damage rule. Off my head I can't even remember it exactly

If you guys HAVE done this sorta thing and felt that it worked and added meaningful flavor, can you present some examples

[Xervous]

This sort of thing serves only to punish PCs. Everything else in the world of significance isn't going to be living too long to have to deal with such things, or they're going to be tied to the PCs and thus the PCs suffer more...

[Tvtyrant]

In my world everyone of any real age has some missing body parts, so it is hardly just the party. Two days ago I had a Duskblade who was repeatedly dropped down to -9 health by bite attacks in separate encounters (including a high rolling Huge Shark who dropped him 29 health.) I decided that he now has massive bite scars on his chest cavity from the attack that look like this:
http://blog.headwestoutfitters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shark-bite.jpg

The scars don't have any effects on his stats, but they aren't normally removable without regeneration. Too much of his torso was removed by the shark for him to get rid of the scar tissue entirely.

If I was going to formalize it the system would be a random table of effects that occur when a crit drops a player below 0 health, and then a random roll for every NPC to see if they have such injuries. The effects would be off of the flaw table, like losing an eye would get you the Murky-Eyed flaw or Poor Reflexes for losing a leg.

Regeneration would remove any of these traits, or they would fade once the person has gained a level and become "adjusted" to their new body.

I also allow my players to sunder natural attacks and do lots of none RAW things, so it isn't likely I play straight D&D anymore anyways. TVE6!

[BowStreetRunner]

There's a game for this - it's called Cyberpunk. Limbs get lost all the time. The system not only supports loss of body parts, but also provides tons of options for dealing with this when it happens.

D&D does not have much support for loss of body parts, nor for dealing with such loss when it happens. If you want to add a mechanic like this to the game, you are going to need to make sure to balance this out everywhere else in the game. You also need to make sure it is still fun to play (which is the ultimate balance check on any changes you implement).

My recommendation is to leave this for other systems.

[ArcturusV]

Interesting stuff. I've tried similar tacks before. But it was always a +/- thing, rather than a straight -.

What I mean is... say you took a fireball to the face, survived the Massive Damage save, still got knocked into Negatives, but overall you live through it. That might have resulted in face burning. But rather than a negative to Charisma or something, it becomes situational. If you're using your charisma in such a way that toughness, fear, etc, would apply, it's a bonus. Lets face it, the guy who has the terrible scars that suggested massive damage, and survived it enough to be Intimidating you now? Probably scarier than the pretty boy with the flawless skin. Similarly have a "battlescarred captain" type might improve leadership when you need someone to be tough and put some steel in your allies. But... it PROBABLY is going to derail from your ability to disguise yourself (Horrible scars being a very distinguishing mark), or to try to seduce the pants off the random bar wench, etc.

I never went too far with it. Just 2-4 point swings at the most. Didn't have any complaints about it. Some players didn't care. Others liked the idea of being able to use their history in certain ways, like the guy with the horrible burn scars being this terrifying figure who could more easily cow people who hadn't taken a fireball to the face.

[Phelix-Mu]

Charisma poorly models superficial changes to appearance. And magic pretty much obviates any such rules later on in the game, when bodies come and go, organs fail, and eyeballs get ripped out. Next day (or sooner), the character is back in black and ready to roll.

I've implemented parts of the Appearance score as introduced in Book of Erotic Fantasy in a couple campaigns that I ran. BoEF's rules include modifiers for things like this, and it has some mechanical impact.

Overall, don't curbstomp the pcs too hard for just pursuing their profession, though. I do use instant kill rules (double natural 20s), and death by massive damage (with a slightly tweaked Fortitude check), and I do occasionally do things like remove limbs when characters are doing something particularly cinematic that goes horribly wrong.

One character jumped off a cliff onto a dragon that was engaged in melee with an npc. After scoring several big hits on the dragon while standing on its head, the dragon turned the tables and landed a severe critical hit on the pc. The pc would have been unconscious or killed, but I instead ruled that the dragon bit the character on the upper arms, and ripped the arm off in some thrashing. The pc made a Fortitude save (remember ye old system shock rules? yeah, something like that), and I had him able to limp away. It was all post 18th level on Ysgard, anyway, so I wasn't particularly worried about implications. I guess I go with a bit of Rule of Cool in these situations. Makes the events and story more memorable.