Clobbered?

[Calimehter]

I've always been a bit disappointed that sticking swords and axes and whatnot into someone never manages to deal a status effect. People are either dead, or there was no game effect at all. Over the years, I've experimented around with various ways of making damage mean something other than just "unharmed" or "dead".

When running E6, I found that I really liked the Vitality/Wound system from UA, but I don't think that it would translate well into higher level play. Damage scales up pretty fast, and you quickly reach a point where pretty much *all* crits take out all of your wound points each time.

So, one replacement option I've been considering is the Clobbered variant found on page 27 of the DMG.

My big fear is that getting clobbered will be a bigger penalty for the melee types (no full attacks) than the spellcasters. I've toyed with the idea of allowing a Fortitude save of some sort to avoid it. I've also thought about trying to incorporate a spellcasting penalty, such as a Concentration check to cast when clobbered.

Anyone tried it out or have any thoughts on it?

[Segev]

I'd go with the Fort Save idea, and give an ad hoc bonus to the various "fighter" type classes as a new class feature every few levels.

Maybe +1 to saves vs. Clobbered at level 1, plus 1 every 4 levels to a maximum of +5 at level 20. Or rescale it as you feel appropriate to keep the Fighters good enough at it compared to clerics and druids and other characters.