Lingering Injuries

[Calimehter]

I've always been fond of the idea of allowing weapon attacks to apply debilitating status effects to enemies. Slicing big chunks of HP off of an enemy doesn't really do much in the game till you get them down to 0, so while the wizard can 'Slow' an enemy down right off the bat in a combat, the warrior isn't really doing much to affect his enemies abilities by sticking swords in their guts . . . but there should be some downside to taking a nasty hit to the vitals other than just losing a few more HP than usual.

The problem with this approach is that the PCs end up taking a lot more hits than the bad guys do over the course of the campaign, so they can get pretty hamstrung (sorry) if they take a lot of hits, and fights could get kind of swingy because of that.

In my heavily modified 3.5 house rules, I had ported in some of the Pathfinder 'critical hit' feats for this. There was an advantage in this approach, in that PCs didn't have to deal with taking the hit every fight, since many enemies wouldn't have the feats necessary to deal out these status effects (whereas if a PC of mine had bothered to take any of the feats, they *would* have them in every fight they were involved in). The status effects delivered by many of these feats also didn't tend to linger much past the immediate battle, so there was a lesser risk of wrecking a PC outright.

5e has the Lingering Injuries table in the DMG. I'm really interested in this, but it seems a bit too harsh as it stands. I could easily see the PCs becoming saddled with lots of peglegs, eyepatches, and other deformities between the start of a campaign and getting to a high enough level for easy access to Regenerate. It also has the problem of further messing up the math of the while 'Dragon vs. 100 archers' thing, which I'm not excited about.

So, my questions for you all:

(1) Has anyone tried it? How did it go?

(2) I'm thinking of using the rule as written for falling to 0 HP, but disallowing it for critical hits unless you also have a homebrew feat that allows you to do that when you score a critical hit. Keeps some of the advantages from my old 3.5/Pathfinder hybrid approach. Would that work better than the table 'as is'? And if so, would "anytime you score a crit, you can force your opponent to roll on the lingering injuries table" be worth it as a feat? Maybe a half-feat?

[sophontteks]

Here's a copy paste of one of my DM's crit injury rules. They may have got it from somewhere else.

"A creature might sustain a lingering injury under the following circumstances:
- When it takes a critical hit (you can choose to either take the crit damage or an injury)
- When it fails a death saving throw by 5 or more
- When it is struck by a melee attack when unconscious (you can choose to either take the 2 death save failures or an injury + a death save failure)"

The important thing here is that players have a choice. It plays to their advantage. Our orc bard, for example, took lethal damage as a level one and lost an eye rather then outright dying from the crit.

[djreynolds]

In Out of the Abyss, one of the Drow NPCs has injury, you could check that out.

Disadvantage can be real debilitating and exhaustion levels are really tough to get rid of.

But you could try out exhaustion levels, a critical injury causes a level of exhaustion and you need a long rest to get rid of it. The worse the injury the more levels of exhaustion

I'm AFB, if you could post the lingering injury table perhaps

[Malifice]

My suggestion is to make it a buy in from the players.

1/ short rest, when reduced to 0 HP and not killed outright a PC can choose to remain on 1 HP and instead suffer a lingering injury.

The above avoids abuse and makes it a totally optional buy in front the players.

[DanyBallon]

Here's a copy paste of one of my DM's crit injury rules. They may have got it from somewhere else.

"A creature might sustain a lingering injury under the following circumstances:
- When it takes a critical hit (you can choose to either take the crit damage or an injury)
- When it fails a death saving throw by 5 or more
- When it is struck by a melee attack when unconscious (you can choose to either take the 2 death save failures or an injury + a death save failure)"

The important thing here is that players have a choice. It plays to their advantage. Our orc bard, for example, took lethal damage as a level one and lost an eye rather then outright dying from the crit.
I really like this!
If it was for characters in my home game, they would have way too many injuries :smallbiggrin:
Instead I would go that when you roll a 1 on a death saving throw, you either get an injury + a failed death saving throw, or get to fail on your death saving throw as per rule.

[Pex]

It's a matter of taste. If you and your players like it, so be it. I don't. I'm of the opinion that too much realism can ruin the fun. You said it yourself it hurts players more. The bad guys will be killed. The PCs play on with the game suffering penalties making further combats deadlier. It also tends to affect melee PCs more. Archers and spellcasters do occasionally get attacked, but melee warriors get attacked the most thus suffer the most. It's an indirect penalty for want of playing a melee warrior. Raging barbarians are also wanting to know why they are equally vulnerable when they take half damage. If they're not, fighters, monks, and paladins will cry foul.

However, if you will do this you need a way to mitigate it. Allow a Medicine check to heal minor injuries with a healing kit. Allow the Healer feat to heal more serious injuries - auto succeed minor injuries as part of using the feat, a check for major. The Lesser Restoration spell can also heal an injury, Greater Restoration a more serious one, and Regeneration still restoring severed limbs. Whether there should be potions of Restoration of different levels like Healing potions to cure injuries I don't know. I'd want them to exist in my own bias, but they might be too much/easy mitigation for your taste.

[Calimehter]

Here's a copy paste of one of my DM's crit injury rules. They may have got it from somewhere else.

"A creature might sustain a lingering injury under the following circumstances:
- When it takes a critical hit (you can choose to either take the crit damage or an injury)
- When it fails a death saving throw by 5 or more
- When it is struck by a melee attack when unconscious (you can choose to either take the 2 death save failures or an injury + a death save failure)"

The important thing here is that players have a choice. It plays to their advantage. Our orc bard, for example, took lethal damage as a level one and lost an eye rather then outright dying from the crit.

I like this, or something similar to it like Malifice's suggestion. In theory, a player would never have to roll on the table if they didn't want to . . . but they could, and possibly avoid a character death in the process. The rule can either exist or not exist for them as each player desires.

I could also in theory use it on an NPC, and (assuming the PCs don't slit his throat or anything like that after the battle) have him come back as the classic eyepatch villain with a score to settle.

I think I'm sold!

[sophontteks]

I like this, or something similar to it like Malifice's suggestion. In theory, a player would never have to roll on the table if they didn't want to . . . but they could, and possibly avoid a character death in the process. The rule can either exist or not exist for them as each player desires.

I could also in theory use it on an NPC, and (assuming the PCs don't slit his throat or anything like that after the battle) have him come back as the classic eyepatch villain with a score to settle.

I think I'm sold!
Dany has a good point on the second option. Maybe just the first and third one.

[R.Shackleford]

My suggestion is to make it a buy in from the players.

1/ short rest, when reduced to 0 HP and not killed outright a PC can choose to remain on 1 HP and instead suffer a lingering injury.

The above avoids abuse and makes it a totally optional buy in front the players.

This would be the only way I play at a table that had lingering injuries. LI punishes melee types more and really takes them out of the fantasy setting that magic-users get to play in (more so than they already are).

I will never again play at a table with forced LI.