Dark Souls Bleed mechanic

[The Ship's dog]

So I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls recently and wanted to incorporate bleed into 5e. For those of you who don't know, you stack up bleed to a cap, and then the target sort of pops and takes a bunch of damage.

Here is my bleed mechanic on spells:
(format) Bleed X + Spellcasting mod to a maximum of Y.
When you hit with a bleed spell, it deals a small amount of damage, but gets a number of bleed tokens equal to X + spellcasting modifier. Upon reaching or exceeding Y number of tokens, remove all tokens and deal Y*the type of dice dealt by the initial damage in bleeding damage.

Let's use Dorhy's Gnawing as an example.

Dorhy's Gnawing
1st level Conjuration
Casting time: 1 action
Duration: Instantaneous
Range: 60 ft

Make a ranged spell attack against a single creature you can see within range with advantage. Upon hitting, deal 1d4+1 Piercing damage and bleed the target for 2+your spellcasting modifier up to a maximum of 10.

So in 2 rounds, if the spell hits both times (the advantage simulates the homing quality of the spell in Dark Souls 3), then the target will take 10d4 bleeding damage. Casting bleed spells at higher levels would raise the maximum bleed counters and the number of bleeding tokens gained per hit.

On a weapon, the template would be:
Lower the damage dice of this weapon by 2 tiers, down to a minimum of d4. Each attack bleeds equal to your Proficiency modifier-1 up to a maximum of double your Proficiency modifier.

[Foxhound438]

Make a ranged spell attack against a single creature you can see within range with advantage. Upon hitting, deal 1d4+1 Piercing damage and bleed the target for 2+your spellcasting modifier up to a maximum of 10.

So in 2 rounds, if the spell hits both times (the advantage simulates the homing quality of the spell in Dark Souls 3), then the target will take 10d4 bleeding damage. Casting bleed spells at higher levels would raise the maximum bleed counters and the number of bleeding tokens gained per hit.


without getting into damage now vs. damage later analysis (as that's pretty much impossible to quantify for all scenarios), each of those L1 casts would end up basically doing 6d4+1 damage, or about 16. For comparison, a single chromatic sphere does (IIRC) 3d8 damage, or 13.5. I would say this is fair, as it's only better on higher HP targets where immediate burst doesn't matter as much, plus costing at least 2 slots, so it's more likely a way of making use of low level slots when you reach higher levels where casting one "magic missile" is too little contribution to matter. Good choice.

As for applying to weapons, be careful of that... A dagger would be made strictly better, and anything with extra attack loses no short term damage, since you're likely to get both required hits before the target can do anything about it. Especially bad on PAM or CBE builds. Probably make weapons gain stacks a bit slower to account for that. Maybe 1 stack + the number of die sizes you lose per hit, to a flat max of 10. At that point the fastest you could get it to go off is if you're a fighter with PAM at L11, and you would need to hit all 4 attacks consecutively, while a dagger would "technically" be strictly better but would be quite difficult to actually get the extra damage to apply since it would stack slower.

[The Ship's dog]

*snip*
As for applying to weapons, be careful of that... A dagger would be made strictly better, and anything with extra attack loses no short term damage, since you're likely to get both required hits before the target can do anything about it. Especially bad on PAM or CBE builds. Probably make weapons gain stacks a bit slower to account for that. Maybe 1 stack + the number of die sizes you lose per hit, to a flat max of 10. At that point the fastest you could get it to go off is if you're a fighter with PAM at L11, and you would need to hit all 4 attacks consecutively, while a dagger would "technically" be strictly better but would be quite difficult to actually get the extra damage to apply since it would stack slower.

Ah, I didn't think of PAM (stupidly), and only took into account Extra Attack, and not even the Fighter Extra Attack!

I like your idea, but how would you rule that with Greatswords and Mauls? Would you say that they bleed 1 or 2, as two of their damage dice are being lowered by 1.

[Arcangel4774]

Dorhys gnawing is a superior version of gnaw; unless gnaw is a cantrip, it should be stronger and at a higher level slot.

[The Ship's dog]

Dorhys gnawing is a superior version of gnaw; unless gnaw is a cantrip, it should be stronger and at a higher level slot.

Ah, right, forgot about Gnaw. I'm a bit wary of making a Bleeding Cantrip, but perhaps Gnaw would be a good candidate for it, also I could just use that for Bleeding arrows.

[Foxhound438]

Ah, I didn't think of PAM (stupidly), and only took into account Extra Attack, and not even the Fighter Extra Attack!

I like your idea, but how would you rule that with Greatswords and Mauls? Would you say that they bleed 1 or 2, as two of their damage dice are being lowered by 1.

eh, it's two dice being lowered by 1... you could rule it either way but I feel like counting it as 2 would make sense.

[Vaz]

Question; why does the existing Bleed mechanic (from a DMG magic item i forget the name of) not work?

[The Ship's dog]

Question; why does the existing Bleed mechanic (from a DMG magic item i forget the name of) not work?

Oh, I don't own a copy of the DMG, so I don't know about this mechanic. I would be very grateful if you could supply me with a link or something to find it easily!

[Vaz]

Essentially each hit causes a Bleeding Wound on a DC15 Con Save fails trigger the bleed; at the start of the turn, each Bleeding Wound deals a dice amount of damage at the start of a turn. If you are bleeding a DC15 Medicine check heals it as an Action.

High level weapons can deal more damage, and even inflict multiple ones, and maybe cause higher DC Con/Medicine checks.

[The Ship's dog]

Essentially each hit causes a Bleeding Wound on a DC15 Con Save fails trigger the bleed; at the start of the turn, each Bleeding Wound deals a dice amount of damage at the start of a turn. If you are bleeding a DC15 Medicine check heals it as an Action.

High level weapons can deal more damage, and even inflict multiple ones, and maybe cause higher DC Con/Medicine checks.

Ah right, I did consider this sort of thing and it is much more realistic, but it just doesn't really fulfill the feeling of Bleed from Dark Souls sorry. Thank you for bringing it up though, I didn't know that a Bleeding mechanic is in the DMG, that's useful.