The system's designed for Dungeons and Dragons, or rather for a generic OSR-style hack that's partially LOFTP and partially reverse-engineered from 5th Edition, which is where I started actually playing RPGs instead of just reading about them. Only thing worth noting is that I use 3d6 instead of 1d20, since 3d6 lands on a bell-curve and means I can make critical successes & failures more memorable. They're fun, okay? Remember fun?
As for the wounds themselves, it's a total mishmash that's like 90% in-the-moment rulings. As such, I'm publishing this more as inspiration than as anything else!
tl;dr:
Zero HP or below is Death's Door. Wipe negatives and reset to zero. If a PC takes damage when they're on zero, instead of losing hp they receive a permanent consequence. Enough of these permanent consequences and they're just dead.The Mechanics
If your hit-points are reduced to zero, you're now on Death's Door. If you'd normally be in negatives, you're just at zero (exceptions below). You are not unconscious, though if you're feeling cowardly you're allowed to lie on the ground and pretend to be dead.
There's now two ways to proceed, pick one or mix and match. Or use a third, I guess.
Stat Damage. (Thanks Chris McDowall and Into The Odd, sorry for stealing from your system.)
If you're on Death's Door then every point of damage you take is removed from one of your stats. Typically, you'd remove it from Constitution or your system's equivalent. If you're taking non-physical damage or under psychic attack, maybe apply the damage to Intelligence or Charisma.
Whenever you take stat damage in this way, reduce the stat and then roll a d20. If the result is equal to or less than the stat you took damage in, then nothing happens. If the result is greater than the stat you took damage in, then you are incapacitated. Typically you're rendered unconscious, but depending on circumstances you could rule this as something like 'hallucinating vividly' or 'asleep.'
Wounds Table. (Cavegirl has a really good table, and Dark Heresy has plenty of them.)
If you're on Death's Door, then every subsequent attack that hits you causes a nasty injury, most of which will be permanent until fixed with serious medicine and probably some magic or something. See how much damage the attack does (e.g. 6) and then find a result in your Wounds Table with a matching number and a matching damage type. Roll randomly for hit location if you need it.
I could do up a table here, but there's a ton of good ones (one of which I linked above). The important part of using a Wounds table is the permanence of it. Once you're at zero HP, then your lifelines are gone and even a scratching blow dealing 1 damage can result in your character losing an eye, whereas larger hits of 8 or 10 damage will often just straight up kill you dead.
More Caveats
The reason for the 'Death's Door' mechanic is pretty simple- it gives the players a vague second chance. If they're on 1 hp and take 10 damage, it's not instant death- they're put to zero and then their next mistake has permanent consequences. That said, I would always apply a 'massive damage' exemption for situations where a character would be put to like, -20 hp in a normal game. If a PC jumps off a cliff and takes capped fall damage, there is no way that they should pull a 'b-but the mechanics say Death's Door' on you. I'll just tell you to rule this case-by-case. A hard number like -20 might be okay for a low-level dungeon crawl, but a high-level campaign might have the party exchanging damage numbers like that in a single hit.
You don't have to offer a way out from your 'permanent' wounds or 'permanent' stat damage. Actually make it honest-to-god permanent if you want to! Just don't break your own fiction to do it. If NPCs are regenerating missing limbs with first-level spells, then it's rude to arbitrarily prevent PCs doing the same thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment