For those of you that didn't read the lengthy report I posted late last night about Sunday's OA game, to summarize very briefly, Lee Ann's character Ami died and Ashli's character Aiko suffered a broken leg because I am using a slightly modified version of this and will be out of the game for 2d4+9 weeks. Ami died from poison, so she didn't get to roll on the table.
Here's where my rules tinkering has had an unintended consequence, under "standard" AD&D rules, as played by pretty much every group I've ever played with, death comes at -10 hp. Aiko got knocked down to -3 hp. Which would have been unconscious and bleeding, there were plenty of people there to "bind her wounds" and a Shugenja to cast Cure Light Wounds, which she had memorized and ready to go.
Instead, she is going to wind up making another character to take the place of Aiko for the three months or so that she's going to be laid up recovering, all because I decided to change a rule to make combats simpler, more survivable, more "realistic" (from my point of view) and do away with tracking negative Hit Points. 1st edition AD&D is actually MORE forgiving here, maybe EGG was on to something when he wrote the Hit Points section in the DMG. That being said, apparently every single group I have ever played with has read no further in Zero Hit Points sub section than the first paragraph, because at no point has any group I have ever played with ever used any of the penalties associated with dropping below 0 hp. Hell, I've had a long standing house rule that once your wounds were bound, or any cure spell was used on you, you automatically returned to 0 hp and started raising your total from there. This made small 1 hp doses of healing potion, 1 hp uses of a Paladin's "Lay on Hands" ability, the Cleric Orison "Cure Minor Wounds" in 3e and simply "binding wounds" very popular activities to do before any serious healing magic was used; which was another unintended side effect of a minor rules alteration.
This is where I feel kind of bad for Ashli and not for Lee Ann. Lee Ann's character died from poison in a "standard" AD&D save or die way, we were both cool with that. Her decision to stick around and duke it out with the Huge Spider wasn't perhaps the best thought out, but poor choices kill Thieves, and apparently Yakuza, that rely on luck to save them all the time. Ashli's character is getting sidelined, essentially retired, which in D&D terms might as well be dead, due to a rule I changed and she'd be more or less fine if I hadn't. Her character Aiko is especially screwed by the injury to any limb because she's a Kensei that specialized in a two-handed weapon. Any Fighter type would have been hurt by a broken limb, what would have been most playable would have been broken ribs, it wouldn't have been fun or easy, but it would have been playable.
The thing that gets me is that this is the second session in a row where unintended consequences have struck my game, and they were both based on the same desire to do away with the negative hit point tracking and having everyone act like they were a combat medic. The last time it was my wife Moan's character Misaki and she got totally hosed by a table I designed on the fly for dealing with the people who hit 0 hp, there was a tiny chance of a permanent stat loss and she not only hit that, but got the worst possible stat loss. I decided to commute that to temporary, because I hadn't had too much time to think the table through while I was creating it, and moved on with the game.
Both of these session's worth of unintended consequences were the results of good intentions, and I can't say that I intend to do any alteration of this week's result; I just feel kind of bad about it because of the fact that Aiko would be pretty much fine under standard rules. The session before had one of the intended results of increasing survivability, all of the characters that were dropped to 0 hp or below survived what would have been, almost certainly, a TPK under standard rules; just because characters would have stopped being active participants in combat to try and save other party members. TPKs three weeks in a row killed my OA game last year, so I was/am a little gun shy on this issue, which is part of the reasoning behind this rules tinkering I've been doing. A few extra spells for the Wu Jen at lower levels isn't going to dramatically impact the game anymore than a few extra spells for Clerics does in standard AD&D. I couldn't use the "Shields Shall be Splintered" rule here, because they don't use shields in feudal Japan. I still use the d30 rule.
Now, the last game session technically ended with Aiko still unconscious with her lower left leg broken. The Henchmen had returned with the spooked horses and the party had searched the room for treasure. Ami's body had been found. My wife's character Misaki had not cast any cure spells because, inconveniently at the end of combat with the Huge Spider, Mona's Aunt called and she had to take that call. It was getting late-ish by then anyway and John and Em had school in the morning. Theoretically the party doesn't have to leave, Aiko can limp along with them and there are three NPCs with the party currently that could be played by Lee Ann and/or Ashli, although I'd rather keep Buntaro to myself for now and the foreseeable future, and I can't see either Dalton or John really wanting to give up their Henchmen to the other players to use. Plus Lee Ann really seems pretty psyched about bringing in her new character Chakha.
It's a tough situation Khan. Can I just recommend the house rule that I've been using, very successfully, in my own games for a very long time. It makes dropping to negative hit points a situation to be feared without permanently reducing a characters stats or making the character unplayable for long periods of real time (and game time).
ReplyDeleteIt also allows the character to continuing adventuring before fully recovering from their injuries, but at a stiff penalty.
Brian's Dead or Dying House Rules:
At 0hp the character is merely temporarily incapacitated , knocked out, stunned, or lying in a groaning heap. He does not lose a hp per round due to bleeding. Cure spells will return the character to consciousness with no loss in memorised spells or penalties to dice rolls. The character can carry on adventuring as normal.
At -1hp or below the character loses all memorised spells. The character is now unconscious and bleeding to death. The character loses an additional hp per round until bandaged by another character(a full round action. The character will remain unconscious until brought back to a positive hit point total by magical or natural healing.
Even when conscious (back to positive hit points) the character will feel the effects of such serious injuries for some time. This is represented by a -1 modifier to all dice rolls for every negative hit point sustained by the character. This is cumulative -if the character was brought back to positive hit points and then dropped down to negative hit points again (even in the same counter) the total number of negative hit points acquired is used to calculate the negative modifier.
This represents broken bones, sprains, deep muscle wounds, blood loss etc. This is refered to as a wound penalty.
The negative modifier is reduced by 1 for every full day of undisturbed bed rest.
Special Case: The heal spell instantly restores a character to full health. He regains full hit points and does not suffer any negative modifiers to dice rolls due to injury.
Example:
Yoshi has 7 hitpoints. He is dropped to -6hp in a fight. He bleeds for one round and reaches -7hp. Then the party skukenja casts cure light wounds, healing him of eight hit points.
Although he is now on 1 hp and conscious, Yoshi essentially remains incapacitated. He is at -7 to all dice rolls and has lost all his remaining memorised spells. After leaving the dungeon, Yoshi rests for three days at the party camp. He regains 3 hp and reduces his dice roll penalty for being injured to -4.
On the fourth day the party is attacked by Brigands. During the fighting, Yoshi catches an elemental burst from a bandit wu-jen and goes down to -1 hit points. Adding this new wound penalty of -1 to his existing wound penalty results in a total wound lenalty of -5. He is now at -5 to all dice rolls and will require a total of 5 days of bed rest to recover from his wounds.
With the party Shukenja dead, Yoshi remains unconscious for two more days, until he recovers two hit points through natural healing and sits on 1 hp. These two days count as bed rest so he is now at a -3 wound penalty. After three more days of bed rest, he is now on 4hp.
He no longer operates under a negative modifier to all dice rolls.
Despite still not feeling entirely at his best (still 3hp short of his maximum) Yoshi's wounds no longer hamper him. He is fit to continue adventuring.
Yeah, the broken bones thing can be rough. It's actually much gentler than the rules I use (Moldvay/Cook where anything below 1 is dead-dead-dead!).
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that it doesn't always need to be an arm or a leg. It can be hand, a finger, a rib, a foot... Lots of bones can be broken to incur lesser penalties that don't put the PC out of the game for long periods of time. You may also allow magical healing to speed up the process.
That all said, when I wrote that chart up, the plan was actually to encourage players to have more than one PC in their stable. That hasn't happened in my game, either. ;p
I just started a new B/X game and killed 2 PCs in the first session, I actually had wanted people to have more than one character in their stable for the B/X game, just because I was running it, more or less, rules as written and less than 1HP is dead. No one did though. No biggie, those characters are quick and easy to make. I also had planned on them looking for some hired help, but no one thought to ask.
ReplyDelete