Homebrew Injury Rules

[TheManicMonocle]

So I had some ideas for injury/death in 5e. Here's the ideas:

If you take more than half your hp in one hit you gain a scar

If your hp goes negative, and you survive, you must spend one day recovering​ per one negative hp.

Thoughts?

[Malifice]

So I had some ideas for injury/death in 5e. Here's the ideas:

If you take more than half your hp in one hit you gain a scar

If your hp goes negative, and you survive, you must spend one day recovering​ per one negative hp.

Thoughts?

You might want to double check the rulebook first.

[Laurefindel]

Not sure about the scar thing. A significant amount of blows at low levels will bring you down 50% hp in 1 attack. Plus this is purely cosmetic, so I'm unsure about the necessity of a rule for that. However the real turn-off for me is that it assumes that all damage taken results in physical injuries, which even by RaW definition of hp isn't necessarily the case.

As for the injury rule, there is no such a thing as negative hp in 5e, as pointed by Malifice above. I guess that easy enough to bring back as a houserule. My last character that went down would have been at minus forty something if negative hit points were a thing, so it would have been a long recovery. I've seen characters take over a hundred damage in a round. If you happened to be low before that attack it could take you months to recover. While that is not unrealistic, it clashes a lot with the overnight full recovery of vanilla D&D.

Also, what does 'recovery' mean? Is the recovering character unconscious for that long? Stuck to 1 hp? can it perform light tasks? what about magical healing? Can injuries be cured faster with cure wounds spells? What about the heal spell? Regenerate? What about the medicine skills, or healing kit proficiency? At the moment this is way to vague.

[TheManicMonocle]

I was thinking that, during recovery they have disadvantage on attack rolls

[Findulidas]

I was thinking that, during recovery they have disadvantage on attack rolls

Disadvantage is huge though. It feels like its going to be a frustration which isnt fun.

[Laurefindel]

I was thinking that, during recovery they have disadvantage on attack rolls

Disadvantage on attack roll isn't going to affect everyone equally. My fighter having disadvantage on every attack roll for 40 days isn't going to be the same as my wizard having disadvantage on attack rolls for 40 days. Sometimes taking a downtime isn't an option, for example:

Strahd says 'see you in a month'

you're going to be screwed with disadvantage on all attack rolls for the rest of the campaign. Giving 1 exhaustion level for that long is also just as crippling for some characters, less so for others. Even for the fighter who doesn't heavily rely on skills during combat, having nothing to contribute to outside combat is a big downer.

In other words, I see your intention to give players a penalty when going down to 0hp (I have a houserule about that too), but the penalty is too severe and the length is way too long

[TheManicMonocle]

Disadvantage on attack roll isn't going to affect everyone equally. My fighter having disadvantage on every attack roll for 40 days isn't going to be the same as my wizard having disadvantage on attack rolls for 40 days. Sometimes taking a downtime isn't an option, for example:

Strahd says 'see you in a month'

you're going to be screwed with disadvantage on all attack rolls for the rest of the campaign. Giving 1 exhaustion level for that long is also just as crippling for some characters, less so for others. Even for the fighter who doesn't heavily rely on skills during combat, having nothing to contribute to outside combat is a big downer.

In other words, I see your intention to give players a penalty when going down to 0hp (I have a houserule about that too), but the penalty is too severe and the length is way too long

That's a fair point, would you mind sharing your house rule?

[Laurefindel]

That's a fair point, would you mind sharing your house rule?

In a nutshell, each time they drop to 0hp, they gain 1 exhaustion level. (in this houserule, they also gain an exhaustion level each time they receive a critical hit or they fail a save by rolling a 1, but in your case it is not necessary). They keep all those accumulated exhaustion levels until they go back to 100% hp, whether it is by spending hit dice, receiving magical healing or just completing a long rest. At that point, all exhaustion levels caused by injuries go away, and they still can heal 1 additional exhaustion level during a long rest.

If you want to give it more bite, you could skip the 'go back to 100% hp' part and simply have one exhaustion level removed by long rest, so multiple injuries might take a bit longer to heal.

This rule was meant to be played with the short rest = 1 night and long rest = 1 week variant. Even with this variant, injuries heal unrealistically fast, but they idea was to not hinder gameplay too much.